(2 of 2)
PIDE's Death List. Now Frelimo faces another severe internal struggle to choose Mondlane's successor. The leading contenders are Rev. Uria Simango, Mondlane's bearded vice president, and Marcelino dos Santos, his external affairs minister. Simango leans toward Peking, dos Santos toward Moscow, and a prolonged struggle between them could damage Frelimo severely. Nothing, of course, would please Portugal (and PIDE) more, and some Frelimo spokesmen believe that PIDE is behind a plot to wipe out the front's leadership. Certainly, Frelimo leaders have an undisputed penchant for dying of unnatural causes. Only six weeks ago, the deputy chief of Frelimo's armed forces in Mozambique was shot dead under mysterious circumstances, and the murder two years before of a close Mondlane associate has never been solved. Simango himself is said to be on PIDE's death list.
In Lisbon, the controlled Portuguese press blamed Mondlane's murder on the "extreme left-wing faction," but skeptics doubted that version. A source close to Premier Marcello Caetano's government made no secret of his feeling that Mondlane was "a moderate, a man we could eventually talk to, and his disappearance is a loss." In black Africa, the press hailed Mondlane as an outstanding liberation leader, and Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere said that "the best way of crying for him is to increase our efforts for the liberation of Africa." As far as Frelimo goes, at any rate, those efforts have been badly damaged by Mondlane's murder.