Samora Machel

Samora Moisés Machel was a Mozambican military commander and the first President of independent Mozambique, serving from 1975 until his death in 1986. He was born on September 29, 1933 in Madragoa (now Chilembene), Gaza Province, and died on October 19, 1986 near Mbuzini, South Africa, in a plane crash.

The son of peasant farmers displaced by Portuguese cotton-cropping policies, Machel trained as a nurse in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo). He left the colony in 1963 to join the Liberation Front of Mozambique, FRELIMO, in Tanzania, training in Algeria and rising through the guerrilla command in northern Mozambique. After founder Eduardo Mondlane was assassinated by parcel bomb in 1969, Machel emerged as president of the movement.

The 1974 Carnation Revolution in Lisbon collapsed Portugal's African empire, and on June 25, 1975 Machel proclaimed Mozambique's independence at Maputo's Machava Stadium. His Marxist-Leninist government nationalized industry, expanded literacy and health care, and supported liberation movements in neighboring Rhodesia and South Africa, drawing destabilizing reprisals through the RENAMO insurgency.

Returning from a meeting with Zambian and Zairean leaders, his Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-134 crashed inside South African territory, killing Machel and 33 others. South African involvement has been alleged but never proven. He was succeeded by Joaquim Chissano.

The name Samora in his native Tsonga and the Portuguese-influenced Bantu naming pool conveys "defender" or "shield-bearer"; he was a man whose name his guerrilla comrades made into a battlefield call.