Guerrilla commander, then Mozambique's first president in 1975, Machel tried to build a socialist state from a poor, largely rural colony — nationalizing land and services, opening schools, sheltering liberation fighters from Rhodesia and South Africa. Those neighbors answered by arming RENAMO, an insurgency that wrecked the economy and killed enormous numbers of civilians. In 1986 his presidential aircraft went down near the South African border; the cause was never conclusively settled. His record is divided: founding national hero and architect of policies that hardened a war he could not end.
In June 1975 a former nurse who had spent a decade in the bush raised a new flag over a country with almost no doctors, almost no trained officials, and a literacy rate near the bottom of the world. Samora Machel had just won a war against one of Europe's oldest empires. Now he meant to remake Mozambique into a socialist state, and he meant to do it while sheltering the fighters of Rhodesia and South Africa next door. Those neighbors answered by arming an insurgency that would tear his country apart for years. Eleven years later his presidential aircraft went down in the hills just inside South Africa, killing him and most of the people aboard. The cause of the crash has never been settled to everyone's satisfaction.