Machel Eulogized as Fighter Against Apartheid

MAPUTO, Mozambique — President Samora M. Machel, one of the heroes of Africa’s struggle for independence and for its own voice in world affairs, was buried Tuesday amid the praise of Mozambique’s neighbors and the tears of its grieving people.

Marcelino dos Santos, a top leader of the ruling Frelimo party, eulogized Machel as a “tireless fighter” who fell “in the struggle against apartheid.”

Dos Santos said that Machel, as the leader of one of the black-ruled “front line states” confronting South Africa’s white-led minority government, “understood apartheid as a problem for all humanity because (he) perceived that what is at stake in South Africa is the very definition of humanity.”

‘Bars of Fear’

“You had a deep loathing for the racist system,” Dos Santos said, speaking of the dead president. “You considered that the destruction of apartheid would be the liberation of the entire South African people, of both the oppressed majority and of the white minority, imprisoned behind the bars of fear that they themselves have built.”

Machel, 53, was returning from a meeting on the South African situation with several other black African leaders in Zambia on Oct. 19 when his plane crashed just inside South Africa’s border with Mozambique, about 45 miles west of Maputo.

First reports suggested that a series of pilot errors in bad weather probably caused the crash, but Mozambique officials now say they “cannot exclude the possibility” that South Africa brought down the presidential airliner. They point to the threats of attack made by the South African defense minister, Gen. Magnus Malan, only four days before the crash.

South African officials have repeatedly denied any role in causing the accident.

Machel’s funeral was an emotional leave-taking for this nation of 14 million. As a guerrilla commander, he led it to independence from Portugal 11 years ago, and since then he had been its only president.

Thousands Line Streets

Tens of thousands of people lined the capital’s streets despite wet and windy weather as the funeral procession moved in a slow-step march from the city hall, where Machel’s body had lain in state, to Heroes’ Square, where he was entombed in a star-shaped monument. His body will lie next to that of Eduardo Mondlan, Machel’s political mentor and the founder of Frelimo, also known as the Mozambique Liberation Front.

Women wailed and men, including soldiers in the honor guard, wept unashamedly as they watched the flag-draped coffin pass by on a gun carriage pulled by an armored personnel carrier. Many people held signs blaming South Africa for Machel’s death.

“The Boers killed the greatest son of the Mozambican people,” one placard said, using the Afrikaans term for Dutch and French settlers of South Africa.

As Machel’s casket was put into the crypt, a 21-gun salute echoed across Maputo, and the country came to a standstill out of respect. Traffic stopped, and people stood still in the streets. A minute later, factory sirens, train whistles and ship horns sounded for another 60 seconds.

Viewed as Good Omen

According to African tradition, the rain that fell throughout the four-hour ceremony was considered a good omen--a blessing from the heavens for a great chief.

Machel’s international prestige was such that more than 20 heads of state came from Africa, along with scores of other dignitaries from around the world.

Among those attending were Prime Minister Robert Mugabe of neighboring Zimbabwe, whom Machel aided in the long war against white rule in what was then Rhodesia; President Mario Soares of Portugal, who with Machel had normalized relations between the former colony and its mother country, and Oliver Tambo, president of the African National Congress, which has had difficulties with Mozambique but still regarded Machel as one of its key supporters.

Others included Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization; Geydar A. Aliyev, the Soviet Union’s first deputy premier; top government and Communist party leaders from Eastern Europe, and special delegations from the West and the Third World.

Maureen Reagan, the President’s daughter, represented the United States, but she was upstaged by an unofficial delegation led by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who had toured southern Africa and met with Machel in July.

No South African government officials were invited, but Jay Naidoo, head of the largest unsegregated trade union federation, was among the mourners. Several South African anti-apartheid leaders, including Winnie Mandela, were refused permission to leave the country to attend the funeral.

Machel’s death leaves Mozambique without a strong leader at a critical time, according to political observers and diplomats here, and the lack of a clear successor could bring divisive political infighting.

“Your death fell upon us suddenly, wrapping all Mozambicans in a heavy mantle of sorrow and anguish,” Dos Santos said, his voice cracking with emotion. “With you died a part of each and every one of us. . . .

“You fell at a crucial, difficult moment in our history. The prolonged aggression against our country has already left deep wounds. We do not have the tranquility we need to rebuild our land.

“We still suffer from hunger. The efforts that we undertake to relaunch production are constantly sabotaged by our enemies. We still face the raggedness, the ignorance, the backwardness inherited from colonial domination.

‘You Were Certainty’

“With you, we had the certainty of removing the obstacles. With you, we did not know fear, doubt or hesitation. With you, everything was possible. You were certainty, you were the past. Now we must learn to continue. . . .”

“In the voices of our children, the ‘flowers that never wither,’ as you used to call them, your name shall be remembered with infinite tenderness,” Dos Santos said. “Eternally you shall be Papa Samora.”

The country has been torn by a long and increasingly fierce insurgency waged by rightist guerrillas of the Mozambique National Resistance, which has pushed government forces out of much of central Mozambique in a recent offensive.

Mozambique’s economy has all but collapsed under the pressure of the war and several years of severe drought, which led to widespread famine.

Popular morale is low, both in the cities and the countryside, because of the fighting, the shortages of food and consumer goods and Frelimo’s difficulties in governing.

The choice of Dos Santos, who has been No. 2 in the party, to deliver the eulogy indicated to some political observers and diplomats that he is likely to emerge as Machel’s successor.

But government sources said Tuesday that the choice is likely to be delayed until after the 60-day mourning period is over.