The Story and ItTs Importance as a Film
Background
Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane was born in the Gaza District of
Southern Mozambique, the last son of his fatherfs third wife.  It was
a humble beginning by most standards, and even though his father was a
chief, no member of his family had ever been educated. Perhaps the first
hint of the sort of boy Eduardo was, and the man he was to become, could
be seen in his diligent pursuit of an education. As it was not the policy
of the Portuguese colonialists to allow an African an education, it was
against great odds that he taught himself both Portuguese and English at
an early age. While a high school student he wrote a series of letters
to a Methodist missionary which, because of Portuguese oppression, were
published only under the missionary's name.  In these letters we get an
early hint of stirrings deep within this young African, a hint of the
role he was to play some thirty years later in opposing Portuguese
colonialists in his homeland:
My people of Africa, we were created in the
image of God, but men have made us think that we are
chickens, and we still think we are; but we are eagles.
Stretch forth your wings and fly!
Eduardo himself set an early example, and after a number of years
of hard work was awarded a PhD. from Northwestern University in Chicago.
At this time no more than a dozen Mozambicans had reached the level of
high school in their own country.
Following his graduation from Northwestern University, he took
a position in the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations. After
almost two years in this position, and after at least two trips back
to Africa (one as U. N. supervisor of the Cameroons' independence),
Mondlane began to feel his "hands were tied" in the impartiality
required of him as a staff member of the U. N. (See "Press Clippings"
in section II of this application for a more detailed biography.)
With the unofficial help of the State Department he took a position
as a professor of sociology at Syracuse University, a move marking
his first step in a telling return to Africa.
Syracuse represented considerable security for Eduardo and
his wife, Janet, an American; it was a position few men would have
left.
However, the frustration and concern for his people soon
became too great and Eduardo, realizing that "there would be no
independence for his country unless he and others were willing to
fight for it," returned in 1962. Using Tanzania to the north as a
base of operations, he assumed leadership of FRELIMO, a movement
designed to liberate the eight million black Mozambicans from the
heavy hand of 20,000 white Portuguese colonialists.