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By KERRY McCUAIG
Growing evidence suggests
lat Mozambique president Sam-
a4 Machel was murdered by
uth African authorities. Local
SS reports quote Black wit-
Sses to the crash who say
hel and others were still alive
len they reached the site.
A nurse told a Zulu paper that
attended to Machel until she
told to leave when South Af-
defence forces arrived.
Machel, who led the Mozambi-
liberation struggle against
rtuguese colonialism since
69 and became the nation’s first
*sident after liberation was won
1975, was killed Oct. 19 in a
ane crash on the South African
© of the Mozambique border.
Speculation of South Africa’s
Yolvement in the crash surfaced
Ost immediately. Aviation ex-
charged that the Soviet-built
€, flown by a Soviet pilot (the
Y survivor who is being held
“Ognito in a South African hos-
ulal) was deliberately lured off
Urse and into danger by a false
nal issued by the apartheid-
Military.
The South African Air Force
admitted that it tracked
hel’s plane throughout its
t, but refrained from warning
pilot he was off course.

his only statement, the pilot
‘dled being lost, then hearing a
¢ explosion before losing con-
usness.

There is no doubt about it,
th Africa was involved in
hel’s death,’ asserts Francis
i, a national executive
ber of the African National
gress. ‘‘It may be impossible
Ove however. The proof rests
the South African govern-
t, but this is like having the
Inal investigate the crime.”

At an international inquiry into
Crash which opened
Utuo Nov. 10, the South Af-

V]

Sechaba editor credits role played by Machel

rican delegation refused to supply
the plane’s flight recorders.
Canadian and other experts are in
the Mozambican capital on behalf
of the Montreal-based Inter-
national Civil Aviation Organiza-
tion.

‘*Machel’s loss will clearly be
felt,’ said Meli who was in
Canada last week to attend a
journalism conference at the
University of Western Ontario.

At the time of his death, the
Mozambican leader was return-
ing from a meeting in Lusaka,
Zambia of the member states of,
the Southern African Develop-
ment Coordinating Conference, a
body set up to enable the Black-
led countries of the region to de-
crease their economic depen-
dence on Pretoria.

The purpose of the conference

‘Organization,

was to discuss joint economic and
military measures to resist the
latest round of apartheid attacks.
Pretoria has recently launched a
major offensive against the
frontline states to punish them for
their continuing support of the
ANC in South Africa and the
South West Africa People’s
the liberation
movement of Namibia. Not least
Pretoria has grown increasingly
angered over her neighbors’ in-
creased calls for an international
boycott against apartheid.

Meli, who is based in London
as editor of the ANC’s magazine
Sechaba (meaning nation), credits
Machel with playing a signal role
in the fight against apartheid.

‘*From the time he was a guer-
rilla fighter, receiving training
alongside ANC members, to his

Samora Machel
1933-1986

longstanding personal friendship
with ANC president Oliver Tam-
bo, Machel was part of a new gen-
eration of African leaders, steeled
in the struggle and leaders for an
independent Africa.”

His personal popularity was a
vital force in mobilizing the
Mozambican people to build a
new society, despite the terrible
hardships endured because of di-
rect apartheid aggression, says
Mell.

He joined FRELIMO at its
founding in 1962, becoming
commander of its armed wing in
1966. After the murder of FRE-
LIMO’s president, Eduardo
Mondlane in 1969, Machel was
chosen as his successor.

A rift was caused amongst the
frontline states in 1984, when
under tremendous pressure from
South Africa, Mozambique

outh Africa charged in Machel’s death —

signed the Nkomati Accord. In
return for denying ANC settle-
ments inside its borders, Mozam-
bique was to be given preferential
trading benefits with South Africa
and arespite from almost 10 years
of vicious contra attacks by the
apartheid-backed MNR.

‘**Mozambique was under a ter-
rible strain. Pretoria did not want
a newly independent Black state
with a socialist leadership to be- —
come a model for the rest of Af-
rica Or more importantly Blacks
in South Africa,’ explains Meli.
‘**But South Africa never kept its
part of the Nkomati Accord.”

In the recent period Machel
however denounced Pretoria’s
failure to live up to Nkomati and
mended any strained relations
with his frontline allies by resum-
ing a leadership role against apar-
theid in the area. :

Only days before his death, the
Mozambican capital was site of a
top-leve conference attended by
prominent African leaders who
issued the Maputo Declaration
calling for international support in
the struggle against apartheid.

There is no doubt that Machel’s
loss will have a destabilizing ef-
fect in the region, says Meli. Pre-
toria used the occasion to launch
a full scale attack. It declared war
against Zimbabwe, which has
promised military support if
necessary to help Mozambique

repel an apartheid offensive and _

Radio Havana reports that four ~
southern Mozambican towns
have been overrun by MNR
forces.

Machel’s successor has yet to
be shown; “‘we are confident
FRELIMO will go in the right
direction,’ assures Meli. “*But it
will not be an easy task. One can
always replace a weapon lost in
battle, but it is very difficult to
replace aman ...and Machel was
the kind of man from which his-
tory is made.”

| INTERNATIONAL FOCUS Tom Morris

Evolution
US. style

U.S. Secretary of State
Shultz was a busy man last
Week,

Fresh from his talks with
Soviet Foreign Minister
hevardnadze in Vienna,
Where he effectively killed all

‘tol, Shultz flew off to an OAS
Neeting in Guatemala City and
mptly turned facts upside
“own, blaming Nicaragua for
Central America’s problems.
en, in a comment which
d only have left his listen-
heads spinning, Shultz
d that the recent effort to
Sinate the dictator Pino-
t was part of a strategy by
a “to head off democratic
Slution in Chile.”

Surely Shultz is joking.

ven this shameless mouth-

'mmediate hope for arms con- ,

Someone might try telling the
Chilean people about Shultz’s
“evolution to democracy” as-
sertion.

piece can’t expect anyone to
believe that Chile is ‘‘evolv-
ing’’ toward democracy. He
couldn’t have missed recent
open police terror on the
streets, the murders of journal-
ists and students — so gross
that even the U.S. ambassador
to Santiago was forced to com-
plain.

Shultz speaks for an
administration that calls contra
killers ‘‘freedom fighters’’,
considers South Korea’s dicta-
torship ‘“‘democracy’s front
line against communism’’,
sees South African apartheid
as its key ally in the region, and
backs every right wing regime
in sight. :

Little wonder he can ignore
the anguish of Chile, the brutal-
ity and raw terror that now is
now institutionalized there and
babble about ‘‘evolving’’ to-
ward democracy.

George Shultz is an un-
abashed liar and bully. He’s
perfect for Reagan’s team.

Let them
eat cake!

Sean Connery or Roger
Moore couldn’t have provided
devotees of James Bond mo-
vies with a better plot:

Agent 007 arrives secretly in
Tehran ona mission so delicate
only a few insiders know about
it. The Pentagon, CIA and
State Department are kept in
the dark. Only the President
and a handful of close advisers
are in the know.

Bond is sent by Ronald Rea- °
gan himself to present a cake to
Iranian leaders — a cake
shaped like a key — to reopen
U.S.-Iranian ties. He’s to offer
weapons and spare parts to
Iran, to be delivered by Ameri-

ca’s proxy, Israel, in a bid to
circumvent U.S. law prohib-
iting such traffic.

The episode is sheer theatre
— except it really seems to
have happened — and the
White House is looking as con-
spiratorial and silly as it de-
serves to look.

James Bond, in reality is
Reagan’s former National Se-
curity Adviser, Robert Mac-
Farlane who, according to Ira-
nian officials, actually did ar-
rive in their country with a
cake from Reagan. The Ira-
nians say they promptly ar-
rested Reagan's delivery boy
and kicked him out of the coun-
try. The White House has no
comment.

We haven’t seen such a
spectacle since Jimmy Carter's
“‘rescue mission”’ to Iran self-
destructed in the desert six
years ago.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 19,1986e9 _