Patrice Émery Lumumba

The day will come when history will speak. But it will not be the history which will be taught in Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations…Africa will write its own history and in both north and south it will be a history of glory and dignity

To this day I am still brought almost to tears when I think about the tragedy of Patrice Lumumba and Congo. Lumumba was a Congolese independence leader. He served as the first democratically elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1960. He was assassinated in 1961 by a Katangan firing squad that was aided by Belgian and US military support. His assassination was unlike other African assassinations in its brutality. Lumumba was beaten, tortured and then killed by a firing squad. Thereafter, his body was hacked, dismembered, burned and then dissolved in sulphuric acid to deny him a proper burial.

From prime minister to execution

Ideologically, Lumumba was an African nationalist and Pan-Africanist. He described himself as “a revolutionary [who] demands the abolition of the colonial regime.” Lumumba was unflinching in his scathing criticisms of post colonial legacies. At Congo’s independence day ceremony, Belgium’s King Baudouin gave a speech praising the developments of colonialism. King Baudouin glorified the “genius” of his great-granduncle, King Leopold II — the same man responsible for killing 11 million Congolese. Lumumba, who was not scheduled to speak, gave an impromptu speech reminding the Belgians that Congo’s independence was ‘filled with tears, fire and blood:’

…For this independence of the Congo, although being proclaimed today by agreement with Belgium, an amicable country, with which we are on equal terms, no Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it was by fighting that it has been won, a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for which we gave our strength and our blood. We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force…

In todays speak, Lumumba did not give a fuck. Many commentators in the West saw his speeches as a call to arms. He called for a more unified Africa and demanded that Congolese people be paid wages that were ‘fitting of their dignity’ and ‘worthy’ of their labor. Moreover, and perhaps most dangerously, he called for Congo to be paid fairly for her resources. Congo has almost every natural resource you can think of. Her rubber powered the global industrial revolution. Her uranium ore is the richest in the world. Congo’s uranium was used to manufacture the first atomic weapons - the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her cobalt was needed for jet engines.

When both the United Nations and the United States refused to help Lumumba’s government suppress the Belgian-supported Katangan secessionists, Lumumba turned to the Soviet Union for support. His decision to turn to the Soviet Union frightened the West, especially the United States. The Soviet Union was increasingly showing how advanced its nuclear program was with regular nuclear weapons tests. The US feared that closer relations between Congo and the Soviet Union would give the Soviet Union access to Congo’s uranium.

Foreign involvement in Lumumba’s assassination

In early 1961, Belgium and the US government - on the direct orders of President Eisenhower - ordered the execution of Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba’s assassination has been called ‘the most important assassination of the 20th century.’ The assassination showed the extend that Western powers are willing to go to keep access to African resources. In February 2002, Belgium issued a formal, 1000+ page apology to the Congolese people, admitting “an irrefutable portion of responsibility in the events that led to the death of Lumumba.” In many Belgian reports, Belgium has cited the US’s involvement in the assassination, however, to this day the US refuses to acknowledge wrongdoing or issue an apology. After Lumumba’s assassination, the Western favorable dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, was installed into power and supported by foreign aid from Belgium, France and the US for over 3 decades.

Lumumba’s legacy

Coming less than seven months after independence, Lumumba’s assassination was a shattering blow to the hopes of millions of Congolese for growth, freedom and material prosperity. Lumumba was Congo’s chance to begin to rebuild herself after centuries of exploitation. When I think about Congo, I am reminded of a poem by Maya Angelou, Still I Rise. Part of it reads:

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

To this day Lumumba remains a martyr of African nationalism and pan African unity. His assassination was a chilling example of the outcomes of speaking against the truths of post colonialism. His narrative complicates commonly held assumptions about African politics. As historian Jason Hickel put it;

In the Western imagination, Africa is stereotyped as a continent plagued by corrupt dictators, with the supposition being that Africans are perhaps too ‘primitive’ to appreciate the virtues of Western-style democracy. But the truth is that ever since the end of colonialism, Africans have been actively prevented from establishing democracies. The legacy of strongman rule in Africa is a Western invention, not an indigenous proclivity. Western powers have thwarted countless attempts at real independence, which casts a rather ironic light on the West’s historical image as a beacon of democracy and popular sovereignty.