Today in 1960, the CIA orchestrated a coup against today’s DR Congo’s democratically elected leader.
After Belgian-occupied Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the country’s first prime minister. 75 years of Belgian rule in the Congo was filled with terror and genocide, leaving up to 15 million people dead and the country’s wealth plundered.
But the US was an early ally of tyranny in the Congo. The 1884 Berlin Congress granted Belgian King Leopold II colonial control and private ownership of the entire 2,600,000 square km Congo Basin region.
What made it worth owning was what lay underneath. Congo’s immense natural wealth, including uranium, became strategically crucial for US global hegemony and its nuclear weapons program. The US acquired its immense natural wealth and uranium to build the atomic bombs it dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
So when Lumumba became Prime Minister in June 1960, he promised to break with imperialism and championed Pan-African solidarity. Lumumba’s rise to power threatened US corporate interests and triggered Cold War paranoia. His anti-imperialism and vision of a united Congo made him an adversary of both Belgium and US imperialism.
The response came fast. A cable from CIA director Allen Dulles on August 25, 1960, read, “We are faced with a person who is a Castro or worse.” He subsequently ordered the CIA station chief in Congo: “Lumumba’s removal must be an urgent and prime objective and a high priority of our covert action.”
Although the CIA ordered his assassination, they weren’t able to carry it out themselves. Instead, Washington and Brussels secretly funneled cash and aid to rival politicians who organized a coup and arrested Lumumba. He was then beaten, tortured, and killed.
On 17 January 1961, Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of the Congo, was executed by a firing squad following assassination plots concocted by the US and Belgian governments. Mobutu’s rule, backed by the US and Europe, solidified the neo-colonial grip on the country.
The international community saw a transparent example of US rogue state status this September, when Washington voted against the entire world at the United Nations General Assembly.
The vote was 164 to 1.
And the man who delivered him was paid for it. During three decades of bloody rule under the US and European-backed Mobutu, the dictator came to control over 20% of Congo’s assets, and his wealth ballooned to $5 billion, equal to the country’s external debt.
Today, the consequences of Lumumba’s murder are still felt in DR Congo. The country has approximately $24 trillion in raw minerals, including almost half the world’s known cobalt reserves, found in batteries of nearly every standard electronic device, from phones to electric cars.
And while multinational corporations continue to plunder the wealth of DR Congo, the country is one of the five poorest countries in the world, with some 60 million people living on less than $1.90 a day.
One thing to flag: your second text opens with “On this day in 1961”, but that line belongs to the 17 January carousel. Since this piece runs on 14 September, I dated the execution instead of saying “on this day”.
Patrice Lumumba’s Last Letter to Pauline Lumumba from Thysville Prison
My dear wife,
I am writing these words to you, not knowing whether they will ever reach you, or whether I shall be alive when you read them.
Throughout my struggle for the independence of our country I have never doubted the victory of our sacred cause, to which I and my comrades have dedicated all our lives.
But the only thing which we wanted for our country is the right to a worthy life, to dignity without pretence, to independence without restrictions.
This was never the desire of the Belgian colonialists and their Western allies, who received, direct or indirect, open or concealed, support from some highly placed officials of the United Nations, the body upon which we placed all our hope when we appealed to it for help.
They seduced some of our compatriots, bought others and did everything to distort the truth and smear our independence.
What I can say is this—alive or dead, free or in jail—it is not a question of me personally.
The main thing is the Congo, our unhappy people, whose independence is being trampled upon.
That is why they have shut us away in prison and why they keep us far away from the people. But my faith remains indestructible.
I know and feel deep in my heart that sooner or later my people will rid themselves of their internal and external enemies, that they will rise up as one in order to say ‘No’ to colonialism, to brazen, dying colonialism, in order to win their dignity in a clean land.
We are not alone. Africa, Asia, the free peoples and the peoples fighting for their freedom in all corners of the world will always be side by side with the millions of Congolese who will not give up the struggle while there is even one colonialist or colonialist mercenary in our country.
To my sons, whom I am leaving and whom, perhaps, I shall not see again, I want to say that the future of the Congo is splendid and that I expect from them, as from every Congolese, the fulfilment of the sacred task of restoring our independence and our sovereignty.
Without dignity there is no freedom, without justice there is no dignity and without independence there are no free men.
Cruelty, insults and torture can never force me to ask for mercy, because I prefer to die with head high, with indestructible faith and profound belief in the destiny of our country than to live in humility and renounce the principles which are sacred to me.
The day will come when history will speak. But it will not be the history which will be taught in Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations.
It will be the history which will be taught in the countries which have won freedom from colonialism and its puppets.
Africa will write its own history and in both north and south it will be a history of glory and dignity.
Do not weep for me. I know that my tormented country will be able to defend its freedom and its independence.
Long live the Congo!
Long live Africa!
Thysville prison
Patrice LUMUMBA
Today is the birthday of Patrice Lumumba, the Congo’s first democratically elected leader, killed within seven months of taking office with the help of Belgium and the United States. Why did they kill him? Not for communism, whatever they said at the time. For believing the Congo’s wealth should belong to the Congolese. That was enough. Sixty-five years…
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