One of Belgium’s perpetrated crimes against Congo, after Patrice Lumumba fought for independence for his country

Photo: One of Belgium’s perpetrated crimes against Congo was after Patrice Lumumba fought for independence for his country.

 

Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Republic of the Congo and a visionary of African unity, was murdered on January 17, 1961, by the Belgian government after leading his nation toward independence. As the democratically elected head of the Mouvement National Congolais, the party he founded in 1958, Lumumba became the face of Congo’s rising defiance against Belgium’s oppressive colonial rule.

 

When independence was finally achieved in June 1960, Lumumba’s unscheduled and electrifying speech at the official ceremony in Kinshasa earned him a standing ovation and cemented his status as a hero to millions. But his courage made him a threat to those determined to maintain a covert imperial grip on the Congo. Within months, he was targeted, arrested, tortured, and ultimately executed.

 

Ludo De Witte’s landmark book The Assassination of Lumumba exposes the web of lies, hypocrisy, and betrayal that has long obscured the truth. Drawing on official documents and eyewitness testimony, De Witte reveals a network of complicity stretching from the Belgian government to the CIA. Chilling memos referencing “liquidation” and “threats to national interests” stand in stark contrast to Lumumba’s dignified struggle for African unity, illuminating one of the darkest episodes of twentieth‑century politics.

 

The Secret Disposal of Lumumba’s Body

 

The bodies of Lumumba and his companions, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, were not meant to rest in their shallow grave in Kasenga. A more permanent erasure was planned.

 

On the afternoon of January 21, two Europeans in uniform, accompanied by several Black assistants, left for Kasenga in a public works lorry. The truck carried road signs, surveying tools, two demijohns of sulfuric acid, an empty 200‑liter petrol barrel, and a hacksaw. According to multiple accounts, all equipment, including the acid, was supplied by Belgian-controlled institutions.

 

To disguise their mission, the men unloaded the road signs and theodolite, pretending to conduct a land survey. But they failed to locate the grave before nightfall. It was only the next evening that they found it and began their gruesome task.

The bodies were exhumed, dismembered with knives and a hacksaw, and dumped into the barrel of sulfuric acid. The operation lasted through the night of January 22 into the morning of January 23. Initially, the two Belgians wore masks, but discomfort forced them to remove them. Their only “protection” from the stench was whiskey, and according to testimony, they became drunk. One assistant suffered severe burns when acid spilled onto his foot.

 

When the acid proved insufficient to fully dissolve the remains, the skulls were crushed, and the surviving bones and teeth were scattered along the road. Ashes were similarly dispersed. Nothing identifiable was left of the three nationalist leaders. For decades, not a single trace of their bodies was recovered.

 

A Trophy Kept: The Molar of Patrice Lumumba

 

Yet one part of Lumumba’s body did survive, because it was kept as a souvenir.

A Daily Maverick report recounts an interview published in the Belgian magazine Humo with Godelieve Soete, daughter of Gerard Soete, one of the men involved in disposing of Lumumba’s remains. Although her father had claimed to have thrown his “trophies” into the sea, Godelieve produced a small box containing a gold‑wrapped molar ripped from Lumumba’s jaw.

 

When asked whether seeing the tooth affected her, she replied coldly: “Mais non… Ce n’était quand‑même pas un homme sérieux.” (“But no… he was a man of no importance.”)

 

Her remarks, and her insistence that her father was also a “victim,” reveal a disturbing lack of empathy and a refusal to confront the brutality of Belgian colonialism—so vividly documented in Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost.

 

Godelieve lamented that her father never received “recognition” for his role. She questioned why Belgium apologized to Lumumba’s family but not to hers, saying, “They lost their brother and father, but we also lost someone, my father.”

 

 

Such statements expose the deep moral blindness of those who have never reckoned with their role in a violent colonial system.

 

A Continent’s Wounds and a Call for Closure

 

Africa has endured centuries of exploitation, slavery, colonialism, apartheid, medical crimes, and engineered suffering from AIDS to Ebola. The assassination of Lumumba is one chapter in a long history of violence inflicted because of the continent’s immense wealth.

 

If Europe and America wish to exploit Africa’s resources, they do so, but they must not kill African leaders and citizens in the process. The pattern of destruction raises a haunting question: What comes next?

 

For more than half a century, Lumumba’s family and the Congolese people have been denied the dignity of mourning. The return of his remains, however small, would allow a continent to begin healing and to honor a man who gave his life for true independence.

 

Patrice Lumumba’s final resting place should stand as a memorial to an African icon whose courage continues to inspire the struggle for justice and sovereignty.

 

Related subject: KING LEOPOLD II, THE IDI AMIN OF BELGIUM

https://juskosave.blogspot.com/2020/09/king-leopold-ii-caucasian-idi-amin-of.html