Eduardo Mondlane

Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane (20 June 1920 – 3 February 1969) was a Mozambican revolutionary and anthropologist who was the founder of the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO). He was the FRELIMO's first leader until his assassination in 1969 in Tanzania. An anthropologist by profession, Mondlane also worked as a history and sociology professor at Syracuse University before returning to Mozambique in 1963.

Early life

The fourth of 16 sons of a chief of the Bantu-speaking Tsonga, Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane was born in N'wajahani, district of Mandlakazi in the province of Gaza, in Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) in 1920. He worked as a shepherd until the age of 12.

He attended several different primary schools before enrolling in a Swiss–Presbyterian school near Manjacaze. He ended his secondary education in the same organisation's church school at Lemana College at Njhakanjhaka Village above Elim Hospital in the Transvaal (Limpopo Province), South Africa. He then spent one year at the Jan H. Hofmeyr School of Social Work before enrolling in Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg but was expelled from South Africa after only a year, in 1949, following the rise of the Apartheid government.

In June 1950, Mondlane attended the University of Lisbon, in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. On Mondlane's request, he was transferred to the United States, where he attended Oberlin College in Ohio at the age of 31, under a Phelps Stokes scholarship.