A few names have continued to echo throughout the pan-African chambers long after they passed on, my focus today is inspired by some recent events in Southern Africa. Can you tell who that handsome fella is before reading the rest of this thread?

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Samora Moisés Machel was born in 1933 & raised in the village of Chilembene. He was from the Shangana ethnic group & came from a poor background. His parents were forced to be cotton growers by the Portuguese instead of food crops.

In the 1950s his parents’ farmland was taken & given to Portuguese settlers. To avoid starving to death his relatives went to South Africa to work in the mines under repressive & dangerous conditions. This is where his brother was killed in a mining accident.

Back home, Machel attended a Catholic school & studied to become a nurse as that was one of the few professions open to Mozambican blacks at that time. Side-note: he never completed his secondary education.

He failed to complete nursing training at the Miguel Bombarda Hospital in Lourenco Marques & got a job as an aide there. Attracted to anti-colonial ideals, he began his political activities there when he protested against wage gap of black & white nurses.

A white anti-fascist, João Ferreira warned him that he was being watched by the Portuguese Political Police, so he slipped across the border & joined FRELIMO in Dar es Salaam. Using the Swaziland, South Africa & Botswana route, he hitched a lift on a-

-flight carrying recruits of the African National Congress en-route to Tanzania. ANC official JB Marks bumper one is the ANC recuits off the flight to let Machel on after being impressed by him. Whilst in FRELIMO Machel quickly rose through the-

-ranks to become head of the army after its first commander Filipe Magaia died in October 1966. FRELIMO had long-standing links with Zimbabwean nationalist movements. Guérillas of ZANLA were able to operate from FRELIMO held areas in Tete-

-during the independence war. He sent Mozambican units into Zimbabwe to fight along Zanu guérillas. Machel was fully aware of the dangerous ethnic divisions between Zanu & Zapu. On his first state visit to Zimbabwe in 1980, Machel gave the warning;-

-“to ensure national unity, there must be no Shonas in Zimbabwe, there must be no Ndebeles in Zimbabwe, there must be Zimbabweans. Some people are proud of their tribalism. But we call tribalists reactionary agents of the enemy-

Machel supported & allowed revolutionaries fighting white minority regimes in Rhodesia & South Africa to operate within Mozambique. Soon after Mozambique’s independence both these countries attacked Mozambique with RENAMO.

They killed peasants, destroyed schools & hospitals built by FRELIMO & blew up railway lines & hydroelectric facilities. The Mozambique economy was strangled by these depredations & began to depend on overseas aid, mainly Soviet Union.

After Machel died in a plane crash, Time magazine noted “really seemed too much of a coincidence.” Throughout Southern Africa angry people mourned the loss. In SA they blamed their gvt. In Zim thousands of youths stoked through downtown Harare.

The crash remains a mystery, with some blaming it simply on bad weather whilst others still believe in SA’s guilt. No conclusive evidence to either effect has yet emerged.

There is a large street in Dar es Salaam named in honor of him called Samora Avenue. Additionally, there is Samora Machel Avenue in the capital of Zimbabwe. In Moscow there is another street named after him. He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize-

-in 1975-1976. Notably, the legendary Zimbabwean band R.U.N.N family had a hit song that mourned his death. #KnowYourHistory