Leader of the Congolese National Movement, Patrice Lumumba, is welcomed at Brussels Airport on January 27, 1960, before attending a conference. Photo/AFP
Patrice Lumumba’s final letter, written to his wife Pauline just before his death in Jan 17, 1961, reads like a speech — it is addressed to “my dear companion,” and contains rousing words that can excite even the most subdued of crowds, especially if wielded by a skilled orator: “We are not alone. Africa, Asia, and free and liberated people from every corner of the world will always be found at the side of the Congolese. They will not abandon the light until the day comes when there are no more colonisers and their mercenaries in our country... for without dignity there is no liberty, without justice there is no dignity, and without independence there are no free men.”
Conspicuously absent, however, is the sentimentality that one would expect from a man writing to his wife, certain that he shall not see her again — there are no pledges of undying love, no glimmers of matrimonial intimacy, no reminisces of a life together.
The letter ends not in a “loving you forever” or “yours truly,” but in “long live the Congo! Long live Africa!”
This is perhaps testament to the kind of man Patrice Lumumba was —singular and focused in his mission, and stoic in the face of death.
The legacy of African nationalist leader in the 50 years since his death has become larger-than-life: Countless streets, statues and buildings have been named in his honour; in 2003, the BBC reported that naming your child “Lumumba” in Africa was likely to give them a head start in life, apparently because people would sit up and listen, as they would to a Nkrumah, Nyerere, Selassie or Sankara.
Patrice Emery Lumumba was born in Onalua in Kasai province, Belgian Congo, one of four sons.
He was a member of the small Batetela tribe, a fact that was to become significant in his later political life.
His two principal rivals, Moise Tshombe, who led the breakaway of the Katanga province, and Joseph Kasavubu, who later became the nation’s president, both came from large, powerful ethnic groups from which they derived their major support, giving their political movements a regional character.
In contrast, Lumumba’s movement emphasised its all-Congolese nature.
After attending a Protestant mission school, Lumumba went to work in Kindu-Port-Empain, where he became active in the club of the évolués, or educated Africans.
He began to write essays and poems for Congolese journals.
He moved to Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) to become a postal clerk and went on to become an accountant in the post office in Stanleyville (now Kisangani). There he continued to contribute to the Congolese press.
In 1956 Lumumba was invited with others to make a study tour of Belgium hosted by the Minister of Colonies.
On his return he was arrested on a charge of embezzlement from the post office.
He was convicted and sentenced one year later, after various reductions, to 12 months’ imprisonment and a fine.
He was later released as a result of pressure from delegates of his Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) party in the run-up to independence elections, and proclaimed prime minister when MNC won the elections, with Joseph Kasavubu as the first president of independent Congo.
Independence Day was celebrated on June 30, 1960 in a ceremony attended by many dignitaries including Belgium’s King Baudouin and the foreign press.
Patrice Lumumba delivered his now famous independence speech after being officially excluded from the event programme, despite being the new prime minister.
The King’s speech contained no apologies for the colonial system, but was instead intended as a vindication of it.
This was considered provocation by Lumumba — who responded by reminding the audience that the independence of the Congo was not granted magnanimously by Belgium.
In contrast to the relatively harmless speech of President Kasavubu, Lumumba’s reference to the suffering of the Congolese under Belgian colonialism stirred the crowd while simultaneously humiliating and alienating the King and his entourage.
The Guardian UK reported on Friday July 1, 1960, that “at the ceremony…when the new republic was formally proclaimed today, the Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, made such a pugnacious speech attacking the colonial regime of the Belgians that King Baudouin nearly decided to end his own part in the independence ceremonies then and there and take his plane back to Belgium.”
The nascent state would soon plunge into anarchy, however.
A few days after independence, some units of the army mutinied largely because of objections to their Belgian commander.
In the confusion, the mineral-rich province of Katanga proclaimed secession.
Belgium sent in troops ostensibly to protect Belgian nationals in the disorder. The troops, however, sustained the secessionist regime of Moise Tshombe and protected Belgium’s mining interests there.
The Congo appealed to the United Nations to expel the Belgians and help them restore internal order.
The Belgian troops did not evacuate, and the Katanga secession continued. Since the United Nations forces refused to help suppress the Katangese revolt, Lumumba appealed to the Soviet Union for planes to assist in transporting his troops to Katanga.
Cold War
His moves alarmed many; in the context of the Cold War, he was seen as a “communist” particularly by the Western powers and the supporters of President Kasavubu.
The American Central Intelligence Agency drew up assassination plans of its own, and US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan discussed the need to get rid of Lumumba.
Belgian industrialists and the Belgian government were also both separately backing anti-Lumumba forces.
The full story of this sordid imperial subterfuge is laid out in The Assassination of Lumumba by Belgian author Ludo De Witte.
On September 5, the same year, President Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba. Lumumba, in turn, tried to sack Kasavubu creating a power stalemate.
There were thus two groups now claiming to be the legal central government.
In the ensuing vacuum, power was seized by the Congolese army leader Colonel Joseph Mobutu (president of Zaire as Mobutu Sese Seko) on September 14, who later reached a working agreement with Kasavubu.
After escaping house arrest, Lumumba was later captured by forces loyal to Mobutu and transferred to Katanga.
He was forcibly restrained on the flight to Elizabethville, now Lubumbashi, on January 17, 1961.
Later that night, after being beaten and tortured, Lumumba was executed by firing squad led by Belgian officers.
It reported that Tshombe and two of his ministers were present with four Belgian officers under the command of Katangan authorities.
Lumumba and two other government officials, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, were lined up against a tree and shot one at a time.
The execution took place on January 17, 1961 between 9.40 pm and 9.43 pm according to Belgian reports.
Lumumba’s body was buried nearby, then exhumed by the Belgian officers, hacked into pieces and dissolved in sulphuric acid.
Apology
In February 2002, the Belgian government apologised to the Congolese people, and admitted to a “moral responsibility” and “an irrefutable portion of responsibility in the events that led to the death of Lumumba.”
Who knows what Lumumba would have become, had he lived?
He leaned toward socialism and, when spurned by the West, turned to the Soviets for military support.
Perhaps he would have degenerated into corruption and megalomania like so many other leaders who began their public careers close to the people, but then drift away.
As it was, Lumumba, only 36 when he was killed, became a symbol of Pan-Africanism and Third World political hope.
In a bizarre twist of irony, Mobutu officially “rehabilitated” Lumumba in 1966, which meant that, instead of being condemned or ignored, the memory of the martyred prime minister was now woven into and immortalised in the national mythology.
Laurent Kabila, who overthrew Mobutu in 1997, also used Lumumba as a symbol of liberation.
American investigative journalist Christian Parenti, writing in 2008 in the Chicago magazine In These Times, talks of a politico-religious movement in Central Congo that believes in Lumumba is God — Nzambe Lumumba, they call him, and believe he can heal the sick.
“In the Congo, as anywhere else, ideas and political symbols change with the times,” writes Parenti. “And so it seems to be the case for Patrice Lumumba. Once dead, the memory of Lumumba is erased, then revived to prop up a dictator, then to legitimise the rebel who overthrew that dictator and then, out in the jungles along the river, an imaginary Lumumba cures the sick and promises to come back to life.”
