Joaquim Chissano
Joaquim Chissano was president of Mozambique for nineteen years, from the death of Samora Machel in the plane crash of October 1986 to his voluntary retirement in 2005, the Frelimo diplomat who inherited a country in a civil war that had killed a million people and starved the countryside, who abandoned Marxism-Leninism in 1989, negotiated with Renamo through the Catholic community of Sant'Egidio in Rome and signed the general peace agreement of October 1992 that has held since, won the first multi-party elections in 1994 and 1999, and declined to stand for a third term he was entitled to, for which the Mo Ibrahim foundation gave him its first prize for African leadership in 2007. He was born in 1939 in Gaza province, the son of a nurse. He was the first black student at the lyceum in Lourenco Marques, went to Lisbon to study medicine and left for Paris and then Tanzania to join Frelimo at its founding in 1962. He was Mondlane's and then Machel's secretary and diplomat, the movement's face in Dar es Salaam and Paris, and the prime minister of the transitional government of 1974 to 1975 that took the handover from the Portuguese. Under Machel he was foreign minister for eleven years, the years of the Rhodesian and then South African war against Mozambique through Renamo, and of the Nkomati accord of 1984 in which Machel promised Pretoria to expel the ANC and Pretoria promised to stop arming Renamo and did not. Machel's Tupolev came down in the Lebombo hills on 19 October 1986 and the party chose Chissano within two weeks. He opened the economy to the IMF in 1987, dropped the one-party state and the Marxist name in 1989 and 1990, and let the Italian lay community and the Mozambican bishops carry messages to Dhlakama of Renamo from 1990 until the two men signed in Rome on 4 October 1992. The UN's ONUMOZ mission disarmed both sides and ran the election of October 1994, which he won with fifty-three per cent against Dhlakama's thirty-four. The second election in 1999 was closer and disputed. He announced in 2001 that he would not stand again, handed over to Guebuza in February 2005, and has since mediated in Uganda, Madagascar and Guinea-Bissau and practised transcendental meditation, which he introduced to his cabinet.
- Lived: 1939 CE – ?
- Nationality: Mozambican
- Roles: president, politician, revolutionary
