Patrice Lumumba, A Pan-African Icon

We explore the history and impact of Patrice Lumumba, a Pan-African Icon.

A Quick History of Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

The country now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was for many years blighted by colonial rule. From 1885-1908, many were murdered and abused under Belgian King Leopold II, who owned the country as his private colony. Due to the widespread publicization of the “crimes against humanity” that took place in Leopold’s Congo, in 1908 he was forced to hand over the colony to the Belgian government but the country would not be fully free from the shackles of colonial rule until 1960. Enter Patrice Lumumba.

Patrice Lumumba’s Background

Patrice Lumumba was born on the 2nd July 1925 in Onalua in the then Belgian Congo. He had three brothers and one half-brother and his  father was a farmer of the Batetela ethnic group. As a child, he gained an education at the local Protestant primary school and despite not advancing to higher education, he regularly wrote articles and poems as he grew from a teenager to a young adult- this helped develop his skills as an orator and was the training ground for his later political career.  As a young adult he made the decision to leave his rural home to move to Kinshasa, the capital of Belgian Congo, where he became a postal clerk and continued writing essays, many of which were critical of the Belgian regime. He later moved to Kisangi, to work as an accountant, and by 1951, at the age of 26, married the then 14-year-old Pauline Opango.

He found himself interested in politics and soon became a regional leader in Kisangani, before founding the Black nationalist political party, the Congolese National Movement, in 1958. Lumumba was an ardent supporter of Pan-Africanism and believed that Africa would be better if Africans were in control. He believed in opposing the colonial systems on the continent that kept Black people from elevating in their own land. Indeed, that is why, at the inaugural All-African People’s Conference in Ghana, 1958, Lumumba explained that establishing   the Congolese National Movement was a ‘decisive step for the Congolese people as they move toward emancipation’ and was dedicated to freeing ‘the Congolese people from the colonialist regime and earn them their independence.’ It was his wish that Congo, as well as the rest of Black Africa, would gain the self-determination that all free human beings were entitled to under the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and so he ended his speech by proclaiming: 

‘Down with colonialism and imperialism!

Down with racism and tribalism!

And long live the Congolese nation, long live independent Africa!’

Political Power

And by the 30th June 1960 he had gained his wish, becoming the first Prime Minister of the independent ‘Republic of Congo’, at the age of 35, and appointing Joseph Kasavubu, of the competing political party ‘The Alliance of Bakongo’, to act as his President. However, although Lumumba had hoped that under the new Republic there would be peace and unity, within a few months of his leadership people in the Katanga Province, encouraged by Belgium, seceded from the republic. Lumumba reached out to many in the international community for help, including the UN, but received little support. Frustrated, he then made the decision to reach out to the Soviet Union which disturbed many in the Western world, including America. In fact, in 1960 the CIA developed multiple plans to assassinate him, including a plan to poison him using toothpaste. Similarly, an MI6 officer wrote a memo for colleagues in which he wrote that the first option for dealing with Lumumba could be to kill him.

Patrice Lumumba’s Death

However, it was people in Congo who eventually killed him. He died in 1961, following a coup led by Joseph Kasavubu and army general Joseph Mobutu. Whilst Lumumba initially evaded capture he was eventually caught, incarcerated and then given to the secessionists in Katanga who, with the support of Belgian mercenaries, executed him by firing squad and dissolved his body in acid. While disposing of his body, a Belgian police officer took Lumumba’s tooth, which is planned to be returned to Lumumba’s family later in 2021. Knowing that after his capture he would likely be killed, he wrote to his wife, foreseeing that:

Whether dead or alive, free or in prison by order of the colonialists, it is not my person that is important. What is important is the Congo, our poor people whose independence has been turned into a cage, with people looking at us from outside the bars, sometimes with charitable compassion, sometimes with glee and delight. But my faith will remain unshakable. I know and feel in my very heart of hearts that sooner or later my people will rid themselves of all their enemies, foreign and domestic, that they will rise up as one to say no to the shame and degradation of colonialism and regain their dignity in the pure light of day.’

Today many in the DRC, which suffered under the dictatorship of Joseph Mobutu until 1997, and many across the African continent and the diaspora continue to hope that Lumumba’s dream will come true. Despite the fact that he was only 35 years-old when he was killed, his memory still lives on as one of Africa’s founding fathers in the struggle for true liberation from colonial rule. Indeed, his life and work have been admired by several prominent Black activists, including Malcolm X who considered him “the greatest Black man who ever walked the African continent” and even named one of his daughters after him.