Helderberg mystery

THE dates November 27 and 28 this year will mark the 30th commemoration of South Africa’s deadliest air disaster, when the South African Airways Boeing, the Helderberg, plunged into the Indian Ocean near Mauritius in 1987.

All 159 passengers and crew perished on the aircraft bound for Johannesburg from Taipei in Taiwan. Only a few bodies were retrieved and some of the wreckage salvaged months later, incurring enormous costs.

A Judicial Commission of Inquiry, led by retired Judge Cecil Margo, could not establish what actually triggered a fire in the aircraft’s hold, which quickly spread and engulfed the whole craft, causing its fall into the ocean.

Many rumours transpired blaming the apartheid regime for trying to transport nuclear fuel with which to make their own nuclear bomb illegally from one of the world’s then four pariah states, Taiwan.

Because of the sensitivity and political undertones surrounding this event, any further attempts to uncover the truth of what really caused this, one of South Africa’s worst peacetime disasters, were unsuccessful. Not even the Truth and Reconciliation Commission could uncover anything.

As with all man-made disasters, the next-of-kin of all those who perished are still longing for closure: Their only wish is to know the truth.

Some have already passed on; one grandson published a book. Many have visited the memorials erected on the island and in Johannesburg.

Then some, like myself, have compiled newspaper clippings books through the years about the event, in the hope that one day, maybe long after all of us have moved on, the truth will ultimately triumph, as it usually does. Until such time, this travesty will haunt us.

Our country was so fortunate that this tragedy was the last in which a commercial aircraft of this size was involved with the loss of so many lives.

As we are moving closer to this date, our hopes and prayers go out to these, our compatriots, for the Almighty to strengthen them. Koert Meyer Welgelegen