The use of "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases" was outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol of which South Africa had been a signatory, while international law prohibited the use of napalm against civilians, it said.
The government announced in 1968 that the manufacture of napalm had begun and according to the ANC submission "this was used extensively in Namibia and Angola".
There were also reports on the use of destabilising gases in Namibia. An investigation by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the World Health Organisation into the SADF airborne assault on Cassinga in 1978 had found that "a paralysing gas had been used to immobilise some of the victims before they were murdered".
There was also evidence that the Mozambican resistance movement Renamo, sponsored by South Africa, had been supplied with poison gas.
The ANC said that it had only recently been discovered that Project B, a top-secret, multi-million rand project run by the former SADF, included chemical and biological weapons projects.
These were still being run with public funds as late as 1993, the ANC said.
"It has been alleged by people close to these programmes that these projects were not only defensive, but were part of the ongoing `dirty-tricks' campaign to murder anti-apartheid activists."
Research on organophosphates and cancer-inducing agents was carried out and even President Nelson Mandela was considered a target, the submission said.