Uncredited
7th April 1972 First Anniversary of the Death of Comrade Josina Machel/Mozambican Woman Combatant/The flowers which fall from the tree come to prepare the soil so that new and more beautiful flowers may grow in the following season/Your Life Continues in those who Continue the Revolution
Three-colour offset lithograph, Frelimo, Dar es Salaam
Samora Machel’s first wife, Josina Machel (1945-1971), was one of Frelimo’s leading women. A founder member of Frelimo’s Destacamento Feminino (Women’s Detachment), she was among the first 25 women militants to receive combat training, having joined Frelimo in Tanzania in 1965. Over the following years she toured the Liberated Zones inside Mozambique to mobilise residents and carry out welfare work with women. She died of cancer in 1971, aged 25. Remembered as an icon of the revolution, the few surviving photographs of her have been widely reproduced ever since.
