Whether economic, political or cultural, interest in Mozambique has significantly increased in recent years. As a reflection of this mounting interest, S is for Samora is an original account of Mozambique's first President that narrates the first years of newly independent Mozambique. Organized as a dictionary, this beautifully written book uses a wide range of sources to weave a biography of Samora Machel that is at once sophisticated and stimulating. We are offered a series of critical historical events and political innovations in which Samora played a key role. This critically transgressive form for discussing the transformations Mozambique underwent during this historical moment draws on sources such as official documents, information collected from books, magazines and newspapers, as well as interviews and memoirs. The personal experiences of the author, who served as a British solidarity worker in Mozambique during the late 1970s, are also included.
Samora Machel, the man Mandela labelled ‘a true African revolutionary’, became the leader of FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front) after Eduardo Mondlane was assassinated in the late 1960s. As a remarkable political and military commander, Samora is remembered for leading a victorious armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism. With the collapse of the Portuguese regime in 1974, FRELIMO emerged as the single legitimate political organization that led the country to independence a year later. Samora Machel directed negotiations for independence, becoming Mozambique's first President on 25 June 1975.
Eleven years later, Machel and most of his delegation were killed in a mysterious plane crash. Inquiries into his death have suggested that the South African apartheid regime conspired to bring the plane down. Recent disclosures have reaffirmed these speculations. The ‘A’ entries (‘Aircraft’) introduce the sombre note: ‘At twenty one minutes past nine on the night of 19 October 1986 a Tupolev 134, flying from Mbala in northern Zambia to Maputo … ploughed into a hillside at Mbuzini in South Africa's Transvaal province, killing President Samora Machel of Mozambique and thirty-four on board.’
A new range of literature about the first years of independence in Mozambique has emerged in recent years. The re-examination of this period retains the figure of Samora at centre-stage. Sarah Lefanu is able to capture the human side of the politician despite the truncated record of Samora Machel's work, essentially preserved in the form of political speeches. She tells us a thorough and compelling story of Mozambique's first years and presents a critical analysis of the development of the country's revolutionary project.
Mozambique's revolutionary dreams are projected in different forms as we follow the anti-imperialistic, anti-colonial, anti-racist struggles that echoed throughout Southern Africa in the widely shared expression ‘A luta continua!’ At the same time, Lefanu skilfully explores the conflicts, continuities and ruptures between the new revolutionary project, embodied in the figure of the ‘homem novo’ (new man), and the old remnants of the colonial society, emblematically represented by ‘Xiconhoca’. In the last entry of the book, Xiconhoca represents the enemy – all the bad habits, vices and wrongheaded ideas that people had to overcome to build a new, non-exploitative society in Mozambique.
In my opinion, however, this book would have benefited from a more thorough analysis of the vast body of literature now available (mostly in Portuguese) on this period. This recent literature subjects the nature of FRELIMO's power and the social and political implications that it produced to a new questioning. One cannot possibly understand the 1970s–1980s period if one ignores the complexities of political and social change brought about by independence in Mozambique: the internal, regional (Southern African) and international context (Cold War) in which FRELIMO assumed power; the transformation of the nationalist movement into a Marxist party in 1977; and the obstacles and conflicts derived from the imposition of a revolutionary emancipatory project that FRELIMO developed, based upon the experiences of the liberated areas during the nationalist struggle.
National liberation, including the symbolic defeat of colonial oppression, mistook national independence for political autonomy – a fact that was to become painfully clear when what was later interpreted as civil war, even though supported heavily by foreign powers, ravaged the country from 1976/7 until 1992. Moreover, national freedom and emergent post-colonial politics after 1975 introduced the tensions and conflicts that have shaped the construction of ‘Mozambicanity’, a project very dear to Samora Machel.
That aside, S for Samora is a remarkable book that brings Samora Machel to a wider audience. He is one of Africa's most-lamented sons, alongside such figures as Congo's Patrice Lumumba, revolutionary Amilcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau, and Mwalimu Nyerere of Tanzania, among others. In short, this book is a compelling read for anyone seeking to deepen understanding of this important revolutionary moment and the political experiences and changes that newly independent Mozambique witnessed.
