Marcelino dos Santos

Who is Marcelino dos Santos?

Marcelino dos Santos is a Mozambican poet, revolutionary, and statesman. As a young man he travelled to Portugal, and Paris, France for an education. He was a founding member of the Frente de Libertacao de Mocambique, in 1962; and served as the party's deputy president from 1969 to 1977. He was Minister of Economic Development in the late 1970s, Frelimo Political Bureau member in charge of the economy in the early 1980s, Chairman of the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, from 1987 to 1994, and, as of 1999, remains a member of the Frelimo Central Committee. He represents the left wing of the party, remaining an avowed Marxist-Leninist, despite the party's embracement of capitalism in recent decades—an embracement which dos Santos declares is temporary. He says that the "retreat" to capitalism was necessary in order to receive Western help in dealing with the RENAMO incursion and Civil War.

Under the pseudonyms Kalungano and Lilinho Micaia, he published poems in O Brado Africano, and his work appeared in two anthologies produced by the Casa dos Estudantes do Imperio in Lisbon.