Dr. Mondlane has been variously described to me as "brilliant,"
"sensitive," "charismatic," and "supremely peaceful." It was with
reluctance that after a long period of fruitless negotiation with the
Salazar regnne, Mondlane took the final, painful step. On September
2l|, 196k9  FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front, launched its guerrilla
war with a devastating attack on the Portuguese Army camp at Mueda in a
northern province. Long after Britain, France and others had peacefully
handed over their colonial territories in Africa to the Africans, Portugal
began pouring in soldiers and equipment to maintain an oppressive and
exploitive colonial status.
The Struggle
Despite Portugal's continued public statements that FRELIMO was
nothing more than a handful of bothersome dissidents, by February of
1969 the liberation movement had effective control of the two northern
provinces and had launched a new action in a third. FRELIMOfs 8000
guerrillas, against over 100,000 well-equipped and well-trained Portuguese
soldiers, now had effective control of almost twenty percent of the land
area of Mozambique.  The Portuguese facade remained cool, but underneath
it was something different.  The activities of the dreaded and efficient
Portuguese Secret Police (PIDE) in all three territories, Mozambique,
Angola, and Guinea attested to this behind-the-scenes concern.
In the same  month, February, I969, Dr. Mondlane received a package at FRELIMO headquarters in independent Tanzania which had been mailed
from Europe. He put the package in his briefcase and carried it with him
to a beach house in Dar-es-Salaam where he frequently went to find quiet
and solitude in his work. Whoever mailed the package knew Eduardo Mondlane's
weakness: a continuing process of learning and a passion for reading. This
was the last book he was ever to open, for within it's pages was an assassian's
bonb.
Elements of the Story
His assassination ended the personal story of a very classical and
tragic sort of hero, a story that in itself is of consuming interest. However, there are a great many more elements that make this an important story,
one that as a feature film can be of considerable significance.
When Eduardo Mondlane was assassinated in February of this year, a
considerable number of people in the West—some of them in very high policymaking positions—were shaken. They were shaken because they knew the
untold story of his repeated appeal to the United States for aid in freeing
his people and the many millions in the rest of southern Africa. They
knew as Eduardo knew that if the United States and the West continued to
refuse aid and, indeed, actually supported Portugal in it's long-outdated
colonial policies, that he would be forced to look increasingly to the
East for help in his life and death struggle.
Robert Kennedy himself became a personal friend of Eduardo and
even supported his movement through some personal financing. But the
Attorney General, and indirectly the President, made it clear that there
was little they could do officially. Even this was a high point for