by Phaphama Tshisikhawe
“If freedom was a dream to be clung to, never to be let go of, and if freedom was a dream that had to be fulfilled in a lifetime, the dreamer of such a compelling dream was none other than Samora Machel, a man on whose shoulders rested the hopes of the people of Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, and South Africa”, said Professor Maluleke, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of TUT, when Dr Machel was awarded the degree of Doctor of Public Affairs (honoris causa) in the Faculty of Humanities, on 17 October 2024.
Machel was a soldier, a military tactician, a political theorist and an inventor of the nation that Mozambique has become.
Samora Moisés Machel was born to Mandande Moisés Machel and Guguiye Thema Dzimba on 29 September 1933, in Chilembene, roughly three hundred kilometres from Maputo, Mozambique. He became the first president of an independent Mozambique after ten years of military struggle against the Portuguese colonial rulers of Mozambique (1964 to 1974). His presidency stretched from 1974 to 1986.
Educated in the mission school system of Mozambique, Machel was a qualified professional nurse and served in Maputo for a decade. Radicalised by his experience of the ill-treatment of African patients and African hospital workers by the Portuguese, Machel decided to join FRELIMO, a liberation movement in 1963. The late Joe Slovo had vivid memories of how the young Samora Machel travelled with him and JB Marks from Francistown in Botswana to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Little did they know that they were travelling with someone who would become the future president of a free Mozambique. Machel was killed in a plane crash in Mbuzini (South Africa) en route from a summit in Mbala, Zambia to Maputo, on 19 October 1986.
What an honour it is for the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) to have conferred on President Samora Moisés Machel, the Degree of Doctor of Public Affairs (Honoris Causa) at the Faculty of Humanities, for his contribution in the Liberation Struggle.
Dr Samora Machel, confered (posthumously) with an
honorary doctorate in Public Affairs (honoris causa) at TUT.
Malenga Machel, son of the late Dr Samora Machel
accepting the honorary doctorate at TUT