by TOM ELEY
Lumumba being forced to eat his own speech while under arrest.
Fifty years ago on January 17, Patrice Lumumba, the leader of the anti-colonial struggle in the Congo and its first democratically-elected prime minister, was removed from prison and murdered in the dark of night by a firing squad acting with the approval of the United States and Belgium. He was 35.
Lumumba and two of his associates, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, were tied to trees and gunned down one by one. Weeks later, when questions surfaced over the official version of Lumumba’s death?that he had been killed by enraged villagers after attempting to escape?the Belgians returned, exhumed the bodies, hacked them up, dissolved them in acid, keeping as souvenirs Lumumba’s teeth and bullets removed from his body.
Belgium, which ruled the Congo until 1960, and the US have never been able to wash away the blood from this grisly crime. Yet there was little doubt at the time, and even less now, that Washington was the primary force behind Lumumba’s execution.
The killing exposed not only the savagery and hypocrisy of US imperialism. It illustrated the hollowness of so-called independence for the African nations, whose absurd boundaries?and indeed very existence as modern political entities?had resulted from the predations of the European powers.
Though not a socialist, Lumumba’s demand that the Congo should control its own extensive mineral wealth proved to be his death sentence. The credibility of all the other newly-independent African nations was lessened by his murder; thereafter in every decision the continent’s leaders would have to reckon with Lumumba’s fate.
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