A bomb inside a parcel bearing stamps from Moscow tragically ended Eduardo Mondlane’s life in 1969. He was forty-nine. After being educated in Portugal and the United States, and teaching at Syracuse University, he was living with his American wife and their children in a suburb of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital. Mozambique was still a colony of Portugal, and Mondlane, immensely likable, tall, imposing, and with a formidable presence, was the leader of Frente de Liberação de Mozambique (frelimo), a Soviet-backed liberation movement that had training bases in Tanzania and guerillas in the field against the decaying Portuguese dictatorship.
The Soviet stamps were false flags. The Tanzanian police have never made arrests, but they determined that the bomb was constructed in Dar es Salaam (two others were found) and inserted into Mondlane’s mailbag by a frelimo worker. Apartheid South Africa, China, the Soviet Union, and Portugal might...