Samora Machel
Samora Moisés Machel ( born September 29, 1933 Xilambene, Gaza district, † 19 October 1986 in Mbuzini, South Africa) from 1975 to 1986, the first president of the People's Republic of Mozambique.
Samora Machel was from 1970 President of the Mozambican national liberation movement FRELIMO and took over when Mozambique gained its independence in 1975 from Portugal, the Office of the President. Under him, Mozambique was formed to socialist one-party state with strong ties to the Soviet Union, China and the German Democratic Republic. Also to Western countries he had contacts. In 1985 Machel paid a state visit to the United States, where he was received by U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the White House. This was done on the advice of Vice President George HW Bush and against the will of CIA Director William J. Casey.
Machel died in 1986 in a plane crash over the Lebombobergen, for the reasons could not be elucidated. It was never brought formal charges; Joaquim Alberto Chissano, his successor said that Machel's death was not an accident.
The plane crash was commissioned by Mozambique and South Africa by an international commission ( Margo Commission), with the participation of the International Civil Aviation Organization and additionally examined by a Soviet team, as it was a Tupolev TU - 134A 3. Several people interviewed members of the South African security forces confirmed to the Margo Commission that at the time of the plane crash was a heavy presence of police and military ( including the South African Special Forces Brigade ) in the region. One of the survivors later testified that ( after asking at a nearby house for help ) when he came to the plane wreck already security forces were at the crash site and documents confiscated. Later, the document feeding was to copying purposes by the then Foreign Minister Pik Botha and the head of the National Intelligence Service, Niel Barnard, confirmed.
The Margo Commission came to the conclusion that the plane crash was not caused by sabotage or external influences, but chosen by the pilot to a low altitude and the related warning was ignored. The Soviet study group assumed a false ground signal, pointing to a 37 -degree swivel of the aircraft to the right in the direction of hilly terrain to, on the basis of which the cockpit crew would still be assumed flat area. The Margo Commission interpreted this change in the flight course as wrong orientation on a VOR signal (ie not coming from Maputo ) could have come from Matsapha Airport in Swaziland. In Mbuzini was erected a monument reminiscent of the plane crash; It was founded in 1999 by Nelson Mandela unveiled ( Mandela was 1994-1999 President of the Republic of South Africa). It consists of 35 steel columns. In this plane crash came alongside Machel another 34 people, including the Ambassador of Zaire and Zambia in Mozambique and four Soviet crew members lost their lives. There were nine survivors.
Graça Machel, Samora Machel's second wife, married in 1998 Nelson Mandela.