The assassination of Eduardo Mondlane: FRELIMO, Tanzania, and the politics of exile in Dar es Salaam

Abstract

This article uses the city of Dar es Salaam as an urban lens for understanding the politics of FRELIMO in exile and the assassination of its first president, Eduardo Mondlane, in 1969. By adopting a multiarchival technique, these narratives can be broken down to a micropolitical level, shedding light on the distribution of agency in the confluence of superpower rivalry and decolonisation in the Third World. The splits within the liberation movement can be explained via the intersection of internal disagreements, Cold War dynamics, and relations with the Tanzanian state, within the context of Dar es Salaam’s cosmopolitan public sphere.

Acknowledgements

Work in the Polish diplomatic archives in Warsaw was facilitated by the translation help of Paweł Pujszo. A draft version of this paper was presented at the International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War, held at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2015, and co-organised by George Washington University and the University of California at Santa Barbara. I am grateful for the feedback received there. I also wish to thank James R. Brennan for his valuable comments, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful remarks. Finally, my thanks to David M. Anderson and Daniel Branch for their support for my broader PhD work.

Notes

¹ Burns to State Dept, 13 February 1969, Record Group (RG) 59, Central Foreign Policy Files (CFPF), 1967–9, Box 2354, POL 30 MOZ, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (NARA); David Martin, ‘Interpol Solves a Guerrilla Whodunit’, Observer, 6 February 1972, 4.

² Ludo de Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba (London: Verso, 2001); Susan Williams, Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa (London: Hurst, 2011); Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick, Death in the Congo: Murdering Patrice Lumumba (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

³ Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Leslie James and Elisabeth Leake (eds), Decolonization and the Cold War: Negotiating Independence (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).

⁴ For a history of the city, see James R. Brennan and Andrew Burton, ‘The Emerging Metropolis: A History of Dar es Salaam, ca. 1862–2000’ in Dar es Salaam: Histories from an Emerging African Metropolis, ed. Brennan, Burton, and Yusuf Lawi (Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 2007), 13–76.

⁵ Andrew Ivaska, Cultured States: Youth, Gender, and Modern Style in 1960s Dar es Salaam (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).

⁶ Daniel Branch, Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1963–2011 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 20; Stephen Ellis, ‘Writing Histories of Contemporary Africa’, Journal of African History 43, no. 1 (2002): 1–26.

⁷ On ujamaa socialism in its global context, see Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New York: The New Press, 2007), 191–203.

⁸ Ivaska, Cultured States; James R. Brennan, Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012); Emma Hunter, Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania: Freedom, Democracy, and Citizenship in the Era of Decolonization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Priya Lal, Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania: Between the Village and the World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

⁹ Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity: A Selection from Writings and Speeches, 1952–65 (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1967), 216.

¹⁰ Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life (London: Allen Lane, 2001), 76.

¹¹ Jonathon Glassman, War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).

¹² Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Africa, and Washington, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 69.

¹³ Timothy H. Parsons, The 1964 Army Mutinies and the Making of Modern East Africa (Connecticut: Praeger, 2003).

¹⁴ Issa G. Shivji, Pan-Africanism or Pragmatism? Lessons of the Tanganyika-Zanzibar Union (Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 2008); Ethan R. Sanders, ‘Conceiving the Tanganyika-Zanzibar Union in the Midst of the Cold War: Internal and International Factors’, African Review 41, no. 1 (2014): 35–70.

¹⁵ Ulrich van der Heyden, ‘“I will not recognise East Germany just because Bonn is stupid.” Anerkennungsdiplomatie in Tansania, 1964 bis 1965,’ in Kalter Krieg in Ostafrika: Die Beziehungen der DDR zu Sansibar und Tansania, ed. Ulrich van der Heyden and Franziska Benger (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2009), 9–30.

¹⁶ Paul Bjerk, Building a Peaceful Nation: Julius Nyerere and the Establishment of Sovereignty in Tanzania, 1960–1964 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2015), 236–49.

¹⁷ Arrigo Pallotti, ‘Post-Colonial Nation-Building and Southern African Liberation: Tanzania and the Break of Diplomatic Relations with the United Kingdom, 1965–1968’, African Historical Review 41, no. 2 (2009): 60–84.

¹⁸ Cranford Pratt, The Critical Phase in Tanzania, 1945–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 166.

¹⁹ Priya Lal, ‘Maoism in Tanzania: Material Connections and Shared Imaginaries’, in Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History, ed. Alexander C. Cook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 96–116; Jamie Monson, Africa's Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008); Alicia N. Altorfer-Ong, ‘Old Comrades and New Brothers: A Historical Re-Examination of the Sino-Zanzibari and Sino-Tanzanian Bilateral Relationships’ (PhD diss., LSE, 2014), 189–229.

²⁰ Hobden to Osborne, 23 March 1966, DO 213/123/92, United Kingdom National Archives, Kew (UKNA).

²¹ MacRae to de Burlet, 2 November 1964, DO 213/123/15^A, UKNA.

²² William Edgett Smith, Nyerere of Tanzania (London: Victor Gollancz, 1973), 153.

²³ Dawson to Scott, 1 March 1966, DO 213/103/68, UKNA.

²⁴ João M. Cabrita, Mozambique: The Tortuous Road to Democracy (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), 5–12.

²⁵ McGill to Ministry for External Affairs, Ottawa, 8 November 1965, DO 213/102/133, UKNA.

²⁶ On Mondlane’s vision for Mozambique, see Eduardo Mondlane, The Struggle for Mozambique (Baltimore: Penguin, 1969).

²⁷ Fowler to Chadwick, 4 October 1965, DO 213/17/3, UKNA.

²⁸ J. B. Thomson, Words of Passage: A Journalist Looks Back (n.p.: Xlibris, 2012), n.p.

²⁹ On China and FRELIMO see Altorfer-Ong, ‘Old Comrades’, 149–56; Stephen R. Jackson, ‘China’s Third World Policy: The Case of Angola and Mozambique’, China Quarterly, no. 142 (1997): 388–422.

³⁰ Services for the Centralisation and Coordination of Information for Mozambique (SCCIM), 4 January 1967, Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros (MNE), PAA 819, Arquivo Histórico-diplomático, Lisbon (AHD); PIDE Mozambique, 21 June 1968, PIDE, SC, SR 337/61, NT 3051, 1º pt., 488–9, Arquivo Nacional, Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (TT).

³¹ On FRELIMO’s relations with the Eastern Bloc, see Natalia Telepneva, ‘Our Sacred Duty: The Soviet Union, the Liberation Movements in the Portuguese Colonies, and the Cold War, 1961–1975’ (PhD diss., LSE, 2015).

³² Africa Division, Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MfAA), 12 December 1966, MfAA, A 18984/1, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin (PAAA).

³³ Africa Division, MfAA, 12 December 1966, MfAA, A 18984/1, PAAA.

³⁴ Foster to Stewart, 14 January 1964, FO 371/176592, UKNA.

³⁵ Fowler to Chadwick, 4 October 1965, DO 213/17/3, UKNA.

³⁶ On the United States and Portugal, see Witney W. Schneidman, Engaging Africa: Washington and the Fall of Portugal’s Colonial Empire (Lanham: University of America Press, 2004); on Britain and Portugal, see Pedro Aires Oliveira, ‘Live and Let Live: Britain and Portugal’s Imperial Endgame (1945–75)’, Portuguese Studies 29, no. 2 (2013): 186–208.

³⁷ Palliser to Bridges, 22 April 1966, UKNA, DO 213/17/8.

³⁸ José Manuel Duarte de Jesus, Eduardo Mondlane: Um homem a abater (Coimbra: Almedina, 2010), 184.

³⁹ Schneidman, Engaging Africa, 44–6.

⁴⁰ Brzezinski to Department V, MSZ, 19 May 1967, DV 1967 57/70 W-5, Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Zagraniczynch, Warsaw.

⁴¹ Walter C. Opello Jr., ‘Pluralism and Elite Conflict in an Independence Movement: FRELIMO in the 1960s’, Journal of Southern African Studies 2, no. 1 (1975): 66–82.

⁴² Burns to State Dept, 7 December 1967, RG 59, CFPF 1967–9, Box 1511, CSM TANZAN, NARA; Burns to State Dept, 15 December 1967, RG 59, CFPF 1967–9, Box 2512, POL 2 TANZAN, NARA.

⁴³ Sayaka Funada-Classen, The Origins of War in Mozambique: A History of Unity and Division, trans. Masoko Osada (Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobo, 2012), 169–77.

⁴⁴ Pickering to State Dept, 30 March 1968, RG 59, SNF 1967–9, Box 2513, POL 2 TANZAN, NARA.

⁴⁵ Funada-Classen, Origins, 251.

⁴⁶ Cabrita, Mozambique, 29–36; Telepneva, ‘Sacred Duty’, 171.

⁴⁷ Michel Cahen, ‘La “fin de l’histoire”… unique: Trajectoires des anticolonialismes au Mozambique’, Portuguese Studies Review 16, no. 1 (2008): 171–237. See also Georgi Derluguian, ‘The Social Origins of Good and Bad Governance: Re-Interpreting the 1968 Schism in FRELIMO’, in Sure Road? Nationalisms in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, ed. Eric Mourier-Genoud (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 79–101.

⁴⁸ Secretary-general for national defence, 16 August 1967, PIDE, SC, SR 337/61, NT 3051, 1º pt., 776–7, TT.

⁴⁹ Cabrita, Mozambique, 53–4; Michael G. Panzer, ‘The Pedagogy of Revolution: Youth, Generational Conflict, and Education in the Development of Mozambican Nationalism and the State, 1962–1970’, Journal of Southern African Studies 35, no. 4 (2009): 803–20; Mondlane to Houser, 5 June 1968, Herbert Shore Collection (HSC), Subgroup II, Series 2, Box 2, Oberlin College Archives, Ohio (OCA); Mondlane to Mwangira, 2 April 1968, HSC, Subgroup II, Series 6, Box 2, Microfiche 1, OCA.

⁵⁰ Burns to State Dept, 11 May 1968, RG 59, CFPF 1967–9, Box 2515, POL 13 TANZAN, NARA.

⁵¹ Mondlane, press statement, 26 May 1968, HSC, Subgroup II, Series 4, Box 1, OCA.

⁵² Müller to Africa Division, MfAA, 13 July 1968, SAPMO, DY 30/IV A 2/20/948, 23–9, Bundesarchiv, Berlin (BA).

⁵³ Mondlane to Houser, 5 June 1968, HSC, Subgroup II, Series 2, Box 2, OCA.

⁵⁴ Director, PIDE, to director-general of political affairs, MNE, 7 November 1968, MNE, PAA 569, AHD.

⁵⁵ Frederic Laurent and Nina Sutton, ‘The Assassination of Eduardo Mondlane’, in Dirty Work 2: The CIA in Africa, ed. Ellen Ray et al. (Secaucus: Lyle Stuart, 1979), 137–9.

⁵⁶ Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe (London: Frank Cass, 2005); José Manuel Duarte de Jesus, A guerra secreta de Salazar em África. Aginter Press: Uma rede internacional de contra-subversão e espionagem sediada em Lisboa (Algragide: Dom Quixote, 2012).

⁵⁷ Laurent and Sutton, ‘Assassination’, 138.

⁵⁸ Cabrita, Mozambique, 56–7; Opello, ‘Pluralism’ 76.

⁵⁹ Funada-Classen, Origins, 257.

⁶⁰ Cabrita, Mozambique, 12, 17.

⁶¹ Hart to Holmes, 6 June 1969, FCO 31/434/18, UKNA.

⁶² Military Governor of Mozambique, 25 January 1969, SCCIM/A/20–7/30, 42–3, TT.

⁶³ Burns to State Dept, 28 March 1969, RG 59, CFPF 1967–9, Box 2513, POL 2 TANZAN, NARA.

⁶⁴ Burns to State Dept, 10 May 1968, RG 59, CFPF 1967–9, Box 2515, POL 13 TANZAN, NARA.

⁶⁵ James R. Brennan, ‘Youth, the TANU Youth League, and Managed Vigilantism in Dar es Salaam, 1925–73’, in Generations Past: Youth in East African History, ed. Andrew Burton and Hélène Charton-Bigot (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 197–220; Lal, ‘Maoism’; Hart to Holmes, 6 June 1969, FCO 31/434/18, UKNA.

⁶⁶ Burns to State Dept, 28 March 1969, RG 59, CFPF 1967–9, Box 2513, POL 2 TANZAN, NARA.

⁶⁷ Müller, 5 June 1968, SAPMO, DZ 8/163, BA.

⁶⁸ Helder Martins, Porquê Sakrani? Mémorias dum medico duma guerrilha esquecido (Maputo: Editorial Terceiro Milénio, 2001), 350.

⁶⁹ Burns to State Dept, 9 and 10 May 1968, RG 59, CFPF 1967–9, Box 2515, POL 13 TANZAN, NARA.

⁷⁰ Müller, 5 June 1968, SAPMO, DZ 8/163, BA.

⁷¹ Wilson to Scott, 21 October 1968, FCO 45/174/7, UKNA.

⁷² Jesus, Eduardo Mondlane, 325.

⁷³ Wilson to Scott, 21 October 1968, FCO 45/174/7, UKNA.

⁷⁴ ‘Fracas at Frelimo Offices’, Nationalist, 10 May 1968, 1.

⁷⁵ ‘Victory is Certain – Karume’, Nationalist, 27 May 1968, 1.

⁷⁶ ‘Freedom Fighters’, Nationalist, 28 May 1968, 4.

⁷⁷ Ministerium für Staatsicherheit, 15 December 1967, MfS, HV A, no. 231, 130–45, Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatsicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR.

⁷⁸ ‘Mondlane in Nairobi Dialogue’, Nationalist, 23 November 1968, 1; ‘Mondlane Denies “Dialogue” Story’, Nationalist, 25 November 1968, 1.

⁷⁹ Hobden to Holmes, 30 November 1968, FCO 45/174/25, UKNA.

⁸⁰ Schneidman, Engaging Africa, 102–3.

⁸¹ Pickering to State Dept, 29 November 1968, RG 59, CFPF 1967–9, Box 2513, POL 2 TANZAN, NARA.

⁸² Houser to Osborne, 31 December 1968, HSC, Subgroup II, Series 6, Box 2, Microfiche 3, OCA.

⁸³ Schlegel, 5 December 1968, SAPMO, DY 30/IV A 2/20/964, 262–3, BA .

⁸⁴ Müller, 5 June 1968, SAPMO, DZ 8/163, BA; ‘Notes from Herbert Shore’s conversation with Pat Murphy, 28 June 1979’, HSC, Subgroup II, Series 6, Box 2, Microfiche 6, OCA.

⁸⁵ ‘Tanzanie-Mozambique: Dissensions au sein du FRELIMO’, [late December 1968]; ‘Tanzanie-Mozambique: Rivalités au sein du FRELIMO’, 6 January 1969, both in 370PO/B/731/PP7–5, Centre des Archives diplomatiques, Nantes.

⁸⁶ SCCIM, 16 January 1969, SCCIM/A/20–7/30, 135–6, TT .

⁸⁷ Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 174–5; Telepneva, ‘Sacred Duty’, 177–83.

⁸⁸ Cabrita, Mozambique, 58.

⁸⁹ Burns to State Dept, 15 February 1969, RG 59, CFPF 1967–9, Box 2354, POL 30 MOZ, NARA.

⁹⁰ Burns to State Dept, 13 and 15 February 1969, RG 59, CFPF 1967–9, Box 2354, POL 30 MOZ, NARA.

⁹¹ Jesus, Eduardo Mondlane, 345.

⁹² Martin, ‘Interpol’.

⁹³ Jesus, Eduardo Mondlane, 317–87; Cabrita, Mozambique, 58–62; Cahen, ‘La “fin de l’histoire”’, 211–6.

⁹⁴ Jesus, Eduardo Mondlane, 367–8.

⁹⁵ Catalão, 4 February 1969, Ministério do Ultramar, GM/GNP/RNP/160, 10º pt., AHD; Jesus, Eduardo Mondlane, 342–3. Cahen advances the alternative, if unsubstantiated, theory that Portugal actually sought a Marxist FRELIMO leadership, since this would add legitimacy to its ‘anti-communist’ war. ‘La “fin de l’histoire”’, 214.

⁹⁶ Jesus, Eduardo Mondlane, 345.

⁹⁷ Dalila Cabrita Mateus, PIDE/DGS na guerra colonial, 1961–1974 (Lisbon: Terramar, 2004), 172–3; Jesus, Eduardo Mondlane, 347; Cahen, ‘La “fin de l’histoire”’, 213n85.

⁹⁸ Victor Igreja, ‘Politics of Memory, Decentralisation and Recentralisation in Mozambique’, Journal of Southern African Studies 39, no. 2 (2013): 313–35; Cahen, ‘La “fin de l’histoire”’.

⁹⁹ Martin, ‘Interpol’.

¹⁰⁰ Laurent and Sutton, ‘Eduardo Mondlane’, 138.

¹⁰¹ Burns to State Dept, 13 February 1969, RG 59, CFPF 1967–9, Box 2354, POL 30 MOZ, NARA.

¹⁰² Cabrita, Mozambique, 81–4, 169–70. Simango’s biographer seeks to exonerate his subject, although his book has attracted strong criticism. Barnabé Lucas Ncomo, Uria Simango: um homem, uma causa (Maputo: Edições Novafrica, 2004); Cahen, ‘La “fin de l’histoire”’.

¹⁰³ Mateus, PIDE/DGS, 172.

¹⁰⁴ Vieira, Participei, 257–9.

¹⁰⁵ Martins, Porquê Sakrani?, 357. Martins later claimed that he himself had unknowingly passed the package to Simango, as requested by a Belgian missionary friend of Gwenjere. Jesus, Eduardo Mondlane, 366.

¹⁰⁶ Martins, Porquê Sakrani?, 357.

¹⁰⁷ Mondlane, Struggle for Mozambique, 132.

¹⁰⁸ Thomas H. Henriksen, Revolution and Counterrevolution: Mozambique’s War of Independence, 1964–1974 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1983); Allan Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman, Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution, 1900–1982 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983); Barry Munslow, Mozambique: The Revolution and its Origins (London: Longman, 1983).

¹⁰⁹ See the criticism in Aquino de Bragança and Jacques Delpechin, ‘From the Idealization of Frelimo to the Understanding of the Recent History of Mozambique’, African Journal of Political Economy 1, no. 1 (1986): 162–80; Derluguian, ‘Social Origins’.