Part of 1987 mission
UNLIKE his brothers-in-arms, Dusty Nayager found the first 11 months in the navy easy.
“We had to scrub toilets, wash floors, iron clothes, shine floors and have an inspection every morning.
“But it wasn't hard for me because I was used to cleaning the house,” he said.
Once Nayager’s initial training was over, he wanted to be a radio technician and studied at the ML Sultan Technikon in Durban, and later at the Wingfield Naval College in Cape Town.
He thereafter spent seven years at sea on a strike craft.
In 1987, Nayager was part of the search and rescue mission that went to the site of the Helderberg plane crash off the coast of Mauritius.
Nayager was woken up by the navy’s duty driver in the early hours of the morning telling him to get ready because his ship was about to sail.
“I only had three overalls. We didn't know where we were going and for how long.”
The strike craft sailed through tumultuous waters and because those vessels do not fare well in rough seas, it took four days to reach Mauritius.
“No one was alive. We just found bodies and pieces of the Helderberg,” he said.
The aircraft belonged to SAA and claimed 159 lives, according to online reports. Reports say an in-flight fire of undetermined origin in the cargo hold led to loss of control and in-flight break-up.
A memorial service was held at sea and the next-of-kin were taken out to the crash site by the strike craft.
Nayager said he was retrenched in 1990 when FW de Klerk became the president of South Africa and cut the defence budget.
Nayager was then a father of four and found a job as a technician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.