Maputo — The Central Committee Secretariat of Mozambique ruling Frelimo Party on Saturday announced the death of Frelimo parliamentarian Mateus Malicocho, at the age of 59.

Malicocho was born in Mueda, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, in 1943, and joined the liberation movement in 1962.

The following year he slipped into Tanzania, to join other young nationalists who were forming Frelimo's guerrilla army to fight against Portuguese colonial rule. In July 1963, he was among the second group of Frelimo combatants to receive military training in Algeria.

In 1965 he was one of those sent by the Frelimo leadership to open what would become the movement's main military training centre, at Nachingwea in southern Tanzania. He was then sent into Mozambique to command the Mipocha Central Base in the liberated areas of the northern province of Niassa. As the war progressed, he was one of those sent south to open a new front, in the central province of Manica and Sofala.

During the 1974-75 transitional government, Malicocho was provincial military commander in Cabo Delgado. From 1976 onwards he held a series of important economic positions, heading state farms in Boane district, 30 kilometres west of Maputo, and later running the administrative services of the Boror Company in Zambezia province.

At the time of his death, Malicocho was a Frelimo member of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, and the rapporteur of the Assembly's Commission on Defence and Public Order.

The Central Committee statement did not give the cause of Malicocho's death.