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Mozambique: Guebuza Gives Funeral Eulogy for Fernando Ganhao
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
9 April 2008
Posted to the web 9 April 2008
Maputo
Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Wednesday praised Fernando Ganhao, the first Vice-Chancellor of a Mozambican University, who died last Friday, as a man of great vision, who never allowed any obstacle to intimidate him.
Giving the funeral eulogy for Ganhao, Guebuza said that from a young age he had defended the cause of the Mozambican people. Born to a Portuguese family in Maputo in 1937, he became an anti-fascist and anti-colonialist. He was sent to do his military service in Angola in 1961, but deserted from the colonial army and made his way to Tanzania where he joined the Mozambican liberation movement, Frelimo.
Ganhao, said Guebuza, had played an outstanding educational role during the struggle for Mozambique's independence, by preparing the curriculum and teachers' manuals used in the schools that Frelimo set up in the areas it freed from colonial rule in the north of the country, and in the Mozambican refugee camps in Tanzania.
He also produced teacher training manuals and, at the request of Frelimo's founder and first president, Eduardo Mondlane, taught at the Mozambique Institute, the Frelimo secondary school in Dar es Salaam.
With Mozambican independence, the country's first President, Samora Machel, gave Ganhao the task of setting up the first Mozambican university, named the Eduardo Mondlane University. Guebuza recalled that Ganhao had faced enormous challenges, including "the lack of teachers, an inadequate curriculum, and a small number of faculties and courses to deal with the job of training the cadres the country needed".
Ganhao headed the university from 1975 to 1987, helping to build it into a credible institution. He then worked full time on the secretariat of the country's parliament, then known as the People's Assembly.
In the closing years of his life he set up, and became Vice-Chancellor of a private university, the Technical University of Mozambique (UDM).
Ganhao was also a sports enthusiast, and was a founder member and the first chairperson of the Mozambican Olympics Committee.
Guebuza declared that Ganhao was a humble and pragmatic man, who never vacillated before the challenges he faced. He approached them methodically, and "embraced all the missions that were entrusted to him with a great sense of responsibility".
"We are only parting from him physically", said the President, "since his work, and his sense of commitment to the people's cause will never vanish from our minds. The seeds that he planted during half a century of work, have germinated, grown and borne fruit which are now giving us new seeds".
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Mad/pf (422)
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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