Belgium’s Lumumba case raises a question Africa still avoids |
On January 20, a court in Brussels, Belgium, convened a procedural hearing in the long-running case concerning the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The hearing did not revisit the full history of the killing, but was limited to determining whether the case should proceed under Belgian law.
At the centre of the proceedings stands Etienne Davignon, a 93-year-old former Belgian diplomat and senior state official. Federal prosecutors are seeking to prosecute Davignon on charges linked to Lumumba’s unlawful detention and degrading treatment in the months preceding his execution, allegations he denies. The case follows Belgium’s acknowledgement of moral responsibility for Lumumba’s death, and represents an incomplete, belated attempt to reckon with colonial violence through legal means.
That such a reckoning is taking place at all, however limited, raises a more uncomfortable question. While a former colonial power is revisiting aspects of its role in Lumumba’s killing, much of postcolonial Africa is still failing to confront the political vision for which he was eliminated. Lumumba’s assassination is mourned, but his analysis is rarely taken seriously. His name is invoked, but his demands are quietly set aside.
Lumumba is often remembered as an anti-colonial martyr and periodically rediscovered across Africa, but the substance of his political thought is rarely engaged. The questions he raised at the moment of independence, about sovereignty, land and the limits of political freedom in postcolonial Africa, remain largely unresolved.
That neglect is not accidental.
Many post-colonial African leaders have not honoured Lumumba’s legacy precisely because of the radical clarity of his critique, and what it would demand of those in power today, including governing coalitions that have learned to profit from the systems he sought to dismantle. To understand why his ideas still unsettle so many in Africa and abroad, it is necessary to return to the speech that announced his politics publicly, and to the reactions it provoked at the time.
On June 30, 1960, at the Palais de la Nation in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, Lumumba addressed the official independence ceremony in the presence of Belgium’s King Baudouin. The speech has since........