Samora Machel Remembered But Mystery Remains

Mozambique President Samora Machel (1933-1986) Speaks to the People, a photo by panafnewswire on Flickr.

Machel remembered but mystery remains

Sunday, 20 October 2013 00:00

On October 19, 1986, a Russian-made Tupolev 134 aircraft crashed in the Lebombo Mountains near Mbuzini in South Africa. On board were 44 people, including President Samora Moises Machel of Mozambique.

President Machel was one of 34 people who perished that day, and since then there have been countless theories as to who was behind the assassination.

Yesterday was the 27th anniversary of Cde Machel’s death but the exact cause of the crash remains a mystery.

Apartheid South Africa, probably working with the United States-backed Renamo rebels, has always been the prime suspect.

Cde Machel’s story begins on September 29, 1933 at Chilembene in the Gaza province of Mozambique.

In his 1988 book, Machel of Mozambique, journalist Iain Christie writes that Machel was “born into a family prosperous by Mozambican standards of the time. This prosperity was the result of hard work, thrift and good farmland”.

Cde Machel took office as Mozambique’s founding president in 1975, after years of heading the country’s guerrilla movement Frelimo in the struggle for independence from Portugal, and he proceeded to lead the country through a tempestuous decade. He was a firm believer in armed struggle not as a means to an end, but as a means to the beginning.

“Of all the things we have done,” he said, “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 … it was essential to create a new mentality to build a new society,” he was once quoted as saying.

Upon independence, Cde Machel introduced sweeping reforms. An ardent socialist, he nationalised all land and property, and spearheaded the establishment of public schools and clinics across the country. By the end of 1975, most of the settler Portuguese population had left Mozambique in fear of violent retaliation for colonial crimes.

They left a trail of malice in their wake, urbanites destroying industrial infrastructure, plantation owners burning crops and equipment as they abandoned their rural kingdoms.

Ahead of Cde Machel’s death, one of the main events that occurred was the signing of the Nkomati Accord he entered into with PW Botha’s apartheid regime. The accord was signed on March 16 1984 with the sole aim of ending South African aggression against Mozambique.

In exchange, President Machel’s government would stop the ANC from operating militarily from Mozambique. But as weeks went by after the accord was signed, the war in Mozambique intensified with South African covert operations carrying on in clear violation of the accord.

ANC president Oliver Tambo commented at the time that Machel had been forced to hug a hyena. The question remains: was the plane crash that killed Machel an accident or a sophisticated assassination plot?

- Sunday Mail Reporter/City Press/Southern Times.