Samora Moisés Machel was a Mozambican military commander and politician. A socialist in the tradition of Marxism-Leninism, he served as the first President of Mozambique from the country's independence in 1975. Machel died in office in 1986 when his presidential aircraft crashed near the Mozambique-South Africa border.
Background
Samora Machel was born on 29 September, 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 by the demeaning term "indigena" (native). He 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.
Education
In 1942, Samora Machel 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.
Career
Even though Machel was unable to complete his formal training, he got a job working as an aide at the Miguel Bombarda Hospital in Lourenço Marques. Here too he faced discrimination as the black nurses were paid less than the white ones. He protested against this discrimination and received a warning.
Machel was attracted to Marxist ideals and left the hospital to begin his political activities. In 1962, he joined the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), a revolutionary group dedicated to creating an independent Mozambique. He left Mozambique in 1963 and went to several other African nations from where he received military training. Machel returned to Mozambique in 1964 and when FRELIMO launched the independence war in September that year, he led FRELIMO's first guerilla attack against the Portuguese in northern Mozambique.
He rapidly rose up the ranks in FRELIMO and became the head of the army after the death of its first commander, Filipe Samuel Magaia, in October 1966. When FRELIMO’s founder and first president Eduardo Mondlane, was assassinated by a parcel bomb in 1969, Machel took over as the president in 1970. Machel was a revolutionary who dedicated his life to overthrow the Portuguese rule and establish Mozambique as an independent nation. He believed in guerilla war and his army soon established itself among the country’s poor. The activities of the revolutionary FRELIMO army weakened the Portuguese rule considerably. In April 1974, the Portuguese officers realized their weakening position and overthrew the government in Lisbon.
Within a few weeks, Machel proclaimed “the total and complete independence of Mozambique and its constitution into the People’s Republic of Mozambique” on 25 June, 1975, and became independent Mozambique's first president.
He started implementing reforms almost immediately and nationalized land and several health and educational institutions. He also took steps for establishing public schools and health clinics for the poor.
In 1977 Machel was re-elected as President of FRELIMO, and thus automatically as President of the Republic. He gave his support to the revolutionaries fighting white minority regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa, and allowed them to operate within Mozambique. As a result both these countries supported an anti-FRELIMO organization called RENAMO, which led to the civil war in Mozambique
Achievements
Religion
In 1986, Samora Machel challenged God to prove His existence by striking him dead, in 60 seconds. To provide incentive, Machel cursed God, blasphemed the Name of Jesus and then whipping out his watch, dramatically counted off 60 seconds before the shocked crowd. Machel then shouted contemptuously, Time's up! Machel declared God dead and himself alive, amidst dutiful applause. Now, Machel was not original. Lenin and Mussolini had both given God similar 60 second blasphemous stop-watch treatment. However God is most merciful, he gives us more than 60 seconds to repent. But the Spirit of God will not always strive for the hearts of men. Just over a month later, Samora Machel's Soviet Tupolev aircraft smashed into the landscape near Komatiport. The Marxist FRELIMO and Zimbabwe plans for overthrowing the pro-Western, Christian orientated government in Malawi were exposed, translated and published worldwide. This doubtless preserved Malawi from communism. There were churches praying that very night for God to intervene in Mozambique and to end the persecution of the church there.
Politics
His political views can be seen in his fight for the independence of Mozambique. He began his political activities in a hospital where he protested that the black nurses were paid less than whites, who were doing the same job. He later told a reporter how bad medical treatment was for Mozambique's poor by saying, "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."
He was a revolutionary who was not only dedicated to throwing the Portuguese out of Mozambique but also radically changing the society. He said, "of all the things we have done, the most important - the one that history will record as the principal contribution of our generation - is that we understand how to turn the armed struggle into a Revolution; that we realized that it was essential to create a new mentality to build a new society."
Views
Samora Machel believed that International solidarity is not an act of charity. According to him, " it is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objectives. The foremost of these objectives is to assist in the development of humanity to the highest level possible. Solidarity is an assertion that no people is alone, no people is isolated in the struggle for progress. Solidarity is the conscious alliance of the progressive and peace-loving revolutionary forces in the common struggle against colonialism, capitalism and imperialism. In short, against exploitation of man by man. And this struggle may be in Asia, in Europe, or in America, or the struggle may be in Africa, but it is the same struggle. It has common enemies and its enemies are always principal. Solidarity has no race and no colour, and its country has no frontiers. There is no solidarity just among Africans, no exclusively Asian solidarity, since the enemy of the people also has no country or race."
Quotations:
"Death is inevitable for man. The real choice is between living and fighting for victory or lying down under exploitation, domination and oppression."
"For a leadership body to work with the masses it must be united. When there are contradictions in the leadership body, this gives rise to rumours, intrigue and slander. Each faction tries to mobilise support for its views, dividing the masses. When we are disunited we divide the masses and the fighters, causing the rank and file to lose confidence in the leadership, demobilising it and making it inactive, and opening breaches through which the enemy penetrates. We ultimately divide our own friends… Unity within the leadership behind a correct line, at whatever level, is the driving force of any sector and the precondition for success in a task.
Unity needs daily sustenance. Collective living, working and study, criticism and self-criticism, and mutual help are the food, salts and vitamins of unity. Members of the leadership should not therefore live separately from one another, each absorbed in his own private world, only coming together when there is a meeting… The members of the leadership ought to make an effort to live together, to know one another better in day-to-day life and to understand each other’s failings, so as to be in a better position to offer mutual correction. Working together, producing together, sweating together, suffering the rigours of the march together and overcoming the challenges of the enemy and the environment creates strong bonds of friendship and mutual respect. It is not by words that we are bound together, but by the many activities we share when serving the people; it is unity fed by sweat and suffering and blood that binds us together. Unity is not something static, a supernatural and absolute value that we place on a pedestal to worship. In the process of struggling for unity we have always said: we must know with whom we are uniting and why."
"Let us be clear in this regard. We are utterly against racism. Racism of any kind. Racism is a reactionary attitude that splits workers, by setting white workers against black workers and sapping their class-consciousness. Racism impedes a correct definition of the enemy, by allowing enemy agents to infiltrate under a cloak of colour… We say that our enemy has no colour, no race, no country. Nor does our friend. We do not define friend or enemy in terms of skin colour. There are whites and blacks who are our comrades, and there are whites and blacks who are our enemies. We are not struggling against a colour but against a system – the system of exploitation of man by man. The louse, the tick and the bug are not all of one colour, but none of them drinks water or milk – they live off blood.
Racism is a cancer still manifest in our society. A cancer that splits the workers and denies them unity and class-consciousness. Racism is a cancer that feeds division and saps the common trench of anti-imperialism. It must be ended and eradicated to the last root.
Frelimo once again declares firmly and clearly that it will not tolerate any racial conflict. To the white population, made up essentially of honest workers, we repeat what we have always said: our struggle is your struggle, it is a struggle against exploitation, a struggle to build a new country and establish a people’s democracy."
Personality
His humility lent him the appearance of a gentle and a meek man. He had the instant likeability quality that made you warm up to him even if you had never met him personally. There was an inexplicable aura about Machel. He had that rare human trait.
Connections
He began a relationship with Sorita Tchaiakomo in the late 1950s when he was working as a nurse in Inhaca Island. Sorita gave birth to four of his children over the next few years. Meanwhile he also became involved with another woman, Irene Buque, with whom he had a daughter. He did not marry either Sorita or Irene.
He married Josina Abiatar Muthemba in 1969. The couple had one son. His wife died of cancer in 1971. Machel was devastated at the death of his young wife.
He married Graça Simbine, a teacher with active involvement in politics, in September 1975. The couple had two children.