The Sunday Mail
Widow reveals intimate details leading to revolutionary’s mysterious death
As “Camarada Presidente”, a documentary about Mozambique’s iconic founding President Samora Moises Machel, made its way to local cinemas at the just-ended Zimbabwe International Film Festival, it had already been shown in several theatres around the world.
However, Graca — Cde Samora’s widow and one of the main contributors to the film — had not watched it until last week when it was screened specifically for her and several other dignitaries, including Vice-President Dr Joice Mujuru, in Harare.
Our Senior Reporter Mtandazo Dube compiled excerpts of Graca’s comments in the film and also spoke to her on a wide range of issues, among them Cde Machel’s death in a 1986 air crash widely suspected to have been engineered by apartheid South Africa. This is Graca Machel in her own words.
***
I want to thank Mosco (Kamwendo, writer and director of the film) for taking the task of bringing together some aspects of Samora’s life. This film is comprehensive. It is so appropriate that it is a Zimbabwean who made this film.
I couldn’t watch it in South Africa. I’m watching it for the first time here.
Next to Mozambique, this is the country, together with Tanzania, that Samora held dear. His decisions had an impact not only in Mozambique but in Southern Africa. Bad decisions and good decisions affected everyone in Southern Africa.
When I was watching the movie, I was reflecting, revisiting with him (Samora). How history has been glorious and how it has been painful as well.
People like Mosco should carry out more works like these so that our children can learn — so that we may not forget. So that some things that happened in the past may not happen again. Someone should do work on the relationship between Frelimo and Zanu, for instance; Samora’s first visit to Zimbabwe.
I wish someone could record that history to the extent where we are today.
I remember one of the rare opportunities I saw Samora crying was when (Zanla Commander Josiah Magama) Tongogara was killed. A group of commanders had come to see Samora at State House in Maputo.
They had a long meeting and they were planning precisely how to organise the armed forces. They were making sure that the leadership of Zanu, when it came in to begin the process of independence, would be safe.
They were learning from the experience of Mozambique where, at the last minute, there were reactionary forces which tried to prevent the proclamation of independence, and he (Samora) told me how comrades should come and prepare to make sure that the proclamation of Independence in Zimbabwe should be peaceful because Rhodesians were still strong here.
It was in the morning that they came to inform him that Tongogara was no more. It was one of the few times I saw him cry. The other time was when his father died.
Why I am saying this is because between our countries there are still a lot of untold stories and how we are cemented. Our relationships are cemented by the blood of those who fought for our liberation.
So, I wish, again, that someone would take that task and tell many other stories so that “we may never forget”, as the song about him suggests. Even for generations to come; we should remember where we came from.
We shall never forget!
It’s mostly for the young generation to know and value, that freedom did not come easy. Freedom was very hard to fight for and gain.
It was brought by people like Samora, who is not only Mozambican, but also Zimbabwean, South African, Namibian and Tanzanian, actually.
This should remind young people that in this region, we learnt that no one can make it alone. We all have to walk the journey. Now the journey is for development. We have to do it together because that’s when we are strong. That’s when we can complement one another.
In fact, our people have mixed by blood.
You will find hundreds of thousands of citizens who may have a Zimbabwean ID, but are Mozambican and vice versa — people who are in Mozambique and are Mozambican, but are actually Zambians; if you go to areas like Tete.
We are very much mixed. Fortunately, this is a very deep bond, which justifies why we have to work together. It is not a fictitious issue; it’s grounded in this history of sharing and being together.
Samora foresaw his own death
Samora was born in a family that was deeply involved in the struggle to resist colonial penetration. His grandfather and his grandfather’s brothers were Ngungunyane’s warriors.
He was physically fit. He revealed clarity and leadership in the process of preparing for independence. He knew that he was not fighting the white people, but fighting the system.
He thought he didn’t have the energy and the capacity to lead the organisation. It was too big for him. The military front was fine, but, as he would put it, “to fill the shoes of such a giant like Eduardo (Mondlane)” was something which was beyond his imagination.
He could see himself as Minister of Defence.
Samora would spend up to seven hours with the people — talking, asking and replying. He disliked corruption. There are certain people who have strong resentments for the way he treated them.
He would expose you and some would say, “But why didn’t he call me?”
Even in the (Frelimo) Central Committee, they would criticise him because he would say, “We, as militants in the party and leaders, particularly, we should be the first to sacrifice and the last to benefit.”
But his colleagues would say: “We sacrificed already in the struggle. Why should we continue to sacrifice?”
On many occasions, he told us, as a family, that his death would not be ordinary: “I will not be killed in the street like a bird. If I (am to) die, they will do it either from the air or using a bomb.”
I did not want him to go to that meeting in Zambia. When I asked him why he had to go, he said: “I am the only one in the region who can deal with Mobutu (Seseko).”
He did not arrive back home at the time I expected and I said to myself, “These people, even if they have meetings, they should have called.”
So, I got in touch with Protocol and they said the plane had not landed. They had no information.
After failing to get an answer on whether Samora had arrived or not, I finally lay down and fell asleep.
When I woke up, the phone was ringing and I didn’t want to pick it up. I finally picked up the phone and it was a guy called Matola.
He told me Old Masilino wanted to talk to me. That’s when I realised that something was wrong.
I will never forgive the people who killed him. How can I forgive them?
Life after Samora
I have these eight children who suddenly had to look up to me as a single parent. I knew and felt that I had an obligation to give them a sense of emotional security; to make sure they don’t fail in their education so that they have tools to strive and choose whatever they wanted to become in life.
So, children are one big reason why I managed to put the pieces together.
The other one is the dreams we had together with Samora.
I said to myself, “Part of me has gone with him, but a part of me has stayed with me.” I needed to, in a very modest way, keep some of the dreams we had together alive.
I have to say that a constant reminder of how I conduct my life is to question myself if he would look into my eyes and continue to smile; continue to trust me and feel that this is the person he had chosen to live a life with.
So, part of the options I have made in life are guided also by the principle and attempt to live up to the dreams we shared together.
If Samora had not died. . .
(Imagining that) is an impossibility. I do not even try. I didn’t even try because between a normal family life and a moment in which suddenly your family has been turned upside down, what you are busy with is trying to put the pieces together.
I could not concentrate on saying, “What could have happened if he had come back?” He didn’t come back and he will never come back.
Life changed completely and profoundly.
I did not and never took the trouble to imagine what could have been. It’s a chapter of my life which was closed that day and I had to open many other chapters.
I still carry Samora as part of my life and, still, I pursue some of his dreams, but it’s a completely different reality.
There is no way I can imagine what it could have been like.
Living in the President’s shadow
Let me begin by saying that people with huge responsibilities will do huge things, beautiful things. But also because their responsibilities are that big, the scale is the same when they make a mistake. At the end of the day, they are human beings except that where they stand and at the position they are, there is nothing they do or decide, which does not have an impact on others.
When a President is making decisions in his office, his wife is not there. He sits there with his advisors and colleagues. So, the decisions he makes are informed by his own judgment and also by the advisors who are sitting around him.
I (would) come later to understand that he would have made this decision I eventually did not agree with. It would be too late because I would not be consulted about what he discussed on daily basis with his advisors and members of his Cabinet.
So, as a wife, you could then just remind him that this decision could have been different if you had taken into account this and that aspect. But as I am saying, it’s a posterior.
If there is anything you can just suggest. Please listen to me. I am saying suggest. You can suggest to minimise the impact of that decision.
I want people to understand that it’s not always that a Head of State consults with his wife, especially if the decisions are about sensitive and strategic decisions about how he runs his nation.
We are there, but we are not necessarily influential in everything they decide. No. So I’m just trying to explain that people should not keep the illusion that because you are too close, you are always too influential.
Sometimes, but not always.
