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September 22, 1998
RELEASE ON RECEIPT
Oberlin
Conference to Focus on Slain "Father of Mozambique
Independence" & Country's Future
Media
Contact: Betty
Gabrielli
Biographical information about Eduardo Mondlane
For more information, contact Conference Coodinator Albert McQueen at 440/774-1334.
Oberlin College alumnus Eduardo C. Mondlane, the father of Mozambique independence who was assassinated in Tangyanika in 1969, will be honored next month at a two-day conference on the Oberlin campus.
Leonardo Simao, minister of foreign affairs and cooperation for the Republic of Mozambique, will give the keynote ad-dress. Some of the nation's leading experts on Mozambique will take part in the conference, which will begin Friday, Oct. 2 with a private reception and banquet.
Titled "The Independence Struggle and Rebuilding Mozambique: Honoring Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane '53," the con-ference will focus not only on Mondlane but also on the fu-ture of the East African country, which held its first multiparty election in 1994.
Due to the devastation of a 17-year civil war that ended in 1992, and to the El Niño-related drought during the war's last year that left 5 million of 16 million inhabitants in need of food and medicine, Mozambique was said to have the highest "misery index" in the world.
The impetus for the Oberlin conference was the wish of many friends and classmates to commemorate the life and work of Mondlane, a scholar, educator, and diplomat as well as the founder and first president of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO). He also was the author of The Struggle For Mozambique (Zed Press: 1983).
"Eduardo was dedicated to the cause of freedom for his own country, and he was, in every sense, a citizen of the world," said George Simpson, Mondlane's Oberlin mentor and anthropology professor. "In his death, men everywhere who believe in and who fight for political and intellectual freedom suffered a grievous loss."
The October gathering will bring Janet Mondlane, the honoree's wife, and the three Mondlane children to Oberlin as well as such distinguished scholars as the discussion moderators Prexy Nesbitt of Chicago's Francis W. Parker School and Sonia Kruks, Oberlin Robert S. Danforth Professor of Politics.
Nesbitt has worked with the Mozambique Institute and was awarded the Order of Friendship and Peace by the Mozambique parliament. Prof. Kruks, who served on the faculty of the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique, teaches courses on political theory , feminist political thought, and theories of social power at Oberlin.
The sub-topics to be explored Saturday afternoon include "What is to be learned? The Rise and Fall of Mozambican Socialism"; "Can Mozambique Reinvent Itself? Challenges of National Development in the 1990s"; "On Strengthening Moral and Community Values and Being a Beacon of Hope for Mozambique's Living in Dire Poverty."
Mozambique was a colony of Portugal until 1975, when an 11-year war of independence ended with the establishment of an independent, Marxist government. But a 17-year civil war started soon after independence, with an internal military uprising that was supported by some foreign governments.
The civil war affected Mozambicans severely, especially in rural areas. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Over a million people fled the country, especially to Malawi, and more than a million others were displaced within Mozambique.
Many rural people migrated to the cities, especially along the coast where the government maintained control. The country went into severe economic depression. Agriculture was disrupted, so the country could not feed itself. By the late 1980s, Mozambique had one of the lowest per-capita caloric intakes in the world.
Even when relief food eventually flowed in after the El Nino-induced famine 1992, Mozambique's war-ravaged transportation system prevented efficient distribution of the food, and internal politics interfered with relief work.
