Graca Machel
Graca Machel was born Graca Simbine on 17 October 1945 in Incadine, Mozambique. She is the current wife of former-President Nelson Mandela and the widow of the late Mozambican president Samora Machel, who died in a plane crash over South Africa in 1986. She is the only woman to have been first lady of two different nations.
Born in rural Mozambique, she was sent to a Methodist mission school at age six and later went to university in Portugal on a mission scholarship. There she mingled with students from other Portuguese colonies and developed her liberation politics. To attend the university she recieved a scholarship to study the Romance Languages. Aside from English and Portuguese, she is also fluent in Spanish, Italian, and French. She returned to Mozambique in 1973, joined the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO) in the fight for independence, and became a school teacher.
Graca Machel was appointed Mozambique's Minister of Education and Culture in 1975, after liberation. She also married Samora Machel, the first President of Mozambique, in 1975, and they had three children. Following her retirement from the Mozambique ministry, Machel was placed in charge of producing the ground breaking United Nations Report on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children.
President Machel was killed in a plane crash in South Africa in 1986. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has inquired into the plane crash, in which many people, among them Graca Machel, believe the South African apartheid government to have been involved.
In 1998 Machel married then-South African President, Nelson Mandela. The couple commutes between South Africa and Mozambique, and Machel continues her work with multiple development and charity organizations in Mozambique and at the United Nations.
In September, 1999 she was elected as the fifth chancellor of the University of Cape Town, a position she still currently holds. She is the first black woman to hold this position. She has also said that gaining a scholarship changed her world and allowed her to study and reach the heights she has.
On 18 July 2007 a group called "The Global Elders" convened. This group was made up of a number of world leaders which have agreed to pool their resources and talents to tackle the world's problems. Along with her husband Machel is one of the founding members of this group.
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Page updated 12 January 2010
