Samora Machel
Samora Moisés Machel (29 September 1933 – 19 October 1986) was a Mozambican military commander and political leader. A socialist in the tradition of Marxism–Leninism, he served as the first President of Mozambique from the country's independence in 1975.
Samora Machel
Mário da Graça Machungo (Jul–Oct 1986)
Office established
Marcelino dos Santos (1970–1977)
19 October 1986 (aged 53)
Mbuzini, Transvaal, South Africa
8 including Josina
Machel died in office in 1986 when his presidential aircraft crashed near the Mozambican-South African border.
Early life[edit]
Machel was born in the village of Madragoa (today's Chilembene), Gaza Province, Mozambique, to a family of farmers. His grandfather had been an active collaborator of Gungunhana. Under Portuguese rule, his father, like most Black Mozambicans, was classified by the demeaning term "indígena" (native). He was forced to accept lower prices for his crops than White farmers; compelled to grow labour-intensive cotton, which took time away from the food crops needed for his family; and forbidden to brand his mark on his cattle to prevent thievery. However, Machel's father was a successful farmer: he owned four plows and 400 head of cattle by 1940. Machel grew up in this farming village and attended mission elementary school. In 1942, he was sent to school in the town of Zonguene in Gaza Province. The school was run by Catholic missionaries who educated the children in Portuguese language and culture. Although having completed the fourth grade, Machel never completed his secondary education. However, he had the prerequisite certificate to train as a nurse anywhere in Portugal at the time, since the nursing schools were not degree-conferring institutions.
Machel started to study nursing in the capital city of Lourenço Marques (today Maputo), beginning in 1954. In the 1950s, he saw some of the fertile lands around his farming community on the Limpopo river appropriated by the provincial government and worked by White settlers who developed a wide range of new infrastructure for the region. Like many other Mozambicans near the southern border of Mozambique, some of his relatives went to work in the South African mines where additional job opportunities were found. Shortly afterwards, one of his brothers was killed in a mining accident.[1][2][3][4][5] 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. He worked at the hospital until he left the country to join the Mozambican nationalist struggle in neighbouring Tanzania.
Rhodesian Bush War[edit]
Frelimo had longstanding links with Zimbabwean nationalist movements. Even during the independence war, guerrillas of ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army), the armed wing of ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union), were able to operate from Frelimo-held areas in Tete province into northern areas of Rhodesia. After the implementation of the UN sanctions against the Rhodesian government, the entire length of the border was now available for nationalist incursions into Rhodesia.
ZANU leader Robert Mugabe, released from Salisbury Prison, Rhodesia in 1974, made his way into Mozambique the following year. Initially, Machel was suspicious of the apparent coup within ZANU that had brought Mugabe to power, and he was effectively rusticated to the central city of Quelimane, where he taught English.[18] Tired of the divisions within Zimbabwean nationalism, Machel sponsored an alternative to both ZANU and its rival ZAPU. This was the Zimbabwean People's Army (ZIPA), which took credit for many operations in eastern Zimbabwe, and was enthusiastically promoted by the Mozambican media. But it soon turned out that the dominant force within ZIPA were ZANLA guerrillas who had never abandoned their loyalty to ZANU and to Mugabe.[19]
Machel accepted the reality that the people doing most of the fighting in Zimbabwe were ZANLA. To bring the war to a successful conclusion, Machel embarked on a dual strategy, military and diplomatic. He sent Mozambican units into Zimbabwe to fight alongside ZANU guerrillas, while also insisting that the new British Conservative government, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, should resume its responsibilities as the colonial power.[20]
The UK Government hosted a conference at Lancaster House in London, aimed at ending White minority rule and drawing up a constitution for an independent Zimbabwe. Mozambicans, notably Machel's British-trained advisor, Fernando Honwana, were in London to advise the ZANU delegation – and ensured that Mugabe accepted the Lancaster House Agreement, despite its failure to solve the land question, with a small minority of white commercial farmers still holding most of the country's fertile farmland. Machel, with his own intelligence teams on the ground, was certain that ZANU would win any fair election. Indeed, ZANU won 57 of the 80 seats reserved for Black Zimbabweans, while the second nationalist movement, ZAPU, won 20. Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front took the 20 seats, which Mugabe had reluctantly agreed to allocate to the Whites.
Machel was fully aware of the dangerous ethnic divisions in Zimbabwe, with ZANU drawing most of its support from the Shona majority, and ZAPU from the minority Ndebele people. On his first state visit to Zimbabwe, in 1980, Machel gave a warning: "To ensure national unity, there must be no Shonas in Zimbabwe, there must be no Ndebeles in Zimbabwe, there must be Zimbabweans. Some people are proud of their tribalism. But we call tribalists reactionary agents of the enemy".[21]
Civil War[edit]
In 1977, a rebel army known as RENAMO launched a rebellion backed by Rhodesia, plunging the country into civil war. Following the collapse of Smith's government, the rebel force began to receive backing from South Africa.[22] The movement was initially known as the RNM (translated into English as MNR), but as from 2003 adopted the acronym Renamo.
During the 1980s, the South African government took an increasingly hostile attitude to the Front Line States. Mozambique, in particular, was accused of harbouring military bases of the African National Congress. On June 30, 1981, South African commandos attacked three houses in the southern city of Matola, killing 12 ANC members as well as a Portuguese electrician. While those killed were members of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK - Spear of the Nation), the houses were not a guerrilla base, as visiting diplomats and journalists soon confirmed. A fortnight later, Machel threw down the gauntlet. At a rally in Maputo's independence square, he embraced ANC leader Oliver Tambo and declared "They want to come here and commit murder. So we say: Let them come! Let all the racists come!... Let the South Africans come, but let them be clear that the war will end in Pretoria!"[23]
Helped by weapons airdropped by the South African Defence Force (SADF), Renamo spread its operations across the entire country with the exception of the far north. Frelimo reacted with a series of authoritarian measures, some of which deeply shocked its supporters inside and outside the country. The death penalty, already in force for serious security offences, was now extended to a range of economic crimes. In addition, corporal punishment was imposed as a penalty for a range of offences. Both laws fell into disuse within a year or so but had done severe damage to Frelimo's image. It is widely believed that, at about this time, former Frelimo officials regarded as “traitors” were executed, including Simango and his wife Celina. To this day, Frelimo has published nothing about the circumstances of the execution, though in the Mozambican parliament, in 1995, former security minister Sergio Vieira publicly confirmed “the traitors were executed”. Renamo supporters published colourful versions claiming that the executions happened in 1977,[24] but a date of 1983 seems more likely. In either case, this violated a promise which Machel gave to the Tanzanian and Zambian Presidents, Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda in 1975.
At the Frelimo Fourth Congress, in April 1983, Frelimo reaffirmed its commitment to Marxism, but admitted economic mistakes, particularly in agriculture.[25] Machel was re-elected President of Frelimo, and once again warmly embraced Oliver Tambo.
But the deteriorating military and economic situation drove Frelimo to give the apartheid government what it said it wanted – a non-aggression pact. On March 16, 1984, on a railway carriage in the non-man's land between South Africa and Mozambique, Machel and South African President P. W. Botha signed the Nkomati Accord on Non-Aggression and Good Neighbourliness. The deal expressed in the agreement was extremely simple – South Africa would drop its support for Renamo in exchange for Mozambique dropping support for the ANC.[26]
Machel only partially honoured commitments to expel various ANC members from his territory. South African support for Renamo did not stop – massive shipments of arms were airlifted to Renamo immediately prior to the Accord, and a senior South African official, Deputy Foreign Minister Louis Nel, even visited the Renamo base at Casa Banana in Gorongosa district, using an airstrip which South Africa had helped Renamo build. In mid-1985, the Mozambican and Zimbabwean armed forces launched a joint offensive to drive Renamo out of Gorongosa. Zimbabwean paratroopers ensured the capture of Casa Banana, but Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama fled north, and re-established the Renamo HQ in the district of Maringue. Visiting Casa Banana on September 5, Machel was optimistic. "We have broken the back of the snake, but the tail will still thrash around," he said.[27]
But in fact, the war continued, although its focus shifted northwards to Zambezia and Tete provinces, with Renamo operating with impunity out of Malawi. Machel loathed the Malawian "life President" Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who was the only leader of an independent African state who had established diplomatic relations with Pretoria. After an unsuccessful meeting with Banda, Machel openly threatened to place missiles on the Mozambique-Malawi border and to prevent trade from landlocked Malawi passing through Mozambican territory.[28]
Funeral and burial[edit]
Machel's state funeral was held in Maputo on 28 October 1986. It was attended by numerous political leaders and other notable people from Africa and elsewhere, including Dr. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Dr. Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho, Dr. Daniel arap Moi of Kenya and Dr. Yasser Arafat of Palestinian State. Also present were the ANC leader Oliver Tambo, the U.S. President's daughter Maureen Reagan, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet Union Heidar Aliyev, and the civil rights leader, Jesse Jackson.[37]
At the funeral, the acting leader of Frelimo, Marcelino dos Santos, said in a speech: "The shock of your journey from which there is no return still shudders through the body of the entire nation. You fell in the struggle against apartheid… You understood apartheid as a problem for all humanity."[37]
Samora Machel was buried in a star-shaped crypt at Mozambican Heroes' Square, a traffic junction in Maputo.[38]
