FINALLY: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MURDER OF SAMORA MACHEL
On June 25th, 1975 thousands cheered as Mozambicans celebrated their independence from over 400 years of Portuguese rule. Soldiers from the revolutionary army, Frelimo raised their weapons in triumph. Peasants saluted their new flag of green, black and yellow. Samora Machel, Mozambique's new president declared, " Our perspective is to form a new society in Mozambique. Our options are various: in the first place we want to wipe out misery which in our country means hunger, lack of hospitals, and products. We are against exploitation." If there's one thing Machel understood about a successful revolution against the Portuguese, is that it had to have the complete support of the people it sought to liberate. For that reason the liberation strategy that Samora and Frelimo put into motion succeeded; Mozambique's' was a people's revolution, and Frelimo the people's army.

In October of 1986 Machel died in a "mysterious" plane crash on South African soil. Now, a former member of an apartheid death squad has confirmed that the death of Mozambique's first president was not an accident, but murder. The man making this revelation is a Namibian national, Hans Louw, who was once a member of the notorious Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB). Despite its innocuous name, this body was one of the most sinister of the apartheid regime's special units, dedicated to clandestine operations, up to and including murder, against the regime's opponents. Louw is currently serving a 28 year term for murders not connected with the CCB, in Baviaanspoort Prison near Pretoria. Louw claims that he was part of a "clean-up team" whose job was to go to the crash site, and finish off the Mozambican President if he survived the disaster. In fact, the back-up team was not activated, because the original plan - to lure the plane off course by using a false navigation beacon - worked, and Machel died on impact, as the presidential aircraft smashed into a bleak hillside at Mbuzini. Louw said the false beacon was put in position by members of the apartheid regime's Military Intelligence. A second man, Edwin Mudingi, says now that he was also part of the operation, and confirmed that Louw was on the team. Mudingi's unsavoury past includes membership of the Selous Scouts, a unit in the armed forces of the illegal Rhodesian regime of Ian Smith that was responsible for many atrocities.

Samora Machel was an internationalist. He supported and allowed revolutionaries fighting white minority regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa to operate within Mozambique and he earned their wrath in return. Frelimo deputy Rafael Maguni just last October told the Mozambican parliament "The conspiracy of which Samora was a victim was an expression of the destabilization strategy used by the apartheid regime in the region, which sought to block the African National Congress (ANC), and had our country as a major target". At the time of that speech Maguni predicted that the truth of the murder of Samora Machel would come out. Today, he has been proven right.

Sources: All Africa, sahistory.org., Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique, kulcha, Mozambique

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