The Death and Life of Patrice Lumumba

“My beloved wife, I’m writing these words not knowing whether they will reach you, when they will reach you, and whether I shall still be alive when you read them. Dead or alive, free or imprisoned by the colonialists, it’s not I who matter: it’s the Congo. It’s the poor people whose independence has been turned into a cage.”

So wrote Patrice Lumumba from his prison cell in December of 1960. Only a few months earlier, Belgium had announced an end to colonial rule over what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Lumumba became the country’s first democratically-elected prime minister. But his days were numbered. Within a year, this inspiring mind would be dead, assassinated by his political rivals in direct collaboration with Belgium and the United States.

---

Patrice Lumumba was born Élias Okit'Asombo on July 2, 1925, in Katakokombe, Belgian Congo. His parents were farmers, and he worked a variety of jobs - including mail carrier and beer salesman - before entering politics. After a year in prison, during which he was tortured, Lumumba helped found the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC), the only party to advocate unity across ethnic and regional lines post-independence. Lumumba represented the MNC at the All-African People’s Conference in December, 1958, where he met with Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah.  

Buoyed by the colonial machinations of the Berlin Conference, King Leopold II of Belgium created his own colony, the Congo Free State, in 1885. Subject to forced labor (particularly for the collection of natural rubber), famine, disease, and systematic terror, as many as fifteen million Congolese died over the thirteen years of Leopold’s rule.

---

Pressured to end the mass murders, Belgium’s government took over colonial authority and creating the Belgian Congo in 1908. By 1950, the colony had a wage labor working class twice the size of any other colony in Africa. An apartheid state in all but name, Belgian troops frequently put down popular uprisings.

But by mid-century, the colonial project in Africa was starting to teeter. In 1958, The Gold Coast (Later Ghana) achieved independence from Britain. In all, sixteen African nations would win independence in 1960, and thirty others would begin armed struggle for independence (many aided by Cuban soldiers). Most colonial powers chose to either crush independence movements with force, or cut their losses and put into place a malleable post-colonial government.

Official liberation for the Congo was achieved on June 30, 1960, when the Republic of Congo-Léopoldville was declared under prime minister Patrice Lumumba and president Joseph Kasa-Vubu.

As part of the independence day formalities, the Belgium king Baudouin flew to the Congo and gave a speech praising colonialism and the rule of mass-murderer Leopold II. But the Belgian king was no longer in a position to lecture his former colonial subjects. Though not part of the official program, Lumumba stood up and spoke in response.

“We have known harassing work, exacted in exchange for salaries which did not permit us to eat enough to drive away hunger, to clothe ourselves, or to house ourselves decently, or to raise our children as creatures dear to us.... We have known ironies, insults, blows that we endured morning, noon and night, because we are Negroes.... We have seen our lands seized in the name of allegedly legal laws, which in fact recognized only that might is right.... We will never forget the massacres where so many perished, the cells into which those who refused to submit to a regime of oppression and exploitation were thrown.”

Baudouin was furious. It would become increasingly clear that Lumumba could not be controlled like other figures associated with the Pan-African movement, including the likes of Kwame Nkrumah. He was quickly accused of being a communist. The massive Congolese working class was too big a threat to be led by the likes of Lumumba.

---

Events moved at a breakneck pace and soon spiraled out of control. From the beginning, Belgium planned to divide and dismember the Congo post-independence so as to maintain control over economically lucrative area. Acting on orders from the Belgian government and aided by Belgian troops, Moise Tshombe, President of the mineral-rich Katanga Province, led a push for secession from the rest of the Congo. Lumumba resisted the move, refusing to allow Belgian control over the country’s resources.

Elsewhere, black troops mutinied against Belgian officers, and in a move that violated the week-old independence declaration, the Belgian army invaded with the purported aim of protecting its nationals (not unlike the United States army during the invasion of Grenada). With the army in open revolt, the entire country began to break down. 

Lumumba turned to the Eisenhower and United States - home of, in his own words, "democracy and freedom - for support, but was denied aid. The Soviet Union, however, did not withhold support. in the eyes of his detractors, here was final proof of Lumumba's ties to Moscow. 

In addition, the embattled prime minister requested and received the presence of an armed UN peacekeeping force. But these troops, essentially under the command of the European powers, would prove less than helpful.

---

Soon, Belgium officials in the Congo were advised by superiors at home that “the main aim to pursue in the interests of the Congo, Katanga and Belgium is clearly Lumumba’s definitive elimination.” On August 18, 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower told CIA chief Allen Dulles that Lumumba had to be “eliminated” in order to keep the Congo from becoming “another Cuba.” Allen Dulles referred to Lumumba as a “mad dog.” The original plan was assassination via a tube of poisoned toothpaste.

On September 14, Lumumba’s former secretary Joseph Mobutu, acting with CIA backing, placed Lumumba under house arrest in Leopoldo. Two days later, he and the Armee Nationale Congolaise carried out a full coup, suspending both parliament and the constitution.

In the end, Lumumba was recaptured and turned over to Moises Tshombe.  Everyone involved understood the handover as a death sentence.

On November 22, 1960, the UN General Assembly voted to recognize the delegation of Joseph Mobutu, refusing to sit delegates loyal to the democratically-elected Lumumba. The UN, led by general secretary Dag Hammarskjold, had supported the removal of Lumumba all along, refusing to allow loyal Congolese soldiers use of its airplanes for transport, blocking Soviet planes supporting Lumumba from using airfields, and supplying Mobutu with helicopters to hunt down Lumumba after his initial escape from house arrest. 

---

On the night of January 17, 1961, Lumumba and two of his supporters, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, were taken from a prison cell, driven into the forest, stood in front of a tree, and executed one-by-one by a Belgian army captain.

Lumumba’s body was buried, but the Belgians - led by the commander of the Katangan police force, Gerard Soete - later returned to cut it into pieces and dissolve it in acid. Recalling the butchery, Soete would later say, “We did things an animal wouldn't do.”

Lumumba’s teeth, along with the bullets removed from his body, were kept as souvenirs.

---

Patrice Lumumba was not a socialist. However, he stands out in the long line of Pan-African leaders for his commitment to a unified Congo post-independence (one not split along ethnic or tribal lines), and his refusal to allow Western capital to control his country's natural resources - particularly cobalt (jet engines) and uranium (atomic weapons). 

Today, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is one of the poorest countries in the world. The average life expectancy is a startling forty-six years. Out of every one thousand births, 195 children will not live past the age of five. 

Caged in Thysville (current day Mbanza-Ngungu) and awaiting execution, Lumumba wrote frequent letters to his wife. In these pages, the thirty-five-year-old shared some of his final dreams for the future.

“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.”