Mozambique parliament backs move to extend military service to five years
File photo: O País
Sérgio Vieira, former minister and governor of the Bank of Mozambique, died yesterday in a clinic in South Africa, where he was receiving medical care for a persistent medical problem, a source close to the deceased’s family confirmed to O País.
“Mozambique and Frelimo have just lost one of their most striking and outstanding figures, Colonel Sérgio Vieira,” a statement issued by the Frelimo Political Commission reads.
Sérgio Castelo Branco da Silva Vieira was born in Tete in 1941. His higher education was interrupted several times. He studied law in Portugal until the 2nd year, in 1961. In 1962 he attended the Collége d`Europe in Bruges.
Between 1962 and 1963 he attended the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, but interrupted his studies the following year. He graduated with distinction from the Institute of Political Studies in Algiers in 1967.
In Portugal he was a University Students Association leader, including at RIA, Inter-Associations Reunion. He became an assistant professor at Eduardo Mondlane University, and a researcher at the same institution’s Centre for African Studies, which he directed between 1987 and 1992.
He was a founding member of Frelimo, being from 1964 and 1967 part of the Frelimo representation in Algiers, and likewise in Cairo in 1969 and 1970.
Before the independence of Mozambique, he was secretary of the Presidency under the direction of Eduardo Mondlane from 1967 to 1969, and of Samora Machel from 1970 to 1975.
After independence, Sérgio Vieira served as director of the Office of the President of the Republic, 1975-1977; Governor of the Bank of Mozambique, 1978-1981; Minister of Agriculture, 1981-1983; Governor of Niassa Province and Deputy Minister of Defence, 1983-1984; Minister of Security, 1984-1987; as deputy of the Assembly of the Republic, where he held several positions in the first to the fourth legislatures; and as Director General of the Zambezi Valley Development Plan Office, from 2001 to 2010.
During his university studies in Lisbon, Sérgio Vieira was closely associated with the cultural activities of the House of the Students of the Empire [Casa dos Estudantes do Império (CEI). Later, in Dar-es-Salam, Tanzania, he directed Frelimo’s Department of Education and Culture.
As a poet and writer, he worked with several newspapers and magazines, such as Jornal de Angola and Mensagem (CEI). He also published Memória do Povo [Memory of the People] (1983) and is included in several poetry anthologies, such as Poetas Moçambicanos (1962), Breve Antologia da Poesia de Moçambique [Brief Anthology of Mozambican Poetry] (1967), Poesia de Combate [Combat Poetry] (1977), and No Ritmo dos Tantãs [In the Rhythm of the Tan-tans] (1991). In 2010, he published “Participei, Por Isso Testemunho” [`I Participated, Therefore I Testify”].
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