Graça Machel

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Graça Machel at the World Economic Forum Africa 2010 in Dar es Salaam
Graça and Samora Machel received Nicolae Ceauşescu in Maputo in 1979

Graça Machel , DBE (born October 17, 1945 in Manjacaze , Mozambique , as Graça Simbine ) is an African politician and activist for human rights and university president .

She is the widow of both the former President of Mozambique , Samora Machel , and the former South African President Nelson Mandela . She is the only woman who has been first lady in two countries . She is committed to the rights of women and children worldwide.

At the age of six, Graça Simbinet attended a Protestant mission school, then received a scholarship to study in Portugal, first at the University of Coimbra . She later went to Lisbon and obtained a bachelor's degree in philology in German from the University of Lisbon in 1972 . In Lisbon she met political comrades from other Portuguese-speaking countries who, like her , strived for independence . She returned to Mozambique as a teacher in 1973 and secretly fought with the Frelimo during the armed struggle for national liberation against the Portuguese colonial government . There she met her first husband Samora Machel and quickly rose in the Frelimo hierarchy.

After Mozambique gained independence, Machel was a member of parliament and minister of education and culture for 14 years, even after the death of Samora Machel. In Mozambique she fought for compulsory schooling. UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali appointed Graça Machel as his special rapporteur in 1994. Over a period of three years, she toured Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Colombia, Rwanda, Lebanon and Sierra Leone to report on the effects of armed conflict on children.

On July 18, 1998, she married Nelson Mandela , the then President of South Africa . From 1999 to 2019 she was Chancellor of the University of Cape Town . In 2017 she was made an honorary member of the British Academy .

Since 2012 Machel is President of the University of SOAS University of London .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Guinness World Records. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
  2. ^ A personal note from Graça Machel . In: Graça Machel: Impact of armed conflict on children , UNICEF 1996
  3. ↑ Chancellor | University of Cape Town. Retrieved June 1, 2020 .
  4. ^ Elections to the British Academy celebrate the diversity of UK research. British Academy , July 21, 2017, accessed July 21, 2017 .
  5. ↑ https://www.soas.ac.uk/news/newsitem75798.html
  6. ↑ https://www.soas.ac.uk/president/

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Machel, Graça
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Simbine, Graça (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Politician, activist, university president, Mozambican-South African first wife (widowed)
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Manjacaze District , Mozambique ,