In this Post, I have shared some of the most memorable revolutionary Samora Machel quotes.
Samora Machel was a Mozambican military commander, revolutionist, and political leader. When Mozambique gained independence from Portuguese rule in 1975, Machel became its first President, a position he maintained until his death in an aircraft crash near the Mozambican-South African border in 1986.
Machel was born into a farming family; by 1940, his father owned four plows and 400 head of cattle. However, like most Black Mozambicans under Portuguese rule, he was forced to accept lower prices for his crops than White farmers, forced to grow labor-intensive cotton, diverting time away from food crops needed for his family, and forbidden to brand his cattle to prevent thefts.
Machel attended a school run by Catholic missionaries who taught the children in Portuguese language and culture. He relocated to the capital city of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) after finishing fourth grade and began studying nursing in 1954.
In the 1950s, the provincial government appropriated fertile lands near his farming village on the Limpopo River to White settlers who built a wide variety of new infrastructure for the region. Many black people were forced to move to South African mines where more job opportunities were found.
Machel was unable to complete formal training at the Miguel Bombarda Hospital in Lourenço Marques, so he took a job as an assistant there and earned enough money to continue his nurse training at night school. He worked at the hospital until he left for Tanzania to join the Mozambican nationalist struggle.
17 Samora Machel Quotes.
- “Imperialist exploitation and an unjust international economic order are a cause of war.”
2. “For the nation to live, the tribe must die.”
3. “To Africanize colonial and capitalist power would destroy the meaning of our struggle.”
4. “To ensure national unity, there must be no Shonas in Zimbabwe, there must be no Ndebeles in Zimbabwe, there must be Zimbabweans. Some people are proud of their tribalism. But we call tribalists reactionary agents of the enemy.”
5. “The main fight of Frelimo is against human exploitation.”
6. “Our country’s liberation struggle arose as a consequence of the contradiction between colonized and colonizers, between exploited and exploiters. Reformist patterns of nationalist pressure were precluded by the very nature of colonial fascism.”
7. “The rich man’s dog gets more in the way of vaccination, medicine and medical care than do the workers upon whom the rich man’s wealth is built.”
8. “There is no place for White racism, as there is no place for Black racism, because racism, racism, in its essence, in its essence racism is an organized attitude, a reactionary attitude.”
9. “We say that our objective is to conquer complete independence, to install a people’s power, to construct a new society without exploitation, for the benefit of all those who feel themselves to be Mozambicans.”
10. “Personalities and fame pass; the revolution must remain.”
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11.”Idleness leads to relaxation, sooner or later bringing about ideological and material corruption, accompanied by lack of discipline, anarchy chaos and defeat.”
12. “All races, all peoples in the world want liberty, want independence.”
13. “The Catholic Church was the church of the colonial fascist regime.”
14. “Our power creates collective production in the service of the people and the revolution, destroys exploiting production, transforms individualistic producers into producers integrated into the collectivity.”
15. “The Emancipation of women is not an act of charity, the result of a humanitarian or compassionate attitude. The liberation of women is a fundamental necessity for the revolution, a guarantee of its continuity and a precondition for its victory.”
16. “International solidarity is not an act of charity: It is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objective. The foremost of these objectives is to aid the development of humanity to the highest level possible.”
17. “Almost everyone know the G3 gun. In the hands of the enemy the G3 is used to oppress and slaughter the people, but we capture a G3, it becomes an instrument for liberating the people, for punishing those who slaughter the people. It is the same gun, but the content has changed because those who use it have different aims, different objectives.”
My favorite Samora Machel quotes are, “For the nation to live, the tribe must die.” and “The Catholic Church was the church of the colonial fascist regime.”