On 27 April 1993, the Zambian national football team aircraft, en route to Senegal for a 1994 FIFA World Cup USA™ qualifier, crashed into the sea 500 metres off the coast of Libreville, Gabon. There were no survivors. Except, that is, for captain Kalusha Bwalya, who had planned to make his own way to Senegal from Eindhoven, where he played his club football at the time.
Fast forward to 2 February 2012, and there was an altogether different mood in Libreville. Zambia had just won their first CAF Africa Cup of Nations title after a memorable penalty shoot-out victory over Côte d’Ivoire. Kalusha Bwalya, now president of the Zambian Football Federation, was struggling to take it all in. It is almost 20 years since the tragedy that took the lives of so many of his friends and team-mates, and...