Death of a Revolutionary

Samora Machel's plane

On the night of Sunday 19 October 1986, the Mocambique presidential aircraft, a Tupolev TU 134A turned towards the South African border in response to signals from a VOR ( a very high frequency omnidirectional radio), which was eminating not from Maputo, but from the crash site on the Lebombo mountain near Mbuzini, Nelspruit.

The South African police arrived on the crash site four and a half hours after the crash. It was alleged that they initially ignored the dead and wounded people and started collecting the documents papers scattered around the scene as well as the victims' valuable personal items and cash. Foreign Minister, Pik Botha, Niel Barnard, head of the National Intelligence Service, who arrived later, admitted that the documentshad been removed from the scene for copying.

Mozambican authorities were only informed about the incident nine hours after it had happenned.