Mozambique’s liberation legend
Samora Machel Street, formerly Aliwal Street
As part of a series on the heroes honoured in eThekwini’s new street and building names, Veronica Mahlaba and Andile Mnyandu profile Samora Machel
SAMORA Moïsés Machel was a Mozambican military commander, revolutionary socialist and eventual President of Mozambique. He led the country from independence in 1975 until 1986.
He was born on 29 September 1933 into a farming family in the village of Madragoa, Gaza Province, of Mozambique, then called Portuguese East Africa. He attended a mission elementary school until the end of Grade 4 and, although he never completed his secondary education, he went on to study nursing, one of the few professions open to blacks, in the capital Lourenço Marques (now Maputo). Shortly afterwards, one of his brothers was killed in a mining accident.
Unable to complete formal training at the Miguel Bombarda Hospital in Lourenço Marques, he got a job working as an aide in the same hospital and earned enough to continue his education at night school. Machel was attracted to Marxist ideals and began his political activities after noticing that black nurses were paid less than whites doing the same job. He worked at the hospital until he left the country to join the Mozambican nationalist struggle in neighbouring Tanzania.
In 1962 Machel joined the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) which was dedicated to creating an independent Mozambique. He left his first wife and four children behind. In 1963 he received military training outside Mozamibique and returned in 1964 to lead Frelomo’s first guerilla attack against the Portuguese in northern Mozambique. By 1969, Machel had become commander-in-chief of the Frelimo army which had already established itself among Mozambique’s peasantry.
His most important goal, he said, was to get the people, “To understand how to turn the armed struggle into a revolution,” and to realise how essential it was, “to create a new mentality to build a new society”. Two months after the assassination of Frelimo’s president, Eduardo Mondlane, in February 1969, a ruling triumvirate of Machel, Marcelino dos Santos and Frelimo’s vicepresident Uria Simango assumed the leadership. Simango was expelled from the party in 1970, and Machel assumed the presidency.
A coup took place in Portugal in 1974 and a leftwing military regime replaced the 48-year-old Portuguese dictatorship. The new government soon granted independence to the five territories administered by Portugal in Africa which, including Mozambique. When Machel’s unelected revolutionary government took over, he became independent Mozambique’s first president on June 25, 1975. Machel quickly put his Marxist principles into practice by calling for the nationalisation of Portuguese plantations and property, and proposing the Frelimo government establish schools and clinics for the peasants. A land reform programme was imposed, gathering peasants in communal villages in accordance with the Soviet kolkhoz and sovkhoz model.
As an internationalist, Machel allowed revolutionaries fighting white minority regimes in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa to train and operate in Mozambique. Those regimes retaliated by forming a rebel group called Renamo in an attempt to destroy Mozambican infrastructure. The Mozambique economy suffered from these depredations, and began to depend on overseas aid. Nonetheless, Machel remained popular throughout his presidency and was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1975-76.
On October 19, 1986, while Machel was flying back from an international meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, his plane crashed in the Lebombo Mountains, near Mbuzini, in South Africa. Machel was killed, along with 33 others, including ministers and officials of the Mozambique government. There has been much speculation over the years about the involvement of apartheid security forces in the crash, but nothing has ever been conclusively proven. His widow and third wife, Graca Machel, is now married to former South African President Nelson Mandela.
mahlabav@durban.gov.za
Source: sahistory.org.za