Patrice Lumumba Assassinated (1961)

Tue Jan 17, 1961

Image

Patrice Lumumba was a Congolese anti-colonial revolutionary assassinated by U.S. and Belgian assisted forces on this day in 1961, after serving as Prime Minister. Lumumba had served as the first Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo from June until September 1960, and played a significant role in the transformation of the Congo from a colony of Belgium into an independent republic.

Ideologically an African nationalist and pan-Africanist, Lumumba led the Congolese National Movement (MNC) party from 1958 until his assassination, in a coup by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, assisted by U.S. and Belgian forces. The coup occurred when Lumumba, facing armed rebellion and an occupation by Belgian forces, asked for support from the Soviet Union. This led to a government split between himself, President Joseph Kasa-Vubu, and military commander Joseph-Désiré Mobutu.

On December 1st, 1960, Lumumba was captured by Mobutu’s forces and imprisoned. On January 17th, 1961, he and his associates were brutally beaten and tortured by Katangan and Belgian officers, and Lumumba was executed later that night. The execution was carried out with Belgian and U.S. assistance. Belgium formally apologized for its role in the assassination in 2002.

On Lumumba’s legacy, his friend and colleague Thomas Kanza wrote the following:

“He lived as a free man, and an independent thinker. Everything he wrote, said and did was the product of someone who knew his vocation to be that of a liberator, and he represents for the Congo what Castro does for Cuba, Nasser for Egypt, Nkrumah for Ghana, Mao Tse-tung for China, and Lenin for Russia.”

“No Congolese worthy of the name will ever to be able to forget that this independence has been won through a struggle in which we did not spare our energy and our blood…We have known ironies, insults, and blows which we had to undergo morning, noon and night because we were Negroes. We have seen our lands spoiled in the name of laws which only recognized the right of the strongest. We have known laws which differed according to whether it dealt with a black man or a white. We have known the atrocious sufferings of those who were imprisoned for their political opinions or religious beliefs, and of those exiled in their own country. Their fate was worse than death itself. Who will forget the rifle-fire from which so many of our brothers perished, or the jails in to which were brutally thrown those who did not want to submit to a regime of justice, oppression and exploitation which were the means the colonialists employed to dominate us?”

- Patrice Lumumba