Arnaldo Caliche

Fellow: Department of History, PhD

I am Arnaldo Pinto Teixeira Caliche, Mozambican, and I was born on 25 September  1976 in Manica Province-Mozambique. Junior lecturer and researcher of the Department of History at Eduardo Mondlane University since 2005, I assisted different subjects: History of the World, 1900-1945; World History Post World War II; Historiography of Africa; Political Economy of Southern Africa Between 1870-1980; and Culture, Consciousness and Nationalism in Southern Africa Between XIX-XX Century. From 1998 until 2004, I concluded my BA Honours Degree in socioeconomic History at Eduardo Mondlane University. From 2013 until 2016 (March), I did my Masters Degree in socioeconomic History at the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg). 

My present doctoral research study analyses the origins, the structure, the social life and the legacies of Samora Machel’s political rhetoric in the history of the formation of the Mozambican nation. The study will also focus on several aspects of Machel’s rhetoric, for example: the more positive legacies of Samora Machel such as the struggle for non-racialism and the critique of apartheid and imperialism; the more problematic aspects such as the onslaught on the enemies of the people and internal traitors; his own family background as “assimilated” (assimilado); the influence of the colonial socio-economic and educational system of exploitation; Machel’s own protestant Christian background; how Machel’s political and military training during the struggle shaped his ideological conception about “mulattos” (mulatos), “assimilated” (assimilados) and “compromised of the nation” (comprometidos da nação) as bearers of colonial mentality after the independence in 1975. At last, the study will also consider the dichotomy between the rural and the urban in Machel’s rhetoric and his present legacy of his rhetoric in contemporary Mozambican society.