Steeped in Blood (27 page)

Johanna Uys has remained silent on this matter all these years, and it is time that she broke her silence. I have also asked the state (in particular John Welsh, the advocate who investigated the matter on behalf of Dullah Omar) why they simply didn’t serve a Section 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act subpoena on Johanna Uys. This would have allowed the state to force her to make a statement in front of a magistrate. The reasons for not doing so are unconvincing.

We know that the fire on the aircraft was hot enough to burn the skin, so there was something on board that had its own oxygen, was unstable and would ignite easily if turbulence occurred. A number of comments were made indicating that there had been more than one fire on board the
Helderberg
, yet these were hushed up or denied.

Things were kept quiet because the government could not afford to have that aeroplane land. Contraband cargo was, and still is, frowned upon. I am aware of a cargo manager at the time who was told to report to SAA head office. He found the room full of top
military officials, who wanted to know which routes back from the East and Europe had extra capacity in the hold – they were using these routes to bring various things into the country, breaking the embargoes and sanctions against South Africa at the time. Transporting innocuous substances can be forgiven, but certain dangerous materials should never be carried by air, particularly not when passengers and cargo are on the same deck. If the cargo hold is below the passengers, it can be flooded with carbon dioxide to kill the fire. But if this cargo was indeed ammonium pechlorate, it would have made little difference, as ammonium pechlorate does not require oxygen to burn. What happened with the
Helderberg
was grossly irresponsible and detrimental to innocent civilian lives.

At the time, families of the deceased passengers were paid out pittances of around $75 000, as specified by the Warsaw Convention. No challenges were posed to SAA, and most families could not afford to litigate. Transparency was certainly not an issue in the P.W. Botha era in South Africa: the ‘official’ version of the story was publicised, and everyone had to accept it. It was a frightening time.

The Margo Commission of Inquiry’s finding was the definitive word on the
Helderberg
air disaster: a single fire just outside Mauritius was the reason the aircraft had crashed, and the cause of the fire was ‘unknown’. I believe that the inquiry was a complete sham – Margo prompted responses from witnesses, threatened others and made absolutely sure that events would progress in a direction that suited SAA.

There are too many ‘ifs’ and ‘what ifs’ when it comes to the
Helderberg
– too many unanswered questions. After nearly twenty-three years, I am still dissatisfied with the official explanation given at the Margo Commission of Inquiry. For me, the case has never been closed. Although I have tried over the years to have it officially reopened by government officials, they have not been interested.

Later, there was a special investigation at the TRC into the
Helderberg
crash. It was concluded that more investigation would
be necessary before this matter could be laid to rest. I participated in this investigation, and the TRC summary of the Special Investigation into the
Helderberg
crash is attached as
Appendix G
.

In an interesting twist, in 2004,
Sawubona
, the SAA in-flight magazine, mentioned the
Helderberg
in an article on SAA’s seventy years of flying. The article appeared on a website, but never saw the light of day in print, as that issue was destroyed and reprinted without the article, at a cost of more than R800 000. The airline plainly did not want its passengers to read about the
Helderberg
. Yet it is a story that will never go away.

The affidavits and other material I have collected over the years point to one feasible scenario only: that the
Helderberg
was carrying rocket fuel destined to assist a flagging South African Air Force in their Angola campaign. This rocket fuel caught fire, and everything that happened subsequently was a sustained government conspiracy to conceal the truth from the public and the rest of the world.

The journalist Robert Kirby had a field day with me in his column ‘Loose Cannon’ in the
Mail & Guardian
, lambasting me for suggesting that Uys would have allowed his authority to be overruled by government or SAA officials. Kirby never understood the consequences of landing the aircraft en route with severe casualties and possible deaths on board. Landing would have opened the whole can of worms, with dire consequences for the pilot and South Africa. Uys was a military man, and these consequences were too much for him. So he flew on into the abyss.

‘[T]ruth and falsity are uniquely and unequivocally determined by the confrontation of statement with fact.’

– THOMAS KUHN,

American philosopher

Forensic science exposes the frailties of humankind, leaving behind only the naked truth about people. When someone ends up dead or in a situation beyond their control, the veneer of civilisation drops away, social airs and graces evaporate and the reality of life is what is left for the forensic scientist to investigate.

Life is difficult, and people respond to stress in different ways. Some turn to various forms of sexual gratification; others feel cornered and burn down their houses; still others kill themselves or their family members. It makes my line of work fascinating and, while I am sympathetic towards these people and their problems, there but for the grace of God go I, as the expression goes.

In death, there are few secrets. This becomes apparent when one looks at accidental deaths, which occur from time to time. Whether someone has died as a result of suicide or accidental death is often an issue of dispute. I have been involved in an advisory capacity in
a few cases of sexual asphyxia, where the victim has gone too far and accidentally hanged him- or herself during sexual play. It is important to understand that, in these cases, if a life assurance policy has a suicide clause, the claims should be paid out, as they are not suicides, but rather accidental deaths.

Sexual asphyxiation is a road not frequently travelled. Some people believe, however, that by partially obstructing the blood flow to the brain during orgasm, they can achieve a heightened orgasm. The majority of the blood flow to the brain is through the carotid arteries, which run up through the neck just behind the jawbone. If someone suspends himself by the neck, the compression of the tissues in the neck cuts off the blood supply to the brain, so that the only blood pumping through is via the vertebral arteries at the back of the neck. This is not sufficient to feed the brain, which then dies: the person becomes unconscious.

So, the trick is to cut off the blood supply just enough – without blocking the blood supply to the brain completely – and, at the right time, to achieve the heightened orgasm. That’s the theory, anyway. But every now and then someone misses the cue and ends up unconscious, suspended, and death rapidly supervenes.

These victims are most often men, although women are not excluded. Frequently the men in such cases are cross-dressers or are found with indicators of sexual activity close at hand, such as pornographic material or dildos. They are also usually on their own.

The range of humankind’s sexual behaviour and tastes is exceptionally wide. The
American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology
used to be affectionately known as the
Journal of Kinky Sex
, as it contained articles on all sorts of medical complications from interesting and varied sexual practices. One story centred on a woman who had a deer’s tongue firmly lodged in her vagina. Another case involved a man who had lost the end of his penis because he was giving himself a blow job with a vacuum cleaner. Strange things are seen in hospital casualty wards – some may need to be seen to be believed!

I recall a case in South Africa years ago involving a man who came into the casualty ward at Johannesburg General Hospital, where I was working while studying trauma proteins in the blood. He was having difficulty walking, and, after an examination, was discovered to have an object stuck in his rectum. The rectal muscles had contracted and gone into spasm, and the object could not be removed. The man was booked into theatre, and the doctors removed a Melrose cheese-spread jar from his rectum. I still remember it was cheese-and-onion flavour!

The next day, of course, everyone wanted to know from him how it had got there. His explanation was that he had been walking across the kitchen floor and had slipped, falling onto the jar. The matter was left at that!

Suicide is always a challenging investigation, as it exposes how people cope with adversity in life. I have acted on behalf of insurance companies in some cases, and also very often on behalf of the family of the deceased. Frequently, the families have put me under immense pressure to come to a finding that is
not
suicide. I was involved in a case a while ago where a young man had financial problems and shot himself in the head. His father would not accept it and desperately wanted me to say that something else had caused his son’s death. Failing to accept the facts, however, can lead to anger, bitterness and frustration.

Families battle with the concept that a loved one was so troubled and unhappy that suicide was their only perceived way out. However, from the forensic point of view, there is often no other reasonable explanation: the person was alone and there was a contact shot to the head or inside the mouth, with the weapon found close by.

Contrary to popular belief, most suicide victims do not leave a note. As the forensic investigator, you have to infer what took place from events that transpired before their death, such as changes in behaviour (see
Chapter 23
, in which I discuss this point in relation to the highly publicised death of a well-known South African businessman).

There are no firm patterns as far as the method of suicide goes, but women tend to use less violent methods, such as drug overdoses, while men are inclined to choose firearms. Suicide by hanging is also quite common. In the case of a man I knew quite well, whom I had seen at a social gathering just a few days before his death, there seemed to be nothing untoward in his behaviour. His son later called me in to investigate his death: he had hanged himself from a beam in his garage. He had been under severe financial strain, and had seen suicide as the only solution to his problems. People reach a point of emotional flatlining and become so desperate that death seems to them to be the only option.

One suicide case stood out for me because of the immense tragedy of it all. It was the death of Jamie Verhoef, son of Gordon Verhoef, who was then the owner and director of Gordon Verhoef & Krause, one of the largest firms of refurbishers and painters in the country. Jamie’s father was a very wealthy man, but, sadly, Jamie had a rather mixed outcome in life. The son of divorced parents, he had a chequered career, dropping out of school at the end of Standard 8 before going to the army, where issues arose concerning him and drugs. After his army stint, Jamie was at a loose end; he had no qualifications or skills – all he had was a fabulously wealthy father.

Jamie tried a number of different careers. First, he wanted to be a boat builder, so his father sent him to New Zealand to one of the top boat builders in the world to learn the trade. A few months later, he came home. He then decided that he wanted a career in property management, something that usually requires tertiary education and years of experience. His father sent him to New York to a top firm of property managers to learn the art of managing high-rise buildings. Soon Jamie was home again, unqualified and jobless.

He then decided to be a game ranger and conservationist, which also would require a degree in zoology or something similar. Gordon Verhoef bought a magnificent game farm. Lavish guesthouses were
built on the premises with gold-plated taps, broekielace and a chef: no expense was spared. The farm was stocked with the best animals, and guests would stay over and hunt on the farm or view the animals. Jamie managed the operation, and was given a Remington .243-calibre rifle as part of his equipment.

The game farm was located about ten minutes outside of Beaufort West. On entering the gate, it took well over forty minutes to get to the farmstead. The road was atrocious – a 4 3 4 was needed to navigate it – and there were steep drops along the side of the road: if your wheel went over the edge, you faced a thousand-foot drop. The farm was a very beautiful place, yet it was also desolate and lonely.

Jamie would go into town every now and then. During some of those visits, he struck up a friendship with an attorney, who was part of the elite in Beaufort West. Jamie also met and fell in love with a local girl. There had been rumours that Jamie had also been visiting a girl in the coloured township, and the new object of his desire seemed hesitant to become too involved with him, perhaps because of this fact. This love triangle came to an unpleasant end at a party on the evening of 18 January 1992.