Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of independent Congo and was murdered within seven months, an assassination in which Belgium and the United States were both implicated. Born in Kasai province in 1925 to peasant farmers, he was educated at mission schools, worked as a postal clerk in Stanleyville, and became a prominent figure in the évolué class — Congolese permitted limited privileges under Belgian rule. He was imprisoned for embezzlement in 1956, a charge he attributed to politics, and on release helped found the Mouvement National Congolais in 1958, the only major Congolese party organised on a national rather than ethnic basis. Belgium, facing riots in 1959, conceded independence with extraordinary speed. The MNC won the most seats, and Lumumba became prime minister on 30 June 1960. At the independence ceremony King Baudouin praised Leopold II's civilising work; Lumumba, not scheduled to speak, replied with a description of the forced labour, humiliation and killing the Congolese had endured. It made him a hero across Africa and an enemy in Brussels. The state collapsed within days. The army mutinied, Belgium sent troops, and mineral-rich Katanga seceded under Moïse Tshombe with Belgian backing. Lumumba appealed to the UN, which would not act against the secession, and then to the Soviet Union — which fixed his fate in Washington. He was dismissed by President Kasavubu in September, Mobutu seized power, and Lumumba was arrested. In January 1961 he was flown to Katanga, beaten, shot by a firing squad commanded by a Belgian officer, and his body dissolved in acid. A Belgian parliamentary commission acknowledged moral responsibility in 2002.
- Lived: 1925 CE – 1961 CE
- Nationality: Congolese
- Roles: head_of_state, independence_leader
