Cape Town -
The mother of a South African Air Force pilot whose aircraft crashed, killing him, his flight crew and passengers a year to the day before Nelson Mandela died, is still waiting to learn why the accident happened.
The aircraft, an Air Force Dakota carrying a replacement security crew for Mthatha Airport, took off in bad weather from Air Force Base Waterkloof early on December 5, 2012, and crashed shortly after 9.45am in the Drakensberg.
Initially, it was thought the plane had carried Mandela’s medical crew and supplies, but this later proved to be incorrect.
Early the next morning, an Oryx SAAF helicopter found the wreckage of the missing aircraft near Giant’s Castle peak.
All 11 on board were dead.
Now, two years later, Beulah Misrole, the mother of pilot Major Kurt Misrole, is still waiting to find out why her son died.
Misrole has had no word from the government or the SAAF and was approached for an interview only because she arrived at Independent Newspapers’ Cape Argus offices to place an “In Memoriam” notice for her son.
“One cannot help but have a lot of questions,” she said on Tuesday. “I do not want to blame anybody, I do not want people to be punished, I just want to know what really happened.
“Why was my son told to fly in bad weather? Why was he told to fly despite the fact that he’d been booked off until the end of that month? South Africa is the only country, it seems, that still flies these old Dakota aircraft. Was the aircraft too old?”
The aircraft was a Douglas C-47TP 6840. It was built in 1943 as 43-48050 for the US Army Air Forces and transferred to the Royal Air Force in 1944 as KG767 before being immediately transferred again, this time to the SAAF as 6840.
In the early 1990s, the aircraft was modified with Pratt & Whitney Canada PT-6A turboprop engines and a fuselage extension.
Based at AFB Ysterplaat, Cape Town, it was used to patrol the coast but also acted as a support aircraft for the Silver Falcons display team, in Silver Falcons livery.
SAAF spokesman Colonel Danie van der Westhuizen on Tuesday said the inquiry into the crash had been completed and the report on its findings was being circulated at ministerial level.
He could not speculate on details contained in the report and asked the Cape Argus to enquire officially by e-mail.
That enquiry had not been answered at the time of going to press as Van der Westhuizen’s superiors were all believed to be at a function at Air Force Base Langebaanweg.
Meanwhile, on Friday, as South Africans remembered the death of Nelson Mandela, Misrole marked the second anniversary of her son’s death.
And she’ll continue to wonder why he died.