A number of years ago, when I started my podcast, I recorded a conversation with forensic scientist David Klatzow about the Helderberg air disaster.
I decided to have that conversation again, now that I have more a professional setup, and because it's just so damn interesting.
In short, the Helderberg was a South African Airways Boeing 747, Flight 295, that took off from Taipei on 27 November 1987, heading for Johannesburg via Mauritius.
It never made it.
Somewhere over the Indian Ocean, about 250 kilometres off Mauritius, a fire broke out in the cargo hold, the plane possibly broke apart in the air, and all 159 people on board died.
He was told to fly on. [Captain Dawie] Uys knew about the illegal cargo on board. And had he landed, in any one of these unfriendly countries on that Indian Ocean rim, he would have been in deep trouble because they would have looked in the hold, found the cause of the fire, and Uys would have traded his pilot's seat for his jail cell there and then.
— David Klatzow
The official investigation, run by Judge Cecil Margo, said a fire caused the crash, but couldn't (or wouldn't) say what started it, which didn't sit right with anyone who bothered to look deeper.
Enter Dr David Klatzow, a forensic scientist who spent nearly thirty years tugging at the loose ends the Margo Commission left behind. What he uncovered pointed to something far darker than a simple accident: a massive cover-up.
His investigation revealed the cargo hold had been secretly carrying ammonium perchlorate, a highly explosive chemical used in rocket fuel, smuggled for Armscor, South Africa's state arms company, to feed the apartheid government's secret weapons programme. (South Africa was involved in a war against "the communists" in Angola, known as the Border War.)
The Margo Commission helped bury the truth.
Margo called them all into his chambers, in the presence of the attorney for SAA and other SAA representatives, and told them
"drop the report, don't push this... they were told it's dangerous for your health, you don't know what you're doing, it's got security implications, and for your own safety, drop it."
I think that they were threatened and bludgeoned, or bribed or whatever, into not going further.
— David Klatzow
David can be contacted at [email protected].
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Jerm
As I type this, I don't think Jerm Warfare is banned anywhere. Interestingly enough, Apple has never censored my podcast, while Spotify has done so three times in the past.
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