Dr Wouter Basson is responsible for the delay in professional misconduct proceedings against him, according to the Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA), which says a “recurring theme” from “Dr Death’s” attorneys was their wait for confirmation that the Department of Defence would resume paying his lawyers’ fees.
In its heads of argument, the HPCSA said Basson was capable of paying the fees himself, in the interim, reports News24.
“This delay could have been curtailed if Dr Basson… funded his own legal costs. He certainly would have been in a financial position to do so,” their papers read.
The HPCSA is seeking to try Basson for a second time for professional misconduct related to his role as the former head of the apartheid government’s secret chemical and biological warfare programme, Project Coast, proceedings which “Dr Death” is attempting to have scrapped in the Gauteng High Court.
He instituted his application after the HPCSA informed him of the fresh inquiry last year. Basson argues that there has been an unreasonable delay in the action against him.
Now practising as a cardiologist, he maintains that the two decades-old complaint relates to his time while acting as a soldier and not as a medical doctor.
This argument is not new: after the initial inquiry, he was found guilty of contravening international protocols and conventions, with the panel deciding that Basson could not rely on military orders to escape his duties as a doctor.
This finding was made in 2014, seven years after he was initially charged by the watchdog and after being acquitted on criminal charges.
Basson challenged the HPCSA’s ruling, which eventually resulted in the Gauteng High Court in 2019 ruling in his favour for the recusal of two biased committee members who had been members of medical associations that had advocated for his removal from the medical register.
The HPCSA applied for leave to appeal at the trial court, the Supreme Court of Appeal and, eventually, the Constitutional Court in February 2020, without success.
According to the council, it had been corresponding with Basson’s legal team since then to convene a new committee.
As a matter of law, an application for a permanent stay of prosecution, disciplinary hearing, or professional conduct inquiry should not be easily granted, the HPCSA argued in its papers.
“This, because a delay per se does not constitute unfairness. What is important is whether the delay, in all circumstances, would inevitably and irremediably taint the overall substantive fairness of the professional conduct inquiry were it to commence.”
Basson’s case was not one deserving of a permanent stay, the body maintained.
“(Basson) is required to make out a proper case or establish that the alleged delay of five years has caused him material prejudice in conducting his defence. (He) failed to do this.”
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
SAMA calls for expulsion of Wouter Basson from register
Wouter Basson accuses HPCSA of ‘persecution’
Concourt rejects HPCSA appeal over Wouter Basson
HPCSA will take yet another try at a disciplinary hearing into Basson