South Africa and Mozambique to honor Samora Machel 40 years after his death in a plane crash

JOHANNESBURG -- The late Mozambican president and freedom fighter Samora Machel will be remembered Monday at a joint ceremony by South Africa and Mozambique to mark 40 years since he died in a mysterious plane crash.

The ceremony is set to take place in Mbuzini, an area in South Africa's Mpumalanga province near the crash site.

Machel was Mozambique’s leader after it gained independence from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975 until his death in 1986.

His death sent shock waves throughout Africa, where he was an outspoken and revered anti-colonial voice.

An inquiry into the cause of the plane crash that killed Machel and more than 30 other people blamed the pilots, but 40 years after his death there are still questions about what really happened.

Here’s what to know about Machel and the crash that killed one of Africa’s leading political figures:

The mysterious plane crash

On Oct. 19, 1986, Machel was killed alongside some members of his cabinet, journalists and flight crew when their plane crashed into the Lebombo mountains in the South African area of Mbuzini near the Mozambique and Eswatini border.

They were returning from a meeting of regional leaders in Zambia.

A South Africa-led investigation into the plane crash blamed the pilots for the crash and ruled out any foul play, but Mozambique believed the crash was planned by the then-apartheid South African government to assassinate Machel.

Officials and experts from Mozambique and the Soviet Union, where the aircraft was manufactured, rejected the findings of the report.

Among some of their allegations was that a false beacon had been erected to divert the aircraft in the wrong direction, but this was dismissed by the inquiry.

The plane crash was also the subject of the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, which did not make any conclusive findings but recommended further investigations.

It did, however, raise some questions about the conclusions reached by the report of the 1987 inquiry, including the alleged presence of South African soldiers in the area of the crash a day before it happened.

Mozambique independence and civil war

Mozambique gained independence from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975 after a decade-long armed struggle by the country’s nationalist movement, FRELIMO, which had waged its liberation war mainly from bases in Tanzania.

Machel became the liberation movement’s main leader after the 1969 death of its then leading figure, Eduardo Mondlane.

FRELIMO’s armed struggle gained momentum and by 1974 it was controlling large parts of northern Mozambique while Portugal was struggling to bear the human and financial toll of its colonial wars that were also taking place in Angola and Guinea-Bissau.

Following the 1974 overthrow of the dictatorship in Portugal, the new government decided to bring an end to the wars and signed the Lusaka Accord with FRELIMO, putting in place a transitional government and a framework toward independence.

In 1975, Machel was sworn in as the country’s president and declared Mozambique’s independence, establishing a one-party Marxist state.

However, the celebrations were short-lived as the country was plunged into a civil war two years after independence between FRELIMO and the rebel movement RENAMO, an anti-Communist group backed by the white minority governments in South Africa and what was then Rhodesia.

‘A luta continua’ — the struggle continues

While Mozambique had gained its own independence, Machel saw his country’s freedom as incomplete while there was still white minority rule in other nations in southern Africa.

He became synonymous with the phrase “A luta continua,” which translates to “the struggle continues,” as he repeatedly chanted it in reference to the liberation fight against apartheid South Africa and white minority rule in Rhodesia, which later became Zimbabwe after independence.

His support for liberation movements in the region made Mozambique vulnerable to raids and airstrikes by the governments of South Africa and Rhodesia as they pursued freedom fighters who found refuge in the country.

Many liberation fighters were killed in attacks in Mozambique.

Machel’s government was backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and its Marxist-Leninist posture transformed its clashes with RENAMO into a Cold War proxy conflict.

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This story has been updated to correct the date of the plane crash to Oct. 19, 1986.

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