Eduardo Mondlane & the rise & fall of Mozambican Socialism*

Abstract

However tempting an exercise it may be when contemplating the abrupt removal from the historical process of so exemplary and important a person as Eduardo Mondlane, speculation as to 'what might have been' had he lived is likely to be an exercise of only limited value. In the present case, this is true even for the analysis of the pre-independence period in which Mondlane both made his political contribution and also died. The tensions within Frelimo had been temporarily papered over at the 1968 Congress, but they were far from being resolved; indeed they may even have helped produce Mondlane's assassination. Had he lived, would he have been able to finesse the Kavandames and the Simangos more deftly and resolve more amicably the key strategic questions that were dividing the movement? And, if this were not possible (I rather doubt it was), would he at least have been able to orchestrate the rising ascendancy of those directly linked to the military wing of the movement (and to the dynamics of popularly-rooted guerrilla struggle) in a positive manner on at least two fronts: to have allowed the military struggle to advance successfully while also to have helped pre-empt the dangers of hierarchy and authoritarianism that the necessary militarisation of the Mozambican struggle seems, in retrospect, to have carried with it?