Mozambique: Machungo “was a great nationalist”

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Mozambique: Machungo “was a great nationalist”

8:33 CAT | 24 Feb 2020

Photo: TVM

Former Mozambican Prime Minister Mario Machungo, who died last week, “was a great nationalist, a great professional, a great economist”, declared the current MP, Carlos Agostinho do Rosario, on Saturday.

Speaking to reporters after a religious service for Machungo at the Sao Cipriano Anglian church in Maputo, Rosario described him as a political leader with a great sense of ethics, who had devoted his life to the cause of the Mozambican people.

Machungo died in Lisbon last Monday, at the age of 79 after a lengthy illness, the exact nature of which has not been revealed. His body arrived from Portugal on Saturday morning, and was received at Maputo airport by members of his family, and an official delegation headed by the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Carlos Siliya.

Giving a sermon at the service, Methodist pastor Rev. Jamise Taimo said Machungo was a leader who had fought for the economic liberation of the country, and was committed to the struggle to build a prosperous country

Taimo added that, while Machingo was known as an economist and a former member of the government, he was also a devoted family man and a Christian. “Today we are bringing to the surface his human and Christian dimension”, he stressed.

Born in Inhambane province in 1940, Machungo studied economics in Portugal where he was also a clandestine militant of the liberation movement, the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo).

In the transitional government set up after the independence agreement was negotiated between Frelimo and the Portuguese government in September 1974, Machungo was appointed Minister for Economic Coordination.

In the first government appointed by President Samora Machel in June 1975, Machungo was Minister of Industry. In 1978, he was moved to the Agriculture portfolio, and in 1980 became Minister of Planning.

In 1986, Machungo became independent Mozambique’s first Prime Minister – a post which had not existed in the immediate post-independence governments. Among his early tasks in this position were negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the drafting of the country’s first structural adjustment programme (known as the Economic Recovery Programme, or PRE). He remained prime minister until 1994.

In the subsequent two decades he was a senior figure in the banking sector, notably as Chairperson of what became the largest commercial bank in the country, the Millennium-BIM (International Bank of Mozambique).

The government has declared two days of mourning for Machungo (Sunday and Monday). On Monday his body will lie in state in Maputo City Hall, before the funeral in the capital’s Lhanguene cemetery.

Source: AIM