Janet Mondlane

Janet Rae Johnson Mondlane and her husband, Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane were the founders of Frelimo and helped organize the liberation of Mozambique from the Portuguese colonialists.

Janet was born in 1935 in Illinois, and was raised in a middle-upper class American family. In 1951 at the age of 17, she attended a church camp in Geneva, Wisconsin where she met Eduardo Mondlane, who was giving a speech about the future of Africa. In 1956, five years later, they married after she received her B.A. and he his M.A. At the time of their marriage, Janet was 22 and Eduardo was 36. They later had three children, Eduardo, Jr., Chude, and Nyeleti.

In 1963 Janet and Eduardo moved with their family to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in order to organize the liberation factions fighting the Portuguese in Mozambique. Together they helped form Frelimo, and Janet was the director of the Mozambique Institute, the nonmilitary branch of Frelimo. The Institute organized health care and secondary education and raised funds for scholarships abroad for Mozambicans.

After independence in 1975 she held positions within the Mozambican government, and was general secretary of the National AIDS council from 2000 to 2003. She established the Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane Foundation in 1996.

In 2011 she received an honorary doctorate in Education Sciences from Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, Mozambique.