Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese Prime Minister, paid with his life for losing his temper and taking on the role of a paladin for his people. His crime? He had dared to tell a condescending European monarch to his face, ‘Your Majesty, what you just said is drivel.’

The monarch in question was the Belgian king, King Baudouin. This king had spewed patronising nonsense about the inglorious role of Belgium in the Congo. The king was the guest of honour at the Congo’s Independence Day celebrations. In his King’s Speech on June 30th, 1960, by omission and choice of words, the king had derided and belittled the killing, the suffering, and the humiliation of the Congolese people in seventy-five years of genocidal colonial rule. The said King Baudouin was the great grandnephew of the infamous King Leopold II, popularly referred to as the Butcher of Congo, of the infamous Congo Free State. In effect, this King’s speech amounted to Belgium, after partaking in ‘the magnificent African cake,’ then deciding to mock the owners of the cake. This Congolese leader, a veritable live wire, replied with facts to repudiate the assertions made by the king in his speech.

Given the genocide prosecuted by the Belgians in its seventy-five years of misrule, it is difficult to understand why the Belgians expected a different reaction from this African politician. This ‘impudence’ by the Congolese leader had immediately led to great tension. The Belgians and the Americans thought that this was unacceptable cantankerous behaviour, exceedingly disrespectful to a European monarch. They conferred and decided they could not, and would not, countenance that kind of insolence from an uppity African minion. The bigger picture, however, was that the western countries were afraid that this prime minister was about to shift into the Russian Bear’s camp, and this they could not allow. This was mainly because of the temperature dropping in the Cold War. The West knew the importance of the Congo’s resources to whichever Bloc was in ultimate control.

The West decided they could not possibly allow such an African leader to go scot-free as he might endanger their interests. They embarked on a decisive course of action. What the West wanted was not an independent country, but a satrapy to look after their interests.

Before Lumumba’s murder, there had been a long prelude. The result of the long prelude was that the Belgians had spectacularly unprepared the Congo for independence. The Belgians in their conceitedness then made what they called ‘The Congo Bet.’ The Congo at independence had only 136 people with a secondary education. There were no Congolese doctors, secondary school teachers, or officers in the army, but there were over 600 Congolese priests. The Congo Bet was that because there were no educated people to run the vast country, the Africans could be given the reigns of political power but everything else would remain in Belgian hands for the foreseeable future. The Belgians would continue to run the economy (the mines, the banks etc.), the government bureaucracy, the officer corps of the Army and so on. The Belgians gave the Congolese political independence, grudgingly. However, the Congolese were aware that economic independence was a mirage. Something had to give, and the Congo Bet unravelled spectacularly. The Belgians were soon laughing on the wrong side of the face when the Congolese turned on them and massacred thousands shortly after the Belgian flag was lowered.

The Americans, the Belgians, and by some accounts the British, together with Moise Tshombe, the leader of Katanga Province engineered to have Lumumba killed, dismembered and his body dissolved in acid. To date, only a single tooth has been retrieved from the murder site.

The Congo, has never recovered from that awful beginning.

The man in the picture below, besides speaking out after being insulted by a representative of an evil Empire, had also dared to take a peek at what was on the other side of the Iron Curtain, at Lenin’s country. That had upset Uncle Sam no end. Given that the Congo at the time had more than half of the world’s known uranium deposits, the order was given to erase Lumumba.

In the picture, note the white men on the right looking on as Lumumba is led to his death.

Now, look carefully at the face of this man at the back of the truck. You can see clearly that this is a man who knows — and has accepted — that he is about to die, about to be murdered. By the presence of all the white faces around him, this man knows exactly who his real hangmen are. In that face, there is defiance, and there is also dignity.

By and large, Africa has let this man’s death be for nought. This is despite the perpetrators of his murder being well known.

Slavery killed Africans; colonialism killed Africans; neocolonialism is killing Africans.