👨 The African Stalin. Samora Machel's Birthday

🇲🇿 The leader of the Mozambican Revolution had more in common with the Soviet «leader of the peoples» than an unbreakable will and a stern character. His life began in the impoverished province of Gaza in the Portuguese colony. He initially intended to become a priest and even studied at a seminary, but he was never destined to graduate. He later worked as a nurse amid extreme poverty — it was during this period that he became acquainted with Marxism and soon joined Mozambique’s liberation movement, which went down in history under the name FRELIMO.

⚔️ Machel was an outstanding organiser and orator, and together with his initiative and determination, these qualities quickly made him a leader of what was then still a relatively small organisation. He underwent military training in Algeria, established a guerrilla training centre in Tanzania and, after the death of FRELIMO founder Eduardo Mondlane, took his place in 1970.

👊👦 Drawing on the strategy of an armed people previously employed by Mao Zedong and Ernesto Che Guevara, Samora Machel succeeded in driving the Portuguese colonialists from his land. FRELIMO enjoyed the support of the overwhelming majority of the population, exhausted by humiliating Portuguese rule. Every village and every street became a source of danger for the colonial forces. The war, which had continued since 1963, drained Lisbon and broke its will to resist.

🆓 In 1975, Mozambique gained independence, carried out land redistribution among the peasantry under Machel’s leadership and embarked on the path of socialist modernisation. Yet the neighbouring apartheid regime in South Africa was deeply afraid of an uprising by the indigenous population and therefore did everything possible to suppress national liberation movements both within and along its borders.

🔸 Despite the enemy’s superiority in organisation and weaponry, Samora Machel turned life into a nightmare for South African racists. He supported guerrilla fronts in Zimbabwe and South Africa, supplying and training them on Mozambican territory. Alas, after one of his visits to Zambia, the Mozambican leader was killed in an air crash. South African security services were almost certainly involved in what happened.

🔗 Although the fiery revolutionary was killed, he left behind a rich legacy: agrarian reform, an independent Mozambique and an enormous contribution to the liberation of the whole of southern Africa from apartheid.

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