Samora Moisés Machel, the first president of independent Mozambique, was born in 1933 in Gaza province, in the south of the country. He died in an unexplained plane crash on 19 October 1986, in Mbuzini, South Africa. Authoritarian and popular, humble and arrogant, visionary and tactical. All these words have been used to describe Machel. Despite these contradictions, there was one quality that everyone recognised in him: his charisma. At the time this gift wasn’t lacking in many political leaders of emerging countries, especially those of Marxist-Leninist inspiration. Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro above all. Their common faith went beyond any personal or family interest. It was a faith for the progress of humanity, for the liberation of oppressed peoples from the colonial yoke, from the chains of capitalism and from traditional values and practices considered regressive.Machel’s enlightenment programme was as fascinating as it was difficult to achieve in Mozambique in the mid-1970s. Small farmers, with all their “traditional” beliefs, made up the majority of the population. It was a political battle for social justice as well as a cultural crusade. Machel’s speech on 25 June 1975, at the Machava Stadium in Maputo, proclaiming Mozambique’s independence from Portugal, highlighted the contradictions. The new head of state addressed the “workers”, who represented a small minority of the Mozambican people. At the same time, he called for freedom from colonial-capitalist oppression and the effective, total independence of the new country, already identifying its possible enemies: the unproductive and exploitative bourgeoisie.The task of nation-buildingMachel’s charisma recalled that of the proto-nationalist hero Gungunhana, who had tried to resist the Portuguese occupation at the end of the 19th century. Machel’s grandfather, Maguivelani, was related to the “terrible” Gungunhana, the last emperor of Gaza, who was defeated in 1895 by Mouzinho de Albuquerque after years of struggle. He was deported to Portugal, where he died in 1906.Paradoxically, the anti-traditionalist Machel was the descendant of a great traditional chief. This heritage played a role in shaping his personality and political action.Machel’s main task was to build a nation that only existed because of political unification under the Portuguese. The initial choices, embedded in the Cold War atmosphere, forced the nationalist Machel to opt for a rapprochement with the Soviet Union. Mozambique formally adopted a Marxist-Leninist doctrine at its Third Congress in 1977.That approach meant political intolerance and the repression of “dissidents”, as well as the marginalisation of certain ethnic groups, above all the Amakhuwa people, who did not sympathise with Machel’s party, Frelimo.The forces opposed to the Marxist-Leninist solution expected democratic elections to be held after the proclamation of independence from Portugal. But this opportunity never came. Portugal handed over power to Frelimo (Lusaka Accords, 1974), ignoring the existence of other political groups. The treatment of leaders who opposed Frelimo’s vision was harsh. On their return from abroad, many were imprisoned in concentration camps in the north of the country.They included the resistance leader Joana Simeão, along with others such as Uria Simango, former vice-president of Frelimo, his wife, Celina Simango, and Lázaro Kavandame, the former Makonde leader who left Frelimo because he didn’t agree with its political line.They were put on arbitrary trial and executed. The dates and the method of execution are still officially unknown, despite the former president Joaquim Chissano’s public apology, in 2014, for these deaths. About a year after independence, an armed opposition, Renamo, was formed. It was financed first by Ian Smith’s Southern Rhodesian government, and then by the South African apartheid regime. Renamo, contrary to Machel’s expectations, had a solid popular base in central and northern Mozambique, especially among peasant populations who had expressed opposition to the policies of collectivisation and cooperation imposed by the Marxist-Leninist government.And it was war which led Machel to a controversial agreement with the South African apartheid enemy. The Nkomati Accords, signed in 1984, provided for the end of Mozambique’s logistical support to the exiled African National Congress in Mozambique and South Africa’s military and financial support to Renamo. This agreement did not bring peace. On the contrary, the war intensified, as the South African regime continued to finance Renamo. Machel died in 1986, with the war still raging, unable to see the end of a conflict that had devastated Mozambique and which defeated the socialist principles.The General Peace Accords between the Mozambican government, represented by the president, Chissano, and Renamo, represented by its leader, Afonso Dhlakama, were only signed in Rome in 1992. End of an eraMachel took the first, important steps towards a rapprochement with the west, as demonstrated by his visit to Ronald Reagan in Washington in September 1985. It can be said that with his death the First Mozambican Republic ended, with all its positive and negative elements. The dream of building a fair Mozambique with an equitable distribution of national wealth came to an end. Machel had worked hard to ensure that health, education, transport, water and energy were distributed equally among Mozambicans. A poor but fair welfare state was born. But it was quickly dismantled in the years following his death. The Mozambican state had very few resources to devote to the welfare state. The rest was done by the rapid abandonment of an ideology, the socialist ideology, which by then the Frelimo elite no longer believed in.In addition, international financial institutions entered the country, with the notorious structural adjustment policies, as early as 1987. Corruption, which Machel sought to combat with various measures, and which he addressed at many of his rallies, spread across the country and all its institutions. The Frelimo political elite soon became the richest slice of the nation. Several observers began to speak of a kleptocracy. The country suffered from continuous corruption scandals. One of the biggest became known as “hidden debt,” in which the political elite, including one of ex-president Armando Guebuza’s sons and former intelligence chief, Gregório Leão, were convicted of a scheme that cost the public treasury more than US$2 billion.However, the main defeat was the fall of an inapplicable socialism.The adoption of a capitalist, liberal and democratic model, at least formally, put an end to the arbitrary violations of human rights as in the age of the socialist state, such as “Operation Production” of 1983. The programme aimed to move “unproductive” people living in cities to the countryside to promote agricultural production. In reality, it turned into arbitrary detentions and displacement of entire families, increasing the systematic violation of human rights by the state.At the same time, the end of socialism meant democratic openness. Since the 1990 constitution, Mozambique has had as its fundamental principles respect for civil and political freedoms based on the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. Still, socio-economic rights have been denied as a result of the dismantling of the welfare state. How he’s rememberedToday, many people miss Machel’s rule. Those who were close to him, such as José Óscar Monteiro, the former interior minister, recall him as an ethical statesman, intolerant of corruption and abuses against “his” people. So do some of the international media. Others, since the 1980s, such as Amnesty International, have denounced the serious violations of the most basic human rights by the Mozambican government and its leader. What remains of Machel today is above all his ethical teaching. He died poor, committed to the cause of his nation, leaving his heirs moral prestige.It is curious that his figure is associated, even in musical compositions by contemporary rappers from Mozambique, with his historical enemy, Dhlakama, who died in 2018.This popular tribute is proof of the distance between the country’s current ruling class and a “people” who are looking to the charismatic figure of Venâncio Mondlane, the so-called “people’s president”. But that’s another story that won’t fit here.Luca Bussotti does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.