Mon, Aug 04, 2003
"
A Lot Of People Wanted
Hansie Cronje Dead"
Was it what it seems to be on first glance, an
"innocent" air crash involving a cargo plane in which Cronje was a
passenger? Or was it something more sinister, the stuff that Agatha
Christie tales are made of? An investigator for South Africa's
Civil Aviation Authority says Cronje, who left cricket in disgrace
after his involvement in a game-fixing scandal, may have been
murdered. If so, then it was a triple-homicide. Both pilots on
board the cargo plane were also killed when it went down on May 30,
2002.
"A lot of people wanted Cronje dead," one investigator close to
the case told Observer Sports Monthly. "They feared he would one
day tell the full truth, and then many more would be implicated. I
know people who have looked closely into what happened but who were
warned off by threatening phone calls. They're scared of getting a
bullet in the head. I understand that police have found evidence of
sabotage, but they're reluctant to go public on this. The full cost
of a follow-up investigation would be too great in a country that
is already riven by crime. It suits the police to have a closed
case."
Wow.
South African papers report Cronje had a tight
relationship with an airline called AirQuarius. "Our crew stayed at
his house – we rented it from him," the airline's chief
executive Gavin Branson told the Observer. "The pilots used to play
golf with Hansie at Fancourt (the estate he lived on). Hansie
didn't pay to fly with us – that route was not a
revenue-paying one for us as far as passengers were concerned."
When, on May 30, 2002, Cronje missed a charter flight, he hopped on
board an AirQuarius aircraft. The plane crashed, killing all three
on board.
"There are a lot of unknowns
about what happened," said Branson. "I think it will be a long time
before the Civil Aviation Authority report comes out. I have a
million questions that I haven't even started asking yet. We'd been
flying that route daily and in far worse weather without
experiencing even a hint of trouble."
According to the Observer, the CAA report may take longer to be
published than normal especially if it is found that there are
grounds to support rumours that George airport's navigational aids
– which failed – had been sabotaged.
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