4 - The Assassination of Eduardo Mondlane: Mozambican Revolutionaries in Dar es Salaam

Summary

Dar es Salaam was a mecca for Third World liberation movements, whose presence in the city was fundamental to its emergence as a ‘Cold War city’. This chapter shows how their activities became embedded in the capital’s political life through the case of the assassination of the president of the Mozambican anticolonial movement FRELIMO. Eduardo Mondlane was a skilful politician who used the city’s international connections to publicise his movement’s cause and canvass for foreign support. However, as FRELIMO sought to draw on Cold War patronage to wage war against the Portuguese, it was gripped by an internal crisis that split the movement’s leadership along ethno-racial and ideological lines. Powerful gatekeepers within the Tanzanian political establishment aligned with Mondlane’s enemies to challenge him in public and undermine his security in private. These schisms facilitated the assassination of Mondlane in 1969 and clouded the waters of subsequent inquiries into the crime’s perpetrators.