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

CHAIRPERSON: Oh, four years ago.   But even then he had eventually gone off to say the tape was there?

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: Yes.   Oh, there's no doubt that the tape was there that night, the tape was removed from ZUR that night by the pilots and it was given into the hands of senior SAA officials.
 If one looks at the DCA, that's the Department of Civil Aviation, their duty is clear, their mandate is to impound immediately all tapes, documentation, records, anything of importance to an aircraft accident.   
 DCA was in charge, was under the control, at the time, of Mr Rennie van Zyl.   Mr Rennie van Zyl informed me then, and again more recently, that he had spoken to a pilot by the name of Du Toit, and that Du Toit had assured him that there was nothing untoward on the missing tape.   This assurance had allayed Rennie van Zyl's fears, and he sent Roy Downs, some three or four weeks later, to impound this tape, after rumours already, at that stage, had surfaced that there was more to the missing tape than met the eye.  Now, Captain Du Toit should be asked how come it was that he got to listen to the tape and what his knowledge of the tape was.
 Let me turn to another factor which suggests that something untoward had happened earlier on in the evening of that fateful night.   The pervious member manning ZUR was a man also coincidentally by the name of Du Toit, he was due to sign off at some time after six, possibly even seven o'clock, on that evening, South African time, and yet at the Margo Inquiry he confirms under oath that he signed off at eight o'clock the next morning, the Saturday morning, this was a Friday night.   If nothing had happened aboard the Helderberg until just before midnight our time, Du Toit would have been long gone after his shift from Radio ZUR and would have been at home, and there is no evidence of him having been recalled.    The fact that Du Toit is still at ZUR by eight o'clock the next morning, having worked a double shift, suggests that at the termination of his shift something already was afoot to require his further presence at ZUR.   It is inexplicable and the interpretation which I have put on it is undeniably correct on a high level of probability.
 The man in charge of ZUR that night was a man called Vernon Nadel, N A D E L.   Vernon Nadel was a lowly radio operator working in the bottom echelons of South African Airways.   Today, and for the last 9 1/2  years, Vernon Nadel has been a manager of the SAA facility at Miami.   He enjoyed a meteoric rise in fame and fortune within the airline in less than the time it takes to say Helderberg.  His meteoric rise has never been satisfactorily answered, and when Nadel has, with great difficulty, been tracked down by either myself or members of the press, his answers have been evasive and strange, to say the least.    He was tracked down by an investigator who worked for the SABC at the time, and he referred to a third man, Mr X, in the studios of ZUR that night.   Why play cat and mouse if there's nothing to hide?   The only thing worth hiding is nothing, and Nadel clearly was at pains to be uncooperative and to be evasive. 
 Let me get back to the missing tape and to the CVR recording, because they come together in another group of people's endeavours to find out what happened to the Helderberg.    These people were the Flight Engineers Association, under the chairmanship of - I think they're under the chairmanship of Ray Scott, but I may be incorrect about that, but Ray Scott was certainly a member of that committee, as was a man called Judge Bedaar and another man called Jimmy Mouton.   The Flight Engineers Association put together a report, in which they respectfully differed from the then current interpretation of the CVR, placing the fire close to Taipei for a number of reasons, not least of which were those that I've already outlined to you, but they expanded on these reasons by doing a detailed analysis of the events as they unfolded in the cockpit and they came to the conclusion that there simply wasn't enough time on the official record to do all the things that had been done, and therefore those things had been done earlier.   
 It was a report put together with honesty and with conviction and its acceptance by the Margo Commission should have been a formality.    They were hindered by Margo from entering that report, having been told that it was too late for the official entry, despite the fact that it was within 48 hours of the deadline, on the right side of the deadline.
 Jimmy Mouton was summoned to Margo's chambers, together with Judge Bedaar and Ray Scott, and were told, quote "to drop your line of inquiry.   The country cannot afford for you to investigate this.   It will cost the country 400 million rand and that for your career and safety's sake, drop it", end quote.

CHAIRPERSON: Now, was this by Margo, according to reports, or in his presence?