Samora Machel
Samora Machel led Mozambique to independence and died in an air crash on the South African border. Born in 1933 in Gaza province, the son of a farmer whose land was expropriated so that he could be forced to grow cotton for the Portuguese, he trained as a nurse — the highest qualification available to an African in the colony — and found that he was paid a fraction of what white nurses received. He joined FRELIMO in 1962 and trained militarily in Algeria. When its founder Eduardo Mondlane was assassinated by a parcel bomb in 1969, Machel emerged as leader. He commanded a guerrilla war from bases in Tanzania for a decade, and the cost of it in Mozambique and Angola contributed directly to the coup that overthrew the Portuguese dictatorship in April 1974. Independence followed in June 1975. He inherited a country where over ninety per cent of the population was illiterate, and where almost all of the 250,000 Portuguese settlers left within months, taking or destroying equipment. He nationalised land, schools and hospitals, and expanded both sharply, and pursued a Marxist-Leninist programme including re-education camps for opponents. He supported the liberation movements in Rhodesia and South Africa, and both retaliated: Rhodesia and then South Africa armed and directed RENAMO, whose insurgency killed around a million people over sixteen years. He signed the Nkomati Accord with South Africa in 1984 under economic pressure, and it did not stop the support. His aircraft crashed into a hillside in South Africa in October 1986. A Mozambican inquiry blamed a decoy beacon; a South African one blamed the crew.
- Lived: 1933 CE – 1986 CE
- Nationality: Mozambican
- Roles: head_of_state, revolutionary, military_leader
