Mozambique's ruling Frelimo party has romped to victory in elections. (Photo Courtesy African Elections Project)

Maputo — Mozambique's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo on Monday, as the general election campaign entered its final week, suddenly announced that the first action of a Renamo government would be to re-open the investigation into the death of the country's first president, Samora Machel.

Machel, and 34 of those accompanying him, died on 19 October 1986, when the presidential aircraft, a Soviet Tupolev-134, crashed at Mbuzini, just inside South Africa.

It is generally believed that the plane was lured off its correct flight path by a pirate radio beacon (VOR), mounted by the apartheid military, and broadcasting on the same frequency as the Maputo airport beacon. This has never been conclusively proved, however, because the apartheid authorities refused to cooperate, and turned down the Mozambican requests to investigate the beacon the plane was following.

Instead, the apartheid regime unilaterally went ahead with its own inquiry which predictably blamed the dead Soviet pilot for the disaster.

Renamo national spokesperson Fernando Mazanga seemed entirely unaware of this history when he gave a press conference on Monday demanding "an explanation" of the death of Machel.

"Renamo, should it win the elections, will clarify the death of Samora", he said. "At the moment it is in what is called state secrets, and as Renamo we cannot get in there. But when we rise to power we shall publish the report of the South African government that explains the causes of the death of Samora".

But the death of Machel is not a state secret, and there is no confidential South African report on the matter that is being concealed from the public. There is, of course, the self-serving report from the apartheid regime's own inquiry, which is already in the public domain.

Mazanga declared "This accident or murder that plunged the country and the African continent into mourning still has no convincing explanation".

He recalled that the Mozambican Commission of Inquiry into the crash was headed by Armando Guebuza, who is now the president and seeking a second term in the current elections. "So far Armando Guebuza has not told the Mozambicans what happened with the Tupolev that took the life of President Samora Machel", he declared.

Mazanga displayed not the slightest knowledge or interest in what was written at the time about the plane crash, particularly the series of articles on Machel's death written by Carlos Cardoso, then the director of AIM. Nor did he explain how Guebuza, or any other Mozambican investigator, could be expected to conclude the investigation without the cooperation of the South African regime.

Mazanga said that Guebuza, during the election campaign, "has a sovereign opportunity to explain to the Mozambicans what he knows about the black box of the Soviet plane that killed Samora Machel".

Mazanga's ignorance of the matter is near total. He was clearly unaware that the two black boxes from the Tupolev (the voice recorder and the flight recorder) were recovered, and were decoded by the technical team formed by Mozambican, Soviet and South African experts. The contexts of the black boxes were made public in 1987, 22 years ago. The press conference took on a repugnant tone, when Mazanga claimed "Samora Machel was not our enemy", and even praised Machel for his integrity and his hostility towards all forms of corruption.

This was not what Renamo was saying in the 1980s. Then Renamo, on the instructions of its apartheid paymasters, was fighting to destroy the Mozambique that Samora Machel was building. Machel was routinely dismissed as a "dictator", and nothing praising the late President can be found in any Renamo documents of the time. Anyone who listened to the Renamo radio station "Voz da Africa Livre" ("Voice of Free Africa") will recall the string of insults it spewed against Machel.

Furthermore, according to a defector from the Renamo office in Lisbon, Paulo Oliveira, the South Africans initially intended that Renamo should claim responsibility for the plane crash, but then changed their minds.

An altogether more decent tribute to Machel was paid at Maputo's Monument to the Mozambican Heroes, where Machel lies buried alongside the man who founded Frelimo, Eduardo Mondlane. Here Machel's relatives, comrades and friends laid wreaths to mark the 23rd anniversary of his death.

At Heroes' Square, reporters from the right wing newsheet "Canal de Mocambique" and from the Miramar TV station (owned by the Brazilian fundamentalist sect, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God) tried to buttonhole veteran nationalist, and close comrade of Machel, Marcelino dos Santos.

Dos Santos, in no uncertain terms, told them he had no intention of granting them an interview. "You are from an institution that I don't respect, so I'm not going to answer. I don't respect your institution, so why are you asking me questions?"

This brief exchange led to a furious article in Tuesday's issue of "Canal de Mocambique", denouncing dos Santos, and accusing him of wishing to restore the one party state (although it was a parliament chaired by dos Santos which, in 1990, approved the pluralist constitution which swept away the one party state.

Dos Santos no longer holds any government position, and has every right to decide who he will speak with. "Canal de Mocambique" seems incapable of understanding that freedom of expression includes the freedom of dos Santos not to give interviews to media which he regards as inimical to everything he stands for.