Eduardo Mondlane (1920 - 1969)

Sun Jun 20, 1920

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Eduardo Mondlane, born on this day in 1920, was a Mozambican anthropologist and professor at Syracuse University who resigned his post to serve as the President of the Mozambican Liberation Front from 1962 until his assassination in 1969.

Mondlane was born in “N’wajahani”, a district of Mandlakazi in the province of Gaza, Portuguese East Africa (modern day Mozambique). In 1948, he enrolled in Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, South Africa but was expelled after one year there, following the rise of the Apartheid government.

Mondlane eventually came to the United States, enrolling at Oberlin College in Ohio at the age of 31 under a Phelps Stokes scholarship, graduating in 1953 with a degree in anthropology and sociology.

Mondlane later became an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Syracuse University and helped develop the East African Studies Program there. In 1963, he resigned from his post at Syracuse to move to Tanzania, co-founding the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO) to fully engage in armed liberation struggle, receiving aid from both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.

In 1969, Mondlane was assassinated by a bomb planted in a book, sent to him at the FRELIMO Headquarters in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The killing remains unsolved to this day, although former Portuguese agent Oscar Cardoso claims that fellow agent Casimiro Monteiro planted the bomb.

FRELIMO went on to successfully win power and an independent Mozambique in 1975.