'Don't blame my son'

As families of the seven police officers who died in the Witbank helicopter crash three years ago prepare to hear what caused the accident, one family believes their son is being made a scapegoat.

Today the Witbank Magistrate's Court in Mpumalanga will release findings of an inquest into the crash, but Dorris Gouws, mother of co-pilot Tinus Gouws, is adamant that the findings can not be credible - she has discovered several blunders in the inquest process.

Gouws, a warrant officer; the pilot, Captain Wikus Zaayman, and five members of the police's crack national intervention unit - Colonel Teboho Maduna, sergeants Jacobus Henning and Daniel de Bruin and warrant officers Cornelius van Aswegen and Colin Davids - were killed when their police BK117 helicopter crashed near Verena outside Witbank on the morning of July 23 2010.

During the formal inquest, which began in February, prosecutor Tom Clemens told the court that Zaayman and Gouws were drunk at the time of the crash.

He said that Zaayman - who, during his career, had piloted planes carrying former presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki - had a post-mortem blood alcohol level of 0.08g/100ml, while Gouws's level was 0.02g/100ml.

But Dorris Gouws told The Times at the weekend that not only did her son not drink alcohol but the body number indicated as that of her son was, in fact, not his.

During the inquest, lawyer Malose Monene, for the police, argued that evidence was "overwhelmingly clear" that Zaayman had been sober when he was required to fly.

This was shown, Monene said, by Zaayman's decision to drop off one of his passengers after takeoff because the helicopter was too heavy.

According to Monene, Zaayman was experienced enough to fly in bad weather.

Gouws's mother said there had been a party at the police's air wing, where her son had worked, the night before the crash, but that he had been at home with his wife, their two children and his brother - a pastor.

He had not had a drop of alcohol.

"When my other son, Driaan, heard that they said Tinus was drunk he told me all they had to drink the night before was a large cup of coffee each."

Gouws had been taking medication for sinus and an ear infection, she said.

He and the six other members of the national intervention units were responding to a robbery and hostage-taking at a bakery when the helicopter crashed.

His mother believes the inquest earlier this year was flawed.

"When I heard they said it was Tinus who was drunk I told my husband, Tok, that he should take me to the state morgue. I found that they had given him the wrong body number," she said.

Gouws's body number - which she wrote down - was 1240.

A letter from the doctor who did the blood-alcohol analysis, said that the person with the body number 1239 had alcohol levels of 0.017 in his blood.

"I sent the documents to my lawyer, who sent it to the magistrate, and I contacted the police with the information, but I haven't heard anything from them," she said.

"The magistrate said I should wait until the results of the inquest are out."

Magistrate Ernst du Plooy will deliver judgment today.

Mpumalanga police spokesman Brigadier Selvy Mohlala said he could not respond to Dorris Gouws's claims as he was not aware of the circumstances.

Dorris did not want to name whom she believed the second drunk policeman was.

Going through pictures of the helicopter crash site - in which firemen are seen dousing off her son's burning body - Gouws shook her head.

"This is what alcohol does to people," she said.

"We Gouwse can party without alcohol. Tinus was too proud a person to smear his name with alcohol."

On the morning of the crash, Gouws left the house at about 6.15am.

At 9:50am, Tok came into their house in Daspoort, Pretoria, to tell Dorris their son's helicopter had been in an accident.

"We thought that he was alive, but then 15 minutes later the police came to the door and told us all seven were killed," she said.

Gouws, his wife, Diane, and two children, Hailey and Stephen, lived in a cottage flat at his parents' house.

He died 12 days after Hailey's sixth birthday.

His mother said: "You miss the small things, like hearing him get up in the morning. Then you'd hear the gate open and the car start and you'd know he was out. And then 15 minutes later the helicopter would fly over. And when they came back later, you'd wave, knowing that it's them."