Remembering 1993 tragedy, from a Kenyan perspective

In my 35-year love affair with African football, I have never seen a better centre forward than Zambia’s Godfrey Chitalu.

It is a measure of the impression he made on me that, so many years and so many players down the line, I still miss him. His striking twin, Alex Chola, was a player endowed with exceptional ball control and ceaseless industry.

Both died in the plane crash that killed the entire Zambian national team in Gabon on April 27, 1993 as they took off for a World Cup qualifier in Senegal. It was a tragedy of monumental proportions and the world wept with Zambia. We Africans would describe it as the pain you feel in the bones.

Near site of death

Now the vicissitudes of destiny have sent the successors of that team into an Africa Cup of Nations final just near where their compatriots perished.

What emotions are going through the young players as they remember their departed heroes? What effect does the waves of the sea that washed the bodies and belongings of their countrymen ashore have on them?
What does Kalusha Bwalya feel?

Bwalya was the sole survivor. And only because he was not in the plane: he was on his way from the Netherlands, where he played for with PSV Eindhoven, to link up with his team mates in Dakar when he learnt of the crash. His mission would change from playing with them to escorting their bodies home and then burying them.

Will Bwalya’s mission after tonight be to carry the country’s maiden Nations Cup trophy home with his young charges from the site of death?

Why has destiny contrived this piece of drama that tags at the heartstrings of millions of Zambians and football fans around the world?

Herve Renard, coach of the squad in Libreville eloquently captured this moment of destiny and the emotional weight it carries.

He said: “It was written in the stars that we had to return to Gabon in order to honour the memories of the national side wiped out in 1993.

“Twelve million Zambians wanted us to go the whole way to Libreville. As soon as we arrive in Libreville, we will go to the spot where the plane crashed, not far from the stadium.

“It is imperative we play for them, for Zambia, because it is a fantastic country.”

In playing for Zambia, they will also play for us. Because some of the best players my generation of fans ever saw came from there. Whether they came to us as Kabwe Warriors or Green Buffaloes or KK Eleven, the then national team, they were always a credit to the beautiful game.

Accomplished goalmouth assassin

Writing in the Sunday Nation of January 18, 1981, I described Chitalu as “perhaps the most accomplished goalmouth assassin in this region of Africa”. Then, his Kabwe Warriors had crushed our AFC Leopards 3-1 in that year’s Cecafa Club Cup.

In that game, he had picked up a ball from his penalty area and cruised all the way to the opposite end before firing in an unstoppable right footer past Mahmoud Abbas.

I thought Maradona’s second goal against England in Mexico in 1986 was only greater because of the World Cup’s great stage.

I am a fan of Ivorian football and I appreciate its contribution to peace in that once-flourishing country. But this is a very special moment; this is a sublime moment.

Across many African cultures, there is a saying that no darkness is so dense that it shall not give way to the dawn. Zambian football was plunged into darkness after that Buffalo Transport went down.

But even before the burial, a Lusaka fan said he would be the first to board the next plane that would carry the rebuilt national team. It is not in our nature to allow death to triumph over life.

May it be destiny’s plan to honour all those great footballers and support staff who died in the Atlantic seaboard off Libreville on that terrible day with the Africa title.

May Zambia be happy.

Roy Gachuhi is a writer with The Content House Initiative