Honoring Patrice Lumumba's Legacy
"He didn’t fear anybody. He had those [Belgian] people so scared they had to kill him. They couldn’t buy him, they couldn’t frighten him, they couldn’t reach him.”
From Friendly Neighborhood Comrade:
On this day in 1961, Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of Congo, was assassinated by US and Belgium-backed mercenaries. His execution by firing squad followed a US and Belgium-backed coup, which had removed him from power after just a few months in office.
The coup destroyed Lumumba’s efforts to wrestle the country away from Western colonial powers and create a proud, free nation governed by the principles of pan-Africanism, social and economic justice, fundamental rights and neutral relations with the West and the USSR.
Following Congo’s independence from Belgium’s long and harsh colonial rule, Congo fell into chaos due to the UN, Belgium, and the US plotting against Lumumba. Lumumba refused to fully hand over power, and the US considered him an "African Fidel Castro" and ordered him removed.
Belgian troops moved in to quell a Congolese mutiny against Belgian officers still holding their army posts, and the UN troops refused to put down a Belgian-backed secession of mineral-rich Katanga Province.
The US and Belgium directed Lumumba’s chief of staff from the army Mobutu Sese Seko (Joseph-Désiré Mobutu) to organize a coup in September 1960. But fearing Lumumba could return to power at anytime, US president Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized his assassination.
CIA director Allen Dulles told Eisenhower on Sept. 21, 1960 that the ''danger of Soviet influence'' was still present in the Congo and that Lumumba ''remained a grave danger as long as he was not disposed of.''
The CIA’s top scientist even arrived in Congo with poison, which would kill Lumumba in a way not attributable to the US. The poison was to be slipped into Lumumba’s food or toothpaste and to give him a disease native to Congo.
CIA director Dulles sent a message to CIA station chief in Congo, Lawrence Devlin, that an assassination of Lumumba was an “urgent and prime objective,” and he gave him the authority to replace him with a “pro-Western group,” with a budget of $100,000.
By mid-October, headquarters was impatient. Bronson Tweedy, head of the African division of the CIA's clandestine services, suggested a “commando type group'' could abduct Lumumba from the residence where he was under the protection of UN troops.
CIA Station Chief Devlin recommended that a ''high-powered foreign-make rifle with telescopic scope and silencer'' be sent to him by diplomatic pouch.
''Hunting good here,'' he wrote cryptically, ''when light’s right.”
Lumumba sensed his security was in jeopardy and attempted to flee to Stanleyville, 1,000 miles to the east, on Nov. 27, 1960, but was arrested on the way by Colonel Mobutu's soldiers and was imprisoned in Thysville, 90 miles from the capital of Leopoldville.
Lumumba was killed by Katangan provincial officials and Belgian mercenaries on the night of Jan. 17, 1961, by firing squad. The CIA claims to have had no hand in his death; however, files demonstrate the CIA had spent months assisting Lumumba’s enemies in their plots against him.
Following Lumumba’s assassination, protests erupted around the world, with huge protests in Egypt and Paris. There were even clashes at the UN.
"History will have its say one day. Not the history they teach in Brussels, Paris, Washington, or the UN, but the history taught in the country set free from colonialism and its puppet rulers. Africa will write her own history, and it will be a history of glory and dignity."
“He was the greatest Black man who ever walked the African continent. He didn’t fear anybody. He had those [Belgian] people so scared they had to kill him. They couldn’t buy him, they couldn’t frighten him, they couldn’t reach him.”
— Malcolm X
"They buried Lumumba
In an unmarked grave.
But he needs no marker–
For air is his grave.
Sun is his grave,
Moon is, stars are,
Space is his grave.
My heart's his grave,
And it's marked there.
Tomorrow will mark it everywhere."
— Langston Hughes
Good read.
Those Dulles brothers. Yikes!