Samora Moisés Machel

Early life

Samora Moisés Machel was born on September 29, 1933, 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 as "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. Despite these barriers, Machel's father was a successful farmer who 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. 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.

Independence struggle

Machel was attracted to anti-colonial ideals and began his political activities in the Miguel Bombarda hospital in Lourenço Marques (Maputo), where he protested against the fact that black nurses were paid less than whites doing the same job. Machel decided to leave Lourenço Marques when a white anti-fascist, the pharmaceutical representative João Ferreira, warned him that he was being watched by the Portuguese political police, the PIDE. Slipping across the border, he made his way to join FRELIMO in Dar es Salaam, via Swaziland, South Africa and Botswana. In Botswana, he hitched a lift on a plane carrying recruits of the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa to Tanzania. Impressed by the young Mozambican, a senior ANC official J. B. Marks (according to Joe Slovo) bumped one of the ANC recruits off the flight to let Machel on.

In Dar es Salaam, Machel volunteered for military service, and was one of the second group of FRELIMO guerrillas sent for training in Algeria. Back in Tanzania, he was put in charge of FRELIMO's own training camp, at Kongwa. After FRELIMO launched the independence war, on September 25, 1964, Machel soon became a key commander, making his name in particular in the grueling conditions of the eastern area of the vast and sparsely populated province of Niassa. He rapidly rose through the ranks of the guerrilla army, the FPLM, and became the head of the army after the death of its first commander, Filipe Samuel Magaia, in October 1966.

Frelimo's founder and first president, Eduardo Mondlane, was assassinated by a parcel bomb on February 3, 1969. His deputy, Rev Uria Simango, expected to take over – but instead the FRELIMO Executive Committee appointed a presidential triumvirate, consisting of Simango, Machel and veteran nationalist and poet Marcelino dos Santos. Simango soon broke ranks, and denounced the rest of the FRELIMO leadership in the pamphlet “Gloomy Situation in Frelimo”. This led to Simango's expulsion from the liberation front, and the election, in 1970, of Machel as Frelimo President, with dos Santos as Deputy President.

Like the late Mondlane, Machel identified himself with Marxism–Leninism, and under his leadership these positions became central to FRELIMO, which evolved from a broad front into a more Marxist party.

The new commander of the Portuguese army in Mozambique, Gen. Kaúlza de Arriaga, boasted that he would eliminate FRELIMO in a few months. He launched the largest offensive of Portugal's colonial wars, Operation Gordian Knot, in 1970, concentrating on what was regarded as the FRELIMO heartland of Cabo Delgado in the far north. Kaúlza de Arriaga boasted of destroying a large number of guerrilla bases – but since such a base was just a collection of huts, the military significance of such supposed victories was dubious.

Independence

Frelimo's immediate warning was that there was no such thing as democratic colonialism, and that nobody should imagine that Mozambicans would tolerate Portuguese rule just because there had been a change of government in Lisbon.

Frelimo's fears were well-founded. The MFA allowed General António de Spínola to become the first post-coup President. He had been commander of the Portuguese forces in Guinea-Bissau, then Portuguese Guinea, and was believed to be deeply implicated in the assassination of the Guinean nationalist leader, Amílcar Cabral.

Spinola had no intention of letting Mozambique and Angola go. He dreamed of a Lusophone commonwealth run from Lisbon, and wanted a referendum on independence. Machel rejected such plans with the pithy remark: "You don't ask a slave if he wants to be free, particularly when he is already in revolt, and much less if you happen to be a slave-owner".

Initial discussions between Frelimo and the new Portuguese government, held in Lusaka in June 1974, proved fruitless. It was clear to Machel that the Portuguese foreign minister, Socialist Party leader Mário Soares, had no power to negotiate independence. So Machel sent one of his top advisers, Aquino de Bragança, to Lisbon to find out who really held power in Portugal. His answer was that Frelimo should really be talking to the MFA, particular to military intellectuals such as Col. Ernesto Melo Antunes, whose power was on the rise, as that of Spinola waned.

Machel refused to give the Portuguese the ceasefire they wanted. For as long as there was no commitment to Mozambican independence, the war would continue. Frelimo re-opened its front in Zambezia province, and stepped up operations throughout the war zone.

There was little resistance. Following the collapse of the Caetano government, rank and file Portuguese soldiers saw little point in continuing to fight, preferring to stay in their barracks.

More serious talks between the Lisbon government and Frelimo ensued, and this time the MFA played a dominant role. The result was an agreement, signed in Lusaka on September 7, 1974, which agreed to transfer full power to Frelimo with the date for independence set for June 25, 1975. That day there was a short-lived settler revolt against the agreement, put down within a day by Portuguese and Frelimo troops acting jointly. A transitional government was set up, containing ministers appointed by both Frelimo and Portugal, but headed by Frelimo's Joaquim Chissano as Prime Minister. Machel continued to run Frelimo from Tanzania. He returned home triumphantly, in a journey "from the Rovuma to the Maputo" (the rivers marking the northern and southern boundaries of the country), in which he addressed rallies in every major population centre in the country.

Rhodesian Bush War

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. 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.

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.

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.

Civil War

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. 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!"

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, 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. Machel was re-elected President of Frelimo, and once again warmly embraced Oliver Tambo.

Death

On October 19, 1986, Machel attended a summit in Mbala, Zambia, called to put pressure on Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, over his support for the Angolan opposition movement UNITA. The strategy of the Front Line States was to move against Mobutu and Banda in an attempt to end their support for UNITA and Renamo, who they regarded as South African surrogates. Although the Zambian authorities invited Machel to stay in Mbala overnight, he insisted on returning to Maputo. He had a meeting scheduled for the following morning at which he intended to reshuffle the leadership of the armed forces. Machel thus overrode the instruction from the Security Ministry that the President should not travel at night – with fatal consequences. The plane never reached Maputo. That night it crashed into a hillside at Mbuzini, just inside South Africa. Machel and 33 others died. Nine people sitting at the back of the plane survived.

Investigation

The Margo Commission, set up by the South African government, but which included high-level international representation, investigated the incident and concluded that the accident was caused by pilot error. Despite the acceptance of its findings by the International Civil Aviation Organization, the report was rejected by the Mozambican and Soviet governments. The latter submitted a minority report suggesting that the aircraft was intentionally lured off course by a decoy radio navigation beacon set up specifically for this purpose by the South Africans. Speculation about the accident has therefore continued to the present day, particularly in Mozambique.

Hans Louw, a Civil Cooperation Bureau operative, claims to have helped bring about Machel's death. Pik Botha, South African foreign affairs minister at the time, said that the investigation into the plane crash should be re-opened. The Portuguese journalist, José Milhazes, who lived in Moscow from 1977 to 2015 and currently works for the Portuguese newspaper Público and as a correspondent for the Portuguese television channel SIC, maintains that the plane crash had nothing to do with any attempt or any mechanical failure, but was due to several errors of the Russian crew (including the pilot), who, instead of diligently performing their duties, were busy with futile things, like sharing alcoholic and soft drinks unavailable in Mozambique that they had had the possibility to bring from Zambia. In Milhazes' opinion, both the Soviet and the Mozambican authorities had an interest to spread the thesis of an attempt by the South African government: the Soviets wanted to safeguard their reputation (exempting the plane and the crew from any responsibility), the Mozambicans wanted to create a hero.

In 2007, Jacinto Veloso, one of Machel's most unconditional supporters within Frelimo, had sustained in his memoirs that Machel's death was due to a conspiracy between the South African and the Soviet secret services, both of which had reasons to get rid of him. According to Veloso, the Soviet ambassador once asked the President for an audience to convey the USSR's concern about Mozambique's apparent "sliding away" towards the West, to which Machel supposedly replied "Vai à merda!" (Go to hell!). Having then commanded the interpreter to translate, he left the room. Convinced that Machel had irrevocably moved away from their orbit, the Soviets allegedly did not hesitate to sacrifice the pilot and the whole crew of their own plane.

Funeral and burial

Machel's state funeral was held in Maputo on October 28, 1986. It was attended by numerous political leaders and other notable people from Africa and elsewhere, including Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho, Daniel arap Moi of Kenya and 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.

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."

Samora Machel was buried in a star-shaped crypt at Mozambican Heroes' Square, a traffic junction in Maputo.

Marriages and family life

In the late 1950s, when Machel was working as a nurse on Inhaca Island, he met a local girl, Sorita Tchaiakomo, and set up house with her. Their first child, Joscelina, was born on Inhaca in 1958. Idelson (1959) and Olívia (1961) were both born after the family returned to the mainland, where they lived in Mafalala, a suburb of Lourenço Marques. Machel returned to the Miguel Bombarda Hospital and was accepted onto a course of further training. At the hospital he began a relationship with another nurse, Irene Buque. She gave birth to their daughter Ornila in February 1963, three weeks before Machel left Mozambique to join Frelimo. N’tewane, Tchaiakomo's fourth child with Machel, was born that September, six months after Machel had left the country. Later, Machel expressed remorse for what he had come to see as bad behaviour towards Sorita and Irene.

Machel was not married to either Tchaiakomo or Buque. When he joined Frelimo in 1963 it was widely believed that the war for independence would last years, if not decades, and that the chances of Frelimo cadres being reunited with their families in Mozambique were vanishingly small. Josina Abiatar Muthemba, who had been active in the anti-colonial student organisation NESAM, arrived in Tanzania in 1965, on her second attempt to flee Mozambique. In Tanzania she worked first as an assistant to Janet Mondlane, Eduardo Mondlane's wife and director of the Mozambique Institute. She became one of the earliest recruits to the Women's Detachment of the guerrilla army, and campaigned vigorously for women's full inclusion within all aspects of the liberation struggle. She and Machel were married at Tunduru in southern Tanzania in May 1969. In November their only son Samora, known as Samito, was born. Josina returned to work as head of Social Affairs, with special responsibility for the welfare of war orphans, and for the health and education of all children in the war zones of northern Mozambique. But she felt increasingly unwell. In 1970 she travelled to the Soviet Union to seek a diagnosis for her chronic ill-health, but to no avail. She was probably suffering from leukaemia, although pancreatic cancer is another possibility. She died on April 7, 1971, aged twenty-five. Machel was devastated.

Machel's second wife, Graça Simbine, joined Frelimo in 1973 after graduating in modern languages from Lisbon University. She worked as a teacher, first in Frelimo-held areas in Cabo Delgado province, and then at the Frelimo school in Tanzania. She became Minister for Education and Culture in newly independent Mozambique. She and Machel were married three months after Independence, in September 1975. In April 1976 a daughter, Josina, was born, and in December 1978 a son, Malengane. At Independence Machel's five older children joined Josina Machel's son Samito in the Presidential household. In 1998, twelve years after Samora Machel's death, Graça Machel married Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa, thus becoming the only woman to have been First Lady of two countries.

International relationships

Samora Machel established a strong relationship with Italy, because of its interest in fighting apartheid and Portuguese colonialism. In particular, the city of Reggio Emilia organized many initiatives to draw Italian attention to the great political problems of southern Africa. On March 24 and 25, 1973, Machel took part in the first "National Conference of solidarity against colonialism and imperialism for freedom and independence of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau".

When Reggio Emilia sent the first solidarity ship "Amanda", Machel welcomed it at the port of Maputo. He said: "Solidarity is not a charity act. It's cooperation, mutual support between peoples striving to reach the same goal. This ship brings peace, it brings the solidarity of the whole Italian people for every population."

He returned to visit Reggio Emilia in 1981.

Foreign honours

Cuba

Recipient of the Order of José Martí

Recipient of the Order of Playa Girón

Italy

Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic

North Korea

Order of the National Flag, First Class

Portugal

Grand Collar of the Order of Prince Henry

Soviet Union

Lenin Peace Prize

Recipient of the Order of Friendship of Peoples

Tanzania

Order of the Uhuru Torch of Mount Kilimanjaro, First Class

East Timor

Great-collar of the Order of Timor-Leste

Yugoslavia

Order of the Yugoslav Great Star

Legacy

Eponyms

Samora Machel Air Force Base in Mbala, Northern Zambia.

Samora Machel Avenue, in the Dar es Salaam central business district in Tanzania (about 1.75 km)

Samora Machel Stadium, in Iringa, Tanzania

Samora Machel Secondary School, in Mbeya, Tanzania

Samora Machel Avenue, in Gaborone, Botswana

Samora Machel Avenue, in Harare, Zimbabwe

Samora Machel Avenue, in Luanda, Angola

Samora Machel Bridge, (formerly Tete Bridge) across the Zambezi River in Tete, Mozambique (762 metres)

Samora Machel constituency, (formerly Wanaheda constituency in 2003) in Khomas Region, Namibia

Samora Machel House, residence for female students at the University of Limpopo, Turfloop Campus

Samora Machel School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zambia

Samora Machel Street, in Moscow, Russian Federation

Samora Machel Street, in Asokoro, Abuja, Nigeria

Samora Machel Street, in Utrecht, Netherlands

Samora Machel Road, in Accra, Ghana

Samora Machel Park, in Reggio Emilia, Italy

Samora Machel Avenue, Mbombela (formerly Nelspruit), South Africa

Memorial

A memorial at the Mbuzini crash site was inaugurated on January 19, 1999, by Nelson Mandela and his wife Graça, and by President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique. Now the monument is made professional and the memorial service is held on October 19 each year. Designed by Mozambican architect José Forjaz, at a cost to the South African government of 1.5 million Rand (US$300,000), the monument comprises 35 steel tubes symbolising the number of lives lost in the air crash. At least eight foreigners were killed there, including the four Soviet crew members, Machel's two Cuban doctors and the Zambian and Zairean ambassadors to Mozambique.

There is a large street in downtown Dar es Salaam, the de facto capital of Tanzania, called Samora Avenue. One of the largest streets in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, was renamed Samora Machel Avenue (from Jameson Avenue) after independence in a gesture of gratitude for Machel's support for black liberation activities before majority rule. Also, a street in Moscow bears his name and the Zimbabwean band R.U.N.N. family had a hit song that mourned his loss.

Printed sources

Munslow, Barry (ed.). Samora Machel, An African Revolutionary: Selected Speeches and Writings, London: Zed Books, 1985.