Samora Moisés Machel

Samora Moisés Machel

Samora Machel was born in the village of Madragoa (today's Chilembene), Gaza Province, Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique), to a family of farmers. He worked at the hospital until he left the country to join the Mozambican nationalist struggle in neighbouring Tanzania.

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. After a period of internment in campos de reeducação (re-education camps), they were executed following a summary trial in the so-called "revolutionary" and "popular" style presided by Samora Machel himself. 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).

The fatal aircrash and investigations

On October 19, 1986 Samora Machel was on his way back from an international meeting in Lusaka, 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.
In 2010, 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 dilligently 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!" (something like "Go to hell!", but more vulgar). 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.

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. 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 aircrash. 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.


Samora Machel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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