Eduardo Mondlane

Killed on 3 February 1969 in Dar es Salaam by a parcel bomb; the founding president of FRELIMO died in exile, his murder widely attributed to the Portuguese secret police.

Overview

Mondlane, a Mozambican of Tsonga background who had studied in the United States on missionary scholarships, earning a doctorate at Northwestern, united the exile movements into FRELIMO in 1962 and built it into a disciplined liberation movement fighting Portugal from northern Mozambique. A book parcel delivered to his Tanzanian office contained the bomb that killed him; the plot involved infiltrated agents, and Portuguese PIDE direction has been documented since the opening of archives. Samora Machel succeeded him and led the movement to independence in 1975. Mondlane remains the founding father of independent Mozambique, whose face appeared on the first national banknotes; his murder, like Cabral, exemplified the assassination of African liberation leadership in the colonial wars.