Since it is believed that Matada was a moslem he was buried in the moslem section of the cemetery.
Six people attended the short funeral service. Cited in the British daily “The Independent”, the funeral director, Abdul Rahman, said “We had no clue whatsoever who this person was and where he came from. But, as moslems, it was our duty”.
Matada had hidden in the undercarriage of British Airways flight BA76 from Luanda to Heathrow, but fell from a height of about 750 metres as the aircraft made its approach to Heathrow.
His body was found on 9 September in a street in the London suburb of Mortlake. A witness heard the body hit the ground at 07.42 – which was exactly when the British Airways flight lowered its undercarriage for landing.
The stowaway was carrying no passport or any other form of identification. His possessions were a wad of Angolan banknotes, a Botswanan coin, a mobile phone that used the Angolan provider Movicel, and a second SIM card, from Zambia.
Initially the fact that he was carrying Angolan currency led the British police to suspect that he was an Angolan. However, careful investigation into his SIM cards proved otherwise. The Angolan SIM card was locked but the Zambian one was not, and the police could extract seven numbers, one in Switzerland, and the rest in Botswana and Zambia.
The Swiss number led the police to Matada’s former employer, a woman of Swiss nationality who had once lived in South Africa. From the police description, she recognized Matada. He was a Mozambican who had migrated to South Africa and had worked for her as a housekeeper and gardener until 2010.
The decisive identifying mark was a tattoo of the letters “ZG” on Matada’s left arm. These were the initials of his nickname.
The woman left South Africa in 2010 and did not know what had happened to her gardener until he contacted her in September 2012, saying that he was in Angola and intended to seek a new and better life in Europe. The SIM card and his other possessions suggest that he made his way into Angola overland, via Botswana and Zambia. The last text message from Matada was dated 6 September.
Somehow he eluded security at Luanda airport and climbed into the undercarriage of the British Airways plane. He had tissue paper in his ears – but it was the cold, not the noise, he should have worried about. Outside the pressurized cabin of a jet aircraft, the temperature on an intercontinental flight drops to around minus 63 degrees centigrade, and there is too little oxygen to remain conscious. Matada clearly knew nothing of the temperatures he would face, since he was only wearing casual clothes.
An inquest on Matada took place in London on Thursday, just prior to the funeral. Medical experts said that he was probably still alive, but unconscious when he fell from the plane.
The pathologist, Dr Robert Chapman, said that the bruising and injuries on Matada’s body indicated that there was still some blood flowing in is body when he hit the ground.
“He would have been unconscious with just a little bit of activity from his heart”, said Chapma. “He wouldn’t have known anything about it”.
Attempts by the British police to track down Matada’s relatives in Mozambique failed, hence the funeral in London. From the Swiss source, the police found that he was a convert to Islam, and was 26 years old. By a terrible coincidence, the date of his lonely death, 9 September, was also his birthday.
Post published in: Africa News