Patrice Lumumba the search for liberty

Patrice …mery Lumumba (2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961) was an African anti-colonial leader and the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo after he helped to win its independence from Belgium in June 1960.

Only ten weeks later, Lumumba's government was deposed in a coup during the Congo Crisis. He was subsequently imprisoned and assassinated under controversial circumstances.

Lumumba was born in Onalua in the Katakokombe region of the Kasai province of the Belgian Congo, a member of the Tetela ethnic group.

Raised in a Catholic family as one of four male children, he was educated at a Protestant primary school, a Catholic missionary school, and finally the government post office training school, passing the one-year course with distinction.

He subsequently worked in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) and Stanleyville (now Kisangani) as a postal clerk and as a travelling beer salesman. In 1951, he married Pauline Opangu. In 1955, Lumumba became regional head of the Cercles of Stanleyville and joined the Liberal Party of Belgium, where he worked on editing and distributing party literature.

After traveling on a three-week study tour in Belgium, he was arrested in 1955 on charges of embezzlement of post office funds.

His two-year sentence was commuted to twelve months after it was confirmed by Belgian lawyer Jules Chrome that Lumumba had returned the funds, and he was released in July 1956.

After his release, he helped to found the non-tribal Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) in 1958, later becoming the organization's president. Lumumba and his team represented the MNC at the All-African People's Conference in Accra, Ghana, in December 1958. At this international conference, hosted by influential Pan-African President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Lumumba further solidified his Pan-African beliefs.

In late October 1959, Lumumba as leader of the MNC was again arrested for allegedly inciting an anti-colonial riot in Stanleyville where thirty people were killed, for which he was sentenced to six months in prison.

Not coincidentally, the trial's start date of January 18, 1960, was also the first day of a round-table conference in Brussels to finalize the future of the Congo.

Despite Lumumba's imprisonment at the time, the MNC won a convincing majority in the December local elections in the Congo. As a result of pressure from delegates who were enraged at Lumumba's imprisonment, he was released and allowed to attend the Brussels conference.

The conference culminated on January 27th with the declaration of Congolese independence and the establishment of June 30, 1960, as the independence date with national elections from May 11–25, 1960. On the 31st of May, it was confirmed that Lumumba and the MNC had won electoral victory and the right to form a government.

Lumumba and the MNC formed the first government on June 23, 1960, with 35-year-old Lumumba as Congo's first prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu as its president. In accordance with the constitution, on June 24 the new government passed a vote of confidence and was ratified by the Congolese Chamber and Senate.

Congolese independence from Belgium was finally gained on June 30, 1960. On Independence Day, in a ceremony attended by dignitaries, the foreign press, and the Belgian elite including King Baudouin, Patrice Lumumba delivered his famous independence speech[1] after being officially excluded from the event programme, despite being the elected Congolese Prime Minister.

In direct contrast to the paternalistic glorification of colonialism in the speech of King Baudouin, as well as the relatively harmless speech of President Kasa-Vubu, Lumumba's outspoken anti-colonial speech resonated with the Congolese for its inspired honesty while simultaneously humiliating and alienating the King and his entourage

Actions as Prime Minister

A few days after gaining its independence, Lumumba made the fateful decision of raising the pay of all government employees except for the army. Late on July 5, this sparked a mutiny among soldiers at the Thysville military base, which quickly spread throughout the country. The soldiers were also rebelling against their officers who were mostly Belgians. Soon the country was overrun by gangs of soldiers and all order disappeared, causing a flood of Europeans to leave the country.

The province of Katanga declared independence under MoÔse Tshombe in June 1960 with Belgian support. Despite the arrival of United Nations troops, unrest continued and Lumumba sought Soviet aid.

Deposed and arrested

In September, Prime Minister Lumumba was dismissed from government by President Joseph Kasavubu, an act of dubious legality; in retaliation, Lumumba attempted to dismiss Kasa-Vubu from the presidency, an act of even more dubious legality.

On September 14, a coup d’Ètat endorsed by the CIA and organized by Colonel Joseph Mobutu removed Lumumba from office. Lumumba was placed under informal house arrest at the prime minister's residence. UN troops were positioned around the house to protect him. Following his house arrest, Lumumba made the decision to escape.

Smuggled out of his residence at night in a visiting diplomat's car, he began a long journey towards Stanleyville, where his supporters held sway. Pursued by troops loyal to Mobutu he was finally trapped on the banks of the Sankuru River and arrested on

December 1, 1960. He was captured in Port Francqui. He appealed to local UN troops to save him. The UN refused on orders from headquarters in New York, reasoning that he had escaped from UN protection.

He was later flown to Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in handcuffs. Mobutu said Lumumba would be tried for inciting the army to rebellion and other crimes. United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjˆld made an appeal to Kasa-Vubu asking that Lumumba be treated according to due process of law. The USSR denounced Hammarskjˆld and the Western powers as responsible for Lumumba's arrest and demanded his release.

The United Nations Security Council was called into session on December 7, 1960 to consider Soviet demands that the U.N. seek Lumumba's immediate release, the immediate restoration of Lumumba as head of the Congo government, the disarming of the forces of Mobutu, and the immediate evacuation of Belgians from the Congo. Soviet Representative Valerian Zorin refused U.S. demands that he disqualify himself as Security Council President during the debate.

Hammarskjˆld, answering Soviet attacks against his Congo operations, said that if the U.N. forces were withdrawn from the Congo "I fear everything will crumble."

Following a U.N. report that Lumumba had been mistreated by his captors, his followers threatened (on December 9, 1960) to seize all Belgians and "start cutting off the heads of some of them" unless Lumumba was released within 48 hours.

The threat to the U.N. cause was intensified by the announcement of the withdrawal of their U.N. Congo contingents by Yugoslavia, the United Arab Republic, Ceylon, Indonesia, Morocco, and Guinea. The Soviet pro-Lumumba resolution was defeated on December 14, 1960 by a vote of 8-2.

On the same day, a Western resolution that would have given Hammarskjˆld increased powers to deal with the Congo situation was vetoed by the Soviet Union.

Lumumba was dispatched first on December 3, 1960 to Thysville military barracks Camp Hardy, one hundred miles from Leopoldville. After the military personnel of Camp Hardy were close to mutiny, a more secure place was sought. It was decided that Lumumba should be transferred to Katanga Province.

Death of Lumumba

Lumumba was beaten again on the flight to Elizabethville (today called Lubumbashi) on January 17, 1961. He was seized by Katangan soldiers commanded by Belgians, and driven to Villa Brouwe.

He was guarded and brutalized still further by both Belgian and Katangan troops while President Tshombe and his cabinet decided what to do with him.

That same night Lumumba was bundled into another convoy that headed into the bush. It drew up beside a large tree, where three firing squads had been assembled.

According to David Akerman, the firing squads were commanded by a Belgian, Captain Julien Gat, and another Belgian, Police Commissioner Verschurre, had overall command of the execution site. The Belgian Commission's findings were that the execution was carried out by Katanga's authorities.

Their report suggests that apart from Katangan ministers, four Belgian officers were present at the execution site, but were under the command of Katangan authorities.

Lumumba and two other comrades (Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito) from the government were lined up against the tree. President Tshombe and two other ministers were present for the executions, which took place one at a time. Lumumba's corpse was then buried nearby. The execution most likely took place on January 17, 1961 between 9:40PM and 9:43PM according to the Belgian report.

As to why Mpolo and Okito were executed, the apparent reason is that they would be possible political players in events after Lumumba's death.

Nothing was said for three weeks - though rumor spread quickly. When Lumumba's death was formally announced on Katangese radio, it was accompanied by an implausible story involving an escape and subsequent murder by enraged villagers.

Later, under cover of this yarn, the Belgians - i.e. Belgian Police Commissioner Gerard Soete and his brother - dug up Lumumba's corpse, cut it up with a hacksaw, and dissolved it in concentrated sulfuric acid. Only some teeth and a fragment of skull survived the process, kept as souvenirs. In an interview on Belgian television in 1999, Soete displayed a bullet and two teeth that he claimed he had saved from Lumumba's body.

After the announcement of Lumumba's death, street protests were organized in several European countries - in Belgrade, capital of Yugoslavia, protesters sacked the Belgian embassy and confronted the police, and in London a crowd marched from Trafalgar Square to the Belgian embassy, where a letter of protest was delivered and where protesters clashed with police.

There is much speculation over the roles that western governments had played in the prime minister's murder. Although the Belgian Commission investigating the assassination of Lumumba reached the conclusions that Belgium wanted Lumumba arrested, Belgium was not particularly concerned with Lumumba's physical well being, although informed of the danger to Lumumba's life Belgium did not take any action to avert his death, the report also specifically denied that Belgium ordered Lumumba's assassination.

Under its own 'Good Samaritan' laws, Belgium was legally culpable for failing to prevent the assassination from taking place. More importantly, and on a more formal and straightforwardly proven level, Belgium was in breach of its obligation (under U.N. Resolution 290 of 1949) to refrain from acts or threats "aimed at impairing the freedom, independence or integrity of another state."

A declassified interview with then-National Security Council minutekeeper Robert Johnson released in August 2000 from Senate intelligence committee's inquiry on covert action, revealed that President Eisenhower had said "something [to CIA chief Allen Dulles] to the effect that Lumumba should be eliminated".[8] The committee later found that while the CIA had conspired to kill Lumumba, it was not involved in the murder.[8]

US and Belgian plots

Interestingly the same report mentions that there had previously been U.S. and Belgian plots to kill Lumumba. Obviously either they failed or they were abandoned. Among them was a CIA-sponsored attempt to poison him, which may have come on orders from U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower.[9] CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb was a key person in this by devising a poison resembling toothpaste. However, the plan is said to have failed because the local CIA Station Chief, Larry Devlin, had a conscience issue and did not go forward.

The Belgian Commission's 2001 report led to an official apology. In February of 2002, the Belgian government apologized 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." In July of the same year documents released by the United States government revealed that while the CIA had been kept informed of Belgium's plans, it had no direct role in Lumumba's eventual death.

However, this same disclosure showed that US perception at the time was that Lumumba was a Communist.[15] Eisenhower's reported call, at a meeting of his national security advisers, for Lumumba's elimination must have been brought on by this perception. Both Belgium and the United States were clearly influenced in their unfavourable stance towards Lumumba by the Cold War. He seemed to gravitate around the Soviet Union.

Arguably that was because that was the only place he could find support in his country's effort to rid itself of colonial rule, and not because he was a communist[16] (ironically, the United States was the first country Lumumba requested help from[17] - in exactly the same way that Ho Chi Minh had first sought US support, was turned down, and thus forced to look to the Communist states for help [18]). Lumumba, for his part, not only denied being a Communist, but said he found colonialism and Communism to be equally deplorable, and professed his personal preference for neutrality between the East and West.[19]

However, the United States were very wary of him becoming too close to the Soviets, and influenced by them. On the other hand Belgium obviously had other additional, more pragmatic, reasons for opposing him. Among others they apparently felt that the Belgian interests in the Congo were not served by his government. Additionally, the Belgian head of state - i.e. the King - seemed to have an even more hostile stance than his government; he had a different attitude than the ministers of Foreign Affairs and African Affairs, who were handling the Congo case.

In the words of the Belgian there was a conflict between the King and his government, which led to him taking individual actions and withholding important information from his ministers.

Patrice Lumumba continues to serve as an inspirational figure in contemporary Congolese politics. In the 2006 elections, multiple political parties claim to be motivated by the teachings of Lumumba.

This includes the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), the political party initiated by the incumbent President Joseph Kabila.[20] Antoine Gizenga, who served as Lumumba's Deputy Prime Minister in the post-independence period, was a 2006 Presidential candidate under the Unified Lumumbist Party (Parti Lumumbiste UnifiÈ (PALU))[21] and was named prime minister at the end of the year. Other political parties that directly utilize his name include the Mouvement National Congolais-Lumumba (MNC-L) and the Mouvement Lumumbiste (MLP).

Lumumba's family and politics

Patrice Lumumba's family is actively involved in contemporary Congolese politics. Patrice Lumumba was married and had five children; FranÁois was the eldest followed by Patrice junior, Julienne, Roland and Guy-Patrice Lumumba.

FranÁois Lumumba was 10 years old when Patrice died. Before his imprisonment, Patrice arranged for his wife and children to move into exile in Egypt. FranÁois spent the rest of his childhood there, then went to Hungary for education (he holds a doctorate in political economics).

He returned to Congo in the 1990s as rebellion against Mobutu began. Since 1992, FranÁois Lumumba has been the leader of the Mouvement National Congolais Lumumba (MNC-L), his father's original political party founded in 1958.

Lumumba's youngest son, Patrice-Guy, born six months after his father's death, was a presidential candidate in the 2006 elections, running independently[23] but receiving less than 1% of the vote.

On the DVD of the film Lumumba, the special features section includes an interview with Julienne in which she speaks of how her father knew that he was going to die for the cause, that he spoke of it frequently but did not anticipate the rule of Mobutu. She says that Lumumba had faith that his message would live on after his death.

Tributes

• In 1966 Patrice Lumumba's image was rehabilitated by the Mobutu regime and he was proclaimed a national hero and martyr in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

By a presidential decree, the Brouwez House, site of Lumumba's brutal torture on the night of his murder, became a place of pilgrimage in the Congo.[24] Furthermore, plans were made to erect a spire in Lumumba's memory (which was never completed), and the anniversary of Lumumba's death was commemorated every year, at least until 1974, upon the unveiling of Mobutism. Also, Brouwez House was later neglected and allowed to fall into disrepair.

• A major transportation artery in Kinshasa, the Lumumba Boulevard, is named in his honor. The boulevard goes past an interchange with a giant tower - known as Tour de l'Echangeur (the main landmark of Kinshasa) in honor of the martyr prime minister. On the tower's plaza, the Kabila regime erected a tall statue of Lumumba with a raised hand, greeting people coming from Kinshasa International Airport.

• In Bamako, Mali, one of the most popular places is Lumumba Square, a large plaza with a life-size statue of Lumumba, a park with fountains, and a flag display. Around square Lumumba are various businesses, embassies and Bamako's largest bank.

• Streets were also named after him in Ghana, Budapest, Hungary (between 1961 and 1990); Belgrade, Serbia; Bata and Malabo, Equatorial Guinea; Tehran, Iran; Algiers, Algeria (Rue Patrice Lumumba); Santiago de Cuba, Cuba (since 1960, formerly Avenida de BÈlgica); _, Poland; Kiev, Ukraine; Rabat, Morocco; Maputo, Mozambique; Leipzig, Germany; Lusaka, Zambia ("Lumumba Street").

• The Peoples' Friendship University of the USSR was renamed "Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University" in 1961, but it was later renamed "The Peoples' Friendship University of Russia" in the post-Soviet landscape in 1992.[27]

• In Belgrade, Serbia, "The Patris Lumumba Hall of Residence" at Belgrade University was built in 1961 and continues to carry Lumumba's name.

• In Kampala, Uganda, "Lumumba Hall" of Residence at Makerere University continues to carry his name.

• "Lumumba" is a popular choice for children's names throughout Africa.