The Zambian football
fraternity on Sunday marked
the 20th anniversary of the
plane crash that killed its
entire national football team -
but still with no full report into the accident in sight. Thirty people died, 18 of them
players in the national team,
when the military plane they
were travelling in crashed into
the Atlantic Ocean. The plane went down soon
after a refuelling stop in Gabon
while heading to Senegal for a
1994 World Cup qualifier
against the Teranga Lions. Twenty years on, dozens
turned up at the incomplete
burial site on the grounds of
the Independence Stadium to
remember their heroes in
Lusaka. It was a familiar story of
raised tempers among family
members of the deceased who
still want to know what
exactly caused the crash. "The government has to do the
right thing by releasing the
report - nothing more, nothing
less," lamented widow Joyce
Chabala, whose husband
Efford, was the first choice goalkeeper. Joyce's anger does not end at
the government's failure to
release the report. At the time of the accident she
was pregnant and a few
months later delivered twins -
Memory and David - who have
grown up without knowing
their father. Joyce believes, had her
husband been alive, she would
not have had to shoulder the
burden of raising her children
alone. "Wherever those people went,
they were playing for their
families," she told BBC Sport. "Since they are no more, we
have been left in misery. We
are struggling while some of
the children can't even go to
school. "Life would have been easy
had they been alive." One person who fondly
remembers the team is the
Football Association of Zambia
(FAZ) president Kalusha
Bwalya who was a member of
the squad. He was not on that flight as he
was supposed to fly to Senegal
from Holland where he played
for PSV Eindhoven at the time. "It seems like yesterday for
some of us," he told BBC Sport. "I am glad that I am still alive
today to pay respects to
talented, gallant and incredibly
ambitious boys. "We learnt a lot through the
boys and for me it's a
reference point for me as a
player and an administrator." Bwalya said he would always
remain indebted to his
bereaved friends, hence FAZ's
initiative to organise a friendly
match against Zimbabwe to
mark the event. Zambia's sports minister
Chishimba Kambwili was not
at the memorial service but
was represented by Bernard
Nakachinda, the director of
sports in the ministry. Nakachinda did not comment
on the bereaved families'
requests for a full report into
the tragedy. He instead encouraged the
current national team to
qualify for next year's World
Cup finals as a way of
honouring their fallen heroes. The Zambian government has
still not given relatives of the
victims a full account of what
caused the crash, other than
blaming a mechanical fault in
one of the plane's engines as well as pilot fatigue as
possible reasons for the
accident. The families of the bereaved
received financial
compensation from the State
in 2002, but promises that the
official report would be
released remain unfulfilled.