In the 1950s, he saw some of the fertile lands around his farming community on the Limpopo river appropriated by the provincial government and worked by White settlers who developed a wide range of new infrastructure for the region.

Machel was attracted to anti-colonial ideals and began his political activities in the Miguel Bombarda hospital in Lourenço Marques, where he protested against the fact that black nurses were paid less than whites doing the same job.

[1] Machel decided to leave Lourenço Marques (Maputo), when a white anti-fascist, the pharmaceutical representative João Ferreira, warned him that he was being watched by the Portuguese political police, the PIDE.

After FRELIMO launched the independence war, on September 25, 1964, Machel soon became a key commander, making his name in particular in the grueling conditions of the eastern area of the vast and sparsely populated province of Niassa.

He launched the largest offensive of Portugal's colonial wars, Operation Gordian Knot, in 1970, concentrating on what was regarded as the FRELIMO heartland of Cabo Delgado in the far north.

Instead, candidates were presented by Frelimo at meetings – and were sometimes rejected when people complained of offences ranging from wife-beating and drunkenness to acting as an informer for the PIDE during the colonial government.

Frelimo faced a hostile environment, with the white minority governments of Ian Smith's Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa on Mozambique's borders.

In retaliation, Smith's Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) recruited dissatisfied Mozambicans and former Portuguese settlers and helped set up an anti-Frelimo movement.

[16] As part of the measures accompanying the new Frelimo government, Machel introduced "reeducation centers" in which petty criminals, political opponents, and alleged anti-social elements such as prostitutes and drug users were imprisoned, often without trial.

[17] In discussing Machel's role, Machava stated that the president took on a "salvationist stance", influenced both by Christianity and Maoism, which led him to believe in the beneficial effects of reeducation for enforcing his vision of social and moral purity.

In 1975, he had made a public appearance at the Nachingwea military camp for a lengthy show trial of former FRELIMO militants who had opposed the party's power consolidation, including Paulo Gumane and Uria Simango.

They are presumed to have been executed sometime in the years that followed; according to a 1995 report by Jose Pinto de Sa and Nelson Saute, they were burned alive by a convoy of soldiers in 1977.

Initially, Machel was suspicious of the apparent coup within ZANU that had brought Mugabe to power, and he was effectively rusticated to the central city of Quelimane, where he taught English.

He sent Mozambican units into Zimbabwe to fight alongside ZANU guerrillas, while also insisting that the new British Conservative government, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, should resume its responsibilities as the colonial power.

[24] The UK Government hosted a conference at Lancaster House in London, aimed at ending White minority rule and drawing up a constitution for an independent Zimbabwe.

Mozambicans, notably Machel's British-trained advisor, Fernando Honwana, were in London to advise the ZANU delegation – and ensured that Mugabe accepted the Lancaster House Agreement, despite its failure to solve the land question, with a small minority of white commercial farmers still holding most of the country's fertile farmland.

Machel was fully aware of the dangerous ethnic divisions in Zimbabwe, with ZANU drawing most of its support from the Shona majority, and ZAPU from the minority Ndebele people.

While those killed were members of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK - Spear of the Nation), the houses were not a guerrilla base, as visiting diplomats and journalists soon confirmed.

"[27] Helped by weapons airdropped by the South African Defence Force (SADF), Renamo spread its operations across the entire country with the exception of the far north.

Machel loathed the Malawian "life President" Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who was the only leader of an independent African state who had established diplomatic relations with Pretoria.

After an unsuccessful meeting with Banda, Machel openly threatened to place missiles on the Mozambique-Malawi border and to prevent trade from landlocked Malawi passing through Mozambican territory.

[32] On 19 October 1986, Machel attended a summit in Mbala, Zambia, called to put pressure on Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, over his support for the Angolan opposition movement UNITA.

The strategy of the Front Line States was to move against Mobutu and Banda in an attempt to end their support for UNITA and Renamo, who they regarded as South African surrogates.

[1][33] The Margo Commission, set up by the South African government, but which included high-level international representation,[citation needed] investigated the incident and concluded that the accident was caused by pilot error.

The latter submitted a minority report suggesting that the aircraft was intentionally lured off course by a decoy radio navigation beacon set up specifically for this purpose by the South Africans.

works for the Portuguese newspaper Público and as a correspondent for the Portuguese television channel SIC, maintains that the plane crash had nothing to do with any attempt or any mechanical failure, but was due to several errors of the Russian crew (including the pilot), who, instead of diligently performing their duties, were busy with futile things, like sharing alcoholic and soft drinks unavailable in Mozambique that they had had the possibility to bring from Zambia.

According to Veloso, the Soviet ambassador once asked the President for an audience to convey the USSR's concern about Mozambique's apparent "sliding away" towards the West, to which Machel supposedly replied "Vai à merda!"

It was attended by numerous political leaders and other notable people from Africa and elsewhere, including Dr. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Dr. Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho, Dr. Daniel arap Moi of Kenya and Dr. Yasser Arafat of Palestinian State.

[41] At the funeral, the acting leader of Frelimo, Marcelino dos Santos, said in a speech: "The shock of your journey from which there is no return still shudders through the body of the entire nation.

Designed by Mozambican architect José Forjaz, at a cost to the South African government of 1.5 million Rand (US$300,000), the monument comprises 35 steel tubes symbolising the number of lives lost in the air crash.