On the afternoon of June 3 1998, I spent a few hours in the company of an extraordinary man. It was the first and only time I met him. Listening to him speak I became aware of a formidable mind with access to wide experience. He was both lucid and articulate, using an expansive vocabulary. Apart from his career as a distinguished jurist, this man was qualified as a mechanical engineer and had been a bomber pilot in World War II, flying some 150 strike missions and commanding the famous 24th Squadron of the South African Air Force. For his bravery he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and twice awarded the
Distinguished Flying Cross — the highest military decorations. When I met him that day he was in his seventies, an ill man, suffering from Parkinson’s disease. During my hours with him he demonstrated no symptoms of this other than a slight shaking in his hands. His mind was as sharp as a blade.
His name was Cecil Stanley Margo, a retired judge of the Supreme Court and, among a catalogue of extraordinary achievements, an internationally renowned and respected aircraft accident investigator.
Strangely, three days earlier, while giving sworn evidence to an in-camera hearing set up by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) into the Helderberg aircraft accident, a certain David Klatzow, testifying in his role as a self-styled aircraft accident expert investigator, was asked whether, in his opinion, Judge Cecil Margo was “in a condition to respond to a subpoena”. In his reply Klatzow commented on Judge Margo, using exactly the following words: “I think we are dealing with the ravings of a man who’s now senile.”
My layman’s reading of Judge Margo’s miraculous three-day recovery from these senile ravings to fully sentient mental capacity can be born out by reference to his doctors of the time, to his family and to his friends.
But this was not the only occasion where fact was distorted in the wretched comic opera the TRC hearing has been shown to have been. Scarcely a page of its transcript goes by that does not reveal how crucially flawed it was.
Last week, more than four years after the TRC hearing, the Minister of Transport, Abdullah Omar, announced that, after considering a lengthy Scorpions investigation, the Cabinet has decided to dismiss the recommendations arising from the TRC hearing, which were that a new investigation into the Helderberg accident should be undertaken. I felt a little piqued at getting no credit from Minister Omar as — Scorpions or not — he repeated, point by point, the arguments I forwarded in an article published in this newspaper some two years ago. I imagine Cabinet ministers are uninhibited by such bothersome notions as respect for other people’s intellectual property.
In his statement Omar also referred to Klatzow, severely under-rating the man by only calling him “strange”. Klatzow is far more than strange. He’s made something of a career out of the Helderberg tragedy and, with that, I imagine, a fair pile of money. Conspiracy theories have long shelf lives. The Helderberg crashed in 1987 so there’s been 15 years of rich pickings.
Apart from the loss of life on the Helderberg, there have been other casualties. Prominent among these was Judge Margo, himself victim of miserable personal attacks and traducement of his professionalism. Among his most vocal detractors has been the same David Klatzow, his comments faithfully echoed in the lower estates of the media where they all showed a sort of malicious glee — what’s more at a time when Margo was in failing physical health. It was a long and destructive campaign and it is to Omar’s shame that he did not mention, let alone apologise for it.
Another principle casualty has been truth and, with that, the credibility of the TRC itself which is deeply stained by the conduct of its shameful, furtive hearing to which even the Civil Aviation Authority was forbidden observer status. Cecil Margo’s board of inquiry now stands fully vindicated. It was overt, its participants were drawn from every country over which the aircraft had flown on its final journey, it was advised by internationally renowned experts. In other words, Margo’s board was an exact opposite of the TRC’s grubby side-show.
The then South African government and South African Airways administration are now also much absolved. Together they stumped up some R31-million to bring as much of the Helderberg wreckage to the surface as possible in their Operation Resolve. That exercise alone virtually exterminates the popular theories about the aircraft having been carrying illegal cargo at the behest of the South African military establishment and with Cabinet-level government encouragement. Had that been so, it would have served these high agents best to leave the wreckage right where it was, four-and-a-half kilometres deep.
Subsequent to the Margo boards’s findings has been this long second Helderberg disaster. It has served narrow political ends, it has been a monstrous squandering of public resources, the financing of a playground for a selection of vivid charlatans. That no one will ever be called to book for all of this is a given.
The full transcript of the TRC “Helderberg” hearing may be found at www.truth.org.za
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