 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch and our new show Dispatches from the Congo where we're going to be talking about on a bi-weekly basis the key issues that are happening in the country, its impact both on the region and globally, as well as the kind of struggles, the social movements and the aspirations of the youth in this very significant country in Africa. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. And I want to start out with a very important issue which is on all of our minds these days. The Monday that is the 17th of January is the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Patrick Lumumba. January 17th marks the 60th anniversary of the brutal assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the iconic leader of the Congo's struggle for independence and the country's first prime minister. Lumumba was and remains a hero throughout the world for his role in the anti-colonial struggle, his belief and work in pan-Africanism and his vision of a decolonized state. Lumumba's beliefs, his policies and his very existence were a threat to the imperial powers. Just months after he had assumed office, the CIA, Belgium and their allies in the country masterminded the operation that led to his brutal murder. He was 35 years old. They hoped to silence him but Lumumba has lived on in the hearts and minds of the people across the world and most importantly in their struggles. Today we try to understand what makes Lumumba such an icon, what made him so dangerous to imperialist powers and how his legacy endures to this day in the Congo and the struggles of the people there. So could you maybe start off by talking a bit about how his legacy is viewed today in the Congo, the kind of inspiration he provides, how he is seen especially by the youth and progressive movements today. But Chris Lumumba was the first elected, democratically elected, prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He comes from a long history of resistance, not just from him as a I would say an activist or a militant, but the struggle of Congolese to determine the affairs since the 1400. The 1400 we had the Portuguese come, later we had the King Lopo come in the 1800 during the curving up of the African continent and Congolese have always resisted. So he symbolized the spirit of resistance that Congolese have embodied for over 400 years. But Patrice Lumumba also represents what is the possibility of what Pan-Africanism can do on the African continent. As we discussed even his work and him becoming prime minister of the DRC, we have to know that this did not happen in Nesilo and it happened with the support of all the Africans from Chad, from Cameroon, from Ghana and from Central African Republic. So all these Africans fought to see a free and liberated Congo. Now that he's dead, brutally killed with the help of the CIA in Belgium, Belgium and of course a few Congolese Sacrafans, we can say that his ideas have not been killed. So they killed Patrice Lumumba physically but they could not kill his ideas and his ideas were very simple. He wanted the Congo to be controlled by the Congolese. He wanted the resources of the Congo to benefit the Congolese people. And because of that idea of control of the land and resources and produce, exploiting those resources for the benefit of the masses, he was brutally assassinated. And the Congolese have not stopped the struggle. Lately in the 2015, we had the Telema uprising in the DRC where Congolese youth took upon themselves to challenge the status quo and their spirit is still very vibrant. But I will be remiss not to mention, even though the spirit is vibrant, we cannot forget that we still have a few reactionaries in the DRC who want to efface. I mean, I'm saying efface. We want to erase the history, the legacy of Patrice Lumumba. But it is hard to do because Lumumba is not just in history books now. Lumumba is in our culture, in our songs, that is going to be very hard to erase his legacy of what he stood for because he's not part of the public consciousness that we as Congolese must fight for the liberation of our land. In September 2020, Belgium announced that they would finally return his mortal remains, a tooth. This followed a major campaign by his daughter, Julianna, and from those fighting for justice around the world. His remains will finally be buried this year. But this does not mark an end to the story. Instead, it throws up many questions on the culpability of colonial powers and the impact of their crimes over the decades. When we talk even about the remains of Patrice Lumumba coming back to the DRC, it's important to look at the historical trajectory of how we got there. The remains coming back to the DRC from Belgium, not in the DRC. So one way to ask, how did he end up there? But we have to look at the struggle of the Congolese from the 40s to the 60s. During that process, young Congolese stopped mobilizing and organizing to end colonialism, particularly Belgian colonialism. And there were a few young Congolese who were impactful. The ones that I'm going to speak about are Patrice Lumumba, Josephine Galula, and Gaston Diomi. These were the three young Congolese who were invited at the All-African People's Conference that took place in Accra, supported by Rasmak Cohn, who apparently bought their flights for them to come to Accra. But as they came, they saw a group of young Africans determined to transform the continent. These young people said, we are being colonized on our land where we have our resources and we don't control them. And if we want to transform our lives, we must regain control of this land. And during that time, in Accra, deals and collections and agreements were made among these young people, stating that each one of us are going back to our home countries and we are going to mobilize for independence now, not tomorrow, not few decades from now, that we needed independence so that we could regain control of our land and resources. As Patrice Lumumba went back to the DRC, he didn't go back alone. So that's why I always insist the independence of the Congo wasn't a Congolese affair. It was a Pan-African affair. You had Cameroonian, you had Chadian, you had Central Africans, you had Ghanaians, who were working with the PSA, Partizolidera African, and the MNC, a movement national Congolese Patrice Lumumba, they mobilized and organized. And in May of 1960, they shocked the world. Congolese, when they were given the space to choose their own leader, they chose a leader who embodied Pan-Africanism. They chose Patrice Lumumba. As he won the election of May 1960, right before the Independence Day of June 30th, Western nations started getting worried. And the worry of the Western powers, particularly Belgium and the United States, was who's going to take control of Congo's economy, who's going to take control of Congo's resources. So they were quick to give Congolese the political independence, but they refused to give Congolese control of their mineral resources, particularly Dwight Eisenhower, who needed Congo's uranium and Congo's cobalt back then during the so-called Cold War. So in July of 1960, right after the declaration of independence in the ERC, can you imagine, the Congo became independent on June 30th 1960, Patrice Lumumba gave one of the most impressive and fantastic speech, Independence Day speech written by André Bois, and that's something people do not know. She actually wrote that speech as he read the speech about why it was important to want for us to remember those who fought before, and that what we fought for did not come as a gift. That we fought with blood and sweat and we gained independence, and we are determined to continue to fight for a new Congo that will transform Africa. And from that speech on June 30th, a few weeks later, the United States president Dwight Eisenhower in the National Security Council meeting stated that Patrice Lumumba should be eliminated. This is in the church committee, the records that this order came from Dwight Eisenhower in July already. And the reason, as I mentioned a moment ago, was he did not want a young 35-year-old Congolese to have control of the land the size of Western Europe, border by land African countries with so much wealth, some of them being strategic minerals that the United States wanted. So the plot to overthrow him happened a few weeks after he became the prime minister of the ERC. So within weeks of Patrice Lumumba becoming the prime minister, he was deposed. Within months, he was assassinated with the help of Belgium, the United States, and a few Congolese sacophants. But his killing is really important to know. And Ludo Dwight says the best in his book, The Assassination of Lumumba. In his book, the introduction of the book is fascinating. He explains saying that when he started writing the book, he was surprised of how much information existed around the killing of Patrice Lumumba. But he was surprised that academics, intellectuals, and others did not want to dig into the information. And he concluded that the assassination of Lumumba was not just the physical assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the ERC where the Congolese will now have a leader. What they did to his body was literally to make sure that Lumumba is erased from the collective memory of Africans. So how did they kill him? They arrested, they tortured him with two of his comrades who were part of the government, Polo and Okito, tortured the three of them, beat them completely to death, put them into firing squad, and buried them. After burying him, they knew that wherever Lumumba was buried for years and decades to come, he may become a place of pilgrimage for Congolese or for those who believe in the ideas of Patrice Lumumba. So they went back to where he was buried, took his body out, chapped it off into pieces, put it into acid, and buried him completely so that his remains will not be found anywhere. But the most bizarre thing that took place around this year, it was done by two Belgian mercenaries. One of them in the early 2000s, participating in a documentary where he actually bragged about the killing of Patrice Lumumba, where he explained what they did to his body, and during the interview he said that Congolese sometimes they feel that Lumumba may resurrect one day. There are even people who believe he will return. Now I'll have to come back with two front teeth missing. Then he goes into his pocket, takes out a pouch, opens the pouch, and pulls a tooth out of the pouch and shows it to the camera, stating, that's Lumumba's tooth. Can you imagine the pain, eye, and millions of Congolese feel to know that there was a Belgian mercenary who was walking around Belgium with Lumumba's tooth and actually bragging about the killing and showing it on camera. But when he did that, there was uprising in Belgium. Riots, people were frustrated and saying, how can this be possible? So a few weeks later, the gentleman said, of course I'm saying it for the second I interviewed that he's a gentleman, but the individual says that he threw the tooth away. He did not have it in his possession anymore. He passed away, he died. Then a few decades ago, his daughter does an interview also in Belgium, where she states that her father gave her the tooth. Riots protest happened again, and then she says that she threw it away. Then surprisingly this year, after the official request of the Lumumba family by Juliana Lumumba, the daughter of Patrice Lumumba, she made an official request to the Belgian government that she wants the remains of her father to be returned to the Congo. The Ministry of Justice officially, the Belgian government responded to the request stating that they have his remains and they will return the remains of Patrice Lumumba. Can you imagine for 60 years, Belgium had Lumumba's tooth, Lumumba's remains, and they want to tell us that Congolese killed Patrice Lumumba. What is this tooth doing in Belgium? So that very small explanation clearly shows that there was an international attempt to not just kill Lumumba, but to stop the Pan-African movement, which was successful, again in 1960, 12 African nations became independent, and this wave was going through the African continent. So they wanted to make sure that they want to make an example out of Patrice Lumumba, so that anyone who wants to rise up, they will say, look at what happened to Patrice Lumumba, do you want that to happen to you? But what they didn't realize is what Patrice Lumumba was fighting, was fighting for him as an individual. There is a spirit of resistance in the DRC, in the Congolese people, to want to have a say in the decision-making process of our country, that no matter who's assassinated, the Rosici manga, the young Congolese who have passed away in the past decade, the Thérèse Capangala, she also passed away in the past protests around Kabila being in power, the former president of the DRC. The spirit of resistance in the DRC is so entrenched in the people that it cannot go away. That's why I always say Patrice Lumumba is an ideal. That ideal is simple. We must take control of our land, we must take control of our resources, we must exploit those resources for the benefit of the Congolese people, not the multinationals in Paris, London, and Washington. As Patrice Lumumba said, Africa will write its own history. It won't be the history written in Paris, Washington or London. It will be the history written by Africans themselves, and that history will be of glory. And that's what the people of the Congo till today are taking from what happened to Patrice Lumumba and what we can do today to transform the Congo.