July 2nd was the 87th anniversary of the birth of Patrice Lumumba , the 1st Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Patrice Lumumba is a historical figure that I first learned of as a teen. My knowledge of him as a person is still limited, but my understanding of his importance has blossomed over the years. When you look at the current condition of the Congo, the roots of this disaster are found in the life of Lumumba. The choices he made, and the reactions to those choices by his enemies, have rippled throughout time affecting his people & his homeland up until this very day.
Lumumba was a Revolutionary. He was a young man, full of the vigor of youth. He was bold, brash & brilliant. His Independence Day Speech (June 30th, 1960) was the speech of a Man determined to be recognized as such. The Congo had just won it's independence from Belgium but in reality the Belgians still looked at the Congolese as children. Lumumba's speech set out to change that perception once & for all. He wanted the Congolese people & indeed Afrikans worldwide to see themselves as equals with their former colonizers & enslavers. That speech was a defiant rebuke to European colonialism, white Supremacy & Afrikan inferiority. Lumumba wanted to remind his countrymen that they had FOUGHT for their freedom and secured it by their own efforts. That speech probably sealed his fate while at the same time making him a legend.
The Belgians & the CIA would engineer his assassination a mere 7 months after that speech. The Congo would eventually fall under the despotic rule of Mobutu Sese' Seko, a kleptocratic megalomaniac that would run the country into the ground. To this day the Congo is in complete disarray. The resources are being looted by multi-national corporations. Civil Wars, rape, murder & dysfunction have raged for over 15 years. The people of Congo have been subjected to untold atrocities since the conquest of the Afrikan continent by European powers starting in the 15th century. The dream of a thriving, independent Congolese nation has been replaced with a nightmare of neocolonial quagmire. This is of course to the benefit of the same forces that opposed Lumumba. European powers and Multinational corporations can continue their economic rape of the country in the midst of the ongoing chaos.
So what can we learn from the life of a man like Lumumba ? The first thing we can see is that our enemies will do anything to keep Afrikans from true liberation. Whenever they realize that an Afrikan leader is really about Afrikan liberation & has no fear, they will seek to destroy them. The second thing we see is that there will always be self hating sycophants who will work against the interest of their own people for personal gain. The name Mobutu has been appropriated by Pan-Afrikanist to mean a traitor to Afrikan people. We use it to remind ourselves of how treacherous some of our own people can be. Most importantly of all, Lumumba's example show us that Afrika will always produce freedom fighters. She will always produce liberators who are willing to live & die for the people. Patrice Lumumba was such a man and all Afrikans should honor him by continuing the struggle for true Afrikan Liberation and Pan-Afrikanism worldwide.
ABIBIFAHODIE'
