Helderberg air disaster still haunts SA

RECENTLY a short letter by an 87-year-old woman from Johannesburg appeared in a London-based newspaper. This paper invites its readers all over the world to write about topics dear to them.

Commenting on the expressions of the two princes’ grief 20 years ago at the loss of their mother, Princess Diana, in 1997, the woman was relating the death of her own mother in a plane crash 71 years ago over Hobart in Tasmania.

We lose loved ones all the time in various ways but there’s one thing about humankind – we can never forget how they passed away, especially in dubious circumstances, and secondly, if the truth about such incidents remains clouded in obscurity. This year marks the 30th commemoration of South Africa’s worst air disaster, the Helderberg, which went down in the Indian Ocean off the Mauritius coast on November 28, 1987, with the loss of all 159 aboard.

There have been several major commercial air disasters in our aviation history, among them a Dakota in the 1950s, a Viscount and a Boeing in the 1960s, all claiming dozens of lives. However, the Helderberg, also a Boeing 747, will remain in darkness until the truth of its demise is uncovered.

Last year, a grandson pleaded in a daily newspaper for information about a train crash in 1926 near Salt River in which his grandfather died.

Another grandson who was not even born when his grandfather died on SA Airways flight 295 (the Helderberg) went as far as writing a book to deal with his grief.

People who had a hand in, or knowledge about the cause of the crash, are suffering as much as the victims because their offspring will always be confronted with questions.

But, as the Bible teaches, the truth will set us free. It is the honourable thing to do: stand up, be counted. There are so few nowadays that will do just that.

TRAGEDY: SAA Flight 295, a Boeing 747 named Helderberg, was a commercial flight from Taiwan to South Africa that suffered a catastrophic in-flight fire in the cargo area and crashed into the Indian Ocean east of Mauritius on 28 November 1987, killing...