Special Hearings — Helderberg Flight Special Hearing — 1998-06-03

JOHAN LODEWIKUS STEYL: I'd like to answer you as follows, it was a subject which was hotly discussed at the time and I'm talking about the era before the Helderberg disaster.  The two subjects which were quite sensitively addressed in this group was, not to place any impermissible cargo on board passenger liners or IATA liners or planes and at that stage the State departments only paid import duties on the consignments coming in, and the other point that was emphasised at the time was that employees were not allowed to include any personal cargo in State consignments for obvious tax purposes.  So these two issues were always raised at each and every seminar and conference and I believe that we did everything in our power to ensure that that did not happen.  If anybody had done that, any member of staff, he would be acting of his own accord and we might not have known about it, but I can't believe that such a thing happened.

UNKNOWN: So it never came to light that any member of staff did such a thing?

JOHAN LODEWIKUS STEYL: As far as I'm aware, it never came to light that any such a thing happened.

MS PATTA: Mr Steyl, we have information from a pilot, a captain Jimmy Hippert who was flying from Spain and a Foreign Affairs official approached him and asked him to bring a package for his wife as a birthday present, it was wrapped up as a birthday present.  He said it was valuable glass, "waardevolle glass" was the words that were used.  He didn't believe this because it wasn't heavy enough and he opened it and inside he found Nitro-glycerine which he was being asked to take in.  And when he complained to the Airline, he was visited by South African Security Officials and said that he should not interfere in this at all.  I mean, there we have one small example of, Nitro-glycerine is a dangerous substance, which was being illegally smuggled.  Do you expect us to believe that at the time of the arms embargo that when South Africa was battling to develop its own programmed, missile programmes and other such things in South Africa, that nothing was ever illegally transported into the country.  How did you manage to the stuff then?

JOHAN LODEWIKUS STEYL: It is very difficult to comment on that because if that was an individual involved in that instance, and my responsibility was official consignments, so if that happened it's strange that there wasn't the necessary follow-up action taken to expose that person to Armscor to prove that that person was busy with an illegal transaction.  I can't comment on that because I'm not aware of any such an incident.  To further answer your question, we obviously had many consignments which could not be transported on passenger planes and then we made use of ships and we went as far as hiring ships where we did the chartering of the ship, we hired the entire ship to be able to get the freight here.  So there ways and means to transport sensitive cargo imported into the country, so it wasn't necessary to import these things on board a passenger plane.  I'm not aware of any such incident.

MS PATTA: Mr Steyl, you testified a minute ago that after the Helderberg went down your superiors actually asked you to monitor the situation, why would they do that if you never transported those kinds of substances on planes?  Surely that implies that there must have been some kind of suspicion in Armscor that you were in fact doing that kind of thing and that it was quite possible that Armscor could have had stuff on the Helderberg?

JOHAN LODEWIKUS STEYL: I can't think that there was a specific suspicion.  I saw it as a normal procedure that after the accident Armscor was visited by security personnel, they asked us certain questions, they asked us whether we'd been aware of any cargo whatsoever, dangerous or non-dangerous, any cargo, whether Armscor had any cargo on board, and that's why we were so very keen to make sure that if there was something we would find out what it was and who had loaded it, or to find out whether perhaps there was no cargo.  And I can say with certainty we didn't find anything.

MS PATTA: But there was even - you entertained the possibility that you might have had cargo on the plane?  You didn't just say to us, there's not ways, we'd never do anything like that, you entertained the possibility.

JOHAN LODEWIKUS STEYL: I can answer you in this way, in Armscor in the shipping department, we acted in good faith and I think one could say that perhaps one did have the fear that somebody in his individual capacity, his personal capacity had perhaps done something.  We believe that he didn't, but it could have been a person who in his personal capacity did such a thing, and we had to ascertain that at all costs, but we couldn't ascertain that.

UNKNOWN: Armscor in those days had many private agents, what I mean by that, is people who on a once-off basis or a couple of times did foreign procurement, is that not so?

JOHAN LODEWIKUS STEYL: That is correct.  I checked, when we looked at the enquiry or when we tried to determine whether there was anything, we in that time, 1987, when the disaster took place, we handled about +-20 customs clearances per day.  In other words 20 imports per day were dealt with.  That gives us about 400 imports per month.  Now, the biggest portion of that, and I refer to a percentage of 98/99%, came from contractors appointed by Armscor, subsidiaries of Armscor and a small percentage of that was stuff which Armscor imported directly.  In other words your statement is correct, there were many agents and many contractors.

UNKNOWN: I'm also referring to individuals like Mr Oslo who died in the Helderberg disaster.

JOHAN LODEWIKUS STEYL: Because I did not deal with foreign procurement directly or deal directly with agents, I'm assuming that there were agents, but I can't tell you who they were and how many there were and what exactly they did.

CHAIRPERSON: Any questions, Mr Magadhla?

MR MAGADHLA: Mr Steyl, would you reject out of hand any suggestion that during those years the South African Authorities or the South African Government was involved in sanction busting together with their allies world-wide?

JOHAN LODEWIKUS STEYL: Honourable Chairperson, I would like to believe that in my capacity in Armscor that there would not have been cases where we as Armscor or as the Government had committed any malicious acts such as for instance placing cargo on board a passenger liner, what individuals might or might not have done I can't comment on, but officially I have to say, I believe no, the answer is no.

MR MAGADHLA: You're saying according to yourself there were no sanction busting by the South African Government?

JOHAN LODEWIKUS STEYL: I'm sorry, I misunderstood you.

MR MAGADHLA: The question was, would you reject out of hand any idea or any suggestion that South Africa did embark on sanction busting during those years together or in conjunction with their allies somewhere else?

JOHAN LODEWIKUS STEYL: Honourable Chairperson, I must answer that positively, I do believe that there were agreements with other countries and I think those other countries did help our Government.

MR MAGADHLA: Now, besides shipments and besides freights using airways to convey whatever stuff between South Africa and her allies in that sanction busting - in those sanction busting operations or undertakings, how else would it have been done according to your thinking or your understanding?

JOHAN LODEWIKUS STEYL: I would as I answered just now, there were countries who helped us with certain venting of sanctions and if there weren't countries then there were individuals in countries who provided in-user certificates whereby certain procurement functions were complied with or fulfilled.  Am I perhaps answering your question, perhaps you should just repeat the question.