Samora Machel.
(Image: Courtesy Samora Machel Documentation Centre)Oct 19, 2007 – Twenty-one years ago, on October 19, 1986, President Samora Moises Machel of Mozambique was killed when his plane, apparently off-course, smashed into a Lebombo hillside near Mbuzini in what is now Mpumalanga, South Africa.
There is a monument now to mark the spot where Mozambique’s first post-independence President and stalwart of the Mozambican liberation struggle died along with 33 members of his presidential entourage. More than two decades later, no official version of what caused the crash has been provided.
Today we remember him and the Mozambican people’s selfless contribution to the realisation of a democratic South Africa and we quote the words of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song, “How long will they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?”