Fare Thee Well Our Hero

Monitor Editor | Monday April 30, 2018 11:01

The fighter plane crashed a day before BDF Day.

There is a circulating audio, in which the narrator says that the pilot called ‘May Day’, and that by the time he reported the fault, he could have ejected his seat to save his life.

That however, according to the narrator, would have had drastic consequences as the jet could have perhaps crashed, with unimaginably horrific consequences into buildings or densely populated areas like the University of Botswana, River Walk mall and Avani Hotel.

Those are places that always teem with people and had it happened, many lives could have been lost. If that’s the case, it takes a big heart, bravery, and great strength for someone to sacrifice his life to the save the lives of others.

What this young man, Major Cliff Manyuni did was palpable heroism. He obviously had a choice to eject the minute he realised that the plane was going to crash. He had a moment to think about saving his skin, but on surveying his surrounding, and calculating the possibilities and the likelihood of the plane crashing into buildings and killing many more people.

From the look of things, the soldier made the difficult choice, and steered the plane away from buildings and areas where he knew there would be more casualties.

Even before, the release of the audio tape, one could immediately make a guess that the pilot could have sacrificed his life to save the lives of many. It is important for us as a nation to honour the young man and many others who have personally sacrificed their own lives out of valour.

Many countries across the world have monuments dedicated to soldiers who die in the line of duty, and it is Botswana for our nation to also consider establishing such a monument.

We should celebrate our heroes, and ensure that their heroic deeds are not forgotten, as soon as we bury them in the ground. We as a nation sometimes take pride in celebrating heroes from other nations at the expense of our own, and that could largely be a result of lack of documentation.

This is not the first crash to claim the life of a pilot during BDF Day preparations, but the other pilots who lost their lives while either training or during BDF Day rehearsals, have now become a distant memory.