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A tribute to Samora Machel of Mozambique
Wilfred Mhanda
October 19, 2011

Today 19 October, we commemorate the death of one of Africa-s greatest revolutionary leaders, Samora Machel, who dedicated his life to the liberation of not only Mozambique, but of Zimbabwe and South Africa as well. Without his leadership role and support, the liberation of Zimbabwe would have followed a more tortuous and longer route with greater sacrifices on the part of the sons and daughters of Zimbabwe.

The mere liberation of Mozambique was inspirational and motivational enough to drive thousands and thousands of young Zimbabweans and South Africans to join the ranks of the respective liberation movements in droves. His concrete material support to the liberation movements and the provision of rear bases thus came as an added bonus to their armed struggle that spurred their struggles to greater heights.

In other words, Mozambique-s liberation under the leadership of Samora Machel served as the recruitment agent for the southern African liberation movements. The mere fact that Mozambique attained its liberation through an arduous armed struggle against the Portuguese colonialists, convinced the Zimbabweans and South Africans that they too could achieve liberation through armed struggle.

Machel did not wait for the liberation of Mozambique to render support to Zimbabwe-s liberation struggle. Frelimo-s victories in the battlefield in the northern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Niassa, where they had established liberated zones under the control of Frelimo, facilitated the opening of an additional military front in Tete province that bordered on Zimbabwe. The phenomenal successes of Frelimo convinced the Portuguese military that they needed an extra hand from the Rhodesian security forces in their operations in the Tete province. The Rhodesians started operating in Tete in 1969.

There is no doubt that Frelimo forces could have coped with Rhodesians intrusion on their own. But the shrewd tactician and strategist that Machel was, he approached Zimbabwe-s liberation movements, ZAPU and ZANU and offered them to fight their way through Tete to Rhodesia. He did not demand that they fight the Rhodesians in Tete province but politely asked them whether they were interested in taking advantage of Frelimo-s operations in the province to launch armed attacks into Rhodesia.

First to be approached was ZAPU who however could not take up the offer on account of internal strife within the organization. When ZANU were subsequently approached, they were more than ready to oblige and viewed the development as a godsend opportunity. To that end, Meya Urimbo led a team of five ZANLA cadres in 1971 into Mozambique-s Tete province to understudy and gain experience in guerrilla techniques from Frelimo.

This is how ZANLA came to establish a sustainable foothold in north-eastern Zimbabwe. Without Machel-s offer, the development of Zimbabwe-s liberation struggle would have followed an entirely different trajectory. Operating from Tete province obviated the need to negotiate the insuperable obstacle into Zimbabwe that the Zambezi River posed. It was the military victories that FRELIMO, MPLA and PAIGC had scored that led to the coup in Portugal that subsequently triggered the decolonization of Portugal-s colonies.

Who was SamoraMachel? Machel was born in 1933 and had only four years of primary education to his credit after which he trained as medical assistant. He joined Frelimo in 1963, a year after the formation of FRELIMO from UDENAMO, MANU and Unami. He went for military training in Algeria in April 1963 and completed his training in May 1964. In Algeria, he rubbed shoulders with some eminent ZIPRA cadres like Nikita Mangena and Ambrose Mutinhiri. Algeria had inflicted a military defeat on French colonialist in a seven year long war under the leadership of Ben Bella. It became the first African country to train African guerrilla fighters.

Upon his return to Tanzania, he was appointed the commander of Nachingweya Camp. He was appointed commander of Frelimo forces in 1966 following the death of Filipe Magaia. After the assassination of Eduardo Mondlane by PIDE in 1969, Machel became part of the triumvirate presidium that assumed the leadership of Frelimno together with Uriah Simango, the former vice president to Mondlane and Marcelino Do Santos.

He assumed the leadership of Frelimo later that year in 1969 following the expulsion of Simango by the central committee. Other senior figures in the Machel led Frelimo were Do Santos as vice president, Alberto Chipande as chief of defence, Joachim Chissano as head of security and intelligence, Armando Guebuza as political commissar and Sebastiao Mabote as chief of operations. It was under this new leadership that Frelimo approached Herbert Chitepo, the ZANU national chairman in 1970 to start operating from Tete province.

I first met Samora Machel in 1975 as we discussed the formation of ZIPA and the resumption of the war in Rhodesia. He was categorical and unflinching in his support for the resumption of the war with Mozambique as the rear base.

This was hardly five months after Mozambique had attained independence. He declared that Mozambique would never be free as long as they shared a border with the racist minority regime in Rhodesia. In other words, he viewed the struggle to liberate Zimbabwe as a struggle to consolidate Mozambique-s independence; the two were two sides of the same coin.

As we engaged him on countless occasions, his simplicity, approachability, his erudition and his commanding presence struck us all. He was a natural born leader who commanded everyone-s respect. He shared freely of his leadership experiences and had the capacity to make everyone feel free to engage him on any matter. He had enormous responsibilities in his hands to build a new Mozambique based on Frelimo-s socialist ideals from the ashes of the former Portuguese colony. Notwithstanding, he devoted a lot of attention to the armed struggle in Zimbabwe. He was highly impressed by the successes that the ZIPA commanders had scored in a relatively short period of operation. Whilst he provided visionary leadership for ZIPA, he never interfered in the actual planning and prosecution of the war, as a demonstration of his confidence in the young commanders.

Machel considered himself and his colleagues to be products of struggle. In his view, it was the actual participation and involvement in the armed struggle that shaped, nurtured and produced revolutionary leaders. He openly bemoaned the lack of practical experience and active participation in the struggle on the part of Zimbabwean nationalists. He encouraged all of as ZIPA commander to go to the war front and gain war experience.

For Machel, there was a difference between armed struggle in general and revolutionary armed struggle. He was of the view that Zimbabwe-s war was still a mere armed struggle that was still to graduate into a revolutionary armed struggle. Whilst the objective of armed struggle in general was to inflict military defeat on the enemy, a revolutionary armed struggle had a transformative agenda that sought to create a new society based on a new set of values that embodied progressive political, economic, social and cultural empowerment of the people. To him, independence on its own was not the goal of a revolutionary struggle that sought to create a new state centred on the people-s interests.

Machel sacrificed his life for liberation ideals that encompassed freedom, democracy, social justice and respect for human dignity that the peoples of southern Africa had been denied by the racist minority regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa. Julius Nyerere had aptly summed the philosophical justification of armed struggle by declaring that "If we cannot leave as a free people, we would rather die as free people".

The best tribute that we can make to Machel, this gallant son of Africa is to re-dedicate and re-commit ourselves to the ideals for which he fought and died; is to position ourselves on the side of championing the people-s interest by standing up and speaking out in defence of the people-s rights. As another gallant son of Africa, Amilcar Cabral had stated before his assassination, "not a day without the struggle, not an hour without the movement and not a minute without the people".

Let us therefore be resolute, steadfast, uncompromising, fear no sacrifice and surmount every difficulty to achieve the people-s freedom.

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