Posted
on October 19, 2015
A
memorial service will be held at the Samora Machel Monument, in
Mozambique, today.
You
see, it is the anniversary of a plane crash that killed this national
hero, Mozambique's first president, in 1986.
Artist
José
Foraj designed two parts for the monument: a display of some of the
wreckage of the plane, and 35 tubes of steel. Each tube stands for a
person who died in the crash, and the tubes were designed so that the
wind blowing over, between, and through the tubes would create a
wailing sound.
A
library is located near the monument, a multi-lingual slab tells a
bit about Machel, and a statue of Machel, donated by Norwegian
artists, now stands at the monument as well.
Who
was Samora Machel?
Was
he a villager born to a family of farmers?
Was
he a fifth-grade dropout?
Was
he a nurse?
Was
he a protestor who rose through the ranks of the Frente
de Libertação de Moçambique – Mozambique's
liberation movement – to become president of the movement?
Was
he a believer in communism?
Yes
to all of that. Of course, Machel was more. He was a complex guy, a
hero to some and a villain to others. He became president of his
nation while Mozambique was still fighting for independence from
Portugal. Machel quickly nationalized land and institutions, and
although the nation was supposed to be a people's nation, a
worker-peasant's nation, the people as such didn't get to vote for
Machel or other national leaders.
In
other words, Machel was definitely not a democratically-elected
president.
Machel
seems to have been guilty of human rights violations, and his rule
was marred by wars, including civil wars. When his plane went down on
this date in 1986, several people and groups suspected that the crash
was caused by Machel's enemies. An investigation pointed to pilot
error, but neither the the Soviet government nor the Mozambique
government accepted the findings of the commission (the plane, pilot,
and crew were all Soviet). To this day nobody is certain if the crash
was an accident or an assassination.
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