Four years after the Zambian national side was wiped out in an air disaster, the players’ widows are living in hopeless poverty while the government refuses to reveal the cause of the crash. Tim Exton reports
LAST weekend thousands of fans jammed their way into Independence Stadium, a decaying concrete bowl perched on a windswept hillside just north of Lusaka. They were there in the hope that Zambia could defeat South Africa in a vital qualifying game for the 1998 World Cup. The game ended in a draw much to their disappointment.
Many of those unable to afford the few kwacha needed for admission were also there, anxious to soak up the atmosphere, to be part of a great game. As kick-off approached they tuned their crackling, battered radios to the match commentary and made their way down a grassy slope to a brick-walled enclosure.
For once the heavy metal gates were open, the high walls offering protection from the dust blowing in off the valley floor. For those not able to watch the game, this is perhaps the next best place to be, a football shrine in the true sense. Arranged in a semi-circle around a plain stone obelisk are the graves of 30 men. They died when a Zambian Air Force plane carrying the national team to a 1993 World Cup qualifier in Senegal crashed in darkness off the coast of Gabon. Eighteen players were killed – the cream of this soccer-crazy nation.
Nearly four years later, the crash still reverberates: the pain, loss and grief. The South African match is overshadowed by the continuing refusal of the Zambian government to release the report of the inquiry into the causes of the disaster.
Doreen Mankinka was only 23 when she was left widowed with three children, the youngest only a month old. Her husband Derby had won numerous caps during a nine-year international career. By playing abroad, in Saudi Arabia, he had ensured a good standard of living for his family. But his death has left an irreconcilable void. “I need to know what killed my husband,” she says. “I never viewed my husband’s body. I never saw it.”
It is a financial as well as emotional limbo. Life insurance is unknown to many Africans, and when Derby died all Doreen Mankinka had to fall back on was the money raised by public appeal: three million kwacha (1 500) given to each victim’s family. Shared, according to African custom, with her husband’s parents, it was soon gone, forcing Doreen and children to leave their comfortable home in a Lusaka suburb to move in with her parents.
The only government contribution to the appeal fund was 10 million kwacha (5 000), a donation from the minister of sport.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, it was decided to carry on with the campaign to qualify for USA ’94. Ian Porterfield, hero of Sunderland’s 1973 FA Cup victory, was appointed coach. The makeshift team nearly achieved a fairytale ending. Needing a draw in their last game away to Morocco, they lost to a late goal.
The government investigation established by President Frederick Chiluba was under way but the victims’ families still await its verdict. Promised dates for publication of the report repeatedly come and go.
There was a time when Peggy Mwape would not have missed a match like the South Africa game for anything, but now she can no longer bring herself to watch football. Her husband Michael, a prosperous businessman and chairman of the Zambian FA, died alongside the players.
His widow continues the campaign to uncover the facts of the disaster. “I think there is something the government is hiding,” she says. “From what I know, the government can’t tell the country the truth.”
The information that Peggy Mwape alludes to concerns the condition of the Zambian Air Force Buffalo aircraft used to fly the squad to Dakar. Her fear of a cover-up raises few eyebrows in a country once considered a showpiece for democratic development in Africa but where suppression of information has become increasingly commonplace.
Goodson Machona is sports editor of The Post, an independent newspaper with a track record of washing the government’s dirty laundry in public. Its offices are bugged and its journalists harassed, but it continues to worry at the truth.
Machona claims a Gabonese journalist told him of the findings of that country’s investigation. “The Gabonese authorities told the pilots not to take off at night because it [the aircraft] was not airworthy. But they wanted to get to Senegal so they ignored the advice and took off.” This alleged negligence, if true, would explain the Zambian government’s reluctance to publish the findings of their own inquiry.
Last year was an election year, with parliamentary and presidential polls in November. Any revelation that the government was responsible for the deaths of the footballers would have had catastrophic political consequences for the ruling party.
For those raised on Match of the Day and the occasional trip to a rain-swept Football League ground, it is difficult to understand the role and influence of football in Africa. In a continent riven with conflict, where politicians seldom remain untainted by corruption, there are few heroes, fewer distractions. Football fills the void, providing hope in a desert of poverty.
But lacking generous sponsors and lucrative TV deals, Zambian soccer is beholden to the government if it is to compete internationally. Even after the cadging of a lift from an Air Force transport plane ended so disastrously the Zambian FA remains squirmingly tight-lipped and faithful to its paymaster. The FAZ secretary-general Julio Chiluba (no relation) fends off inquiries about the suppressed report with a tired “can’t comment, it’s a government matter”.
With no compensation payable until and unless the government admits liability, the families of the victims feel betrayed by the authorities. Peggy Mwape was lucky – she has successfully taken up the reins of her husband’s petrol station and grocery business – but others are less fortunate.
For Doreen Mankinka, life is a continual struggle, fitting in a full-time job and the demands of motherhood with her studies in public relations at college. Still young, she hopes for a new career, one that will enable her to afford a home for her family.
Derby’s photo looks down on her from a sideboard in her in-laws’ cramped front room as she revises for exams. Her face, tense in concentration, has the lines of a woman 10 years older.
The publication of the government’s inquiry report is essential if she and her children are to put the tragedy behind them and move on. “They keep asking me what killed their father,” she says. “I don’t know what to say. If that report is out they will be able to go on with life. Let them give us the report, then we can forget about it.”
After being overwhelmingly re-elected, albeit amid allegations of vote-fixing, President Chiluba has once again promised the report will be published shortly. Perhaps, with the election safely behind him, he will keep his word this time. But the victims’ families no longer trust his assurances and are going to court to force the report’s release and a compensation settlement. They had hoped for a hearing in December but are still awaiting a date.
In the meantime the World Cup quest continues. No sponsor could be found to pay for television coverage of the first qualifying game, away to Congo a few days before the elections. So groups of men huddled around ancient wirelesses all over the country, straining to hear the commentator through the static.
During a lull in the game, which Zambia lost to an 86th-minute goal, one of them expressed fear about the report’s publication. “It will bring conflict to this country,” he said. “So many people love soccer, they hate what happened. If they bring out that report it will bring disaster.”
But for Peggy Mwape, Doreen Mankinka and all the families of those who died, the best memorial would be the truth.