35 years on, still no light on mystery plane crash that claimed ex-Mozambican leader Machel

THIRTY-FIVE years ago, an aircraft crash killed then-president of Mozambique, Samora Machel.

It was at the height of the cold war, when alliances were made and betrayed like chess moves.

Questions as to who was responsible for Machel’s death remain alive today as many believe he was murdered in an intricate plot involving many who had close ties with the apartheid regime.

Mozambique and the then Soviet Union demanded an onsite investigation but South Africa, the third member of a tripartite commission after the disaster, stalled.

It ignored protests, including those from the International Civil Aviation Organisation {ICAO} consultants, and did not hand over the black boxes until more than a month after the crash.

There are numerous and pivotal incidents that occurred before and after the crash that were not properly investigated.

Any decision by South Africa to re-investigate the Samora Machel air crash will have far-reaching consequences, when the full truth is unearthed.

Two sets of compelling evidence will have to be examined by the relevant authorities, to unravel this mystery crash.

No one has been able to explain or hypothesize about reasons behind the plane’s surprising 37 degree turn about 97km earlier than it should have, which led to the crash.

Apartheid South Africa was in those years attempting to build frequency scramblers for strategic purposes and to enhance its capacity in the realm of electronic warfare.

A frequency scrambler could decode an aircraft’s signal and interfere with the aircraft’s direction.

It is an established fact that tapes at Maputo Airport went missing in the aftermath of the aircrash.

The false beacon theory: The Russian Tupolev 134 plane took its death plunge towards the South African border away from Maputo because it was following signals of a VOR navigational beacon, which was not that of Maputo.

The Botha government claimed that the plane had locked onto a VOR at Matsapa, an airport near Manzini in Swaziland (now eSwatini).

The snag is that Matsapa and Maputo VOR operated on distinct frequencies which could not be confused by the Russian crew.

Like the Helderberg crash, and the murders of Dulcie September and Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, the truth will emerge, but not in our lifetime.