The latest Helderberg ‘exposures’ have sucked familiar roaches, and some new ones, out of the woodwork
Robert Kirby
Conspiracy theories are always constructed in reverse. First there’s the foregone conclusion. Once this is stated, suitable facts are rapidly gathered in support of it. Reams of other facts are left out lest these conflict with the conclusion. In conspiracy theories hindsight is a lacunal science.
Proof of this is to be seen in the flurry of conspiracy theories around both the Helderberg and the Tupolev (Samora Machel) air accidents. The theories had similar expressed ambitions – the rubbishing of the apartheid machine – and were marked by the eagerness of their sponsors to be seen as occupying some sort of retrospective moral high ground.
Behind such gallant altruism, though, there invariably lurk more businesslike reasons for the often obsessive nature of conspiracy theorists. In the case of Neels van Wyk – the former SABC producer who claims to have reinterpreted the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) tapes from the Helderberg – motivations quickly became clear.
Van Wyk was after hard cash – R250E000. He had earlier failed to convince a previous minister of transport, Mac Maharaj, to part with a considerable sum to sponsor him in his private investigations; he had tried unsuccessfully to sell his “enhanced” CVR recording and transcript to Carte Blanche. He had then offered the tapes on the open market. Add to this that Van Wyk is currently facing fraud charges and his credibility takes an even steeper nosedive.
As before, the latest Helderberg “exposures” have sucked familiar roaches out of the woodwork, to include a shiny new one in the form of Brian Watkins, retired senior route manager for South African Airways (SAA).
Watkins is the owner of what might be described as a Rip van Winkle conscience, which suddenly sprang back to wakefulness last week after a 13-year sleep. Out gushed the opportunistic humbug: “I can no longer live with the knowledge of all those thousands of SAA passengers who never knew what was being carried just beneath their feet,” pomped Watkins. “My conscience just wouldn’t let me be silent any longer.”
The same conscience which just wouldn’t let him say anything about dangerous cargoes when he had his SAA job to lose or, for that matter, when later he had to sign a document he claims was shoved under his pen by SAA bossman, Gert van der Veer.
“I hereby solemnly swear that 10 minutes ago I did not hear someone say something about ‘those damn chemicals on the Helderberg’.” Signed: B Watkins.
Soon to come sprinting out of the wainscotting was Dr David Klatzow, one of an extremely rare breed of spider: the entirely self-taught aircraft accident investigator.
Klatzow likes to be known as anything from a “leading forensic scientist” to a “Boeing investigator”. He prides himself as having been a principal cross-examiner in the secret Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings into the Helderberg accident.
He has spoken admiringly of the way in which he “grilled” certain SAA staff members. One of the SAA employees involved privately described the hearings as a “clown’s breakfast”.
It must be said that Klatzow is very consistent. With almost every opinion on the Helderberg accident he has faithfully demonstrated his profound ignorance, not only of the methodologies of professional aviation, but of the conventions under which international air transport operates. His pet theory – of an earlier fire on the Helderberg – ignores several vital factors.
Klatzow speculates that after this supposed first fire, the captain of the aircraft, Dawie Uys, elected to continue the flight on radioed instructions from Johannesburg (Klatzow called them “telephoned”) instead of landing at a suitable en-route airport.
To continue a flight so compromised in its safety would have had Uys, his crew and therefore SAA in open violation of both International Civil Aviation Organisation and International Air Transport Authority regulations. There was no way in which the matter could have been kept secret. The Helderberg carried five flight and 14 cabin crew members. They would all have had to be convinced that their own lives and those of 140 (witness) passengers were of secondary consideration to some distant political instruction. SAA would have had to answer some very difficult questions.
In his latest outburst, Klatzow is asserting that the real reason Maharaj refused to reopen the Helderberg investigation was that the African National Congress was not concerned with discovering the truth as there had been no black people on board the aircraft. At least reliable old racism is being given a show-in.
A seemingly obvious explanation for the enduring interest of the conspiracy theorists is that they smell some sort of pay-day down the line. It is being put about that SAA would face civil law suits “running into the billions” were it ever proved that the Helderberg had been carrying illegal and hazardous cargo.
But those selling the civil damages proposition disregard an obvious pragmatism: if indeed the Helderberg was carrying rocket fuel or whatever, it would at this stage be nigh impossible to prove any culpability on the part of the airline or its staff. Flight crew and load clerks do not open up and inspect the contents of every box that goes into an aircraft cargo hold – in the Helderberg’s case, about 32 tons of it. Simple practicality demands they have to take things on trust. Someone else must be blamed.
At this stage it must be said that it is not the Van Wyks or the Klatzows who are to blame for the opacity of the water. Their real contributions were inadvertent: they merely matched and stimulated the trashier instincts of popular journalism.
The practical subversion has been on the part of the TRC, which began its involvement two years ago by mounting sequestered “special investigations” into the Helderberg and Tupolev accidents. The full transcripts of these hearings have now been released, but only to two Cabinet ministers and the senior public prosecutor. The whole process is again being kept hidden under party political wraps.
The senior public prosecutor says the release of the transcripts might compromise his new “investigation” into the Helderberg. This is patently furtive. Why would some bright light be so unwelcome?
The TRC has been a major contributor to the witch’s brew surrounding both air accidents. Now, in an abrogation of murky ramifications, the TRC has shifted the responsibility for disclosure on to another’s shoulders. The manoeuvre stands in apparent corruption of the TRC brief: to bring into the open, to examine, to adjudicate, to perform a historical role – and to do all of this under public gaze.