The head of Avia Airlines has a shady past, reports Stefaans BrUmmer
GERT de Klerk, the former airline mechanic whose Avia Airlines has made him South Africa’s Richard Branson, built his empire flying clandestine military contracts to war-torn Angola in the 1980s.
Avia this month became South Africa’s first independent carrier to ply the lucrative London passenger route.
Perhaps not surprisingly, De Klerk has been talking to Virgin’s Branson about a co-operation agreement. Branson is understood to want to exercise his own rights on the route later this year. De Klerk said this week: “Rather than that we throw bombs at each other, we are talking to each other about strategy and so on.”
Avia’s inaugural Boeing 747 flight to London’s Gatwick Airport took off earlier this month amid great media fanfare. But what the media, including the Argus group of newspapers, neglected to mention, was that De Klerk is involved in one of South Africa’s largest defamation suits yet: he wants about R6-million from the Argus’ Pretoria News, which, he says, implicated his air charter business Wonder Air in post-1992 clandestine cargo flights to the Angolan rebel movement Unita.
De Klerk’s court challenge, instituted last year, followed a set of Pretoria News articles published early in 1993 when neighbouring countries claimed evidence of clandestine flights from South Africa to
The Pretoria Supreme Court action is on hold pending an application by Pretoria News to the Constitutional Court for a decision on whether freedom of speech guarantees apply “horizontally” between private parties, rather than only “vertically”, between the state and private parties.
De Klerk, who started his air career as an apprentice aircraft technician with the South African Air Force (SAAF) in the 1960s, is understood not to dispute assertions by Pretoria News lawyers that Wonder Air flew clandestine missions to Unita territory before 1992 on behalf of the South African military.
South Africa officially renounced its earlier clandestine support of Unita when the rebels rejected their September 1992 defeat in United Nations- supervised elections and went back to war. The UN also embargoed the rebels.
De Klerk refused to confirm any pre-1992 flights this week, but argued there was “a hell of a difference” between “when there is a war where it is government policy to support one side and you are a charter operation and you fly food and things” and “when peace has been brokered by the UN and conflict starts up again … and you fly against the UN”.
State documents in possession of Pretoria News lawyers confirm Wonder Air flights during the 1980s to several destinations in Unita territory, and a senior officer of the South African National Defence Force’s intelligence directorate has confirmed to the Mail & Guardian that De Klerk “used to fly for us”.
The flights would have formed part of South Africa’s clandestine participation in the Angolan war in the 1970s and 1980s. Front companies and sympathetic private companies were used to disguise aspects of the role of the South African military.
Air charter company Pasload Flights, later acknowledged by the government to have been a front, was disbanded together with the SADF’s notorious Directorate of Covert Collection in 1992 after a Goldstone Commission investigation.
De Klerk had links with Pasload. A former Pasload pilot confirmed last week that De Klerk had serviced Pasload aircraft, while Directorate of Civil Aviation registration records show that three DC3 transport aircraft were transferred from Wonder Air to Pasload in 1987 and 1988.
Meanwhile, the SAAF has confirmed that De Klerk had been involved in an “embargo-busting” excercise on its behalf, converting two DC3 aircraft from piston engines to turbo-props.
Directorate of Civil Aviation records show that the vintage DC3s, property of the SAAF, were registered in the name of Wonder Air in February 1990, only to be re- registered to the SAAF in November 1993.
A SAAF representative said the aircraft had been the prototypes in a SAAF programme to upgrade the aircraft to turbo configuration and that Wonder Air held the local rights for the conversion. He said the registration of the aircraft to Wonder Air had been necessary “as a result of the (arms) embargo”.
The embargo, enforced by the United Nations, would have barred the foreign supplier of the turbine technology from dealing with the SAAF. But De Klerk this week disputed the arms embargo had been broken, arguing the conversions were “a civilian modification”.
De Klerk last week visited Harare after an approach by the Zimbabwe Defence Force, which also wants its ageing DC3 fleet upgraded to turbine configuration. He has been reported to have stakes in 17 companies, including a diamond concession in Angola. De Klerk acknowledged this week he was involved in “a few companies … but I don’t know how many”.
He owns a private airstrip next to the Pretoria- Pietersburg highway. Already large enough to land DC6 cargo aircraft, the airstrip is being extended and De Klerk hopes it will take wide-bodied jets by next year.
The chief of another air charter operation this week described De Klerk as “a maverick (who) gets the job done … with initiative and guts”.
An Avia insider said De Klerk “plays his business quite close to his chest”.