In a startling on-camera confession featured in the documentary Cold Case Hammarskjöld, a former member of South Africa’s apartheid-era intelligence network claims that the HIV/AIDS virus, along with other diseases, was deliberately spread among Black populations in an effort to reduce their numbers. His statement, regarded by some as only the beginning of a much larger story, has reignited debate about the history and spread of AIDS in Africa.
Until February 2019, many Africans were unfamiliar with the Sundance Film Festival, the annual event organized by the Sundance Institute in Park City, Utah. That changed this year because of a controversy that is likely to remain significant for a long time. With nearly 225,000 attendees in 2018, Sundance is the largest independent film festival in the United States. In 2019, it ran from 24 January to 3 February.
What emerged from the festival was not merely cinematic discussion, but a deeply troubling allegation. On the third day of the festival, the Danish-Swedish documentary Cold Case Hammarskjöld was screened, drawing attention to the testimony of Alexander Jones, a former operative who said he had served as an intelligence officer with the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR) roughly 30 years ago. In the film, Jones claims that SAIMR, an organization allegedly involved in coups and violent operations across Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, deliberately spread HIV in Southern Africa as part of a broader effort to eliminate Black people.
Sources in South Africa have long linked SAIMR to the country’s secret chemical and biological warfare program, which was led by Dr. Wouter Basson. According to these accounts, apartheid-era extremists used this program as a cover for operations aimed at killing or harming Black South Africans and others in the region. Their activities reportedly extended beyond South Africa into what were once called the Frontline States, now known as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.
South Africa’s chemical and biological warfare program was also said to have connections to Rhodesia’s efforts, and together they allegedly caused significant suffering among Black Africans, including through the spread of cholera and other dangerous diseases, as well as experimentation involving HIV/AIDS.
Some have further suggested that, as Zimbabwe approached independence, Ian Smith’s Rhodesian government, with tacit support from South Africa, attempted to destroy evidence of these experiments by killing many of the Black people who had been used as test subjects.
Digging Out the Truth
Cold Case Hammarskjöld, directed by Mads Brügger of Denmark and Göran Björkdahl of Sweden, primarily investigates the mysterious 1961 plane crash near Ndola, Zambia, that killed former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.
During South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in 1998, letters bearing SAIMR letterhead reportedly surfaced, suggesting that the CIA and British intelligence had agreed that Hammarskjöld “should be removed.” Both London and Washington denied any involvement in his death.
While making the documentary, Brügger and Björkdahl were led to Alexander Jones. In the film, Jones claims that SAIMR, which he says operated with support from both the CIA and British intelligence, used fake vaccination programs to spread HIV throughout the SADC region.
“We were at war. Black people in South Africa were the enemy,” Jones says in the documentary.
He further alleges that he and his SAIMR colleagues spread the virus during the 1980s and 1990s under the direction of their leader, Keith Maxwell, whose vision was to preserve white domination by reducing the Black population.
Jones argues that apartheid created the perfect environment for such abuse. In the film, he says that Black people had no rights and were desperate for medical care, making them vulnerable to anyone posing as a benevolent doctor or philanthropist. According to his account, people seeking treatment were instead exposed to sinister experimentation under the guise of humanitarian aid.
Keith Maxwell died in 2006. Those who knew him say he had no formal medical qualifications, yet he operated clinics in poor Black neighborhoods in Johannesburg. His headquarters was reportedly in Putfontein, where a sign bearing the name “Dokotela Maxwell” still remained outside the building where he worked.
One local shopkeeper told the filmmakers that Maxwell had administered “false injections.” Another man, Claude Newbury, an anti-abortion doctor, offered a different view, claiming that Maxwell opposed genocide and was instead trying to discover a cure for HIV.
Jones, however, insisted that Maxwell used his medical cover to carry out “sinister experimentation.” His account was supported in part by Ibrahim Karolia, whose shop stood across the road from Maxwell’s premises. Karolia told the filmmakers that Maxwell provided strange treatments, false injections, and even placed patients through “tubes,” claiming he could see inside their bodies.
Jones also alleged that SAIMR’s operations extended beyond South Africa. In the documentary, he states: “We were involved in Mozambique, spreading the AIDS virus through medical conditions.” He also claims to have visited a research facility in the 1990s that was used for what he called “sinister experimentation,” with the goal of eradicating Black people.
South Africa’s Josef Mengele?
Documents uncovered by Brügger and Björkdahl reportedly reveal deeply disturbing views held by Maxwell. In one document, Maxwell wrote that South Africa might one day achieve “one man, one vote with a white majority by the year 2000.” He also expressed the view that a post-AIDS world would restore conservative religion and eliminate what he described as the excesses of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
According to The Observer in South Africa, these writings resembled the fantasies of a man who aspired to become South Africa’s version of Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor infamous for conducting brutal experiments on Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz during World War II. The paper reported that Maxwell’s documents included detailed, though at times confused, ideas about how HIV might be isolated, cultivated, and used to target Black Africans.
One former SAIMR recruit, marine biologist Dagmar Feil, was murdered outside her Johannesburg home in 1990, allegedly because of fears that she might expose the organization’s activities.
Her brother, Karl Feil, told the filmmakers that his sister had once come to him in distress, saying she believed she was going to be killed. She confided that several others in her team had already been murdered, though she refused to explain what team she was part of. He recalled that AIDS research came up several times in their conversations, but he did not understand its significance at the time. Instead, she asked him to accompany her to church so she could make peace with God. Weeks later, she was dead.
The Blowback
The revelations in Cold Case Hammarskjöld shocked many viewers, but criticism followed almost immediately. The New York Times dismissed Jones’s claims as part of a conspiracy theory. In a 27 January report, the paper questioned whether his story could be true at all.
The article argued that the idea of HIV as a man-made virus introduced for population control had circulated for decades and had previously been promoted as part of Soviet Cold War disinformation campaigns.
It also reported that scientists quickly challenged Jones’s claims. Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, director of CAPRISA, an AIDS research center in South Africa, reportedly described the allegations as medically implausible. According to him, such an operation would have required enormous financial resources, advanced laboratory facilities comparable to those of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and technology that was not realistically available in the 1990s for an operation of this scale.
Rebecca Hodes, director of the AIDS and Society Research Unit at the University of Cape Town, warned that such false claims could have serious consequences. She argued that they risk undermining trust in doctors and medical institutions, while also creating confusion about how HIV is actually transmitted.
The Question That Remains
Yet the issue raised by the documentary is not whether people understand how AIDS spreads from one person to another. That is already well known. The question is whether another force may have deliberately helped initiate or accelerate that spread in certain places.
Jones insists that such a force did exist, and that it was SAIMR. He says the motive was clear: to reduce the Black population and preserve white dominance in South Africa. “We were at war,” he says, suggesting that apartheid operatives saw such actions as part of a larger struggle.
This accusation should not be confused with the work of doctors, researchers, and medical professionals who fought to contain the AIDS epidemic. Their efforts saved lives and continue to deserve recognition. The disturbing question raised here is different: who, if anyone, helped ignite the fire in the first place?
Jones’s confession is explosive. For some, it confirms long-held suspicions that were never fully investigated. It also raises troubling questions about inconsistencies in the accepted history of AIDS in Southern Africa.
Still, this may be only the surface of a much deeper and more horrifying story: the possibility that the apartheid regime deliberately pursued genocide, and nearly succeeded in carrying it out.
For some victims of AIDS and their families, Jones’s account may offer a sense of closure. For others, it may reopen old pain and provoke fresh anger. It may also challenge one of the most offensive narratives often repeated over the years: the claim that Africans brought the AIDS epidemic upon themselves through so-called “unbridled sexuality.”
Why did Jones choose to confess after so many years? No one can say for certain. But history has shown that people burdened by guilt sometimes speak out later in life, seeking relief from the weight of long-hidden sins. Whatever the reason, one truth remains: sooner or later, the truth has a way of emerging.
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