South Africa on Thursday said it would reopen a probe into the death of Mozambique’s first president Samora Machel, who was killed in mysterious circumstances in a plane crash during the apartheid era.
”We will deploy some of the best resources we have, human and material, to get to the bottom of that matter,” Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula told reporters in Parliament.
”We owe it to the people of Mozambique to ensure the matter is thoroughly investigated,” the South African Press Association quoted him as saying.
”We would not start an inquiry without any reason. There is a reason, but that’s all I can tell you.”
Machel died in a plane crash on October 20, 1986 near a South African town bordering Mozambique.
Machel had signed a non-aggression pact with the erstwhile apartheid regime agreeing that he would not let his country be used by the then banned African National Congress, while Pretoria pledged to withdraw support to Renamo rebels fighting Machel’s government.
However, many Mozambicans believe the then government in Pretoria was behind the accident by jamming the plane’s radar.
Others speculate that the pilot had mistaken a South African airstrip for the Maputo airport.
Machel’s widow Graca married Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first post-apartheid president, in 1998 and the couple spend their time between South Africa and Mozambique. – AFP
