BiographyPatrice Lumumba was the first legally elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). His assassinated on 17 January, 1961 was engineered by two cooperative assassination plots of American and Belgium, with Congolese accomplices and a Belgian execution squad. For 126 years, America and Belgium have played regulated the Congolese government. In April 1884, the US became the first country in the world to recognize the territories in the Congo Basin to be ruled by Belgian King Leopold II.
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Assasination MotivesIn the “Congo Free State,” Leopold sanctioned extreme economic exploitation that caused millions of deaths. The US and others thus forced Belgium to take over the country as a regular colony. During the colonial period the U.S. became absorbed in the natural wealth of the Congo. It used uranium from Congolese mines to manufacture the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These raw materials spurred the US and its western allies to control the Congo during the Cold War before the Soviets. Patrice Lumumba's goal of independence and the usage of natural resources for the improvement of the standard quality of living was against the goals of the West. To fight him, the US and Belgium used the United Nations secretariat, under Dag Hammarskjöld and Ralph Bunche, to buy the support of Lumumba's Congolese rivals assassins. |
The Aftermath
The GovernmentThis assassination was seven months after independence (on 30 June, 1960), and destroyed Congolese national unity, economic independence and pan-African peace. During the assassination, the Congo was ruled by four separate governments: the central government in Kinshasa (then Léopoldville); a rival central government by Lumumba's followers in Kisangani (then Stanleyville); and the secessionist regimes in the mineral-rich provinces of Katanga and South Kasai.
With Lumumba dead, international efforts installed a moderate and pro-western regime in Kinshasa over the whole country. This rule ended the Lumumba's regime in Kisangani in August 1961, the secession of South Kasai in September 1962, and the Katanga secession in January 1963. RebellionShortly After this consolidation a "second independence" formed to challenge the pro-western leadership. This mass movement of peasants, workers, the urban unemployed, students and lower civil servants was led by Lumumba's lieutenants, leaders of the National Liberation Council (CNL). The CNL was created in October 1963 in Brazzaville.
Lumumba lived on through Pierre Mulele who advocated democracy and social progress during this uprising. On the other hand, the CNL leadership, which included Christophe Gbenye and Laurent-Désiré Kabila, was more interested in power and privilege than the Congolese people. This is Lumumbism solely in theory and practiced through the leadership of Laurent Kabila. |