Addis Ababa, June 20, 2022(Walta) – Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Emery Lumumba, will finally have a burial in the Democratic Republic of Congo 61 years after his assassination as Belgium returns to the family of the Congolese independence hero his remains, a tooth which was removed on January 17, 1961, the day the former leader was assassinated.
A strong delegation of Lumumba’s family and Congolese authorities, led by Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde, is in Brussels for this event, which is considered the official mourning of independent Congo’s first prime minister.
The former Congolese leader was shot in Katanga in the south of the DRC with two of his ministers who had remained loyal to him. His body was never found. Investigations in Belgium many years later revealed that his body had been cut up and dissolved in acid.
Lumumba is fondly remembered for his struggle for independence and the liberation of Africans from the colonial yoke.
His intransigence in the face of an inhuman and cruel colonial power earned him great enmity from Belgium and the western world, which suspected him of tipping the Congo into the communist fold at the height of the Cold War.
When the Congo gained independence, he was the prime minister in President Joseph Kasavubu’s government.
But from the very first days of independence, the country sank into chaos. Patrice Lumumba, who served as prime minister for only two months, was arrested and quickly handed over to his enemies in Katanga where he was killed. But since then he has been celebrated in Congo and elsewhere, mainly in Africa.