Mozambique mourns João Machado da Graça

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Mozambique mourns João Machado da Graça

2:58 CAT | 20 Jul 2016

Rádio Moçambique / A recent photograph of Machado da Graça, posted today by Rádio Moçambique where he worked at for many years.

Prominent Mozambican journalist Machado da Graça and one of the best known throughout the entire country, died of an illness yesterday in Maputo, chairman of Mediacoop Mozambique Fernando Lima has told Lusa. The company owns the weekly newspaper Savana, where Machado da Graça was a columnist.

Retired Radio Mozambique broadcaster Machado da Graca, 70, wrote the popular column “A Talhe de Foice” (“Scythed Down”) in the weekly Savana for the last 20 years, providing a political commentary much loved for its simple language and biting satire.

“It is a major loss for Mediacoop. Machado was one of our most prolific employees,” Lima said.

In addition to writing A Talhe de Foice, Machado da Graça coordinated the humorous supplement “Sacana” (“Slutty”), also marked by severe criticism of the country’s political class.

Ten years ago, Machado da Graca began a collaboration with the Maputo electronic newspaper Correio da Manhã, writing a column called “Marco do Correio” (“Mail Box”), where he would open his heart in letters to fictitious recipients on various topics, mainly involving scandals in Mozambique’s ruling class.

“He was a perfect collaborator. Even as his strength ebbed, he recorded his last installment on Tuesday of last week, so as not to miss an edition,” Correio da Manhã editor Refinaldo Chilengue told Lusa.

Calling himself “a ‘retornado’ in reverse” – the name given to the people who left Mozambique for Portugal following independence – in an interview with Lusa last year, having swum against the tide and moved from Lisbon to Maputo just when most Europeans were abandoning Mozambique after independence in 1975.

Machado da Graça was passionate about theatre and was for many years artistic coordinator of Casa Velha, a theatre association in the capital.

Revealing and rebuking what he thought of as deviations within Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front) often earned him harsh public criticism from the party in power.

Source: Lusa