Patrice Lumumba

From Ludo De Witte's The Assassination of Lumumba

"Talking directly to the people over the heads of the assembled diplomatic corps, he explains that the granting of independence is not a generous gift offered by Brussels, as King Baudouin maintains. Independence has been procleaimed in agreement with Belgium, but: "no Congolese worthy of the name can ever forget that it is by struggle that we have won [our independence], a struggle waged each and every day, a passionate idealistic struggle, a struggle in which no effor, privation, suffering or drop of our blood was spared."

Lumumba describes in the frankest of terms the colonial system that Baudouin had glorified as his great-uncles' chef-d'oeuvre and condemns it as "the humiliating slavery that was imposed on us by force". He goes on:

We have know sarcasm and insults, endured blows morning, noon and night, because we were "niggers". Who will forget that a Black was addressed in the familiar tu, not as a friend, but because the polite vous was reserved for Whites only? We have seen our lands despoiled under the terms of what was supposedly the law of the land but which only recognised the right of the strongest. We have seen that this law was quite different for a White than for a Black: accomodating for the former, cruel and inhuman for the latter.We have seen the terrible suffering of those banished to remote regions because of their political opinions or religious beliefs; exiled within their own country, their fate was truly worse than death itself...And finally, who can forget the volley of gunfire in which so many of our brothers perished, the cells where the authories threw those who would not submit to a rule where justice meant oppression and exploitation.

Lumumba puts the role played by Brussels in the process of decolonisation into perspective: "Belgium, finally understanding the march of history, has not tried to oppose our independence."

Lumumba's speech is interreptured eight times by sustained applause from all the Congolese present and honoured by a veritable ovation at the end. In not time, the thousands following the festivities on the radio have spread the news of the bombshell to the four corners of the Congo. Lumumba has spoken in the language the Congolese thought impossible in the presnece of a European, and those few moments of truth feel like a reward for eighty years of domination. For the first time in the history of the country, a Congolese has address the nation and set the stage for the reconstruction of Congolese history. By this one act, Lumumba has reinforced the Congolese preople's sense of dignity and self-confidence.

The representative of defunct colonialism are stunned.Brussels is suddenly facing the anti-colonial revolution it feared. The colonial enterprise, so highly praised by the king, has been depicted as humiliating slavery in front of the Europeans themselves. And all this is the work of Patrice Lumumba, the man who, only a few weeks earlier, after his electoral victory, was described in the Belgian press as an illiterate thief, an upstart, a black parachuted to the top!

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