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 review the full circumstances of the killing, but was limited to determining whether the case should proceed under Belgian law.
At the center of the proceedings is Etienne d’Avignon, a 93-year-old former Belgian diplomat and senior state official. Federal prosecutors are seeking to indict Davignon on charges related to Lumumba’s illegal detention and degrading treatment in the months before his execution, charges he denies. The lawsuit follows Belgium’s admission of moral responsibility for Lumumba’s death, and represents an incomplete and belated attempt to legally absolve colonial-era violence.
The fact that such calculations are actually occurring, however limited, raises more uncomfortable questions. While former colonial powers are reconsidering their role in Lumumba’s murder, much of postcolonial Africa remains unable to confront a political vision that excludes Lumumba. Lumumba’s assassination is mourned, but his analysis is rarely taken seriously. His name is called, but his request is silently ignored.
Although Lumumba is often remembered as a martyr of anti-colonialism and regularly rediscovered across Africa, the essence of his political thought is rarely addressed. The questions he raised at the moment of independence about the limits of sovereignty, land, and political freedom in postcolonial Africa remain largely unanswered.
That neglect is no coincidence.
Many postcolonial African leaders do not respect Lumumba’s legacy precisely because his critique is fundamentally clear and demands of those in power today, including the coalition governments that have learned to profit from the institutions Lumumba sought to dismantle. To understand why his ideas continue to unsettle many people in Africa and abroad, we need to go back to the public speeches that announced his politics and the reactions they provoked at the time.
On June 30, 1960, at the Palais de la Nation in Leopoldville, present-day Kinshasa, Lumumba spoke at the official independence ceremony in the presence of King Baudouin of Belgium. This speech has since been recognized as one of the most significant political interventions of Africa’s decolonization era. However, at the time, much of the Western media treated this as a provocation.
Writing in the New York Times the next day, foreign correspondent Harry Gilroy described Lumumba’s speech as “militant” and argued that it “ruined” an occasion that was supposed to celebrate independence in the spirit of colonial goodwill. Gilroy contrasted Lumumba unfavorably with President Joseph Casa-Vubu’s conciliatory speech, observing that “the Soviet diplomats present appeared to be relishing the occasion,” portraying the moment through a Cold War lens and casting Lumumba as an erratic and ideologically dubious figure. This framing was not coincidental, but part of a broader Western media reflex that treated uncompromising anti-colonial discourse as a threat to order rather than an assertion of political agency.
A special report in the Guardian on 1 July 1960 was similarly revealing, albeit in more detail. A British newspaper described Lumumba’s speech as “offensive” and undermined the dignity of the royal family. Much attention was paid to etiquette, the king’s discomfort, delays in official programs, and the embarrassment caused to Belgium during what was supposed to be a ceremonial handover.
Contemporaneous reports said Baudouin almost abandoned the independence ceremony as authorities scrambled to contain the fallout. What was little considered in the West was the accuracy of Lumumba’s account and how it came to be.
Sitting inside the Palais de la Nation after listening to Baudouin’s speech, Lumumba revised and expanded on his remarks, even though he had no plans to speak. His speech was not part of the official program.
That was the reply.
The gulf between the king’s self-congratulatory tone and Lumumba’s prophetic speech could not be more apparent. Baudouin praised Leopold II’s “genius.” Under Leopold II’s personal rule, an estimated 10 million Congolese people died from forced labor for rubber and ivory, violence, and starvation. He spoke of Belgium’s so-called civilizing mission, presenting independence as a benevolent stewardship without acknowledging the racial terror, property deprivation, and mass death it had caused.
Lumumba rejected that framework outright.
“We know the cynicism, the insults, the blowbacks,” he said of a system that reduces Africans to subjects rather than citizens. He described racist laws that led to the seizure of land, the deportation of political prisoners into the country, and forced labor paid at wages that could not sustain human life. He argued that independence is not a gift but the result of a struggle and is meaningless without dignity, equality and control of national wealth.
What upset Western observers was not that Lumumba’s views were inaccurate. It was that he spoke openly in front of the public and in front of European powers. Colonial self-justification was accepted. Telling the truth of anti-colonialism was not. Lumumba paid with his life the price of naming a reality that others would later learn how to manage, mitigate, and profit from. His tone, timing, and supposed obsession with militancy served as an early delegitimization of African political institutions.
History will prove that Lumumba’s diagnosis was correct.
One of the central demands of his speech was that “our native land truly benefits its children.”
More than 60 years later, the contradictions persist.
The DRC is home to some of the world’s most strategic mineral resources, including those essential to the global energy transition. But about three-quarters of the population lives in poverty, and mining revenues are dominated by foreign companies. In the DRC, particularly since the 1980s, World Bank-supported reform and liberalization programs formalized in the early 2000s have dismantled state control over mines, promoted privatization, returned cobalt and copper to foreign companies, and weakened state control over strategic resources.
Resource extraction continues, particularly in the east, alongside displacement, conflict, and environmental degradation.
The same pattern can be seen elsewhere.
Although oil exports have generated hundreds of billions of dollars in Nigeria since the 1970s, more than 133 million Nigerians live in multidimensional poverty. Different national situation, similar outcome: political independence without economic sovereignty. Communities in the Niger Delta endure chronic pollution, underdevelopment and violence, while wealth flows overseas.
Lumumba also spoke directly about political freedom.
He pledged to “end the persecution of free thought” and ensure that “all peoples enjoy to the fullest extent the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
This was no lofty speech either.
That was a warning.
Across Africa, including in Uganda, Tanzania, and Eritrea, the promise of rudimentary democracy has been repeatedly broken by violence, repression, and serious violations of electoral processes.
Militarization has become the default mode of politics, with wars, coups, and power struggles recurring across the continent, from long-running conflicts in the Horn of Africa to repeated military takeovers elsewhere.
Lumumba clearly warned against armed rule in Africa. “We will establish peace in this country based on harmony and goodwill, not on guns and bayonets,” he said.
That vision has been steadily abandoned.
Africa is independent in form, not substance.
Corruption, repression and neo-colonial regimes continue to hollow it out.
The African Union estimates that Africa loses approximately $89 billion annually to illicit financial flows, while CFA franc regulations and debt conditions continue to hinder socio-economic development. Courts can examine individual acts, but the historical judicial system and the system Lumumba warned against remains firmly in place. That’s why the ongoing case in Belgium is important beyond its legal scope.
Although the Belgian court process is reviewing the mechanism of Lumumba’s death, it cannot resolve the deeper historical and political wounds his killing signified.
Mr. Lumumba’s family, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the continent bear full responsibility for Mr. Lumumba’s assassination, just as Africans deserve reparations for slavery and colonialism.
But justice for the past is inseparable from responsibility for the present.
His legacy requires more than statues and monuments.
Lumumba’s failure to continue to meet the standards he articulated has produced a cycle of exploitation, inequality, and violence rather than stability and dignity.
It remains the unfinished business of Patrice Lumumba’s life and death.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
