CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘The Boeing’s great, the going’s great’
Federico Freschi
South African Airways, Apartheid and the Technopolitics of Design
Shortly after midnight Universal Time on 28 November 1987 the Helderberg, a South African Airways (SAA) Boeing 747-200BM Combi en route from Taipei to Johannesburg via Mauritius, crashed into the Indian Ocean, killing all 159 passengers and crew on board. It was, and remains, by far the worst accident in the history of the airline, which by then had been operating for 53 years. Terrorism was immediately suspected. This is unsurprising, given that SAA was the national carrier of the pariah apartheid government, flying a problematic route from the pariah state of Taiwan via an African country that, for reasons of economic expedience, was not observing the Organisation of African Unity’s ban on overflying or stopping rights. An extensive commission of inquiry into the crash, which entailed the recovery1 and reconstruction in a hangar at Johannesburg’s international airport of as much of the wreck as could be salvaged, was led by Justice Cecil Margo.2 The commission ruled out terrorism and concluded that the crash was caused by an out-of-control fire that had developed in the main deck cargo hold.3 Further conclusions that were drawn about inadequate fire detection and suppression facilities on this type of aircraft would lead to safety innovations across the entire Boeing fleet, not least the outlawing of the ‘combi’ principle of incorporating a cargo hold on the passenger deck. However, questions regarding the actual cause of the fire, the cargo that might have ignited it, and who or what body should ultimately be held accountable remained unanswered. Inevitably, given the volatile political atmosphere in South Africa at the time and the South African government’s militaristic facing down of the ‘total onslaught’ of resistance to apartheid, rumours immediately began to circulate about the potentially sinister nature of the cargo that might have caused a fire of ‘The Boeing’s great, the going’s great’
315
