Eduardo Mondlane

Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane was born on 20 June 1920 in Gaza Province in southern Mozambique, then ruled by Portugal, into a Tsonga royal family. He was a shepherd as a child, completed secondary school at Lemana in the northern Transvaal, and enrolled at Wits University, though he was expelled after a year.

Mondlane then studied at the University of Lisbon and later in the United States, where he earned a master's degree and a doctorate, becoming an anthropologist and sociologist. In 1957 he joined the United Nations as a research officer in its Trusteeship Department, a post that brought him back to Africa and deepened his involvement in nationalist politics.

In 1962 Mondlane took the lead in developing a movement for national liberation. On 25 June of that year, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, he founded FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front, uniting three separate independence groups, and was elected its first president. He moved the headquarters to Dar es Salaam and mobilised support from African states and from East and West.

FRELIMO began an armed struggle against Portuguese rule on 25 September 1964. Mondlane also worked on education, directing the Mozambique Institute in Dar es Salaam, led by his American-born wife Janet Mondlane, which taught refugees, and wrote The Struggle for Mozambique, published in 1969.

On 3 February 1969, Mondlane was killed at FRELIMO's headquarters in Dar es Salaam when a book containing a bomb exploded. The assassination is widely attributed to Portugal's secret police, though the full circumstances remain debated. Samora Machel succeeded him, and Mozambique became independent on 25 June 1975, the anniversary of FRELIMO's founding. Mondlane is revered as the father of the nation, and Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo bears his name.