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Brandon Booth and daughter Zara
Most were not much older than 30. Some were newly engaged. Others were new parents.
They were the eight South Africans who were killed in Tuesday’s suicide bomb attack in Kabul. The Department of International Relations and Co-operation released the names of the dead with the permission of families on Wednesday. The government said it was working with the authorities in Afghanistan, via its Pakistan-based mission, to repatriate the remains of the victims.
The ANC described the attack as “an unwarranted waste of life”.
“These wanton and indiscriminate killings are not helping to defuse tensions in Afghanistan,” said spokesman Jackson Mthembu. “This is indeed a very dark day in our industry,” said Air Line Pilots’ Association SA president Fanie Coetzee. It was a “blatant and deliberate attack on innocent civilians”.
Most of the South Africans worked for private aviation company BalmOral Central Contracts. Yesterday, family and friends spoke of their heartbreak.
A grief-stricken Darryl Wood, partner of KwaZulu-Natal pilot Brandon Booth, told The Mercury that her husband had been forced to work in Afghanistan to pay the soaring medical bills for the cancer treatment of their son Vincent who had since died.
Pilots and aviation officials have confirmed that job scarcity was forcing pilots to work in high-risk areas to make ends meet and to gain the necessary flying hours to make them eligible for employment with commercial airlines.
Wood, who was unable to contain her grief, said when her son had died the couple had had an “enormous amount of debt” from his treatment.
“When Vincent was in Johannesburg undergoing treatment Brandon decided to renew his commercial pilot’s licence. For the relaxation mainly, you know, just spending time flying. He then thought why doesn’t he start working overseas.
“He started off in the Sudan, then the Congo and now in Afghanistan. It was a two-year-plan, but you know what happens. He was hoping to finish at the end of this year. It really wasn’t a life for any of us. This is our story, it’s a very personal one and I know everyone else working there has different, and just as personal, stories.”
Trevor Myburgh, marketing and sales manager for 43 Air School in Port Alfred which qualifies 300 commercial pilots a year – among them SAA cadets and pilots for both the Ugandan and Kenyan Airlines – said SA’s commercial aviation industry was “in sleep mode”.
“At least 60 percent of SA pilots are forced to go overseas to work. Our charter industry is not massive and when they leave us they only have 200 flying hours. No commercial airline is going to employ a pilot with so few hours. They do charter work to make up the hours and there just aren’t those opportunities in SA,” he said.
Wood, who is surrounded by friends and family at her home in Balgowan, said the charter company her partner worked for, BalmOral Central Contracts, had offered support and was making all the necessary arrangements for the grieving families.
“The company has been incredible,” she said.
She said she had also received a call from the Department of International Relations and Co-operation which offered condolences and was making arrangements to repatriate Brandon’s remains.
Another of the victims was Steven Leong, 31, of Joburg. After studying, he travelled around Africa as an aircraft maintenance engineer, finally ending up in Kabul.
“He was always interested in planes, ever since he was a young man,” Leong’s mother, Hilda, said.
Her son, the youngest of three, was considerate, kind, “and always full of jokes”.
His older brother from England, Lee Oades, said: “Here in the UK, we hear about soldiers being killed every day. But they aren’t South African. They aren’t your brother.”
Like Leong, 30-year-old Joburger Johan Bouchaud had done a few tours of duty in Afghanistan as an aircraft maintenance engineer for CemAir. He was fun-loving, well-liked and engaged.
“With anyone who works in these war-torn areas, there is always that element of concern,” said his uncle Mark van Buuren. “You see it on the news, incidents happening all over the world. But this… this time it hit a little close to home.”
