By Firmain Eric Mbadinga
June 30, 1960. Standing before King Baudouin of Belgium and a startled audience, Patrice Émery Lumumba’s voice rang clear as he seized what was an unscheduled moment at the podium.
The Belgian monarch had patronisingly portrayed DRC’s independence as Belgium's generous gift, but Lumumba was about to set the historical record straight.
"Who can forget the shootings in which so many of our brothers were killed, or the dungeons where those who refused to submit to a regime of injustice were brutally thrown?" he said.
“We experienced the irony, the insults, the beatings we had to endure morning, noon, and night, because we were Negroes. Who can forget that we used to say 'You' to a black person, not as a friend, but because the honourable 'You' was reserved for whites only? We have known our lands despoiled in the name of supposedly legal texts that merely recognised the right of the strongest.”
This defiant, stirring speech would immediately mark the first Prime Minister of Congo – now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – as a threat to powerful interests. It would also set in motion the series of chaotic events leading to Lumumba’s assassination just seven months later.
Theme for a dream
More than half a century after Lumumba's death at 35, some people still wonder what the DRC might have become under his leadership.
Given his declarations, courage and political commitment, he would have surely dreamt of making his nation great, at peace and liberated from external control.
Lumumba, born in 1925 at Onalua in what is now Sankuru province, saw the yoke of colonisation and neo-colonialism in all its forms as exerting the control that his nation must break free from.
"We may aspire – and some will find this utopian – to found in the Congo a nation in which differences of race and religion will disappear, a homogeneous society made up of Belgians and Congolese who, with a single impulse, will bind their hearts to the destiny of the country," he had declared in a 1957 letter, just four years before his assassination.
From filmmaker Raoul Peck to author Yves Pinguilly, many celebrated artists have since been inspired to create works revolving around Lumumba’s fight for a free Congo.
Making of a hero
Lumumba’s charisma as a national hero was defined by his multifaceted personality. His distinctive hairstyle, with a long parting on the left, became as iconic as Che Guevara’s beret.
After an education at Catholic and Protestant missions, the young Lumumba developed a love of science.
Curious, lively and enterprising, he worked various jobs in his native region, also dabbling in writing as a journalist in what is now Kinshasa.
At 29, he continued writing for local newspapers at the Kisangani post office. His writings and ideas increasingly resonated with the independence movement, mainly with the indigenous people fighting for a free country.
June 30 is Democratic Republic of Congo's independence anniversary.
Seeds of awakening
To structure his political struggle, Lumumba founded APIC (Association du personnel indigène de la colonie) in 1955 before joining the Liberal Party a year later. The party included Congolese and Belgian elected representatives advocating for Congo’s independence.
That same year, after returning from a brief stay in Belgium, Lumumba was imprisoned after being accused of embezzlement, which he denied. The accusation was widely seen as politically-motivated.
Upon release, he renewed his fight for the Congolese people, supporting various associations and trade unions demanding better working conditions and wages.
In 1958, with Gaston Diomi Ndongala and Joseph Ileo, he founded the Congolese National Movement (MNC). That December, he met pan-Africanism theorist Kwame Nkrumah and other African independence leaders in Accra.
Back home, in front of a crowd exceeding 10,000 people, he outlined the MNC's vision to end colonialism. This declaration effectively marked the platform's rising prominence in Congolese politics.
In 1959, a colonial government crackdown on a banned rally organised by the ABAKO independence association resulted in 42 deaths and the deportation of its leader, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, to Belgium. This further strained the political climate in the colony, which was struggling for emancipation.
Shortly afterwards, during an MNC national congress in present-day Kisangani, paramilitary forces fired on the crowd, killing at least 30 people and arresting Lumumba, who was sentenced in January 1960 to six months’ imprisonment.
Lumumba's popularity had grown so much by then that pressure from the streets forced the colonial administration to release him.
Subsequently, the Belgian government faced a united front of Congolese representatives, who set June 30, 1960, as the independence date.
The DRC has opened an investigation into vandalism at the Kinshasa mausoleum housing the tooth of independence hero Patrice Lumumba.
Before that, general elections determined who would govern the post-colonial nation. Lumumba's party prevailed and appointed ABAKO leader Joseph Kasa-Vubu as President, while Lumumba became Prime Minister.
After 80 years of occupation and exploitation, Belgian colonists finally yielded to the spirit of the times, as happened across most French and Anglo-Saxon colonies.
More than a speech
At the independence ceremony, Lumumba spoke out for himself and his country.
"If it is proclaimed today in agreement with Belgium, a friendly country with which we deal as equals, no Congolese worthy of the name can ever forget that it was through struggle that it was won, a struggle of every day, an ardent and idealistic struggle, a struggle in which we spared neither our strength, nor our privation, nor our suffering, nor our blood,” he said.
“We have known the back-breaking work demanded in exchange for wages that did not allow us to eat our fill, clothe or house ourselves decently, or bring up our children as loved ones…We knew that the law was never the same, depending on whether you were white or black, accommodating for some, cruel and inhuman for others. The Republic of Congo has been proclaimed, and our beloved country is now in the hands of its children.”
For others, particularly Belgian officials who had not entirely relinquished control, his speech was a bitter pill.
