Patrice Lumumba is Coldheartedly Executed – Part 2

Patrice Lumumba was sentenced to six months in prison. The trial’s start date of 18 January 1960 was the first day of the Congolese Round Table Conference in Brussels, intended to make a plan for the future of the Congo.

Despite Lumumba’s imprisonment, the Movement National Congolais (MNC) won a convincing majority in the December local elections in the Congo. As a result of strong pressure from delegates upset by Lumumba’s trial, he was released and allowed to attend the Brussels conference.

When he was released from detention in time to attend the Round Table Conference in Brussels which paved the way for Congo’s general elections, he became an effective speaker when compared to other Congolese leaders and this helped his campaigning. After the May 1960 general elections, Congo achieved independence on 30 June 1960 with Lumumba as the leader of the largest single party. He was selected to become the Congo’s first Prime Minister and his political rival, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, became President of the Congo.

The resulting 37-strong Lumumba government was very diverse, with its members coming from different classes, different tribes, and holding varied political beliefs. Though many had questionable loyalties to Lumumba, most did not openly contradict him out of political considerations or fear of reprisal.

As the Prime Minister, Lumumba faced sudden emergencies. The Congolese elite feared Lumumba’s notion of nationalism and participatory democracy and thus they started revolting against him. Shortly after Congolese independence in June 1960, a mutiny broke out in the army. The revolt of the army and the secession of the provinces of Katanga and Southern Kasai, marked the beginning of the Congo Crisis.

Lumumba sent Congolese troops to Southern Kasai province in an attempt to restore the situation, but the poorly trained soldiers killed thousands of Congolese civilians. Lumumba appealed to the United States and the United Nations (UN) for help to suppress the Belgian-supported Katangese secessionists led by Moïse Tshombe.

He then accused Belgium and the UN for not helping to restore order and unity in Congo. However, both refused to intervene, due to suspicions among the Western world that Lumumba secretly held pro-Communist views. The United Nations, through Secretary General Dag Hammerskjöld, blamed Lumumba for the massacre of unarmed civilians.

It was believed that some elements of the Congolese elite conspired with foreign states, specifically the US administration and the CIA, to get rid of Lumumba. When Lumumba asked for military help from the Soviet Union against the secessionist provinces of Southern Kasai and Katanga, President Kasa-Vubu dismissed him from office on 5 September 1960.

The suspicions about Lumumba harbouring pro-Communist views deepened when he turned to the Soviet Union for assistance, which the CIA described as a “classic communist takeover”. This led to growing differences with President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and his Chief-of-Staff, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu (later named Mobutu Sese Seko), as well as with the United States and Belgium, who opposed the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

This was the beginning of the end of the political life of Patrice Lumumba. The Congolese National Assembly disagreed with the decision of President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and ordered Lumumba back in power as Prime Minister. This, however, did not happen, since a faction of the Congolese army, under Colonel Mobutu Sese Seko, took over the government instead and put Lumumba under the house arrest under the protection of Ghanaian troops of the UN force.

Lumumba managed to get out of house arrest in Léopoldville (Kinshasa) and attempted to leave for Stanleyville. However, he was arrested by an army patrol and held prisoner in a military camp at Thysville. From the military camp, Lumumba was transferred to Elisabethville, in Katanga, on 17 January 1961.

Despite the presence of United Nations troops, Lumumba was picked up by a small group led by Katanga’s Interior Minister, Godefroid Munongo, to a nearby Brouwez House, where he was assassinated.

In a letter to his wife before his death, Lumumba wrote, “Without dignity there is no freedom, without justice there s no dignity, and without independence there are no free men. Cruelty, insults and torture can never force me to ask for mercy, because I prefer to die with head high, with indestructible faith and profound belief in the destiny f our country than to live in humility and renounce the principles which are sacred to me.”

Concluding the letter, Lumumba maintained that “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. It will be the history which will be taught in the countries which have won freedom from colonialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history and in both north and south it will be a history of glory and dignity.”

Castro Khwela
Good evening fellow Compatriots!