At 99, the memory of Patrice Lumumba only grows stronger, as a new book uncovers fresh details about his gruesome assassination 64 years ago.
"Sulfuric acid turned Lumumba, "into a mass of mucus". But the bones and teeth survived, and when the acid ran out, Katanga's Belgian Police Commissioner, Gerard Soete and his brother Michael, 'doused the remaining parts with gasoline and set them aflame. The whole job took two days. Soete returned home a changed man, his daughter observed. Along with the darkness he brought back, he carried a gruesome souvenir: one of Lumumba's fingers and a pair of gold-capped molars, twisted out from his skull with pliers."
The Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly the Belgian Congo, celebrated its 64th Independence Day on June 30. Considered the richest country in the world, its natural resources are valued in excess of U.S. $24 trillion. Yet since its independence, it has been marred by wars and instability. On this occasion we look back at the life and times of Patrice Lumumba through "Stuart Reid's The Lumumba Plot, which uncovers the intricate and brutal assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Congo. His party, the Mouvement National Congolais, was the only party that fielded candidates from across the vast country during the December 1959 elections and won the majority of seats in parliament.
Lumumba's assassination story has been recounted many times before. Reid's version stands out due to his access to newly declassified material and his vivid, detailed narration. The book got wide recognition from mainstream outlets such as the New Yorker, New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy and the intelligence community in the CIA.
On 22 June 2022, a plane transporting a coffin containing a gold-crowned tooth landed in Kinshasa. Eight days later on 30 June, it wa installed in a mausoleum in Kinshasa.
Reid's narrative begins with the discovery of Lumumba's tooth in 2016, a macabre trophy preserved by the daughter of Gerard Soete. From this starting point, Reid navigates through the complex web of local, regional, and international actors involved in Lumumba's assassination.
Origins
Born on 2 July, 1925, to semi-literate Catholic farmers, Lumumba grew up in Onalua, a small village in the Katako-Kombe region of Kasai province in the centre of the Belgian Congo. His birthplace was renamed Lumumbaville in his honour in 2013. Lumumba belonged to the Batetela ethnic group, which influenced his political views. After he and his colleagues formed the Congolese National Movement (known by its French initials, MNC), the party aimed to unite the ethnically diverse Congo, home to as many as 250 ethnic groups and up to 700 distinct languages and dialects. This contrasted with the single-ethnic parties of his rivals, Joseph Kasavubu and Moise Tshombe, who came from powerful ethnic groups.
Lumumba displayed leadership and rebelliousness at an early age. He was expelled from schools twice without completing primary school, for questioning authority and engaging in debate He questioned established beliefs, such as Mary's virginity and the depiction of God as white. Driven by ambitions too large for his small village, he left home with only three francs and a forged document and travelled mostly on foot to a mining town, where he began working for a canteen company. This new urban environment exposed him to modern conveniences. He later relocated to Stanleyville (now Kisangani), the third-largest city in the Belgian Congo. There, he secured a position at a government district office, marking a significant step in his developing career.
In 1956, he embezzled funds while working as a postal clerk and was arrested, serving 14 months of his two-year sentence in a Stanleyville prison. According to Reid, his fraudulent activity was driven by his inability to afford the lifestyle of an evolué - the Europeanized African deemed socially a rung above the native African. After his release in 1957, he moved to Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) and was hired as an accountant's assistant at a brewery and later promoted to sales director.
As an individual, he didn't listen to advice from his close associates; indeed, he trusted persons against the advice of his close associates, He was ambitious, self-taught, read voraciously and always wanted to be the top man. Lumumba immersed himself in Stanleyville's évolué society. One notable characteristic of the évolué is that they viewed themselves as future Belgians, distancing themselves from their fellow Congolese. They fought for their own privileges, did not internalise the broader population's grievances, and were preoccupied with gaining approval from the colonial masters.
Lumumba held multiple leadership roles (chair, secretary and treasurer) simultaneously in seven such organisations. He was an excellent orator who captured the minds of his audience. He was impatient - the reason as independent Congo's PM, he got into an unnecessary confrontation with the UN when they did not bring Katanga under his administration as quickly as he wanted.
According to Jean Paul Sartre: "Lumumba was accused of playing a double and even a triple game. When he addressed an audience only made up of Congolese, he spoke with the greatest passion. If he saw there were whites in the audience, he mastered his emotions and cleverly blew both hot and cold. In Brussels, speaking to Belgian audiences, he was prudent and deliberately charming, and his first concern was to reassure his listeners.
His views would change radically after he attended the All-African People's Conference in Accra from December 5 to 13, 1958. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president had the most significant impact on Lumumba at the December 1958 Conference. Organised by African liberation nationalists in Accra, in newly-independent Ghana, . Two East African leaders, Abdulrahman Babu of Zanzibar and Tom Mboya of Kenya invited Lumumba. The conference brought together representatives from eight of the nine independent African states at the time - Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. During this meeting Lumumba established important relationships with major African leaders - Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Modibo Keita, and Ahmed Sékou Touré. it was also in
Reid notes that Accra transformed Lumumba. Back in Leopoldville, Lumumba initially tolerated the condescending Belgian attitude towards Africans but eventually advocated for the Congo's liberation from paternalistic control. He committed to eradicating the colonial regime, moving from an ambiguous to a firm deadline for independence by the end of 1960. Additionally, he embraced a pan-African viewpoint, asserting that Africa was irreversibly committed to a relentless fight against colonial powers for its freedom. On 28 December 1958, Lumumba delivered the famous statement: "The independence we demand in the name of peace should not be considered by Belgium as a gift." From that day on he fell out of grace with Brussels. Léopoldville erupted in riots a week later, on January 4, 1959. His collection of speeches attest to that change.
Lumumba's life paralleled that of Frantz Fanon, the influential Martinican philosopher who advocated violence against colonialism, and whom he first met at the Conference in Accra. Both were born and died in the same years, each aged 36. Fanon and Lumumba knew and admired each other. Fanon saw Lumumba as a determined opponent of disguised imperialism but criticised him for being naïve in his blind trust of his fellow men, which he believed was both Lumumba's greatest strength and the reason for his downfall. Indeed, it was his trust in Mobutu that brought him down. His independence day speech, which was not included in the program for the ceremony was the straw that broke the camel's back in his relations with Belgium. Whether or not it hastened his removal from power is debatable; he became a marked man after a disastrous US trip in July 1960 after which president, Dwight Eisenhower personally ordered for his assassination
Belgium's role
After 75 years of occupation, Belgium's strategy for Congo's independence was to relinquish control over inconsequential matters while retaining control over essential services such as the army, economic and foreign policy. Belgian efforts to undermine Lumumba and form an opposing coalition proved unsuccessful. The Belgians had inflamed ethnic tensions by a policy of divide-and-rule. The prospect of self-rule alarmed the 113,000 white settlers in the Congo. While Brussels was prepared to grant independence, the settlers were not.
The Congolese army (Force Publique), its rank-and-file impatient for better salaries, and keen to replace the Belgian officers now that their country was independent, mutinied against them on 5 July 1960, leading to widespread chaos and violence. Lumumba and President Kasavubu toured the country to calm the barracks. Belgium intervened militarily. By 9 July, it had occupied important cities, citing the need to protect Belgian citizens, compromising the new country's sovereignty days after formally relinquishing authority. The mineral-rich Katanga region declared independence with Belgian support on 11 July, complicating governance.
Lumumba appealed to the United Nations for assistance to quell the secessionist movements and restore order. He travelled to the US to meet US and UN officials, arriving in New York on 24 July for a weeklong visit.
On 5 September, against the advice of US Ambassador Clare Timberlake who urged him to buy up parliamentary support to secure a no-confidence vote, President Joseph Kasavubu announced over the radio Lumumba's dismissal as Prime Minister. Lumumba, also over the radio, dismissed Kasavubu's announcement; with his parliamentary majority intact, he survived.
Lawrence "Larry" Devlin, the new CIA station chief had arrived in Leo on 10 July and was received by Amb. Timberlake, with whom the idea of ousting Lumumba was closely shared. Both he and Timberlake, while not convinced that Lumumba was a communist, feared that he could fall under Soviet influence. Devlin was given the cover of political consul at the Embassy and, armed with a $100,000 (about $1m today) set about buying allies. Among his newly-minted friends: President Joseph Kasavubu, Foreign Minister, Justin Marie Bomboko, Security Minister, Victor Nendaka, National Bank of Congo president, Albert Ndele. Together with others, these constituted the Binza Group. As events unfolded, it would emerge as the most powerful faction in Congolese politics.
On 14 September 1960, the army chief, Colonel Joseph Desiré Mobutu led a military coup, suspending parliament and effectively removing Lumumba from power. Until then, Lumumba had considered Mobutu his closest friend, unaware that Mobutu was the CIA's principal agent in the Congo and the ringleader of the plot against him.
On 10 October, Lumumba was put under house arrest. On 27 November, he escaped with his two companions, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo. He was caught en route to Stanleyville (now Kisangani), his political bastion, on 1 December. He was transferred to the main army barracks at Thysville, located halfway between Leopoldville and the Atlantic coast, and subjected to torture and beatings. On 17 January 1961, he and his colleagues landed in Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi) and were handed over to the secessionist forces in Katanga. They were executed that evening. Lumumba's short 75-day tenure as prime minister is a story of Africa's first Cold War encounter, and one from which the Congo is yet to recover. As in so many subsequent proxy wars, it is depicted as a US anti-communist campaign.
The Role of the CIA
In late August 1960, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered Lumumba's elimination ostensibly due to fears that Lumumba was a communist sympathiser who would align with the Soviet Union. At one security meeting, CIA Director Allen Dulles said Lumumba "remained a grave danger as long as he was not disposed of". President Eisenhower, for his part, told the British foreign secretary that he wished "Lumumba would fall into a river full of crocodiles". Lumumba's Washington visit that July had set the Americans on edge; his request for US military intervention had been ignored. He resorted to the Soviet Union as a last option. The Soviet Union did not consider him radical enough; their support was too little, too late.
Larry Devlin was strongly anti-Lumumbist. Using Mobutu in the army, Kasavubu in the executive alongside the Binza Group, Devlin deftly managed Washington, at times sending exaggerated reports, and at other times withholding information that may have been useful to Lumumba.
On 19 September, Devlin received a telegram from the CIA's headquarters in Langley. He was to expect "Joe from Paris" on 27 September. Joe was Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA's top poisons expert. He was passing on an order to Devlin to assassinate Lumumba. Gottlieb said that the order had come from President Eisenhower. Gottlieb delivered a poisonous toothpaste. Administered successfully, it would deliver the polio virus and a slow, excruciating death.
In his 2007 memoir, Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone, published a year before his death, Devlin says he was morally opposed to the assassination order but chose not to defy it openly, instead repeatedly stalling. When Lumumba was finally executed, Devlin says he retrieved the toothpaste from his safe and threw it into the Congo River.
CIA director Dulles admitted to the president that Patrice Lumumba consistently prevailed despite their efforts to kill him. The CIA paid off opponents of Lumumba's policies to isolate his supporters when parliament resumed its functions after his assassination. In typical CIA fashion, Devlin rented anti-Lumumbist crowds and bought local newspaper headlines, strongly influencing both domestic and international perceptions of the growing opposition to Lumumba.
Declassified documents from the Church Committee, the inquiry into CIA activities in 1975, along with other sources Reid relies on in his book, reveal that Devlin may have played an altogether bigger and darker role than what comes across from his memoir and highly visible public engagements before his death in 2008.
Crucial to the Lumumba assassination account was Devlin's withholding of information concerning Lumumba's transfer to Elisabethville in mid-January 1960, resulting in his execution. When Lumumba was transferred to the Thysville barracks after his capture at the beginning of December, it soon became apparent that, even in chains, he wielded a charismatic influence over the soldiers. Rumours began to circulate that the soldiers had turned and were going to release Lumumba. Devlin contacted Langley for funds, which he intended to use to pay off the soldiers. However, a 14 January telegraph informed him that the State Department felt that the Lumumba situation should be handled by the incoming Kennedy administration and therefore, chose to wait until the new president had taken office.
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It appears that this may have been the reason Devlin failed to share information on Lumumba's transfer to Moise Tshombe's men in Katanga. It begs, tragically, the question: might Lumumba have avoided execution if Devlin, who was in a position to do so, had called off the handover?
When Lyndon Johnson became US president, he approved a significant CIA covert operation - at $90-$150 million in today's rates, the most expensive operation at the time - to combat supporters of Lumumba who controlled large areas of the Congo after his death. Among these rebels was Laurent Kabila (he would later overthrow Mobutu and seize power in 1997, ironically, as the titular head of a US-backed rebel operation). The CIA-backed white mercenaries ultimately prevailed against the pro-Lumumbist Simba rebels. The conflict claimed 100,000 Congolese lives.
The situation would further deteriorate. Under Devlin, the CIA lavishly funded Mobutu to win over officers in the army to organise another coup, on 25 November 1965, allowing him to maintain a stranglehold over the Congo - with Belgian support. While State Department officials pointed out that corruption was the single biggest threat to the Congo, Devlin turned a blind eye to Mobutu's growing kleptomania as he amassed enormous wealth amidst the impoverisation of the Congolese and the haemorrhaging of the neocolony's vast mineral resources, not least to the benefit of US diamond interests fronted by Maurice Tempelsman, the longtime companion of JFK's widow, Jacqueline.
Mobutu's relationship with Devlin - worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and payoffs to Leo politicians and army generals - and with the CIA in the long run, gave him the external support to disguise his clientelism with a pervasive personality cult that in effect held the Congo together and propped up his rule despite his oppressive governance.
A man of courage
In his last letter to his wife, Lumumba writes, "Neither brutal assaults, nor cruel mistreatment, nor torture have ever led me to beg for mercy, for I prefer to die with my head held high, unshakable faith, and the greatest confidence in the destiny of my country rather than live in slavery and contempt for sacred principles." He also stated that history in the future will judge in his favour.
Stuart Reid's The Lumumba Plot is a meticulously researched and compelling account of one of the Cold War's most iconic tragedies. Rather than providing new revelations about Lumumba's assassination, it re-examines it by revisiting existing evidence in recently declassified documents, thereby enriching it. In addition, Reid provides detailed biographical portraits not just of Lumumba, but his adversaries as well. It lets readers appreciate Lumumba as a human being within his historical context. Reid's ability to weave personal stories with political analysis makes the book informative and deeply engaging. It provides a nuanced understanding of Lumumba's life and times and the international machinations that led to his demise. Though I had no doubt about the involvement of the CIA, the book's details meticulously reveal its role in the plot. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in Cold War history, African politics, or the complexities of decolonisation.
Mohamed Kheir Omer is an African-Norwegian researcher and writer based in Oslo, Norway. He is a former member of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF).
