Zambia: The 1993 plane crash and the African underdogs of 2012

For the people of Zambia, the football team was a beacon of hope.

The price of copper, the country’s main export, had nearly halved in the past four years, causing the economy to collapse and incomes to plummet.

President Frederick Chiluba had declared a state of emergency after a coup d’état against him was discovered.

But the football team was a source of pride.

They were known as Chipolo-polo, the Copper Bullets.

The nickname was derived from Zambia’s main industry and the team’s attacking, aggressive style.

The team had just returned from a 3-0 win over Mauritius in an Africa Cup of Nations qualifier.

They had been undefeated in their homeland for eight years and were a band of brothers at the peak of their powers.

For the Zambians, USA ’94 was the ideal scenario.

To get there, they had to top a three-team qualifying pool and beat Morocco and Senegal in home and away matches.

First off to Senegal.

As usual, she was taken there by a DHC-5 Buffalo military aircraft.

As the recession eroded the Football Association’s financial resources, it could no longer afford commercial flights.

Instead, the DHC-5 Buffalo, an 18-year-old twin-propeller aircraft, early models of which had been used in the Vietnam War, would travel across the vast expanses of Africa.

The aircraft was not built for long distances and therefore had to stop regularly to refuel.

And it was starting to show its age. Six months earlier, while flying over the Indian Ocean on its way to Madagascar, the pilot had actually told the players to put on their life jackets.

When the Zambian players reported to the airport outside the capital Lusaka to board the flight, they were met by Patrick Kangwa, a member of the national team selection committee.

He told 21-year-old midfielder Andrew Tembo and third-choice goalkeeper Martin Mumba they didn’t have to travel, and they were dropped from the squad.

Pride was hurt and heated words were exchanged on the asphalt.

It was a standard selection decision, but on this day it was determined who would live and who would die.

Those who did board were presented with a daunting itinerary. The Buffalo would land and refuel in the Republic of Congo, Gabon and Ivory Coast before finally arriving in Dakar, the capital of Senegal.

In reality, the animal never got further than Gabon.

The Zambian government has never published a report on what happened to the flight.

But in 2003, Gabonese authorities reported that almost immediately after takeoff from the capital Libreville, the plane’s left engine failed.

The pilot, tired from flying the team back from Mauritius the day before, accidentally turned off the right engine.

The heavy aircraft, suddenly without engine or lift capacity, crashed into the ocean a few hundred meters off the coast of Gabon, killing all 30 people on board.

Back in the Netherlands, Bwalya, his run forgotten, saw the news he already knew appear on television.

“There was a woman reading the news and behind her was the Zambian flag,” he recalls.

“She said: ‘The Zambian national football team travelling to Dakar, Senegal, for a World Cup qualifier has crashed. There are no survivors.’

“Ambition – as a young person, brothers, teammates, the spirit of the group – was lost in one day. But it seems like yesterday, it is so clear in my mind.”

Kangwa, the official who had sent the selected players away in Lusaka, flew to Gabon.

In one fell swoop, his role had changed from selecting players to identifying their remains.

“The bodies had been in the water for a while so some of them had changed condition,” he said on the BBC World Service podcast Copper Bullets.

“I had to try to say, who is this, who could this be?

“After that I cried, we all cried. None of us thought we would end up in a place where we would see our colleagues in pieces.”

Meanwhile, Bwalya had arrived in Lusaka, where reality dawned on him.

“We went to retrieve the bodies and one by one the coffins were taken off the plane to be transported to Independence Stadium,” he said.

“That’s when I realized I wasn’t going to see the team – the team I had traveled with on the same plane a few months earlier – anymore.”

On May 2, 1993, more than 100,000 Zambians gathered at Independence Stadium, where Zambia played its home games, for a funeral.

Most of those in attendance remained on the streets, as the stadium only had a capacity of 35,000 people.

After an overnight vigil and memorial service, the players were buried in a semicircle of graves.

A tree has been planted for each grave in a memorial garden called Heroes’ Acre, 100 metres north of the stadium.

One of them commemorated the life of the legendary Godfrey Chitalu, a legendary goalscorer who later became the team’s coach.

Another was dedicated to Bwalya’s roommate, David ‘Effort’ Chabala, who had kept a clean sheet in the Olympic defeat to Italy.

Kelvin Mutale, 23, was also among the dead. With his two legs, good air quality and two years of international career, he had become Bwalya’s strike partner and had just scored all three goals in the victory over Mauritius.

“Derby Makinka was one of the best players Zambia ever produced at number six,” Bwalya recalled. “He was a tank.

“We had a world-class player in every position.

“I can still feel what it’s like to be in the locker room with the boys, I can still see how happy the boys were, and it’s a good past.”