On 19 October 1986, a Tupolev Tu-134 jetliner with a Soviet crew carrying President Samora Machel and 43 others from Mbala, Zambia to the Mozambican capital Maputo crashed at Mbuzini, South Africa. Nine passengers and one crew member survived the crash, but President Machel and 33 others died, including several ministers and senior officials of the Mozambican government.A board of enquiry blamed the captain for failing to react to the Ground Proximity Warning System. Another theory was that the crew had set the aircraft's VOR receivers to the wrong frequency, causing them to receive signals from a different airport, or even that a false beacon had been used to lure the crew off course. While there was widespread suspicion in other nations that South Africa, which was hostile towards Machel's government at the time, was involved in the incident, no conclusive evidence was ever presented to support that allegation.

Samora Moisés Machel (29 September 1933 – 19 October 1986) was a Mozambican military commander and political leader. A socialist in the tradition of Marxism–Leninism, he served as the first President of Mozambique from the country's independence in 1975. Machel died in office in 1986 when his presidential aircraft crashed near the Mozambican-South African border.