They have laid the flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the coffin, in the courtyard of the Egmont Palace in Brussels on Monday morning the soldiers are lined up, a band is playing the national anthem of the Congo, and the picture of Patrice Émery Lumumba can be seen on a screen, who was murdered 61 years ago but has never been buried in the decades since. Because for a long time there was nothing to bury. Now at least his tooth, which lies in the big coffin, is in a small handmade box with a white cover.
Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde, Prime Minister of the Congo, and his Belgian counterpart Alexander De Croo are standing in front of the coffin. He said in a short speech: “I would like to apologize here, in the presence of his family, for the way in which the Belgian government influenced the decision to end the life of the country’s first prime minister.” It’s a sentence that Lumumba’s descendants have never heard before, for which they had to wait a long time.
Lumumba was the first Prime Minister of the Congo, which had just become independent, a battered country the size of Western Europe, which Belgium had subjugated, first it was the king’s private property, then a colony, up to ten million people are said to have died during this time, murdered, enslaved, starved. Those who didn’t feel on the plantations had their hands chopped off. Congo gained independence in 1960, but it was not intended to be independent. Its raw materials were too valuable for Europe: rubber, ivory, uranium, gold, diamonds, precious woods and copper.
When the Belgian king solemnly dismissed the country, he spoke of the “civilizational merits” of colonial rule. Lumumba was not on the list of speakers, but then simply gave the floor himself and said, among other things: “We know mockery, insults, beatings that were incessantly dealt out morning, noon and night because we were Negroes.” The king’s face collapsed. When Lumumba later spoke of nationalization and turned to the Soviet Union because he was not getting the help he had hoped for from the West, his fate was sealed.
At the time, the Belgian king knew about the assassination plans – and did nothing
The Belgian king knew of plans to assassinate him and did nothing; the CIA ordered its staff to take care of the disposal of the new prime minister, who wanted a very different Congo, one whose riches would benefit all Congolese. After only three months in office, Lumumba was deposed. He fled, was captured and kidnapped in the renegade province of Katanga, rich in raw materials, where he was shot – under the supervision of Belgian officers. A few days later, two Belgian colonial policemen dug up Lumumba’s body from the makeshift grave, drove it deep into the bush, crushed it, and dissolved it in acid.
One of the two, Gérard Soete, took two teeth and a finger bone as a souvenir. When he died in 2000, at least one tooth was left by his daughter, who proudly showed it to journalists. For a long time, the Belgian judiciary was not bothered by this, only when the journalist Ludo De Witte demanded that the tooth be handed over to the court did they take action. For a long time, the tooth lay in a safe at the highest judicial authority, which would probably have preferred to return it to the family as inconspicuously as possible.
Belgium’s Prime Minister Alexander De Croo apologized in his speech.
(Photo: Nicolas Maeterlinck/AFP)
But especially the daughter Juliana Lumumba wanted a funeral, a farewell, as he deserves a prime minister. “He died for the Congo, he deserves a dignified and appropriate burial, not much is left of my father, but we would like to finally bring him home to his country,” said Juliana Lumumba Süddeutsche Zeitung Said in late 2021 in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. Now it is time.
On Monday she stands to the left of the coffin with two of her brothers. Black suits and a dark dress. They have fought for this day for decades. Again and again they have been put off and disappointed. The return has often been announced and then postponed, most recently by the Congolese state. First it was Corona, then a planned mausoleum was not finished, then there was no money. Some suspected that Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi might not be all that interested in returning; his father, a well-known politician, belonged to that part of the elite who at the time thought that getting rid of Lumumba wasn’t a bad idea.
He is now to be buried in Kinshasa, in a new mausoleum
Lumumba’s murder was not really dealt with in either country for a long time. An investigation is still ongoing in Belgium, and ten of the twelve suspects are no longer alive. In Kinshasa, even in the brand new National Museum, you search a long time before you find out anything about Lumumba. Independence is written on a billboard in a few lines, not even his name is spelled correctly, only “Patrice Emery” is his name, a man with no last name.
The average age in the Congo is around twenty years old, and many young people know little or nothing about the independence hero Lumumba. What the daughter wants to change. From Brussels she flies home with the remains of her father, on a farewell trip across the country, to his hometown, to cities where he worked for a long time. To where he died. Finally, he is to be buried in the capital, in a new mausoleum, on the roof of which the existing statue of the independence hero has just been placed. The banners of Chinese companies are still hanging at the construction site, the Beijing ambassador is spreading the pictures, and apparently his government has helped out with the financing.
Didn’t Belgium pay anything? No critical word can be heard from the children of Lumumba. They say: The return of the father could be the beginning of reconciliation.