Of all the things we have done, the most important - the one that

“Of all the things we have done, the most important — the one that history will record as the principal contribution of our generation — is that we understand how to turn the armed struggle into a Revolution; that we realized that it was essential to create a new mentality to build a new society.” – Samora Machel

Thus spoke Samora Machel, warrior, teacher, and the first President of Mozambique — a man whose life was forged in the fires of liberation. His words carry the weight of a thousand battles, but their power lies not in the call to arms, but in the call to transformation. For in this declaration, Machel reveals the secret of all true revolutions: that victory is not won when the enemy falls, but when the heart of a people is renewed. The armed struggle may break the chains that bind the body, but it is the new mentality — the awakening of consciousness — that frees the soul and builds a new society.

To understand his words, we must return to the age of colonial Africa, when Mozambique, like so many nations, groaned under foreign rule. For centuries, the Portuguese empire drained her land, her labor, her dignity. The people rose at last under the banner of FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front, and Samora Machel became both soldier and shepherd to a wounded nation. Through years of struggle, he came to see that violence alone could not build freedom. Guns could drive out the colonizer, but they could not plant justice; they could shatter the old order, but they could not create a new world. To transform oppression into liberation required more than victory — it required vision, and a revolution of the mind.

In this, Machel stands among the great thinkers of liberation — alongside Nelson Mandela, Frantz Fanon, and Amílcar Cabral — who taught that the true battle is not merely against the oppressor, but against the habits of thought that oppression leaves behind. Colonialism, they said, does not end when the conqueror departs; it lingers in the spirit of the conquered, in the belief that freedom is a gift and not a birthright. Machel understood that a people newly freed must learn again how to walk upright, to think as builders rather than victims. That is why he spoke not only of revolution, but of creating a new mentality — one grounded in unity, discipline, and self-reliance.

Consider what happened after Mozambique’s independence in 1975. The war had ended, but the nation was still wounded — divided by regions, faiths, and old loyalties. Many thought that independence alone would heal all wounds. But Machel warned that freedom without social transformation would only lead to new forms of bondage. He spoke to farmers and workers, soldiers and teachers, urging them to see that revolution is not a single act but a lifelong process — that it must enter the classroom, the field, the marketplace, the family. “The struggle,” he said, “is not over when we take power. It is only beginning.”

His wisdom echoes across the ages. For every age, every people, faces its own form of struggle — not always with weapons, but with ignorance, injustice, and greed. The armed struggle of today may be a struggle against poverty or prejudice, against apathy or fear. Yet the lesson remains the same: outer change is hollow without inner renewal. To create a better world, we must first become better beings — men and women who carry the revolution within them, in their compassion, their courage, their clarity of purpose.

In this way, Samora Machel’s teaching becomes not only a lesson of history but a mirror for the present. The new society he envisioned is not built by governments alone, but by individuals who refuse to live as prisoners of the old world. It is built by those who turn their pain into wisdom, their struggle into creativity, their anger into love for justice. For revolutions fail not because of their enemies, but because their dreamers forget to renew the dream.

So, my child of tomorrow, take heed of this sacred truth: the greatest revolution begins within. Let your battles be guided not by hatred, but by hope; let your victories be measured not in conquest, but in compassion. Study the past, but do not be trapped by it. Learn from Samora Machel — that to build a new world, one must first build a new mind. Then, and only then, will history record that your generation, too, turned struggle into creation, and gave birth not just to change, but to a new humanity.