Congolese remember Lumumba

By Kim Se-jeong

On Jan. 17, people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) commemorated the 50th anniversary of the death of a visionary politician: the 35-year-old Patrice Lumumba, killed shortly after his country obtained independence from Belgian colonial rule.

Lumumba, then prime minister of the young country, is largely unknown to the outside world. But he is well-known and still remembered all over the African continent, even though he was assassinated in 1961.

“He’s a national hero,” said Jean Izankov Boleme at the Congolese Embassy in Seoul as to what he remembered about Lumumba.

Boleme, in his mid-30s, wasn’t born when the assassination took place. But he learned at school that Lumumba’s approach toward the newly independent country had a rare quality.

The former prime minister actively sought for an equal distribution of national wealth of natural resources. His approach came as a worry to Belgium and the United States, two important players who had been shaping the country for 126 years.

They worried that the independent DRC with its vast natural resources would fall into the hands of Soviet powers.

Born on July 2, 1925, Lumumba was raised and educated in a Catholic setting.

He later joined the Liberal Party of Belgium, and helped to found “Mouvement National Congolais” in 1958, of which he eventually became the president.

In 1959, Lumumba was arrested for provoking an anti-colonial riot, and was sentenced to six months in prison.

His imprisonment coincided with the Brussels Conference, during which the Belgian and Congolese discussed the independence of Belgian Congo, the old name for the current DRC during Belgian colonization.

People in Belgian Congo rallied for the release of the young activist to take part in the conference, which eventually happened.

With Lumumba’s presence, the conference convened on Jan. 27, 1960, producing a setting for the declaration of Congolese Independence on June 30 that year.

On June 23, Lumumba was appointed as the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo at the age of 34. Joseph Kasa-Vubu, backed by Belgium and the United States, became the country’s first president.

In his Independence Day speech, the prime minister said, “We’re 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.”

And this triggered unease in the two Western powers.

Only 10 weeks into his duty as prime minister, Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu clashed, as the president dismissed him from the government.

On Sept. 14, a coup d’etat organized by Col. Joseph Mobutu swept through the country, and Mobuto put Lumumba under house arrest,

U.N. troops surrounded his house to protect him. He was charged with inciting the army to rebellion and other crimes, which many refused to believe.

Claiming Western powers were responsible, the Soviet Union requested a session at the U.N. Security Council, and urged his immediate release.

On Dec. 3 Lumumba was sent to Camp Hardy at Thysville, and soon after was transferred to Katanga Province. On Jan. 17, the following year, he was sent to Elizabethville, now Lubumbashi, where he was also forcibly arrested.

Later that night, he was shot to death at close range.

From what it appeared, it was an execution by the people of his domestic opposition. Yet the circumstances of his death suggested the support and complicity of the governments of Belgium and the United States. His death wasn’t announced to the public for three weeks, yet rumors had already circulated that he was dead.

Nearly four decades later, a 2001 report by the Belgian Commission stated that there had been previous plots by U.S. and Belgian governments to kill him.

In 2002, the Belgian government made an official apology to the Congolese people, admitting to its “moral and irrefutable portion” of responsibility that led to Lumumba’s death.

The embassy said the 50th anniversary this year was observed with a massive prayer meeting, with a long line of people paying their respects to a statue of him and documentaries about him on television.

Outside the country, the anniversary generated mixed reactions.

Adam Hochschild, a historian and author with an expertise in Congolese history, wrote in the International Herald Tribune, insisting that “Americans should surely look back on the death of the Congolese politician ... with shame.”

Lude De Witte, a Belgian author, however, described the crime “the most important assassination of the 20th century” that prevented the Soviet power from further expanding.

Boleme said he himself and people in the Congo lamented Lumumba’s death, questing how the Congo under his leadership would have taken a different path as a nation.

After decades of civil wars and neglect, the DRC, the second biggest country in Africa is now with a new leadership struggling to attain its former glory.

“With him, I think the Congo could be very different now,” Boleme said.