Special Hearings — Helderberg Flight Special Hearing — 1998-06-01

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: The clarification of this I'm not certain of.  According to Ray Scott, Margo was present, according - and there was more than one occasion on which this occurred - according to Mouton, Margo left the room in his chambers, but members of DCA and the legal representatives of SAA were present, and it is no coincidence that the reference to 400 million rand was about the price, with a little bit of small change, that a new 747 would have cost should Lloyds have declined to pay.   The references to "the country cannot afford it" is capable of sinister interpretation, and it appears that a comment was also made in the same context that their investigation would be playing into the hands of the ANC, a strange comment.
 Ray Scott met with me, after great difficulty, about four years ago, and my contemporaneous note of the time reads as follows:-
"He would not meet with me at my house or at his house, and after a tortuous event, reminiscent more of things that you read in the Forsythe novels, he finally met me at the Boulders Restaurant in Midrand on the 11th of the 4th, 1995."
And my note reads as follows, and I quote from the contemporaneous note:-
"Peter de Beer was the chairman of the Engineers Association.   His family is in London.   He flies now for Phoenix Air.   He and Moutons and Judge Bedaar and Ray Scott were called in to Margo's chambers, told to drop their inquiry, could cost the country 400 million rand, they were causing tension, they were told they did not have the expertise..."
strange to say that to people who fly as a living in the cockpit:-
"...and that national security was at risk.  Present were Mickey Mitchell,  Margo, the airline lawyers and he thinks the DCA was there.   Peter de Beer's family were threatened and Margo said to Ray Scott, quote "the safety of your future and family are at risk", end quote."
 Now, if the flight engineers' interpretation was that of simple, ignorant, misguided do-gooders, the simplest thing for Margo to have done would have been allowed them to present this misguided report and allow it to be shredded on cross-examination.   He chose not to do that, and chose, improperly in my view, to follow a course of threats and intimidation, and the reason, I would submit to you, is clear, that he realised that the South African Airways had been carrying contraband material in the form of military ordinance, and that that this lay at the heart of the explanation of the loss of the Helderberg. 
 Let me examine, as an aside, very briefly, the fortune of a gentleman called Mr Thinus Jakobs.   Thinus Jakobs occupied a fairly lowly position in the freight - in South African Airways - and he was the freight manager at Taipei.  He was the man who loaded the cargo aboard the Helderberg and he was the man who closed the door on Captain Dawie Uys that night, the last person on earth to see Uys alive.   He too has been part of an economic miracle.   He runs today, and has done since shortly after the crash, a thriving company called Crown Travel, extensively patronised by SAA, in well-appointed offices at Brummer Lake, and boasting an annual turnover of some millions of rands.    It is not impossible that Mr Jakobs, by dint of hard work and extraordinary skill, could establish and prosper in the way that he has, but it is strange too that he is one of the people who has made a quantum leap in fortune, coinciding with the loss of the Helderberg.   
 Persistent rumours of Uys's unhappiness with the cargo on this and other occasions have been around since the aircraft was lost.   I'm aware that the attorney-general has information which supports part of that statement that I've made to you.  
 Mrs Uys was never called to the Margo Inquiry, she was never questioned, despite the fact that these rumours had gained currency well before Margo chaired that inquiry.

CHAIRPERSON: I missed that, what were the rumours, the persistent rumours?

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: That Captain Uys had expressed dissatis-faction... (intervention).

CHAIRPERSON: Oh yes.

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: ...about the sort of cargo that he was asked to carry.

CHAIRPERSON: And had actually refused to want to carry it.