Toxicology specialist Dr Danie Goosen helped chemical warfare expert Wouter Basson establish the Roodeplaat Research Laboratory during the eighties – a private company that concentrated on research for the SADF (South African Defense Force) chemical and biological agents. Truth this time did outdo fiction as a product considered for use on humans caused heart failure in horses - animals were torn apart by dum-dum bullets and baboons are blow torched. Super phosphates that affected heart beat and respiration brought on trembling, severe vomiting and diarrhea in baboons. After developing respiratory failure, they’d die. But animals weren’t the only victims. Black prisoners and Bushmen were administered poisons too. Once all had been revealed during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (which began in 1996), Wouter Basson faced 64 charges, including 16 of murder and 24 of fraud. It emerged that anti-apartheid activist Frank Chikane - general secretary of the SA council of churches (SACC) - had been poisoned with one poison first tested on baboons - Organophosphate. There could be no more hiding.
I’d come closer to understanding the plight of our primates but due to the theoretical nature of all I had learned, still remained separated. You can only go so far with knowledge born from theory.
Living at the top of Redhill near Cape Point during the early nineties, the baboons in the wild seemed on the surface to be free. P.A.V had grown and evolved into S.A.A.V (South Africans for the Abolition of Vivisection) – an anti vivisection organization that grew with every new year but remained mainly active in the thriving activity of Johannesburg. Perhaps people were more inclined to be distracted by nature’s charms and able to forget humanity’s crimes while buried in beauty. But the Cape had its environmental issues too.
In the mean time, baboons were becoming infamous around the Cape Peninsula for reasons that had little to do with Medical Science. They were slowly becoming known as potential raiders amongst the local people. Once they had noticed the extent to which people carried food and were prepared to hand it over, they’d hang around the roads waiting to be fed - passing tourists would oblige without hesitation in spite of the signs warning against this. And in time these particular baboons learnt to generalize about humans.
Handing an apple to a Chacma does not only offer an unnatural food source but also suggests submissive body language. Eventually, with so many people feeding the baboons, the power tipped into the baboons favor. They became bolder, raiding houses and fuelling the age-old hatred towards their species.
The human/baboon war had arisen in 1652 soon after the Dutch arrived and started farming at the foot of Table Mountain. Prior to this, the Khoi people with an understanding of baboon language and a respect for their ways, had co-existed harmoniously with baboons, learning from them and never killing them for food. Conflict between humans and baboons reached a head in 1990 when Cape Nature Conservation authorities shot a troop of 18 baboons after mistaking one for being a well-known raider in Kommetjie. This troop had allegedly been fed until trust was obtained before they were shot one by one in the enclosure they were lured into. As a result, conservationists Wally Peterson and Jenni Trethowan led a protest and formed the Kommetjie Environmental Awareness Group to help protect the remaining baboons.
By 1993, I’d moved back to Gauteng and reunited with S.A.A.V who’d become more active due to Michele Pickover and Beatrice Wiltshire’s relentless efforts to expose the hidden facts behind animal testing.