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 Samora Moisés Machel (September
29, 1933 – October 19, 1986)
was President of Mozambique
from 1975 until he died eleven years
later, when his presidential aircraft
crashed in mountainous terrain where
the borders of Mozambique, Swaziland
and South Africa converge.
Peasant roots
Machel was born in the village of
Chilembene, Mozambique, to a poor
peasant family. His parents were forced
by the Portuguese colonialists to grow
cotton rather than food crops, so hunger
was prevalent in the family.
He attended Catholic school but, when
not in class, he had to work in the fields.
He studied to become a nurse, one of
the few professions open to Mozambican
blacks at the time.
In the 1950s his parents had their
farmland confiscated and given to Portuguese
settlers. To avoid starvation,
his relatives went to work in the South
African mines in dangerous conditions
and, shortly afterwards, his brother was
killed in a mining accident.
Liberation struggle
Machel was attracted to Marxist ideals
and began his political activities in a
hospital where he protested the fact that
black nurses were paid less than whites
doing the same job.
He later told a reporter
how bad medical treatment was
for Mozambique’s poor: “The rich man’s
dog gets more in the way of vaccination,
medicine and medical care than do the
workers upon whom the rich man’s
wealth is built.”
His grandparents and great grandparents
had fought against Portuguese
colonial rule in the 19th century so it
was not surprising that in 1962 Machel
joined the Front for the Liberation of
Mozambique (FRELIMO) which was
dedicated to creating an independent
Mozambique.
He received military training in 1963
elsewhere in Africa, and returned in
1964 to lead FRELIMO’s first guerrilla
attack against the Portuguese in northern
Mozambique. By 1970,
Machel had become commander-inchief
of the FRELIMO army which had
already established itself among Mozambique’s
peasantry.
His most important
goal, he said, was to get the people
“to understand how to turn the armed
struggle into a revolution” and to realize
how essential it was “to create a new
mentality to build a new society.”
Independence
Converging borders of Mozambique,
Swaziland and South Africa, that goal
would soon be realized. The FRELIMO
army had weakened the colonial power
and, after Portugal’s coup in 1974, the
Portuguese left Mozambique. Machel’s
revolutionary government then took over and he became independent Mozambique’s
first president on June 25,
1975.
At home, he quickly put his Marxist
principles into practice by calling
for the nationalization of Portuguese
plantations and property, and to have
the FRELIMO government establish
schools and health clinics for the peasants.
As an internationalist, Machel allowed
revolutionaries fighting white minority
regimes in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and
South Africa to train and operate with
Mozambique. The regimes retaliated by
forming a rebel group called RENAMO
to destroy the schools and hospitals
built by FRELIMO, and to sabotage
railway lines and hydroelectric facilities.
The Mozambique economy suffered
from these depredations, and began to
depend on overseas aid - in particular
from the Soviet Union. Nonetheless,
Machel remained popular throughout
his presidency.
Samora Machel was awarded Lenin
Peace Prize (1975-76).
The fatal aircrash
On October 19, 1986 Samora Machel
was on his way back from an international
meeting in Malawi in the presidential
Tupolev Tu-134 aircraft when
the plane crashed in the Lebombo
Mountains, near Mbuzini.
There were
nine survivors but President Machel
and twenty-four others died, including
ministers and officials of the Mozambique
government. While there was
widespread suspicion—both nationally
and internationally—that the apartheid
regime was implicated in the crash, no
conclusive evidence to this effect has yet
emerged.
The day after the crash, Mozambique
and South Africa agreed that an international
board of inquiry should be established
with the participation of the
International Civil Aviation Organization.
According to the Chicago Convention,
South Africa, as the state on whose
territory the crash had occurred, would
head up the investigation.
South Africa was obliged to work in
partnership with the state of ownership
(Mozambique) and the state of manufacture
(Soviet Union). However, the
Soviet Union and Mozambique did not
feel they were taken on as equal partners
and therefore withdrew their participation
after the initial stages.
Inquiries into the aircrash
Margo Commission
South Africa established the Margo
Commission of Inquiry to investigate
the aircrash. Its investigation was delayed
for several weeks by General
Lothar Neethling’s refusal to hand over
the cockpit voice recorder (the black
box), which he had seized at the scene
of the crash. Having completed its inquiry,
the Margo Commission concluded
that the aircraft had been airworthy
and fully serviced, and that there was
no evidence of sabotage or outside interference.
In its report, the Commission determined:
“that the cause of the accident was
that the flight crew failed to follow
procedural requirements for an instrument
let-down approach, but continued
to descend under visual flight rules in
darkness and some cloud without having
contact with the minimum assigned
altitude, and in addition ignored the
Ground Warning Proximity alarm.”
Soviet report
The Soviet delegation issued a minority
report saying that their expertise
and experience had been undermined
by the South Africans. They advanced
the theory of complicity of South African
security forces and that the plane
had been intentionally diverted by a
false navigational beacon signal, using
a technology provided by Israeli intelligence
agents.
The Soviet report focused on the 37
degrees’ right turn that led the plane
into the hills of Mbuzini. It rejected the
finding of the Margo Commission, saying
that the crew had read the ground
proximity warning as false since they
believed themselves to be in flat terrain
as they approached landing.
TRC report
Graça and Samora Machel with “very
good friends” president P.W. Botha
& foreign minister Pik Botha at the
signing of the Nkomati Accord in
1984 Twelve years after the crash, when
the apartheid regime had been replaced
by a democratically-elected South African
government, a special investigation
into Machel’s death was carried out by
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC).
The TRC’s investigation did not find
conclusive evidence to support either of
the earlier reports. Circumstantial evidence
collected did, however, question the conclusions reached by the Margo
Commission.
For example:
A former Military Intelligence (MI)
officer revealed that Pik Botha and a
number of high-ranking security of
ficials held a meeting at Skwamans, a
secret security police base shared with
MI operatives halfway between Mbuzini
and Komatipoort, on the day before
the crash. They left late that night in a
small plane and some, including Pik
Botha, returned there after the crash.
Although the plane entered a military
and operational zone (a “special
restricted airspace”) which was under
twenty-four hour radar surveillance by
the highly sophisticated Plessey AR3-
D radar system, no warning was given
that the plane was off course and in
South African airspace.
South Africa’s State Security Council
(SSC) minutes from January 1984
indicate that the Mozambican working
group, including General Jac Buchner
and Major Craig Williamson, discussed
how to help RENAMO overthrow the
FRELIMO government of Mozambique.
The TRC report concluded that the
questions of a false beacon and the absence
of a warning from the South African
authorities require further investigation
by an appropriate structure.[1]
A police video in the TRC’s possession
that shows South African foreign minister
Pik Botha telling journalists at the
crash site that President Samora Machel
and others killed in the crash were his
and President P. W. Botha’s “very good
friends”, and that their deaths were
therefore a tragedy for South Africa.
Investigation
The online edition of the
Mail&Guardian of February 10, 2006
reported that the South African government
is to reopen the inquiry into
Machel’s death.
Charles Nqakula, Minister
of Safety and Security, told reporters
in Parliament:
“We owe it to the people of Mozambique
to ensure the matter is thoroughly
investigated.” He added: “Discussions
are underway for dealing with the
matter.”[2]
All of South Africa’s law enforcement
agencies are expected to be involved in
the probe, in co-operation with their
Mozambican counterparts.[3]
Mrs Machel
His widow, Graça Machel, is convinced
the aircrash was no accident and has
dedicated her life to tracking down her
husband’s killers. In July 1998, Mrs
Machel married the then South African
President Nelson Mandela. She thus
became unique in having been the first
lady of two different
nations (Mozambique
and South
Africa), although
not simultaneously.
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