Mondlane Eduardo Panaf Great Lives Panaf

5.0 out of 5 stars Father of Mozambican Independence, June 11, 2006

By Elijah Chingosho "Dr Elijah Chingosho" (Nairobi, Kenya) - See all my reviews

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Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane was born in 1920 in a peasant village in Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique), the son of a tribal chief. Eduardo lived a rural African boyhood of poverty caring for his family's cattle. He attended several different primary schools before enrolling in a Swiss-Presbyterian school. Not being allowed to attend secondary schools in Mozambique, he attended the church school at Lemana in the Transvaal, South Africa. Eduardo began his college education at Witwatersrand University in South Africa, but, after a year, was forced to withdraw by the new apartheid-oriented Nationalist Party government which came to power in 1948.

In 1951, he enrolled at Oberlin College, Ohio where he earned his BA in Sociology and Anthropology in 1953, followed by an MA at Northwestern University, and a PhD in Anthropology at Harvard. He married Janet Rae Johnson, a young white woman from Indiana while he was doing a year of research at Harvard.

After Tanzania (then Tanganyika) gained independence from Britain in 1961, the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) elected Eduardo as its first president. He then decided to dedicate his life to Mozambique liberation struggle. FRELIMO's operations were based Tanzania, from where they launched guerrilla attacks into Mozambique. Mondlane was re-elected as President of the liberation movement in 1968 at the second FRELIMO Congress, held in liberated Northern Mozambique.

However, Eduardo was killed on February 3, 1969, in Dar es Salaam, by a bomb that was planted in a book then sent to him at the FRELIMO secretariat. He was only 49 years old. The assassination of Mondlane did not stop the progress of the liberation struggle and Mozambique was finally liberated from Portuguese colonial control to become an independent nation in 1975. Sadly, Eduardo was not present to celebrate the victory.

In 1975, the Universidade Lourenço Marques, which had the colonial name of the capital Lorenco Margues, was renamed Universidade Eduardo Mondlane or Eduardo Mondlane University situated in the country capital renamed Maputo.

Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane will always be remembered as a great Pan-African and the father of Mozambican independence as well as a brave, intelligent, eloquent man of the highest who was totally dedicated to the cause of freedom for his own country.