For the people of Zambia, his football team was a beacon of hope.
The price of copper, which is the country’s main export, had almost halved in the past four years, boosting the economy. Incomes had dropped significantly.
President Frederick Chiluba had declared a state of national emergency, claiming that a coup plot against him had been uncovered.
The football team though was a source of pride.
They were known as Chipolo-polo, Copper Bullets.
It was a nickname derived from the Zambian industry and the attacking style and intensity of the team.
The team was coming back from a 3-0 win against Mauritius in the qualifying match for the Africa Cup of Nations.
They had an eight-year unbeaten home run and were a band of brothers at the peak of their powers.
For the Zambians, USA ’94 was welcoming.
To get there they would have to top the group of three to qualify, beating Morocco and Senegal in home and away matches.
First, Senegal away.
As usual it was a DHC-5 Buffalo military aircraft that would take them there.
Due to the economic recession increasingly affecting its funding, the football club could not afford commercial flights.
Instead the DHC-5 Buffalo, an 18-year-old twin-propeller aircraft, the earlier models of which were used in the Vietnam War, could be deployed over much of Africa.
It was not built for long distance journeys so it would have to keep the regular fueling stations.
And it was showing its age. Six months earlier, while flying over the Indian Ocean on his way to play Madagascar, the pilot had told the players to put on their life jackets.
When Zambia’s home players arrived at the airport outside the capital Lusaka to board their flight, Patrick Kangwa, a member of the national team selection committee, met them.
He told 21-year-old midfielder Andrew Tembo and third-choice goalkeeper Martin Mumba that they would not need to travel. They were removed from the squad.
Pride was hurt and they exchanged hot words on the tarmac.
It was a normal selection decision, but, on this day, it decided who would live and who would die.
Those who boarded the ship faced a daunting schedule. The Buffalo planned to touch down and refuel in the Republic of Congo, Gabon and Ivory Coast before arriving in Dakar, the capital of Senegal.
In fact, it did not succeed beyond Gabon.
The Zambian government has never released a report on what happened to the plane.
But in 2003, Gabon authorities said that shortly after taking off from the capital Libreville, the plane’s left engine stopped working.
The pilot, exhausted from bringing the team back from Mauritius the previous day, mistakenly shut down the right hand engine.
The heavy plane, suddenly without power or lift, plunged into the sea a few hundred meters from the coast of Gabon, killing all 30 people on board.
In Holland, Bwalya, his flight forgotten, saw the news he already knew spread on television.
“There was a woman reading the news and the Zambian flag was behind her,” he recalls.
“He said, ‘the Zambian national football team that was traveling to Dakar, Senegal, for a World Cup qualifying match has crashed. There are no survivors’.
“The passion – as a young man, a brother, a teammate, a team spirit – was gone in a day. But it seems like yesterday, it’s so clear in my mind.”
Kangwa – the official who had sent the selected players on the way to Lusaka – flew to Gabon.
Shockingly, his role had changed from selecting players to identifying their remains.
“The bodies had been in the water for a while so some had started to change,” he says in the BBC World Service podcast, Copper Bullets.
“I had to try to say, who is this, who could it be?
“After that, I cried, we all cried. None of us thought that we would find ourselves in a place where we would see our comrades in pieces.”
Meanwhile, Bwalya arrived in Lusaka, where the truth sunk in.
“We went to receive the bodies, and one by one, they took the coffins from the plane to be transported to Uhuru Stadium,” he says.
“That’s when I realized I wasn’t going to see the team – with whom I had traveled on the same plane a few months ago – again.”
On 2 May 1993, more than 100,000 Zambians came to Uhuru Stadium, where Zambia played their home matches, for the funeral.
Most of the attendees stayed on the road because the stadium had a capacity of only 35,000 people.
Following an all-night vigil and memorial service the players were laid to rest in the semi-circle of the cemetery.
Each grave has a tree planted in front of it in a memorial garden called Heroes’ Acre, 100 meters north of the grounds.
One celebrated the life of the legendary Godfrey Chitalu, the legendary goalscorer who became the team’s coach.
The other was dedicated to Bwalya’s roommate, David ‘Effort’ Chabala, who kept a clean sheet in Italy’s Olympic demolition.
Kelvin Mutale aged 23 was also among the dead. Two-footed, good in the air and two years into his international career, he emerged as Bwalya’s partner and scored all three goals in the win over Mauritius.
“Derby Makinka was one of the best players Zambia has ever produced at number six,” recalls Bwalya. “He was a tank.
“We had a world-class player in every position.
“I can still feel being in the locker room with the boys, I can still see the boys, how happy they were, and it’s the good old days.”
