" 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.

FMI: www.caa.co.za