Maputo — A former member of an apartheid death squad has confirmed that the death of Mozambique's first president, Samora Machel, in a 1986 plane crash on South African soil, 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.
According to a report reaching AIM from the South African Press Association (SAPA), Louw told the weekly "Sunday World" of Soweto that he played a peripheral role in the murder of Machel, and of the 33 others who died in the plane crash.
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, told the paper 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. Louw says he was also part of a squad that spied on a prominent member of the Namibian liberation movement, Anton Lubowski, and knows the names of those who murdered him.
He says he took part in a team that lured an Angolan military plane off course, again using a false beacon, causing a crash that killed key figures in the Angolan military in 1989.
He also confessed to taking part in an operation that resulted in the murder of five youths in a bar in Phalaborwa in March 1986.
Louw says he decided to confess to his killings after meeting another jailed killer, Eugene de Kock, who was once the commander of the Vlakplaas police death squad.
