Patrice Lumumba Centenary Dialogue: Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja

This is the transcript of a presentation given by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja at the online discussion "The Legacy of the African Liberation Struggles: Continuing Struggle Against Neocolonialism in a Time of Western Crisis", an intercivilizational dialogue organized to commemorate the centenary of Patrice Lumumba.
Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja is a Congolese diplomat, activist and author. He served as the Permanent Representative of the DRC to the UN in 2022-2023. He is known for his book The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History, and has written a biography of Patrice Lumumba.
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I am very pleased to know of your vision statement which is excellent and also wish to acknowledge the leadership of India in terms of giving African countries the strength and the courage to start the fight for independence. India was our example for the whole world and Gandhi of course and Nehru are people that we worship in Africa. We are extremely proud of their leadership in terms of ending the British Empire in Asia and of course in the rest of the colonial world.

My statement is going to be quite brief, basically to say something about Lumumba's assassination, who assassinated him and why they did it. I will certainly be able to answer any questions that people might have concerning Lumumba. There cannot be a full restitution for Lumumba's murder. No amount of money or other form of compensation will do justice to the harm suffered by the Congo in losing a 35-year-old visionary leader who could have helped build a great country. No amount of money would be justice to his children after having grown up without a loving and supporting father to guide them through childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. And the same goes for his wife and other relatives whose loss could not be mitigated by material acquisitions.

What is needed from all the accomplices in Lumumba's murder is, first of all, an acknowledgment of the crime they committed against him, his family, the Congo and Africa. An apology for the harm done in this regard and an effort to honor the Congo's first democratically elected leader by promoting his legacy through schools, public education and cultural events in all the countries whose leaders took part in this disappearance, beginning with the Congo itself.

While the Sankuru region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is mostly known as the home of the Tetela people to which Lumumba himself belongs, it is inhabited by people of other ethnic groups who ended up there either because of the activities of the Swahili Arab slave traders or of Belgian colonialists. These groups include the Kusu of Maniema, the Luba, the Songye and other groups from the Kasai region as well as the Ngombe of Equateur. In addition to growing up in the multiethnic environment, Lumumba's formative years as a middle class civil servant took place between 1944 and 1956 in Kisangani, then Stanleyville, one of the major cities in the Congo and in other parts of a country that was really committed to ethnic diversity, and not through  working about one single group.

In general, Congolese nationalist leaders were strong believers in nonviolence and Lumumba was no exception. This is why they were all shocked by the mass uprising for independence on January 4, 1959 which erupted in Léopoldville, present day Kinshasa after members of an anti-colonial party were denied the right to assemble. Celebrated today as a day of martyrs, it was the first major outbreak of violence in the independence movement and marked the turning point for the anti-colonial struggle. Later on, these leaders understood that mass violence was a bargaining chip in their confrontation with the colonial masters and the latter found it difficult to maintain law and order in the vast Congo once the masses had rejected colonial authority and were unwilling to obey colonial administrative directives.

The Congo crisis cannot be understood without reference to the Belgian engineered Katanga secession in collaboration with international mining companies which recruited white mercenaries to join Belgian troops in backstopping the secession in Katanga. The UN refusal to use force to expel Belgian troops and the mercenaries led to a dispute between Prime Minister Lumumba and UN Secretary General Hammarskjöld, who shared the same world view as a major western power, and was very hostile toward Lumumba as shown by his cable traffic in UN archives. He was the single most important obstacle to the independence of the Congo because for Dag Hammarskjöld, the colonial territories of Africa should remain part of the western sphere and should not be taken over by the Soviet Union. In their mind they didn't think that we Africans can take care of our business ourselves. Instead, they thought that we have to be controlled by somebody else which was total nonsense and racist at best.

We do get a glimpse of this vision from postcolonial Congo in several of the major speeches and letters that Congolese and other leaders have made. While preoccupied with the unity, independence and sovereignty of the Congo due of course to the counterrevolutionary situation facing the country from July 10 to July 11, 1960, the Belgian military invasion and the Katanga secession respectively, this main concern was how to transform the inherited structures of the state and the economy in order to improve the quality of life of ordinary Congolese.

Like Amilcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara, Steve Biko, Lumumba’s martyrdom transformed him into a powerful symbol, a force that continues to inspire radical movements across Africa. We believe that our people should continue this process. Because for Lumumba he was assassinated, as you know, because of the fact that he did not want to have the former colonial powers and the United States to dictate us how we should run our countries, how we should manage our resources which are abundant. Our country is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of minerals, forests, land, water and so on. It is up to us Africans to make sure that we follow the teachings of Amilcar Cabral: knowing our own weaknesses and finding ways to overcome them, and the voice of Nkrumah: collective continental security through an African military high command. We need our own equivalent to NATO to ensure the security of our people and of our endangered progressive leaders.

As a matter of fact to sum up Lumumba's personality and what his vision was: Lumumba was a person who was committed to using the fabulous resources of the Congo, the wealth of our countries to improve the living conditions of African people, not only in the Congo but across the entire continent. As a matter of fact, when he held a conference of Pan-African people in Kinshasa in August of 1960, he gave a whole program of how Africa can really improve itself and how Africa can be in control of its own territory and not from outsiders.

So he was not a communist as the western countries tried to paint him but he was a person who was committed to the independence of the African people like Nkrumah. He felt that independence of one country like Ghana and the Congo was not enough. That we should do our best to make sure that countries of Southern Africa, for example, which were under colonial control by colonial settlers who didn't want to leave (should gain independence). This required that Africans take up armed struggle to be able to end this colonialism and we did our best in providing money, providing security, in providing whatever was needed so that these people can go forward.

And so Lumumba was assassinated by the Belgians with the support of the Americans and of course with the involvement of Congolese leaders who were against Lumumba who felt that getting money from Uncle Sam in Washington was better than working with Patrice Lumumba to make sure that the Congo become a big country, a country that can really help Africa move forward. Thank you very much.