Ex‑judge Chris Nicholson’s new book claims apartheid deliberately weaponised HIV/AIDS to shrink the Black population ahead of the first democratic vote. Picture Credits: The Book Lounge
By Duncan Mnisi
Book Review — A controversial new book, Who Really Killed Chris Hani?, claims that in the final years of white rule, the apartheid government turned the emerging HIV/AIDS epidemic into a tool of population control.
Author and former judge Chris Nicholson argues that the regime and its allies deliberately allowed — and in some cases facilitated — the spread of the virus to reduce the number of black South Africans ahead of the country’s first non-racial election.
He supports this claim with apartheid-era documents, testimony from former security operatives, and references to global eugenics movements, suggesting that the disease was at times “actively facilitated rather than ignored”.
Nicholson’s allegations echo the darker realities of South Africa’s early HIV history. The first AIDS case was recorded in 1982, and by the late 1980s the virus had already infected thousands, disproportionately affecting black communities.
The apartheid state responded with draconian measures, including mandatory 14-day quarantines for anyone suspected of having AIDS — policies that reinforced stigma and undermined effective public health responses.
Modern research shows that apartheid’s migrant-labour system, forced removals, and rigid racial segregation created the structural conditions for the epidemic to spread rapidly. By 2012, black South Africans accounted for 6.2 million of the country’s 6.4 million people living with HIV.
“The evidence points to a deliberate strategy to weaponise a deadly disease,” Nicholson said in a recent interview. “We have documents that discuss ‘population reduction’, and former operatives who admit they turned a blind eye while the virus spread.”
He added that the apartheid regime’s biological-weapons research, detailed in classified files, provided the technical capacity to exploit the pandemic for political ends.
The book forces South Africa to confront a deeply uncomfortable chapter of its history — one many hoped had been buried with the end of apartheid.
Who Really Killed Chris Hani? is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the hidden truths behind South Africa’s past.
