By Desire Tshuma
Harare — President Emmerson Mnangagwa has paid a deeply emotional tribute to Mozambique’s founding President, Samora Moises Machel, marking 40 years since his tragic death in a plane crash in South Africa.
In a statement issued yesterday, 19 October 2026, President Mnangagwa said Zimbabwe and the whole Southern African region continue to feel the pain of Machel’s death, which occurred on 19 October 1986.
“Today, 19th October, we solemnly mark forty years since the tragic demise of President Samora Moises Machel in South Africa,” the President said.
“On that fateful day in 1986, the revolutionary founder President of the sister Republic of Mozambique and a doughty comrade and ally in the fight against colonial rule and apartheid in our Southern African Region, met his violent end, alongside 33 other compatriots who also perished in that tragic air disaster.”
President Mnangagwa said the region was thrown into deep anguish and mourning by the incident, with the pain keenly felt in Zimbabwe, a nation to whose liberation Machel gave his all.
Forty years on, he said, the impact of that devastating loss remains fresh and painfully felt, defying any healing.
“His rich legacy as a militant freedom fighter, a leader, an internationalist and an uncompromising proponent for social justice, equity both at home and abroad, and an icon in the struggle against colonialism and long apartheid, remains timeless,” he said.
The President said the greatest tribute the region can pay to Machel is to fulfil the ideals that drove him, rooted in the anti-colonial struggle, and to continue his quest to re-make and transform Mozambique into a just society in which all are equal, with no one and no place left behind.
He said Machel’s desire for peace for Mozambique and the region — a mission for which he paid the ultimate price — remains a timeless goal for all leaders on the African continent.
“The guns must fall silent on our Continent, as the late Machel would have wished, to release Africa’s collective energy towards greater peace and development under a just social order,” President Mnangagwa said.
He added that the region’s quest to claim a greater share in its God-given finite resources through deliberate value addition and industrialisation resonates with Machel’s mission, alongside his Frontline State colleagues, to achieve total, unfettered sovereignty for the African nation-state.
“We dare not fail this founding generation of visionary leaders of Africa,” he said.
President Mnangagwa also reflected on his personal relationship with Machel, recalling with fondness the moments he shared with him and his family, both on and off official engagements.
“I became a friend of the Machel Family,” he said.
On behalf of the nation and people of Zimbabwe, his family and himself, the President extended his timeless respect for the late President to the Government of Mozambique and wished Machel’s family, particularly his wife Graça and the children, continued good health and long life.
“Both as individual leaders and as a collective leadership of SADC, COMESA and the African Union, we strive to walk in late President Machel’s footsteps until our African Continent claims its just place in the comity of Nations,” he said.