Zambia: 1993 plane crash and underdogs at the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations

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

The price of copper, the country’s main export, has almost halved in the past four years, sending the economy into a tailspin. Income fell sharply.

President Frederick Chiluba had declared a national emergency, claiming that a coup plot against him had been uncovered.

Although the football team was a source of pride.

They were known as cipolo polo, copper bullets.

It was a nickname derived from Zambia’s mainstream industry and the team’s aggressive attacking style.

The team had just returned from beating Mauritius 3-0 in the African Cup of Nations qualifiers.

They had an unbeaten home record for eight years and were a band of brothers at the peak of their powers.

For Zambians, the 94th USA Championship was up for grabs.

To get there, they will have to top the three-man qualifying group, ahead of Morocco and Senegal over the two legs.

Firstly, Senegal is away.

As usual, it was a DHC-5 Buffalo military plane that would take them there.

As the recession affected its finances, the Football Association was unable to afford commercial flights.

Instead, the DHC-5 Buffalo, an 18-year-old twin-propeller plane, early examples of which were used in the Vietnam War, will crisscross the vastness of Africa.

It was not designed for long journeys, so it had to stop regularly to refuel.

He was showing his age. Six months ago, as the pilot was flying over the Indian Ocean on his way to play Madagascar, the pilot asked the players to put on life jackets.

When the local Zambian players arrived at the airport outside the capital Lusaka to board, 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 that they would not need to travel. They were dropped from the band.

Pride was wounded and heated words were exchanged on the runway.

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

Those who boarded the plane faced a grueling itinerary. The Buffalo planned to land and refuel in the Republic of Congo, Gabon and Ivory Coast before finally arriving in Dakar, the capital of Senegal.

In fact, it was never able to get beyond Gabon.

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

But in 2003, Gabonese authorities said that almost immediately after the plane took off from the capital, Libreville, the plane’s left engine stopped working.

The pilot, tired from the team’s flight back from Mauritius the day before, accidentally shut down the right engine.

The heavy plane, which suddenly lost power or lift, fell into the ocean a few hundred meters from the coast of Gabon, killing all 30 people on board.

Back in the Netherlands, Bwalya, who had forgotten about his trip, saw the news he already knew on television.

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

She said: “The Zambian national football team’s plane heading to Dakar, Senegal, to participate in the World Cup qualifiers has crashed. There are no survivors.”

“Ambition – as a young man, brothers, teammates, the soul of a group – was lost in one day. But it feels like yesterday, it’s so clear in my mind.”

Kangwa – the official who sent the selected players on their way to Lusaka – traveled to Gabon.

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

“The bodies had been in the water for some time, so the condition of some of them was starting to change,” he said in a BBC World Service podcast Copper Bullets.

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

“Then I cried, we all cried. None of us thought we would find ourselves in a place where we would see our colleagues torn apart.”

Meanwhile, Bwalya arrived in Lusaka, where reality sank in.

He says: “We went to receive the bodies, and one by one, they took the coffins out of the plane to transport them to Independence Stadium.”

“That’s when I realized I would never see the team – the team I had flown on the same plane with a few months ago – again.”

On 2 May 1993, more than 100,000 Zambians came to Independence Stadium, where Zambia played its home matches, for the funeral.

Most of the attendees remained in the streets because the stadium’s capacity was only 35,000 spectators.

After an all-night vigil and memorial prayer, the players were buried in a semicircle of graves.

Each grave has a tree planted in front of it in a memorial park called Heroes’ Acre, 100 meters north of the stadium.

One of them is to commemorate the life of the legendary Godfrey Chitalu, the legendary goalscorer who became the team’s coach.

Another goal was dedicated to Bwalya’s roommate, David “Evort” Chabala, who kept a clean sheet in Italy’s Olympic defeat.

Twenty-three-year-old Kelvin Motal was also among those killed. He was two-footed and good in the air and two years into his international career, he has emerged as a strike partner for Bwalya and has just scored all three goals in the win over Mauritius.

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

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

“I can still feel being in the changing room with the boys, I can still see the boys, how happy they are, and that’s a good past.”