For the Zambian community, their football group was once a ray of hope.
The price of copper, the country’s main export, had almost halved over the next four years, sinking the economy. The source of income had fallen drastically.
President Federico Chiluba had declared a crisis siege throughout the country, alleging that a coup plot against him had been exposed.
The soccer team was still a source of joy.
They were known as Chipolo-polo, the Copper Bullets.
It was once a nickname derived from Zambia’s main occupation and the group’s competitive and offensive taste.
The team had just returned from a 3-0 victory over Mauritius in a qualifying match for the Africa Cup of Internationals.
They had an eight-year undefeated habitat record and were a group of brothers at the peak of their powers.
As far as Zambian participation is concerned, USA 1994 was once an attraction.
To get there, they must top a qualifying group of three, beating Morocco and Senegal in home-and-away qualifiers.
First, Senegal out.
As usual, it was a DHC-5 Buffalo military aircraft that would pick them up there.
With the recession eating into its investment, the football affiliation couldn’t come up with the money for industrial flights.
Instead of the DHC-5 Buffalo, an 18-year-old twin-propeller aircraft, early models of which fell into disrepair during the Vietnam War, would lumber across the vastness of Africa.
It was no longer built for long-distance travel, so it had to build in regular fuel stops.
And once his life appeared. Six months earlier, when flying over the Indian Ocean toward Madagascar, the pilot had advised the players to put on their party jackets.
When the Zambian national players arrived at the capital Lusaka airfield to board, Patrick Kangwa, a member of the national team selection committee, greeted them.
He informed midfielder Andrew Tembo, 21, and first-choice goalkeeper Martin Mumba that they would not wish to move. They had been eliminated from the squad.
Satisfaction was pain and burning words exchanged on the dance floor.
It was once a common type of decision, but in the past, it determined who would live and who would die.
Those who climbed aboard faced a terrifying itinerary. The Buffalo planned to stop and refuel in the Republic of the Congo, Gabon and the Ivory Coast before finally arriving in Dakar, capital of Senegal.
In fact, he never made it past Gabon.
The Zambian executive has never skimped on the document on what happened to aviation.
However, in 2003, the Gabonese government declared that almost immediately after takeoff from the capital, Libreville, the plane’s left engine was prohibited.
The pilot, retired from the team’s aviation again from Mauritius last year, closed the right engine by mistake.
The bulky plane, unexpectedly lacking power and lift, plunged into the sea a few hundred meters off the coast of Gabon, killing all 30 people on board.
Back in Holland, Bwalya, with his career forgotten, saw the scoop he already knew break on television.
“There was a lady reading the news and the Zambian flag was behind her,” he recalls.
“She said: ‘The Zambian national soccer team traveling to Dakar, Senegal, for a World Cup qualifying match has crashed. There are no survivors.’
“The ambition, that of youth, that of brothers, that of colleagues, the spirit of the group, was lost in one day. But it seems like yesterday, it is very clear in my mind.”
Kangwa, the respectable one who had sent the chosen players on their way to Lusaka, flew to Gabon.
In one fell swoop, his role had changed from selecting players to determining their rest.
“The bodies had been in the water for some time, so some had started to change state,” he says on BBC Global Provider’s Copper Bullets podcast.
“I had to try to say, who is this? Who can it be?
“After that I cried, we all cried. “None of us thought we would find ourselves in a place where we would see our colleagues torn to pieces.”
Meanwhile, Bwalya arrived in Lusaka, where the reality became clear.
“We went to receive the bodies and, one by one, they took them off a plane to transport them to the Independencia Stadium,” he says.
“That’s when I realized I would never see the team I had traveled with on the same plane a few months earlier again.”
On May 2, 1993, more than 100,000 Zambians flocked to the Self-Determination Stadium, where Zambia performed their habitat suits, for a funeral.
Most of the attendees stayed on the streets since the stadium’s capacity was greater than 35,000 people.
After an all-night vigil and memorial service, the players were buried in a semicircle of graves.
Each and every grave has a tree planted in front of it on a memorial farmland called Heroes’ Acre, 100 meters north of the stadium.
One of them graced the occasion of the legendary Godfrey Chitalu, a legendary goalscorer who was the group’s school teacher.
Another was dedicated to Bwalya’s roommate David ‘Effort’ Chabala, who had saved Italy’s clean slate from Olympic devastation.
Twenty-three-year-old Kelvin Mutale was also one of those killed. Two feet, right in the wind and two years into his international career, he had become Bwalya’s successful partner and had just scored all three goals in the victory over Mauritius.
“Derby Makinka was one of the best players Zambia has ever produced at the sixth position,” Bwalya recalls. “He was once a tank.
“We had a world-class participant in each location.
“I’ll still be in the conversion room with the guys, I can still see the guys, how happy they were, and it’s a good future.”
