The voice we lost: Forty years without Samora Machel

I was a baby of just a few months when my parents took me to witness the proclamation of Mozambique’s independence on the night of 25 June 1975.

I have no conscious memory of that night, but I grew up knowing that my parents wanted me to be present at what they regarded as the country’s greatest day. It was also the night Samora Machel’s voice solemnly announced the birth of an independent nation.

Eleven years later, I was a 12-year-old schoolboy when that same voice, which I had grown up listening to on the radio, was silenced by the tragedy of Mbuzini.

Between these two moments lies much of my generation’s history: the euphoria of independence, the conviction that a different society could be built, the violence of regional conflicts and the sudden loss of a leader who embodied the hopes of a country still finding its feet.

Wreath laying: Ms Graça Machel pays tribute to the late former Mozambican President Samora Machel and 34 others who lost their lives in the 1986 plane crash at the Samora Machel Monument in Mbuzini, Mpumalanga. Photos: GCIS

Radio played a fundamental role in how I came to know Samora, at a time when television remained a luxury beyond the reach of most people. I knew him not through personal encounters, but through his speeches, which entered our homes and accompanied our daily lives. I grew up listening to him speak against apartheid, racism and the forces seeking to undermine independent Mozambique. His voice was firm, sometimes stern and almost always mobilising. He spoke of sacrifice, discipline, sovereignty and social transformation.

For a child growing up in the early years of independence, Samora was more than the president. He was a constant presence, a voice that sought to give meaning to the freedom that had been won and to explain why political independence had to be accompanied by a profound transformation of society. Independence was not presented as the end of the struggle. It was the beginning of another. Then came the morning of 20 October 1986.

I remember being sent home from school. News had reached the country that the presidential aircraft had crashed the previous evening in the Lebombo Mountains, near Mbuzini, in South Africa. Samora Machel and members of his delegation were dead. The grief was spontaneous. The country was in tears. At 12, I could not comprehend the full political and geopolitical significance of his death. But I understood the pain that had swept through the population. There was something profoundly collective about the mourning. This was not merely the death of a president; it was the feeling that the country had lost a part of itself.

Forty years later, I still remember that morning. It was one of those moments when national history ceased to be something heard on the radio or learned from adults and became a personal experience. Independence had marked the beginning of a promise. Samora’s death raised questions about its future.

The circumstances surrounding the presidential aircraft crash remain contested. South Africa’s Margo Commission attributed the disaster to pilot error. A Soviet investigation advanced the theory that a false navigation beacon had diverted the aircraft from its course. Later, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission found no conclusive evidence to establish either explanation definitively, but identified questions warranting further investigation.

Four decades later, the circumstances of the tragedy remain historically and politically significant. The victims deserve accuracy, transparency and respect for the facts. The task is not to turn suspicions into certainties, but to acknowledge that some questions remain inadequately answered. Yet Samora cannot be reduced to Mbuzini. His political life, choices, contradictions and vision for the country are too important to be confined to the circumstances of his death.

That position came at a devastating cost. Regional destabilisation contributed to the destruction of infrastructure, economic decline and the suffering of millions. War affected families, schools, hospitals and entire communities, undermining the development prospects of a country that had only recently won its independence.

Samora’s death on South African soil, while returning from a regional summit, made Mbuzini a site of shared historical memory. His story belongs to Mozambique, but it is also part of the wider struggle for the liberation of southern Africa.

That regional dimension must not be forgotten. But remembering the sacrifices of the past raises an unavoidable question in the present: how can the memory of solidarity and liberation be translated into better lives for ordinary people? Commemorating history matters. It cannot replace the responsibility to build more just societies.

Remembering Samora: South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Ronald Lamola and Mozambique’s president, Daniel Chapo.

These difficulties should not be used to romanticise Samora’s era. His time in power also had contradictions, political restrictions and shortcomings. An honest reading of history must acknowledge both the emancipatory ambitions of independence and the limitations of the policies and political system built under his leadership.

Nor can every contemporary problem be attributed to the death of one man. History does not stop when a leader disappears. Institutions, governments and successive generations make choices and bear their own responsibilities.

The question is not whether Mozambique would be different today had Samora survived. That counterfactual cannot be answered with certainty. The question is what we have done with the aspirations that accompanied independence, and how far we have transformed them into rights, opportunities and dignity for citizens.

Independence meant more than the right to govern a territory free from colonial rule. It also carried the possibility of building a society in which political freedom translated into social justice and collective well-being. Forty years later, that promise remains an important measure of national progress precisely because it remains unfinished.

The expression is, of course, hyperbolic. But it reveals a sentiment worth taking seriously. It reflects the popular perception that corruption, illicit enrichment and the private appropriation of public resources collide with the values of discipline, sacrifice and collective service associated with Samora’s political message.

For many citizens, the image of a leader who demanded discipline and condemned conduct deemed contrary to the collective interest has become a reference point against which those in power are judged. Each new scandal revives the comparison between one generation’s promises and the practices fuelling the present generation’s disillusionment.

We should not, however, turn Samora into an idealised figure, immune to criticism or to the contradictions of his time. The challenge is not to speculate about how he would react to today’s scandals. It is to ask why corruption continues to pro-voke such anger, four decades later, in a society born with the promise of building a different order.

Perhaps this is where Samora’s absence is felt most acutely: in the contrast between the demand to serve the people and the perception that power too often becomes an opportunity to serve private interests.

I was a baby when my parents took me to witness the birth of an independent nation. I was 12 when I was sent home from school because the man whose voice I had grown up listening to on the radio was dead. Between those two memories, I witnessed the birth and the interruption of a promise.

Remembering Samora does not require agreement with everything he said or did. It requires taking seriously the questions raised by independence: What does freedom mean? Who benefits from it? What obligations does the state owe its citizens? And how can we ensure that the sacrifices made in the name of national sovereignty are not squandered?

At Mbuzini, we continue to ask how Samora Machel died. In Mozambique, another question deserves equal urgency: what have we done with the independence for which he fought?

The answer will not be found in the repetition of Samora’s speeches or in nostalgic evocations of a past that must remain open to scrutiny. It will be found in the ability to build institutions that serve citizens, fight corruption without selectivity and ensure that political freedom translates into dignity, justice and opportunity.

Forty years without Samora, Mozambique continues to live with the promise of independence. The true test of his legacy will not be the intensity of our commemorations, but whether future generations will finally be able to live in a country where that promise ceases to be an aspiration and becomes a reality. Luis Nhachote is a Mozambican journalist and former Mail & Guardian intern 2011 (AmaBhungane).