Special Report Transcript Episode 24, Section 5, Time 21:08

On Thursday President Nelson Mandela visited the site where Samora Machel died ten years ago. He declared it a national monument and announced that his government would reopen the investigation into the causes of the plane crash. Of course, as far as the previous government was concerned there was no mystery. They appointed a Commission of Inquiry under Judge Cecil Margo who found that errors by the Russian crew caused the crash. But the Margo findings were never fully accepted by most South Africans. The people in government of Mozambique have totally rejected the findings and still believe it was an elaborate South African plot. Perhaps this is paranoia, but I investigated the crash as a journalist ten years ago and while I found many of the arguments of the Margo findings persuasive I could never quite shake off the feeling that there was something else they didn’t tell me. Now ten years later I looked at the circumstances and evidence again and I talk to people who had an interest in the case. My conclusion is that if the Machel crash had been a South African plot it had been planned and executed brilliantly. I still have no answers but I certainly have a number of serious suspicions and questions that would only be resolved with the new full scale investigation.

Notes: Max du Preez; Samora Machel’s funeral