education for our young people. Some
efforts in this direction were underway
even before the founding conference of
frelimo in June  1962.
My wife Janet and I had noticed that
there were many refugee students in Dar
es Salaam who wanted to go abroad to
take up higher education, but that no
machinery existed through which they
could be introduced to colleges and to
governments or organizations that might
give them scholarships. We knew that
it would be very difficult to get private
humanitarian organizations, especially in
Western countries, to give direct support to a political organization and therefore we decided that it would be wiser
to establish an independent, or somewhat
independent, educational center for Mozambique students. My wife developed
an outline of a program which she presented to various organizations in the
United States and Western Europe, and in
1963 she got her first grant of almost
$100,000 from an American humanitarian organization. Starting with that,
she built the present center in Dar es
Salaam. The party, of course, is directly
interested in this program because it is
part of the general educational program
for Mozambique. The department of education of frelimo cooperates closely
with the Mozambique Institute.
The Institute has three functions: (1)
It tries to fill the gap between the low
level primary school training program
that the mission schools give Mozambican Africans and the mucn more advanced primary program that prevails
in English-speaking Africa. In Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea, primary
schools end at standard four, while primary school ends at standard eight in
East Africa. If a student from Mozambique is granted a scholarship for secondary education in East Africa, he can't
take it unless he has the equivalent of
standard eight. (2) It prepares students
with the equivalent, or near equivalent,
of secondary education to accept scholarships abroad, in any part of the world
where scholarships are offered. When the
Institute was conceived in 1962, we had
barely 15 students in any institution
higher than secondary school anywhere
in the world. Now we have rr >re than
150 students in universities and technical
schools in Europe, America, Asia, and
Africa. (3) It also provides as much
technical training as possible to Mozambicans who are going back into the areas
of Mozambique we control to do specific
work that is much needed. There is a
nurses' training program and a new
program of teacher training, and we have
plans for a general technical training
program.
There are, of course, never enough
funds.   As  I  said  before,  an  American
foundation gave the Institute its first
grant, but political pressures on that
foundation made it impossible for us to
get further help from this source. Most
of the funds now come from Europe,
especially Scandinavia. Eastern European
and Asian countries have also been helping, notably in giving educational equipment. Usually we have about 15 teachers
—three from the United States at present,
one from Scandinavia, one from Eastern
Europe, one from India, four Portuguese
Mozambicans, and the rest Africans.
Kitchen: You referred to concp and
frelimo's relations with liberation
movements in other Portuguese territories. Can you elaborate?
Mondlane: The activities of most, though
not all, of the national liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies are coordinated by the Conference of Organizations Against Portuguese Colonialism.
frelimo, mpla of Angola, paigc of
Guinea, and clstp of Sao Tome and
Principe established concp in 1962, and
we had our second congress in 1965 just
before the oau conference held that
year in Accra. The purpose of these meetings is to exchange ideas, strategies, and
opinions. We are fighting against the
same enemy in all four of these countries
and it is only natural that we should
have a coordinating body.
The concp has a directorate composed
of the top leaders of the member movements. We are supposed to meet once
every six months, but it is not always
possible to do this because of the difficulties in communication. There is a secretariat in Rabat composed of officers
representing each member movement,
who exchange information on various
problems relating to our common struggle
—defense, foreign policy, political techniques, cultural affairs, education. But
we are not one party or front. Each
movement is independent of the others,
has its own policy, and follows the needs
and requirements of its own people. It
may even be that we have different ideological lines. We don't know. We have
never discussed ideology in these conferences. We are like a small oau.
Kitchen: What is your policy toward the
grae-mpla split in Angola?
Mondlane: frelimo has never really
taken a stand concerning the internal affairs of any country, including Angola.
We work with mpla rather than grae
because we believe in the coordinating
function of concp. grae has issued statements from Kinshasa against us, accusing us of being communists and various
other things. We do not respond. We
have never made a statement against
Holden Roberto or the movement. We
believe in unity, in common action. We
are not cooperating with grae because
its leadership doesn't wish to cooperate
with us. We work with mpla because the
mpla people are very much interested
in cooperation.
Kitchen: You said that Tanzania's
achievement of independence gave
frelimo a base from which to operate,
that your military was initially trained by
Algeria. To what extent have other
African countries aided frelimo?
Mondlane: Support for our program of
liberation—and by this I mean the whole
range of political, military, and educational programs—now comes from every
corner of the world. I can divide these
sources of aid into three broad categories:
First, Africa. Most help for the political and military program comes from
independent African states, either in the
form of money or equipment obtained for
us by the oau's African Liberation
Committee, or as individual offers of
material and financial aid. The Liberation
Committee designated frelimo as the
only channel for oau aid to Mozambique
nationalism in 1963. African aid composes more than two-thirds of our total
resources.
Second, we receive aid from Asian and
socialist states, including India, the
People's Republic of China, Indonesia,
Japan, and the USSR. This aid includes
both funds and equipment useful in the
struggle.
Third, we also get aid from Western
countries. This is mostly from churches
and humanitarian pro-African committees, and is designated for our educational, refugee, and other humanitarian programs. The Mozambique Institute has
received a great deal of financial support
from Western countries and school equipment from Eastern Europe.
Kitchen: What do you most need in
external aid that you are not getting?
Mondlane: Before I answer that question,
I think it is necessary to make it clear
that the main source of support for our
struggle is our own people. It is important
to say this because there are many people
in America and elsewhere who think our
success will depend primarily on the
kind of support we get from outside. We
believe very strongly that it is the political determination of the people and the
clarity with which they see the necessity
for their line of action that will make
possible the liberation of our people, of
our country. Everything else is supportive.
Without the political determination of the
Mozambicans and without an organization such as frelimo to structure the
action, outside help would be of no use
at all.
Having said that, I can answer the
question in its proper context. There are
several kinds of support that we very
much need that we aren't getting. Above
all, perhaps, we wish we had the outright political and diplomatic support of
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AFRICA REPORT,  NOVEMBER  1967