Some regard Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane (1920-1969) as the father of Mozambican independence. The forth of 16 sons of a chieftain of the Bantu-speaking Tsonga tribe, Mondlane was born in Portuguese East Africa in 1920. He worked as a shepheard until the age of 12 before enrolling in a Swiss-Presbyterian school. After gradution, Mondlane attended Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg but was expelled from South Africa after only a year in 1949 following the rise of the Apartheid government. Mondlane then left for the University of Lisbon, forming the first Mozambican student union. He withdrew, again after only a year, due to the ill-treatment Africans suffered in Portugal. In 1951, at age 31, Mondlane enrolled at Oberlin College, starting as a junior, and in 1953 he obtained a degree in anthropology and sociology. He continued his studies at Case-Western Reserve University .

In 1962, Mondlane was elected president of the newly formed Mozambican Liberation Front (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique or FRELIMO), which was comprised of elements from smaller nationalist groups. In 1963, he settled FRELIMO headquarters outside of Mozambique in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. Supported both by the West and the USSR, FRELIMO began a guerilla war in 1964 to obtain Mozambique's independence from Portugal. In 1969, a bomb planted underneath Mondlane's office chair at FRELIMO headquarters detonated, killing him.

However, by the early 1970s, FRELIMO's 7,000-strong guerilla force had wrested control of much of the central and northern parts of the country from the Portuguese authorities and was engaging a Portuguese force of approximately 60,000 men. In 1975, Portugal and FRELIMO negotiated Mozambique's independence, which came into effect in June of that year. After this, a Marxist one-party state formed in the capital, Maputo, following a coup d'état. This situation rapidly degraded and the country sank into a civil war that ended only in 1992.

Mondlane's death was mourned at a state funeral in 1969 which was officiated by his Oberlin classmate and friend the Reverend Edward Hawley, who said during the ceremonies that Mondlane "...laid down his life for the truth that man was made for dignity and self-determination."

In 1975, the Universidade Lourenço Marques, given the colonial name of the capital Lourenço Marques, was renamed Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, or Eduardo Mondlane University. It is still located in the capital, (now called Maputo).