Steeped in Blood

by David Klatzow

  How does Margo deal with the tape in his report? He says, ‘There was no further contact between ZUR and the aircraft’ (page 12). Later, he states, ‘The ZUR tape recording ran until about 16.34. As the follow-on tape was apparently later mislaid or inadvertently reused there was no further communication between SA 295 and ZUR on record’ (page 30, emphasis added).

  This is very strange. How did the tape get lost? And why was no one questioned or reprimanded for the missing tape? If it was over-taped in error, why was that tape not given to Margo? I believe that Margo knew all along where the tape had gone and that it was damning.

  Margo concluded that ‘The circumstances were investigated in full by the board, which is satisfied that there was no connection between the failure to comply with the instructions and the accident to the Helderberg’ (page 137). Margo goes on to elaborate on the point that there was no connection between the ZUR tapes and the demise of the Helderberg. I totally disagree with Margo on this issue. Margo was being less than honest when he put these remarks in his report, and I will explain why.

  Firstly, whatever was on the tape would have been of benefit to the commission. If it had simply been a conversation about taking the cat to the vet, it would have assisted the commission in knowing that there was no foul play during that period. It would have instantly silenced a host of critics – myself included – who maintain that there was dirty dealing at the crossroads.

  Secondly, Margo’s suggestion that he and the board had investigated the disappearance of the tape does not survive even the most elementary scrutiny. If the tape had been lost, someone would have come to Margo or the investigators and said, ‘We have lost the tape.’ We know that that didn’t happen. The next alternative is that the tape was inadvertently over-taped. This also did not happen: these are huge tapes, each with their own index card and identifying marking. Had the relevant tape been over-taped, someone would have led evidence to that effect and said to Margo or anyone else, ‘Look, here is the tape. I messed up and accidentally taped over it.’ This never happened. Margo’s claim that he and the board had examined the disappearance of the tape thoroughly also does not bear scrutiny on his own records, on the transcript of the court proceedings. So what really happened to that tape?

  I was determined to get answers. After asking around, someone suggested that I contact a certain Captain Jimmy Deal, whom I called late one evening in Durban. He had a bad cold and was feeling poorly, but I said to him directly, ‘I was told that you took the missing ZUR tape out that evening. What did you do with it?’ He admitted that he had given it to Mickey Mitchell, who was the chief pilot for SAA at the time. Then Deal realised what he had said, and tried to backtrack. When I cross-examined him later, he was unsure about whom he had given the tape to, and ended off by saying that the tape never went missing. It was clear that this was a tape recording that SAA wanted hushed up.

  I needed to know a little more about what I thought was the first fire. One of the people to whom I spoke was Athol Hardy, who worked for a company that sold fire equipment. The Monday morning after the Helderberg accident, which took place early on Saturday morning, he was at Jan Smuts Airport and overheard a conversation, which he repeated to me in a signed statement on 24 February 2001:

  I am at present station officer at Benoni Fire and Emergency Services. I have been a fire officer for about the past 12 years. In 1987 I was working for a company called Harwil engineering (a company belonging to my father) which manufactured aircraft tenders among other fire-fighting equipment. On the Monday after the accident I was at the airport fire station. I had some servicing work to perform. This was at approximately 8.00 a.m. in the morning.

  Normally when I get there I would speak to the other officers and chat about this and that. That Monday the only topic of conversation was the Helderberg. The conversation between the officers was to the effect that the plane had had a fire plus minus three hours after take-off and that the plane wanted to divert to Singapore. They had used up all the fire extinguishers on board. The captain thought that the fire was out and hence the reason for the diversion.

  There had been some talk that if there had been a fire on board that the passengers would have been dead and that essentially they were flying a coffin and the only survivors were the senior steward and the cockpit crew. I got the impression that the senior steward had done the bulk of the fire-fighting.

  There were two consequences: 1. the officer said he would put it [the plane] in the drink; 2. there was a second fire and they could not control it.

  The people in the office at the room were myself, Tony Cavallier, Vossie Vorster, Blackie Swart (Training Officer) and a man with a large black beard.

  They had obtained the evidence from the SAA staff. It appeared that two senior officers were in on a meeting with SAA personnel where the whole issue had been discussed.

  Clearly there was radio communication between SAA and the plane (not the tower) earlier in the evening. The officers had been notified earlier in the evening.

  According to the officer’s discussion the pilot had been refused permission to land the aircraft.

  A similar version of events was relayed to me by Lucas Meyer. One of the radio operators, Gavin Dick, had been on duty in the ZUR room the evening of the accident. The next morning he went to visit his father, who worked in the avionics department. In the presence of at least one other person, Dick said that he had been in contact with the aircraft that evening, and that they had asked to land because of a fire but had been refused permission. When I questioned Dick on the issue, he denied having had the conversation – but he had been overheard by Meyer (see Appendix F).

  I have a signed, sworn statement dated 16 March 2007 by a third independent person, Christiaan Pieter Hattingh, who had heard about the fire early on the Monday morning.

  At the time of the Helderberg accident I was Flight Simulator Instructor on the B747 for South African Airways. We were scheduled for a training session that Saturday morning. I cannot remember the exact time of our programme but on a Saturday it was most likely to have started at 0800 in the briefing room and 0900 to 1300 in the simulator. It was only after my arrival that I heard that SA295 had crashed near Mauritius. The information was basically little, and one of the crew members decided to go to ZUR to find out more. He came back with the story that SA295 had reported a fire earlier on but had decided to continue.

  That Saturday morning the only information that could have been available was from ZUR and they must have been in contact with the aircraft earlier. Yet, during the investigation and hearing it turned out that they were not in contact with SA295. That cannot be the truth.

  I believe I am just one of the few people that knew of the fire earlier in the flight. Like the flight engineers who tried to submit their report.

  Jimmy Mitton was a Flight Engineer Instructor on the flight simulator and we often worked together and talked about the Helderberg accident.

  Three entirely independent sources confirm the theory that there had been a fire on board the doomed aircraft shortly after take-off.

  Various people have criticised my view that Uys chose not to land, saying that he was in ultimate control of the flight. There is one fact we cannot ignore: Uys surely knew that he had loaded dangerous cargo. After the first fire, he probably had bodies on board, as some of the passengers would have died from the toxic gases. He realised that if he landed with a cargo of dead bodies and traces of a dangerous substance, he would be dead in the water, as he had risked the lives of innocent people.

  During my investigation, I came across an attorney of the Supreme Court by the name of Andrew Kenneth Miller. He was consulted by two clients, Sally Baker and Gina Hart, who wanted to provide certain information regarding the Helderberg accident. Miller gave a sworn statement on 20 April 1995, in which he repeated what they had told him. At the time, his clients did not want their names mentioned. In the first statement, which is quite damning, his client states that she was at
an aviation conference, where she met Renée van Zyl, who was then the head of the Directorate of Civil Aviation.

  [Van Zyl] stated that, to his knowledge, approximately 2–3 hours after take-off from Taipei a fire occurred in the front right hand pallet of the Helderberg. The crew, using fire extinguishers and other available equipment, managed to put out the fire. This fire had apparently melted cabling encased in metal situated along the inside of the body of the aircraft. One of the things that was mentioned was that there was a collapse in communication between the cockpit, cabin crew and fire fighting crew, presumably due to the destruction of the cables. I vaguely recall it being said that the decision was made to bring the plane close to home as opposed to landing it elsewhere … It was said that a second fire broke out during the aircraft’s descent into Mauritius and this time the equipment on board had all been utilised and was therefore rendered useless … I also remember hearing that the captain of the plane was not happy about carrying certain items listed (under other names) on the cargo manifest and, at some stage before the plane went down, he stated that he ‘had told them this would happen’. I cannot remember clearly from whom I heard this but am totally sure that I heard it on or around the time of the conference. It was also stated to myself and a colleague that the fire was caused by rocket fuel at the front of the holding compartment of the plane.

  In the second statement, Miller’s client says that she met Captain Eddie Bourhill, chairman of the ‘Committee for the Safe Carriage of Dangerous Goods’ – the South African Air Safety Council (SAASCO) – in April 1990, during discussions regarding an aviation conference.

  Captain Bourhill expressed concern and indignation at reports that the cause of the Helderberg fire and subsequent explosion was due to fireworks being carried in the hold … [H]e said that the captain of the Helderberg, having noticed certain strange items on the manifest in Taipei, investigated the nature of these items and discovered that they contained rocket fuel but had been listed under code names. Knowing the aircraft was a combi, he registered a complaint and refused to take off with this cargo. Apparently SAA moved very quickly and obtained instructions from as high as President PW Botha and General Magnus Malan. These instructions threatened the captain with instant dismissal without pension if he did not fly the plane. Since this was to have been his last or second to last flight before retirement, he obviously felt he had no choice but to comply. I was also told that the reason for the tapes from the aircraft to Plaisance Airport as the plane was coming down were not available for inspection was because the captain could quite clearly be heard to say ‘I told them this would happen’.

  These statements point in one direction – the total opposite to the official version of events: that there were two fires on board SAA Flight 295.

  The Flying Coffin

  I saw a city filled with lust and shame, Where men, like wolves, slunk through the grim half-light; And sudden, in the midst of it, there came One who spoke boldly for the cause of Right.

  – JOHN MCCRAE, CANADIAN POET

  What substance could the Helderberg have been carrying that would have resulted in such a tragedy? Rocket fuel was mentioned a number of times. My theory is that the substance that had caused the Helderberg crash was ammonium perchlorate – or possibly one of the other perchlorates – the main component of rocket fuel. A number of clues lead to this conclusion.

  At the time, South Africa was fighting a bloody war in Angola. Our air force used ageing Mirages, which were struggling against the Russian MiG 23s being flown by the Angolans. We needed faster rockets to be effective. One of the problems was with the fuel we used: it didn’t make our rockets fly fast enough. So we needed a new fuel.

  Because South Africa was in the throes of sanctions and arms embargoes, Armscor had perfected the art of replicating weapons and ammunition. One has only to look at the R1 rifle to see that it is a replica of the Belgian FN, just as the Z88 pistol is a replica of the Beretta – so much so that the weapons’ parts can be interchanged with ease. It was all-out war in South Africa, so no rules applied.

  Ammonium perchlorate is an extremely dangerous chemical. It contains chlorine combined with oxygen and, because it has its own oxygen, it does not need an external source of oxygen to ignite and burn, as most other chemicals do. It can therefore ignite on its own, and it is able to burn under water. Ammonium perchlorate can be used to make rocket fuel or explosives, acting as a base material for these compounds. It also contains many other components that enhance its performance. Replicating this cocktail would take time; Armscor needed a sample to analyse and test before attempting to manufacture it themselves.

  The state of the wreckage provided vital clues as to the cause of the fire on the Helderberg. It is important to understand that the aeroplane was a Combi: the front half of the middle deck was where the passengers were seated; the back half was where the cargo was stored. The pilots and Business Class passengers were seated above the Economy Class passengers. The fire took place in the front, right-hand pallet of the aircraft, and was so hot that it burnt the outside of the aircraft. A piece of wreckage retrieved from the area of that pallet showed this clearly. At that high altitude, the Helderberg would have been flying at temperatures of around 240 ºC. It is possible to calculate the rate of heat transfer from the inside of the aircraft to the outside by looking at the damage to the aeroplane’s skin and taking into account the airflow, the outside temperature and the speed of the aircraft.

  This could not have been a diffusion-flame fire. In an ordinary diffusion-flame fire, such as that of a candle, there is a blue region inside the flame and an orangey incandescent glow in its outer area. The chemical reaction takes place where these two regions meet. Oxygen needed to sustain the flame comes from outside and meets the fuel being vaporised at that boundary. The flame temperature is limited by the rate at which oxygen can diffuse from the outside to the reaction zone. The temperature of the average diffusion fire is limited to burning at just under 1 000 ºC, and will very seldom go beyond that. For instance, you rarely find copper melted in a fire, as it needs heat of over 1 000 ºC to melt. If copper has melted in a fire, it is a clear indication that something more is at play.

  In the case of the Helderberg, the damage to the skin of the aircraft showed that the temperature of the fire had been well in excess of a diffusion-flame fire. There had to have been something like ammonium perchlorate burning inside, as there was obviously an additional source of oxygen, and, as mentioned, ammonium perchlorate has its own built-in oxygen.

  An interesting question is why the substance would have ignited. A chemical compound like ammonium perchlorate will ignite spontaneously if it is agitated enough. The Helderberg was late in departing from Taipei, and I believe it encountered a subtropical storm. The turbulence would have been enough to cause the spontaneous combustion of a substance like ammonium perchlorate.

  If Uys knew about the cargo he was carrying (and this may not have been the first time he had carried such cargo), one would think his wife would have had some comments to make on this. A puzzling event took place in this regard. Out of the blue, a reporter from Durban, Paul Kirk, contacted me, saying that he had an affidavit from Johanna Uys, the wife of the pilot, which had been sent to him. Kirk was calling from a public telephone and seemed nervous, saying that he had been sent an affidavit by the security police. He read the affidavit to me over the phone, and then later sent it to me. I immediately doubted the validity of this document – it was suspicious, as it was written in English, and it was also intensely contentious.

  Johanna Uys stated that Dawie had called her previously just before leaving Taipei and had told her that he was being forced to carry an extremely dangerous substance containing ammonia. He had been told that if he did not fly the aircraft, he would lose his pension money. Once Johanna was aware of the crash, she threatened to talk about the phone call and was told she would lose her pension if she mentioned it. She decided to keep quiet. She was also apparently t
old by the security police that she would be ‘taken care of for life’ if she kept quiet.

  I saw this ‘statement’ as being part of a strategy or game to put me, and others, off the scent. Some people will go to any lengths to discredit you in an investigation. You will be given some accurate information, and some that is pure rubbish. If you swallow it all hook, line and sinker, they can later nail you on the inaccuracies of your findings. I recognised this affidavit as such. Johanna Uys would never have written an affidavit in English and, on top of this, the contents were doubtful.

  Johanna Uys did actually make a statement to a more trustworthy source, in Afrikaans, her home language. She spoke to Torrie Pretorius, chief prosecutor for the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). She had felt that there were issues being debated on which she had to comment. Pretorius made notes of the discussion, which he shared with me, and which appear in translation below:

  I am the widow of Captain Dawie Uys who was the pilot of the fated Helderberg aircraft that crashed into the Indian Ocean on 28 November 1987.

  This is the first statement that I am making with regards to the death of my husband, the passengers and crew of the Helderberg. I have not made a statement to any officially regarding the Helderberg prior to this.

  I have also not made any statements to the media. My attorney, Mr Willem Bester, has taken care of all my affairs.

  I was questioned on 8 August 1997 by Dr Pretorius and Superintendent Venter regarding my husband’s habits and his career.

  I was an air hostess in the employ of SAA from …. to …. [sic.] I flew on numerous domestic and international flights with my deceased husband.