Cape Town - More than three decades after the Helderberg air disaster, families of the victims are still searching for answers about the final minutes of the fatal flight which killed all 159 people on board.
“33 years on, that person is still not there. You have to live with it every single day. Time doesn’t take away that injustice,” said Peter Otzen, a Cape Town attorney whose father was killed in the plane crash just before he was born.
The crash robbed Otzen of the chance to ever know his father, but it’s the drive for justice that keeps him hunting for the truth.
“I never had a relationship with him. There are people who had real significant loved ones and futures that were taken away in an instant,” he said.
“They haven’t been given the closure and truth that they absolutely deserve. They are what I fight for, in many ways; both my family and the other families I’ve worked with.”
The Helderberg was a South African Airways flight from Taiwan to Johannesburg that crashed into the ocean off the coast of Mauritius on November 28, 1987.
After a record-breaking recovery mission to salvage parts of the plane from the ocean bed, analysis revealed that a fire had started in the cargo pallets being transported on the main deck of the plane. The fire was catastrophic, causing the plane to break up mid-air before crashing into the sea.
But despite a commission of inquiry and consultations from international experts, one thing was never ascertained beyond a doubt: what started the cargo fire?
In the years since the crash, independent investigators including forensic scientist Dr David Klatzow have made allegations that the passenger aircraft was in fact carrying explosive military material in its cargo, smuggled into South Africa covertly because of the international arms embargo at the time.
SAA and Armscor have repeatedly denied these claims, and the radio tape recordings which could contain proof went missing and have never been found.
Klatzow was originally brought in by Boeing, but three decades later, he is still independently investigating new leads about the crash.
“Once I made the discoveries I made, it became incumbent on me to follow up,” he said.
“We’ve hit brick walls with the authorities, but every year for 30 years, new information has come out which all points in the same direction: that aircraft was carrying military cargo.”
Klatzow and Otzen have recently secured affidavits from two new sources - a retired Navy admiral and an adviser in Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet - who allege that ammonium perchlorate, a type of rocket fuel, was on board the plane.
Despite this, Klatzow thinks it unlikely that an inquiry will be reopened.
“I don’t think anything will be done. That doesn’t mean that you’ve got to let it die,” he said.
“Time does not erase a hideous crime. Here was an aircraft with innocent civilians who were effectively murdered. You cannot let that go unpunished, while you have breath.”
Otzen still hopes that someone with critical evidence - such as the missing tape recordings of the conversation between the pilots and the control tower - will come forward. He hopes that his ability to offer confidentiality in a client-attorney relationship will give someone the opportunity they need to safely disclose missing pieces of the puzzle before it’s too late.
“I think the truth will come out,” he said.
“I think there will be someone who wants to clear their conscience before they die. This is the opportunity to do that.”
Weekend Argus