Mondlane, Eduardo Chivambo

Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane was born in the region of Gaza, in southern Mozambique, in 1920. His family, with a prominent lineage, was polygamous and animist. Why was he named Chivambo? This name was given to him by the magicians because they believed that, in this baby, the great chief Chivambo Mondlane was reborn. Eduardo himself commented: “My parents belonged to old Africa without real contact with the fashions of the Western world; they did not know Christianity, they could neither read nor write; they venerated and worshiped the ancestors… We lived off the cultivation of small fields, cattle breeding, and hunting. My childhood was spent in the pastures with many shepherds who were my age.” The life of the shepherds had its rules and hierarchies. An acute sense of responsibility revealed to the boys very early on the ineptitude of the brutalizing colonial domination.