In summer 1971, Owusu Sadaukai (Howard Fuller), cofounder of the Malcolm X Liberation University in North Carolina, attended an anti-colonialism conference in Tanzania. Sadaukai, a rising Black Power activist and Pan-Africanist, then visited Kenya and Ethiopia, where Organization of African Unity officials briefed him and his comrades on the import of diasporic Africans providing material aid to Southern African revolutions. After Addis Ababa, he received an invitation, beckoning him to FRELIMO’s (Mozambique Liberation Front) territories. Embedded with guerrillas resisting Portuguese colonialism, Sadaukai observed, “It is hard to tell the civilians from the freedom fighters. FRELIMO is, in fact, the people of Mozambique in arms…. Women are total comrades.” Sadaukai asked his FRELIMO hosts how African kindred in the Americas could support them. FRELIMO requested material aid and demonstrations of Pan-African solidarity across North America (Adjetey 2023, 233–34). Sadaukai returned to the United States and in May 1972 launched African Liberation Day Coordinating Committee, mobilizing massive annual protests in US, Canadian, and Caribbean cities. This front against white supremacy in Southern Africa shaped world history.
Colin Darch and David Hedges’s Samora Machel is a detailed account of the man who inspired Black people globally. A collection of rich primary sources on Mozambique’s first president and FRELIMO, the biography unfolds in three parts, starting with Machel’s origins. The second and meatiest section scrutinizes his speeches, interviews, and other ruminations from armed struggle to Mozambican independence to resisting counter-revolution. The third section explores Machel’s legacy. The editors approach their subject not as a polished revolution-turned politician, but as a person whose genesis, struggles, and aspirations evolved based on the contingencies of colonialism and revolutionary statehood, culminating with his tragic death in Mbuzini, South Africa. The book contains a detailed chronology of key moments from his birth on September 29, 1933 to his death on October 19, 1986.
Delving into migrant and agricultural laborers, tax regime, and other systems of control in Mozambique at the turn of the twentieth century, readers gain insight into the formation of colonialism in Southern Africa and under Portuguese occupation. An undercurrent is the emergence of a race and class consciousness that later fueled a liberation mindset from colonialism. The son of a migrant laborer who toiled in South African mines from 1912 to 1926, Machel’s father acquired a herd of cattle that helped sustain the family on fertile ancestral lands in the Limpopo River flood plain. This context illuminates the evolution of Machel’s political education and his capacity, over time, to reason and defend his ideas to a wide audience (51).
Darch and Hedges approach their subject with care. In ample ways, they humanize Machel, a thoughtful revolutionary leader, exploring his “humour, passion, impatience” (x). A transformational personality, Machel had some “authoritarian” impulses, too, although he welcomed comrades’ views. He was a man of integrity, appreciating the contributions of women to the struggle. In 1967, on the third anniversary of FRELIMO’s armed insurrection against Portugal, Machel denounced some FRELIMO soldiers for abusing women. “What is at stake are very important principles, and the fight against these evils requires the conscious participation of each and every one of us,” he implored comrades. He called principled conduct in armed conflict “revolutionary behaviour.” Machel insisted, “We want revolutionary justice, mutual respect and revolutionary morality” (74–75). His reflections in the Report on Western Niassa circa 1969, for example, in which he examined the science of guerrilla warfare and revolutionary consciousness of the masses illustrated his acute awareness of and commitment to combatants and civilians. He did not emerge as FRELIMO’s president until May 1970 when the party’s Central Committee elected him.
Five years later in 1975, Mozambique won its long-fought independence. As African states learned, nominal flag independence alone could not guarantee genuine self-determination. In addition to developing Mozambique and its citizens, Machel and FRELIMO resisted on multiple fronts plots by state and non-state actors to undermine the post-independence revolution. The proverbial winds of change left many impediments unscathed in the wake of Portugal’s retreat.
A staunch critic of apartheid and South Africa’s clandestine destabilization efforts in the region, Machel appreciated neo-colonialism as a clear and present danger. The editors remind us, in fact, that a few weeks before Machel’s untimely death, he spoke at a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Zimbabwe, demanding apartheid’s complete demolition. Escalation of tensions between Mozambique and rivals South Africa and Rhodesia created a regional crisis before Machel’s plane crashed in October 1986.
This detailed and timely biography with its collection of primary sources is an invaluable contribution to the study of Africa, imperialism, and (neo-)colonialism. One cannot encapsulate the extent to which race- and class-conscious leaders like Machel and organizations like FRELIMO inspired African peoples worldwide, especially throughout the Americas. Given the context of and manner surrounding Machel’s death, readers will desire more clarity about foul play, although Darch and Hedges did not intend to solve this conundrum. Using declassified sources, one scholar confronted this enigma, identifying apartheid South Africa’s “culpability beyond reasonable doubt” (Douek Reference Douek2017, 2046). This point notwithstanding, Samora Machel is a bold and refreshing scholarly achievement.
