Graca Machel ex First Lady of Mozambique and South Africa
Graca Machel will take her place in history as a leader in the fight against poverty, illiteracy and injustice.
Graca Machel First Lady of Mozambique and South Africa
Graca Machel is the only women to have ever been
first lady of two different countries, wife of Mozambique former president Samora Machel 1975 to 1986 and Nelson Mandela President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.
Graça Simbine Machel was born on October 17, 1945,
in Gaza, Mozambique, the last in a family of six children. Her father, a
Methodist minister died three weeks before she was born. She attended Lisbon
University in Portugal in 1968, to major in languages. Under surveillance from
the Portuguese secret police, she was forced to abandon her education and flee
to Switzerland to escape the prison sentence that was almost certainly waiting
for her due to her political activities as a student.
Graca Machel and Samora Machel
In Tanzania, she underwent military training and
learnt how to take an assault rifle apart and put it back together.
Subsequently, she spent a short period in Mozambique Cabo Delgado Province,
where she met Samora Machel, the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO) commander
who later became her husband.
In September 1975, she married Samora Machel, the
first president of newly independent Mozambique. When Mozambique became
independent and FRELIMO formed the country’s first government in 1975, Machel
became a member of Frelimo's Central Committee and the Minister of Education
and Culture. Machel is recognized for her dedication to educating the people of
Mozambique, and for her leadership in organizations devoted to the children of
her war-torn country. She has been a major force in increasing literacy and
schooling in Mozambique and has spoken of the needs and rights of children,
families and community, from platforms all over the world.
Following President Machel’s death in a plane
crash on October 19, 1986, she resigned her post as Minister of Education; she
was able to reduce the illiteracy rate in Mozambique by 72 percent.
Graca Machel and Nelson Mandela
After Graca Machel and Nelson Mandela met, she was reluctant to marry him or
discuss their relationship in public. Nevertheless, Mandela wooed her the
old-fashioned way, occasionally giving his bodyguards headaches as president
when he would make unannounced stops to buy her chocolates. The friendship
between Graca Machel and the President of South Africa Nelson Mandela in the 1990s
began to flourish. Machel has known Nelson Mandela since her husband's death in
1986.
Shortly after his release from prison, Mandela
met Graça Machel, the widow of former Mozambican president, Samora Machel. The
couple decided to tie the knot on Nelson Mandela's 80th birthday on July 18, 1998;
she was 52 and Mandela 80 however, Machel said they were a perfect fit because
they were both settled. She's Mandela's third wife, Nelson Mandela once said
his wife, Graca Machel, makes him "bloom like a flower." They were
married for 15 years until Mandela’s death December 5, 2013.
Graca Machel is a leader in her own right known
for her integral part Mozambican liberation struggle, international advocate
for women and child rights, and had headed the first United Nations study on
the impact of war on children. She was a Laureate of Africa Prize for
Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger from the Hunger Project in 1992
and in 1995 the Nansen Medal in recognition of her contribution to the welfare
of refugee children and a member of the Africa Progress Panel.
