From his anti-colonial military leadership to the presidency of independent Mozambique, Samora Machel held a reputation as a revolutionary hero to the oppressed. Although killed in a 1987 plane crash, for many Mozambicans his memory lives on as a beacon of hope for the future.

List of Illustrations
Foreword by Albie Sachs
Acknowledgments
Prologue: The Challenge of Representation
1. Living Colonialism The Making of an Insurgent
2. The Early Political Education of Samora Machel The Making of a Freedom Fighter, ca. 1950–63
3. The Struggle within the Struggle, 1962–70
4. Samora and the Armed Struggle, 1964–75
5. Politics, Performance, and People’s Power, 1975–ca. 1977 115
6. Samora Machel’s Marxism and the Defense of the Revolution, 1977–82
7. The Unraveling of Mozambique’s Socialist Revolution, 1983–86
8. Who Killed Samora?
9. The Political Afterlife of Samora and the Politics of Memory
Conclusion: Samora Revisited
Notes
Recommended Reading
Index

Allen F. Isaacman is a Regents Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of numerous books, including the co-authored (with Barbara Isaacman) Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965-2007, winner of the ASA Best Book Prize and the AHA Klein Prize in African History. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has won fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, among others.