Pretoria - Dr Wouter Basson, recently found guilty of breaching professional codes in the apartheid era, has pulled another trick out of his hat and found another loophole in the law to further delay sentencing, interested parties said on Thursday.
Basson was to have appeared before a disciplinary tribunal for the finalising of sentencing on Thursday, but an application to have the courts intervene on the refusal of committee members to recuse themselves from the hearing halted the process.
“He brought an application to the High Court for a review of the decision to refuse to recuse,” legal counsel for the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) Tebogo Malatji explained.
The application filed three weeks ago came three months after Basson and his legal team walked out of a session of the HPCSA while arguments for his sentencing were being heard.
The legal team had rushed to the high court in January to launch an urgent application to challenge two members of the tribunal to recuse themselves from the committee that morning.
Lawyer Jaap Cilliers had cried foul that committee chairman Professor Jannie Hugo and member Professor Eddie Mhlanga had failed to disclose their membership of the South African Medical Association, which last December had added its voice to calls for Basson’s removal from the medical roll. He said the two would be biased against Basson and would negatively affect the outcome of sentencing.
The High Court in Pretoria gave him the go-ahead to request recusal, but in a hearing in March they again refused to budge, outlining their professional positions and saying they had so far been fair in handling all matters related to Basson.
Arguments for sentencing were heard over two days in March, both parties agreeing to the May 28 and 29 dates for sentencing.
“He now says they are wrong in refusing to leave,” Malatji said.
But this latest action by Basson and his lawyers was dismissed as “pathetic delaying tactics” and “clutching at straws” by some parties who have thrown their weight behind efforts to have the former head of apartheid’s secret chemical warfare laboratory Project Coast struck off the roll.
“This is intolerable. He has stretched this so far already by using every tactic to prevent the conclusion of his case,” Dr Marjorie Jobson of apartheid crimes national membership organisation Khulumani, said adding he was in denial of the crimes he committed against humanity.
“He violated every code in the medical rule book when he facilitated the harming of people,” the human rights activist said.
The HPCSA had been forced to suspend the hearings scheduled for this week to avoid playing into Basson’s hands again, human rights lawyer Selby Selekoa said, adding that the doctor had shown he would stop at nothing to prolong what was already a drawn-out battle to save his medical licence.
“Basson is in denial of the gravity of his crimes and clearly hopes they will give up and let him be.”
To avoid the case being brought before the courts next year, lawyers for the HPCSA had applied for an expedited hearing of the case.
“We are hoping to be in court by August, to resume hearings at the council in October or November,” Selekoa said.
Cilliers said the case was to have been on the high court roll on Thursday, but had to be removed due to a lack of responses from both parties.
Pretoria News