The Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing into the crash was biased, crude and ignored the maxims of balance and fair play, writes Robert Kirby That the transcript of the secret Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings into the Helderberg accident has been kept from public view comes as no surprise. What is far more surprising is that it has been released at all, for even the most cursory look into the records of this grandly termed “Section 29” hearing reveals it to have been a kind of kangaroo court lampoon. The transcript exposes something not far short of travesty. The hearing was deeply biased, it was crude, it ignored the precepts of balance or fair play. The evidence on which it made its findings was often no more than suppositional, unsupported by independent let alone expert evidence. The actual hearing was conducted in an atmosphere of tart hostility. As a reflection on the overall credibility of the truth and reconciliation process the record of its hearing stands in sore disgrace. What lends an air of the ludicrous to the exercise is that its prime purpose was to condemn the supposed shortcomings of the Margo commission of enquiry, but it did so in what was itself a burlesque of formal examination processes.
In what bizarre circumstance is the principal “expert” witness invited also to play the role of the main prosecutor? The hearing began with a lengthy deposition by the self-styled aircraft accident expert Dr David Klatzow. This was accepted almost without question by the chair of the TRC hearing, Dumisa Ntsebeza. Once Klatzow’s contribution was completed he was assigned the role of prosecutor. Having changed hats, Klatzow became chief interrogator and, as expected, his questioning of several witnesses had less to do with uncovering any previously hidden truth than it had to do with proving the Klatzow theories. Whatever Klatzow’s proficiencies as a forensic scientist, on the sole evidence of this deposition he showed himself pitifully uninformed on matters of professional aviation and its practices. As a courtroom performer he was a parody, a pretentious would-be advocate bristling with his own importance.
Much of what Klatzow claims as incontestable fact is little but conjecture. His “expert” evidence contradicts itself. As if in misdirection he plays continually to the “sins of apartheid” gallery. Ponderous and repeated references are made to the evils of the previous South African government. So long as apartheid was to blame, all rational discourse could be repudiated.
On the basis of this record, Klatzow cannot be adjudged a detached examiner. He was hostile or simply deaf to any explanations or conclusions that did not match his own. When asked by witnesses to explain or give body to some of his more fatuous claims, his invariable answer was: “We will come to that in due course.” He never did. There is no space here for a step-by-step deconstruction of the TRC hearing. Its deficiencies are apparent from the outset. But as just one example let us take this statement from Klatzow’s “expert” deposition. Referring to the LPC Jansen transcript of the Helderberg’s cockpit voice recorder (CVR), Klatzow says: “Captain [Dawie] Uys refers to something and says, ‘I should rather not try that because I’m going to have troubles afterwards’. This probably refers to a seafood meal and probably refers to the fact that Captain Uys … was allergic to seafood as it caused him to have intense problems with his skin as a result of a medical condition.” Nothing on the full CVR transcript supports this. In the first place the owner of the voice making the remark is not identified on the transcript. Klatzow both assumes it was Uys and assumes that the remark was about seafood. The preceding few cockpit remarks have nothing to do with food or the serving of it and there are no lacunae in this part of the transcript. It is also virtually impossible that seafood would have been on the flight crew menu. A SkyChefs manager of 30 years’ experience confirmed to the Mail & Guardian that, because of its allergenic potential, seafood (as opposed to cooked fish) is never included in flight-crew meals. One feels a forensic “expert” should have known this. It is quite preposterous to assume what Klatzow did. What is even more preposterous is that the TRC hearing accepted what was no more than wild speculation. This sort of blind endorsement of the Klatzow fantasies occurs on several further occasions. >From the dislocated fragments of conversation lifted from the CVR it seems that someone on the Helderberg flight deck was having food. One of the voices says: “Hierdie ou word nou honger. Ek wens ek kry dinner nou [This guy’s getting hungry now. I wish I got dinner now].” That is more likely the comment of someone who for five days has been 10 hours forward in time-change and is now travelling in reverse. His body-clock has not kept pace. Air crew will confirm that midnight hungers are a common feature of particularly east/west flying. “This is bloody junk food as well” is another comment but hardly enough to support the theory of a dinner, according to Klatzow, “being served to the entire crew”. It should be remembered that – putting aside Klatzow’s version of events – this conversation actually took place in the 30 minutes prior to the start of an emergency descent for Mauritius. In normal circumstances descent would have taken place about 20 minutes later and at about 100 nautical miles from Mauritius.
The Helderberg went down 134 nautical miles from Mauritius. It follows that what food was served on the flight deck was between 20 minutes and half-an-hour before the start of expected normal descent. When the Helderberg called Mauritius Air Traffic Control the crew had already initiated an emergency “maximum rate” descent. The wiring to the CVR had already been melted. Klatzow’s insistence that there should be an overlap between the CVR and the Mauritius ATC tapes is uninformed nonsense. Klatzow also seemed – and to judge from his more recent utterances, continues – to harbour an almost obsessive need to disparage and defame Judge Cecil Margo, the chair of the board of enquiry into the Helderberg accident.
In the hearing he referred to Judge Margo’s comments to a reporter as “the ravings of a man who is now senile”. He accuses Judge Margo of deliberately suppressing information, of subversive and criminal activities; opinions approved without question by Ntsebeza and his fellows. This supposed “senility” is later revealed as the reason that neither Judge Margo nor any representative was called, even as an observer to the TRC hearing. Again, this was a slander of due process. I must here recall that coincidentally, three days after the TRC hearing in question, I interviewed Judge Margo at his home in Johannesburg. For two-and-a-half hours we discussed the Helderberg and the 1986 Tupolev “Samora Machel” accidents in depth. Notwithstanding his Parkinson’s disease, which made him physically weak, Judge Margo was quite obviously in full control of a remarkable and disciplined intellect. He was articulate and his memory of details of the two accidents was profound. That he was not called to defend himself at the TRC hearing is beyond reasonable explanation. To which must be added the obvious question: why weren’t any of the other eight Margo enquiry members called? These included at least three internationally recognised aircraft accident investigators. Or didn’t Klatzow want informed competition?
What continues to be overlooked about the Helderberg accident are some very obvious factors. First there’s the “smoking gun”: if the South African government of the time was indeed using South African Airways to transport illegal military chemicals and hardware, why did the same South African government spend more than R20-million in having the evidence of their miscreance brought to the surface from four miles down and for all to examine?
The second obvious factor is that after an on-board fire of some severity – according to Klatzow of sufficient ferocity to melt the wiring to the CVR – there is simply no way the Helderberg crew would have continued the flight. To do so would have been inviting their own and their passengers’ deaths. Had Uys tried to insist his crew would have – in the words of a current 747 captain – “hit him with a fire-axe”. In any event, continuing the flight would have had the airline in flagrant violation of the rules of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the International Air Travel Association and others. The penalties would have been impressive. In some ways it comes therefore as welcome news that there is a possibility of a reopening of the Helderberg enquiry. Despite its cost such an enquiry will render more overt and formally inspected the often antic theorising of those who have long sought to capitalise on both the Helderberg and the Tupolev accidents. One thinks immediately of the deplorable Neels van Wyk and his “enhanced” transcript of the Helderberg CVR tape. The asking price for that brand of altruism was R250000. The Helderberg transcript reveals the TRC approving a very distorted modification of truth driven, it seems, more by a paramount need to inflate political agendas than by any other reasons. The full transcript of the hearing may be found at www.truth.org.za