Samora Machel
Encyclopedia
Samora Moisés Machel was a Mozambican
military commander, revolutionary socialist
leader and eventual President of Mozambique. Machel led the country from independence in 1975 until his death in 1986, when his presidential aircraft crashed in mountainous terrain where the borders of Mozambique, Swaziland
and South Africa converge.
, Portuguese East Africa
(Mozambique), to a family of farmers. He was a member of the Shangana ethnic group and his grandfather had been an active collaborator of Gungunhana
. Under Portuguese rule, his father, a native, was forced to accept lower prices for his crops than white farmers; compelled to grow labor-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. 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
.
ideals and began his political activities in the Lourenço Marques hospital where he protested against the fact that black nurses were paid less than whites doing the same job. He later told a reporter how bad medical treatment was for Mozambique's poor: "The rich man's dog gets more in the way of vaccination, medicine and medical care than do the workers upon whom the rich man's wealth is built." His grandparents and great grandparents had fought against Portuguese
colonial
rule in the 19th century, so it was not surprising that 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. He received military training in 1963 elsewhere in Africa, and returned in 1964 to lead FRELIMO's first guerilla
attack against the Portuguese in northern Mozambique. Machel married his second wife, Josina
(née Mutemba), in 1969, who gave him a child later that same year. 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 realize 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 comprising Samora Machel, Marcelino dos Santos
and Frelimo's vice-president Uria Simango
assumed the leadership. Simango was expelled from the party in 1970, and Machel assumed the presidency of the movement.
Following Portugal's coup of 25 April 1974
, the left-wing military regime that replaced the 48-year old Portuguese dictatorship soon decided to grant independence to the five territories administered by Portugal in Africa (Cabo Verde, Overseas Province of Guinea, São Tomé e Príncipe, Overseas Province of Angola and Overseas Province of Mozambique). When Machel's unelected revolutionary government took over, he became independent Mozambique's first unelected president on June 25, 1975. Marcelino dos Santos
became vice-president. Uria Simango
, his wife Celina and other FRELIMO dissidents such as Adelino Gwambe and Paulo Gumane (former leaders of UDENAMO, one of the National liberation groups in Mozambique
) were arrested and later murdered.
In fact, as early as during the transitional government it shared with Portugal, FRELIMO shattered all opposition to its rule. Former militants Lázaro Kavandame, Uria Simango, Paulo Unhai, Kambeu and Father Mateus Gwengere were arrested, under the pretext that they had allied themselves with elements of the white community during the 7 September 1974 upheaval against the transfer of power to FRELIMO (Mateus Gwengere was kidnapped in Kenya, where he had sought refuge, and brought secretly to Mozambique). The same wave of arrests caught Joana Simeão, who, in opposition to FRELIMO's one-party system, had created a political party, GUMO (Grupo Unido de Moçambique – United Group for Mozambique), proposing a model based on pluralism and free market (which FRELIMO would ironically adopt years later, when it eventually renounced Marxism).
They were all accused of "treason" (even though Joana Simeão herself had never been a member of FRELIMO) and subject to a trial in the so-called "revolutionary" and "popular" style, presided by Samora Machel himself. According to the journalists José Pinto de Sá and Nélson Saúte in the Portuguese daily Público, Joana Simeão, the Reverend Uria Simango, Lázaro Nkavandame, Raul Casal Ribeiro, Arcanjo Kambeu, Júlio Nihia, Paulo Gumane and Father Mateus Gwengere were interned in the campo de reeducação (re-education camp) of M’telela, in the Northeastern province of Niassa, when, on 25 June 1977 (the second anniversary of Mozambique's independence), they were told that they would be taken to the capital, Maputo
, where President Machel himself would discuss their liberation. At a given moment, the jeep convoy stopped on the dirt road between M'telela and Niassa's capital city, Lichinga. By means of a mechanical excavator
, the soldiers had opened a ditch
on the road shoulder and had partially filled it with wood. The prisoners were tied, thrown to the ditch and showered with gasoline
. Then fire was set to the wood. Frelimo's political prisoners were burnt alive, while the soldiers chanted revolutionary anthems around the ditch. The macabre details of this massacre would only be revealed eighteen years later, in 1995. Frelimo, whose successive governments had up to then consistently refused to release information on the whereabouts of those members of the so-called «reactionary group», resorted to silence.
Domingos Arouca, Pereira Leite (who had nevertheless had some political activity against the colonial regime), Máximo Dias (GUMO's # 2) and another FRELIMO dissident, Miguel Murupa, managed to escape to Portugal. Dr Willem Gerard Pott, a lawyer whose resistance to the colonial regime was well-known, was abhorred for not showing unconditional allegiance to FRELIMO. Following a period of detention during which he was subject to humiliating treatment (such as being displayed half-naked in public), he died in prison.
SNASP (Serviço Nacional de Segurança Popular – National Service for People's Security) and PIC (Polícia de Investigação Criminal – Criminal Investigation Police) began a wave of arrests, using both traditional prisons and the so-called campos de reeducação located randomly in northern and central sparsely populated areas. Even Machel's first wife, whom he had deserted in 1963, was detained, despite her total abstention from political activity. Citizens were under permanent watch by the grupos dinamizadores (movement teams), of control cells set up at neighborhood and workplace level.
Machel quickly put his Marxist principles into practice by calling for the nationalization
of Portuguese plantations and property, and proposing the FRELIMO government establish schools and health clinics for the peasants. A land reform
was imposed, gathering peasants in aldeias comunais (communal villages) in accordance with the kolkhoz
and sovkhoz
model. For this purpose, the new Mozambican regime did not hesitate to use the old aldeamentos, or strategic hamlets, in which the Portuguese Army had tried to confine the rural population in order to remove it from FRELIMO's influence in the war-ridden areas of the North (paradoxically, FRELIMO itself then denounced such aldeamentos as "concentration camps"). Deeply contrary to the traditional way of life in the Mozambican countryside, which was characterised by single-family units scattered in the bush, the land reform based on the aldeias comunais concept soon proved to be a monumental fiasco.
As an internationalist, Machel allowed revolutionaries fighting white minority regimes in Rhodesia
(Zimbabwe
) and South Africa to train and operate within Mozambique. The regimes retaliated by forming a rebel group called RENAMO to destroy the infrastructures built by FRELIMO, and to sabotage railway lines and hydroelectric facilities. The Mozambique economy suffered from these depredations, and began to depend on overseas aid – in particular from the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, Machel remained popular throughout his presidency.
Samora Machel was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize
(1975–76).
It is widely admitted that one of the main reasons for the economic and financial collapse of post-independence Mozambique was the hasty departure of the majority of about 200 000 Portuguese residing in the country on the eve of the Portuguese revolution, which had taken place on 25 April 1974, and that such exodus was caused by a sudden change of attitude by Samora Machel.
Indeed, the transitional government that ruled the country from the cease-fire agreement (signed in Lusaka on 7 September 1974) to independence (set for 25 June of the following year) acted in a very conciliatory fashion. Prime-Minister Joaquim Chissano (who would become President of the Republic after Machel's death twelve years later) managed to convince the majority of the white population that only those bearing heavy responsibility for the darkest pages of the colonial era should fear FRELIMO's rule.
However, one month before independence, i.e., in mid-May 1975, Samora Machel crossed over into Mozambique from Tanzania, in the far North, and started a tour heading for the capital city of Lourenço Marques
, in the far South, where he would arrive on the eve of Independence Day. Along this tour, he galvanised the masses with bitter speeches, recalling incessantly the most abhorrent and humiliating aspects of colonialism from the standpoint of colonised Mozambicans. Unease gradually got the upper hand in the Portuguese community, many of whose members then decided to rebuild their lives elsewhere.
Several explanations have been proposed for this change of attitude. In his memoirs, Dr António de Almeida Santos
, a renowned lawyer from Lourenço Marques who, after the fall of Caetano's regime, became Minister for the Coordination of Portuguese-Administered Territories and who was a close friend of Machel's, sustains that FRELIMO's President was strongly affected by two outbursts of violence involving the white population. The first of such episodes was caused by an upheaval in the capital city on 7 September 1974, with the seizing of offices and transmitters of the Rádio Clube de Moçambique, in protest against the Lusaka Agreement signed by the Portuguese Provisional Government and FRELIMO, which provided for the handover of power exclusively to the nationalist movement. This upheaval was led by FICO (Frente Integracionista de Continuidade Ocidental – Integrationist Front for Western Continuity), a movement mostly composed by whites with which FRELIMO dissidents and other members of the black community unwilling to accept a one-party system had allied themselves. FRELIMO supporters retaliated with bloody riots in the black shantytowns surrounding the city and, during several days, thousands of people, mostly Portuguese, were barbarously slaughtered, along with blacks who had allegedly remained loyal to their employers.The second episode of violence happened a few weeks later, on 21 October 1974, when a quarrel between Portuguese commandos
and FRELIMO guerrillas in downtown Lourenço Marques gave rise to another wave of bloody riots in the black shantytown areas, with the murder of dozens of whites. According to Almeida Santos, Machel possibly became convinced that the presence of a numerous Portuguese community in Mozambique would always be a source of instability and a potential threat to FRELIMO's rule. To that was allegedly added pressure from the Soviet Union, to which FRELIMO had contracted a heavy debt, namely of a political nature, and which desired to be rid of the Portuguese in order to better exercise its influence at all levels.
, Zambia
, in the presidential Tupolev Tu-134
aircraft, when the plane crashed in the Lebombo Mountains
, near Mbuzini, South-Africa. There were ten survivors, but President Machel and thirty-three others died, including ministers and officials of the Mozambique government.
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 assisted in Machel's death. Pik Botha
, South African foreign affairs minister at the time, who later joined the ANC
, said that the investigation into the plane crash should be re-opened.
The Portuguese journalist
José Milhazes, who lives in Moscow
since 1977 and currently works for the Portuguese newspaper Público
and as a correspondent for the Portuguese television chain SIC
, sustains 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 regime: 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, however, 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!" (Eat shit!). 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.
(née Simbine), is convinced the aircrash was not an accident and has dedicated her life to tracking down her husband's alleged killers. In July 1998, Mrs Machel married the then South African President Nelson Mandela
. She thus became unique in having been the first lady
of two different countries, Mozambique and South Africa.
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 the 19th October 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.
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.
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
military commander, revolutionary socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
leader and eventual President of Mozambique. Machel led the country from independence in 1975 until his death in 1986, when his presidential aircraft crashed in mountainous terrain where the borders of Mozambique, Swaziland
Swaziland
Swaziland, officially the Kingdom of Swaziland , and sometimes called Ngwane or Swatini, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, bordered to the north, south and west by South Africa, and to the east by Mozambique...
and South Africa converge.
Early life
Samora Machel was born in the village of Madragoa (today's Chilembene), Gaza ProvinceGaza Province
Gaza is a province of Mozambique. It has an area of 75,709 km² and a population of 1,333,106 .Xai-Xai is the capital of the province. Inhambane Province is to the east, Manica Province to the north, Maputo Province to the south, South Africa to the west, and Zimbabwe to the...
, Portuguese East Africa
Portuguese East Africa
Mozambique or Portuguese East Africa was the common name by which the Portuguese Empire's territorial expansion in East Africa was known across different periods of time...
(Mozambique), to a family of farmers. He was a member of the Shangana ethnic group and his grandfather had been an active collaborator of Gungunhana
Gungunhana
Ngungunyane, also known as Mdungazwe Ngungunyane Nxumalo, N'gungunhana, or Gungunhana Reinaldo Frederico Gungunhana, was a tribal king and vassal of the Portuguese Empire, who rebelled, was defeated by General Joaquim Mouzinho de Albuquerque and lived out the rest of his life in exile, first in...
. Under Portuguese rule, his father, a native, was forced to accept lower prices for his crops than white farmers; compelled to grow labor-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
Maputo
Maputo, also known as Lourenço Marques, is the capital and largest city of Mozambique. It is known as the City of Acacias in reference to acacia trees commonly found along its avenues and the Pearl of the Indian Ocean. It was famous for the inscription "This is Portugal" on the walkway of its...
), beginning in 1954. In the 1950s, he saw some of the fertile lands around his farming community on the Limpopo river
Limpopo River
The Limpopo River rises in central southern Africa, and flows generally eastwards to the Indian Ocean. It is around long, with a drainage basin in size. Its mean annual discharge is 170 m³/s at its mouth...
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
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
.
Liberation struggle
Machel was attracted to MarxistMarxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
ideals and began his political activities in the Lourenço Marques hospital where he protested against the fact that black nurses were paid less than whites doing the same job. He later told a reporter how bad medical treatment was for Mozambique's poor: "The rich man's dog gets more in the way of vaccination, medicine and medical care than do the workers upon whom the rich man's wealth is built." His grandparents and great grandparents had fought against Portuguese
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
colonial
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
rule in the 19th century, so it was not surprising that 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. He received military training in 1963 elsewhere in Africa, and returned in 1964 to lead FRELIMO's first guerilla
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
attack against the Portuguese in northern Mozambique. Machel married his second wife, Josina
Josina Machel (FRELIMO)
Josina Muthemba Machel is a major heroine in the history of Mozambique. She was born with a twin brother, Belmiro, in Vilanculos, Inhambane, Mozambique on August 10, 1945 into a family of 5 sisters and 3 brothers. Her grandfather was a lay Presbyterian evangelist who preached nationalism and...
(née Mutemba), in 1969, who gave him a child later that same year. 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 realize 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
Eduardo Mondlane
Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane served as President of the Mozambican Liberation Front from 1962, the year that FRELIMO was founded in Tanzania, until his assassination in 1969.-Early life:...
, in February 1969, a ruling triumvirate comprising Samora Machel, Marcelino dos Santos
Marcelino dos Santos
Marcelino dos Santos is a Mozambican poet, revolutionary, and statesman. As a young man he travelled to Portugal, and Paris, France for an education. He was a founding member of the Frente de Libertacao de Mocambique , in 1962; and served as the party's deputy president from 1969 to 1977...
and Frelimo's vice-president Uria Simango
Uria Simango
The reverend Uria Timoteo Simango The reverend Uria Timoteo Simango The reverend Uria Timoteo Simango (born March 15, 1926 was a Mozambican Presbyterian minister and prominent leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front FRELIMO during the liberation struggle against Portuguese colonial rule...
assumed the leadership. Simango was expelled from the party in 1970, and Machel assumed the presidency of the movement.
Independence
Carnation Revolution
The Carnation Revolution , also referred to as the 25 de Abril , was a military coup started on 25 April 1974, in Lisbon, Portugal, coupled with an unanticipated and extensive campaign of civil resistance...
, the left-wing military regime that replaced the 48-year old Portuguese dictatorship soon decided to grant independence to the five territories administered by Portugal in Africa (Cabo Verde, Overseas Province of Guinea, São Tomé e Príncipe, Overseas Province of Angola and Overseas Province of Mozambique). When Machel's unelected revolutionary government took over, he became independent Mozambique's first unelected president on June 25, 1975. Marcelino dos Santos
Marcelino dos Santos
Marcelino dos Santos is a Mozambican poet, revolutionary, and statesman. As a young man he travelled to Portugal, and Paris, France for an education. He was a founding member of the Frente de Libertacao de Mocambique , in 1962; and served as the party's deputy president from 1969 to 1977...
became vice-president. Uria Simango
Uria Simango
The reverend Uria Timoteo Simango The reverend Uria Timoteo Simango The reverend Uria Timoteo Simango (born March 15, 1926 was a Mozambican Presbyterian minister and prominent leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front FRELIMO during the liberation struggle against Portuguese colonial rule...
, his wife Celina and other FRELIMO dissidents such as Adelino Gwambe and Paulo Gumane (former leaders of UDENAMO, one of the National liberation groups in Mozambique
National liberation groups in Mozambique
Groups interested in freeing Mozambique from Portuguese colonial rule and making it an independent nation emerged in the early 1900s, shortly after Portugal had defeated the last of the native chieftaincies and established effective control over the territory....
) were arrested and later murdered.
In fact, as early as during the transitional government it shared with Portugal, FRELIMO shattered all opposition to its rule. Former militants Lázaro Kavandame, Uria Simango, Paulo Unhai, Kambeu and Father Mateus Gwengere were arrested, under the pretext that they had allied themselves with elements of the white community during the 7 September 1974 upheaval against the transfer of power to FRELIMO (Mateus Gwengere was kidnapped in Kenya, where he had sought refuge, and brought secretly to Mozambique). The same wave of arrests caught Joana Simeão, who, in opposition to FRELIMO's one-party system, had created a political party, GUMO (Grupo Unido de Moçambique – United Group for Mozambique), proposing a model based on pluralism and free market (which FRELIMO would ironically adopt years later, when it eventually renounced Marxism).
They were all accused of "treason" (even though Joana Simeão herself had never been a member of FRELIMO) and subject to a trial in the so-called "revolutionary" and "popular" style, presided by Samora Machel himself. According to the journalists José Pinto de Sá and Nélson Saúte in the Portuguese daily Público, Joana Simeão, the Reverend Uria Simango, Lázaro Nkavandame, Raul Casal Ribeiro, Arcanjo Kambeu, Júlio Nihia, Paulo Gumane and Father Mateus Gwengere were interned in the campo de reeducação (re-education camp) of M’telela, in the Northeastern province of Niassa, when, on 25 June 1977 (the second anniversary of Mozambique's independence), they were told that they would be taken to the capital, Maputo
Maputo
Maputo, also known as Lourenço Marques, is the capital and largest city of Mozambique. It is known as the City of Acacias in reference to acacia trees commonly found along its avenues and the Pearl of the Indian Ocean. It was famous for the inscription "This is Portugal" on the walkway of its...
, where President Machel himself would discuss their liberation. At a given moment, the jeep convoy stopped on the dirt road between M'telela and Niassa's capital city, Lichinga. By means of a mechanical excavator
Excavator
Excavators are heavy construction equipment consisting of a boom, stick, bucket and cab on a rotating platform . The house sits atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. A cable-operated excavator uses winches and steel ropes to accomplish the movements. They are a natural progression from the...
, the soldiers had opened a ditch
Ditch
A ditch is usually defined as a small to moderate depression created to channel water.In Anglo-Saxon, the word dïc already existed and was pronounced 'deek' in northern England and 'deetch' in the south. The origins of the word lie in digging a trench and forming the upcast soil into a bank...
on the road shoulder and had partially filled it with wood. The prisoners were tied, thrown to the ditch and showered with gasoline
Gasoline
Gasoline , or petrol , is a toxic, translucent, petroleum-derived liquid that is primarily used as a fuel in internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. Some gasolines also contain...
. Then fire was set to the wood. Frelimo's political prisoners were burnt alive, while the soldiers chanted revolutionary anthems around the ditch. The macabre details of this massacre would only be revealed eighteen years later, in 1995. Frelimo, whose successive governments had up to then consistently refused to release information on the whereabouts of those members of the so-called «reactionary group», resorted to silence.
Domingos Arouca, Pereira Leite (who had nevertheless had some political activity against the colonial regime), Máximo Dias (GUMO's # 2) and another FRELIMO dissident, Miguel Murupa, managed to escape to Portugal. Dr Willem Gerard Pott, a lawyer whose resistance to the colonial regime was well-known, was abhorred for not showing unconditional allegiance to FRELIMO. Following a period of detention during which he was subject to humiliating treatment (such as being displayed half-naked in public), he died in prison.
SNASP (Serviço Nacional de Segurança Popular – National Service for People's Security) and PIC (Polícia de Investigação Criminal – Criminal Investigation Police) began a wave of arrests, using both traditional prisons and the so-called campos de reeducação located randomly in northern and central sparsely populated areas. Even Machel's first wife, whom he had deserted in 1963, was detained, despite her total abstention from political activity. Citizens were under permanent watch by the grupos dinamizadores (movement teams), of control cells set up at neighborhood and workplace level.
Machel quickly put his Marxist principles into practice by calling for the nationalization
Nationalization
Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...
of Portuguese plantations and property, and proposing the FRELIMO government establish schools and health clinics for the peasants. A land reform
Land reform
[Image:Jakarta farmers protest23.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Farmers protesting for Land Reform in Indonesia]Land reform involves the changing of laws, regulations or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution,...
was imposed, gathering peasants in aldeias comunais (communal villages) in accordance with the kolkhoz
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
and sovkhoz
Sovkhoz
A sovkhoz , typically translated as state farm, is a state-owned farm. The term originated in the Soviet Union, hence the name. The term is still in use in some post-Soviet states, e.g., Russia and Belarus. It is usually contrasted with kolkhoz, which is a collective-owned farm...
model. For this purpose, the new Mozambican regime did not hesitate to use the old aldeamentos, or strategic hamlets, in which the Portuguese Army had tried to confine the rural population in order to remove it from FRELIMO's influence in the war-ridden areas of the North (paradoxically, FRELIMO itself then denounced such aldeamentos as "concentration camps"). Deeply contrary to the traditional way of life in the Mozambican countryside, which was characterised by single-family units scattered in the bush, the land reform based on the aldeias comunais concept soon proved to be a monumental fiasco.
As an internationalist, Machel allowed revolutionaries fighting white minority regimes in Rhodesia
Rhodesia
Rhodesia , officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state located in southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965...
(Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
) and South Africa to train and operate within Mozambique. The regimes retaliated by forming a rebel group called RENAMO to destroy the infrastructures built by FRELIMO, and to sabotage railway lines and hydroelectric facilities. The Mozambique economy suffered from these depredations, and began to depend on overseas aid – in particular from the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, Machel remained popular throughout his presidency.
Samora Machel was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize
Lenin Peace Prize
The International Lenin Peace Prize was the Soviet Union's equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize, named in honor of Vladimir Lenin. It was awarded by a panel appointed by the Soviet government, to notable individuals whom the panel indicated had "strengthened peace among peoples"...
(1975–76).
Machel's change of attitude towards the Portuguese
Indeed, the transitional government that ruled the country from the cease-fire agreement (signed in Lusaka on 7 September 1974) to independence (set for 25 June of the following year) acted in a very conciliatory fashion. Prime-Minister Joaquim Chissano (who would become President of the Republic after Machel's death twelve years later) managed to convince the majority of the white population that only those bearing heavy responsibility for the darkest pages of the colonial era should fear FRELIMO's rule.
However, one month before independence, i.e., in mid-May 1975, Samora Machel crossed over into Mozambique from Tanzania, in the far North, and started a tour heading for the capital city of Lourenço Marques
Maputo
Maputo, also known as Lourenço Marques, is the capital and largest city of Mozambique. It is known as the City of Acacias in reference to acacia trees commonly found along its avenues and the Pearl of the Indian Ocean. It was famous for the inscription "This is Portugal" on the walkway of its...
, in the far South, where he would arrive on the eve of Independence Day. Along this tour, he galvanised the masses with bitter speeches, recalling incessantly the most abhorrent and humiliating aspects of colonialism from the standpoint of colonised Mozambicans. Unease gradually got the upper hand in the Portuguese community, many of whose members then decided to rebuild their lives elsewhere.
Several explanations have been proposed for this change of attitude. In his memoirs, Dr António de Almeida Santos
António de Almeida Santos
António de Almeida Santos, GCL , is a Portuguese lawyer, politician, parliamentary and minister in several occasions.-Career:...
, a renowned lawyer from Lourenço Marques who, after the fall of Caetano's regime, became Minister for the Coordination of Portuguese-Administered Territories and who was a close friend of Machel's, sustains that FRELIMO's President was strongly affected by two outbursts of violence involving the white population. The first of such episodes was caused by an upheaval in the capital city on 7 September 1974, with the seizing of offices and transmitters of the Rádio Clube de Moçambique, in protest against the Lusaka Agreement signed by the Portuguese Provisional Government and FRELIMO, which provided for the handover of power exclusively to the nationalist movement. This upheaval was led by FICO (Frente Integracionista de Continuidade Ocidental – Integrationist Front for Western Continuity), a movement mostly composed by whites with which FRELIMO dissidents and other members of the black community unwilling to accept a one-party system had allied themselves. FRELIMO supporters retaliated with bloody riots in the black shantytowns surrounding the city and, during several days, thousands of people, mostly Portuguese, were barbarously slaughtered, along with blacks who had allegedly remained loyal to their employers.The second episode of violence happened a few weeks later, on 21 October 1974, when a quarrel between Portuguese commandos
Commandos
Commandos is a stealth-oriented real-time tactics game series, available for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. The game is set in the Second World War and follows the escapades of a fictional British Commandos section. It leans heavily on historical events during WWII to carry the plot...
and FRELIMO guerrillas in downtown Lourenço Marques gave rise to another wave of bloody riots in the black shantytown areas, with the murder of dozens of whites. According to Almeida Santos, Machel possibly became convinced that the presence of a numerous Portuguese community in Mozambique would always be a source of instability and a potential threat to FRELIMO's rule. To that was allegedly added pressure from the Soviet Union, to which FRELIMO had contracted a heavy debt, namely of a political nature, and which desired to be rid of the Portuguese in order to better exercise its influence at all levels.
The fatal aircrash and investigations
On October 19, 1986 Samora Machel was on his way back from an international meeting in LusakaLusaka
Lusaka is the capital and largest city of Zambia. It is located in the southern part of the central plateau, at an elevation of about 1,300 metres . It has a population of about 1.7 million . It is a commercial centre as well as the centre of government, and the four main highways of Zambia head...
, Zambia
Zambia
Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....
, in the presidential Tupolev Tu-134
Tupolev Tu-134
The Tupolev Tu-134 is a twin-engined airliner, similar to the American Douglas DC-9 and the French Sud Aviation Caravelle, and built in the Soviet Union from 1966–1984. The original version featured a glazed-nose design and, like certain other Russian airliners , it can operate from unpaved...
aircraft, when the plane crashed in the Lebombo Mountains
Lebombo Mountains
The Lebombo Mountains, also called Lubombo Mountains, are an 800km long, narrow range of mountains in Southern Africa stretching from Hluhluwe in KwaZulu-Natal in the south to Punda Maria in the Limpopo Province in South Africa in the north. Part of the mountains are found in South Africa,...
, near Mbuzini, South-Africa. There were ten survivors, but President Machel and thirty-three others died, including ministers and officials of the Mozambique government.
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
International Civil Aviation Organization
The International Civil Aviation Organization , pronounced , , is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It codifies the principles and techniques of international air navigation and fosters the planning and development of international air transport to ensure safe and orderly growth...
, 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
Radio navigation
Radio navigation or radionavigation is the application of radio frequencies to determine a position on the Earth. Like radiolocation, it is a type of radiodetermination.The basic principles are measurements from/to electric beacons, especially...
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
Civil Cooperation Bureau
The South African Civil Cooperation Bureau was a government-sponsored hit squad during the apartheid era that operated under the authority of Defence Minister General Magnus Malan...
operative, claims to have assisted in Machel's death. Pik Botha
Pik Botha
Roelof Frederik "Pik" Botha is a former South African politician who served as the country's foreign minister in the last years of the apartheid era...
, South African foreign affairs minister at the time, who later joined the ANC
African National Congress
The African National Congress is South Africa's governing Africanist political party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a...
, said that the investigation into the plane crash should be re-opened.
The Portuguese journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
José Milhazes, who lives in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
since 1977 and currently works for the Portuguese newspaper Público
Público
Público is a Portuguese daily national newspaper.It began publication on March 5, 1990. The newspaper is known as a publication of the French school, with extensive texts and few illustrations...
and as a correspondent for the Portuguese television chain SIC
SIC
Sic is a Latin word that means "thus" or, in writing, "it was thus in the source material".Sic may also refer to:* Sic, Cluj, a commune in Romania* SiC, Silicon carbide, a semiconducting material, also used to make metalworking tools from...
, sustains 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
Zambia
Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....
. In Milhazes' opinion, both the Soviet and the Mozambican authorities had an interest to spread the thesis of an attempt by the South-African regime: 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, however, 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!" (Eat shit!). 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.
Graça Machel
Machel's widow, GraçaGraça Machel
Graça Machel, DBE is a Mozambican politician and humanitarian. She is the third wife of former South African president Nelson Mandela and the widow of Mozambican president Samora Machel...
(née Simbine), is convinced the aircrash was not an accident and has dedicated her life to tracking down her husband's alleged killers. In July 1998, Mrs Machel married the then South African President Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
. She thus became unique in having been the first lady
First Lady
First Lady or First Gentlemanis the unofficial title used in some countries for the spouse of an elected head of state.It is not normally used to refer to the spouse or partner of a prime minister; the husband or wife of the British Prime Minister is usually informally referred to as prime...
of two different countries, Mozambique and South Africa.
Memorial
A memorial at the MbuziniMbuzini
Mbuzini is a village in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. Situated near to the borders of Mozambique and Swaziland. This is where Mozambican president, Samora Machel, and 34 other passengers died in a fatal airplane crash in 1986...
crash site was inaugurated on January 19, 1999 by Nelson Mandela and his wife Graça, and by President Joaquim Chissano
Joaquim Chissano
Joaquim Alberto Chissano served as the second President of Mozambique for nineteen years from 6 November 1986 until 2 February 2005. Since stepping down as president, Chissano has become an elder statesman and is called upon by international bodies, such as the United Nations, to be an envoy or...
of Mozambique. Now the monument is made professional and the memorial service is held on the 19th October 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.
Also, a street in Moscow bears his name and the Zimbabwean band R.U.N.N. family
R.U.N.N. family
R.U.N.N. family were a Zimbabwean musical group that had several hits in the 1980s, whose songs combined mbira-inspired music with reggae and rhumba influences....
had a hit song that mourned his loss.
See also
- Portuguese Colonial WarPortuguese Colonial WarThe Portuguese Colonial War , also known in Portugal as the Overseas War or in the former colonies as the War of liberation , was fought between Portugal's military and the emerging nationalist movements in Portugal's African colonies between 1961 and 1974, when the Portuguese regime was...
- Samora Machel constituency, named after Machel in NamibiaNamibiaNamibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...
External links
- Speech by Nelson Mandela at the unveiling of the Samora Machel Memorial
- The TRC's Special Investigation into the death of President Samora Machel
- A case of assassination? President Samora Machel and the plane crash at Mbuzini
- Biographical notes on Samora Machel
- Graça Machel and Mandela
- Historic film essay on Frelimo and Samora Machel's rehabilitation program