Roland Lumumba, one of Patrice Lumumba’s sons, during a news conference at the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Brussels, June 17, 2022. KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP
Belgium is returning a tooth belonging to Patrice Lumumba to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Monday 20 June, which has the value of a “relic” and should make it possible to offer Congolese a place dedicated to the memory of their former prime minister is dedicated. tortured and shot down in 1961.
This assassination, followed by the disposal of the dismembered and acid-dissolved corpse, represents one of the darkest pages of the relationship between Belgium and its former colony, which became independent on June 30, 1960. It is still the subject of a court investigation in Brussels over “war crimes” following the 2011 complaint filed by François Lumumba, the eldest son of the assassinated leader, who pointed the finger at the responsibility of a dozen Belgian officials and diplomats.
The tooth is returned as part of this procedure. The file was consolidated in 2016 with a lawsuit for “acceptance”, the relatives saw there as the only way to have these human remains confiscated by the judiciary. The tooth had been kept as a memento by a Belgian police officer who was involved in the disappearance of the body and boasted about it in the media.
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On Monday morning, federal prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw was scheduled to present Patrice Lumumba’s children with “the box of teeth,” attributed to their father, in a “private” ceremony scheduled for 10 a.m. The case will be placed in a coffin during a “beer setting”, this time in the presence of the Belgian and Congolese prime ministers, according to the official programme, still at the Egmont Palace in Brussels.
Speeches then have to be held in front of the coffin before the national anthems of the two countries are played. At the end of the ceremony, the remains will be transported to the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She was due to fly to Kinshasa on Tuesday evening after honoring the Afro community in Brussels.
A monument under construction in Kinshasa
Independence hero Patrice Lumumba, who became prime minister of the former Belgian Congo (former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), was overthrown in a coup in September 1960. He was executed with two brothers-in-arms on January 17, 1961 by separatists from the Katanga region with the support of Belgian mercenaries.
Perceived as pro-Soviet by Washington in the midst of the Cold War, seen as a threat to Western economic interests in the Congo, after his death he acquired the status of an African advocate of anti-imperialism. “In a very short time, Lumumba became the martyr of decolonization, the hero of all the oppressed on earth,” summarized David Van Reybrouck in his book “Congo, a history”.
For his family he remained a father or grandfather from whom it was not possible to say goodbye. “The years pass and our father remains a dead person without a funeral speech,” wrote his daughter Juliana in a letter to the King of the Belgians, Philippe, in 2020, demanding “the just return of the relics”.
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The restitution was intended to allow relatives to end their grief and the Congolese authorities to erect a memorial under construction in Kinshasa on a main axis where a statue of the national hero already stands. According to Congolese sources, a burial ceremony must be organized there on June 30, the anniversary of independence. During the past week, the coffin will have stopped at emblematic places of the former leader’s personal and political journey.
“New defining moment” in bilateral relations, according to Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, the restitution comes right after a six-day trip by King Philippe to the DRC in early June – his first trip to the former colony – during which he reiterated his “deepest regrets” for the “wounds” of the colonial era. On Monday morning, before the restitution ceremony, Philippe was scheduled to interview the Lumumba children at the Royal Palace. A symbolic meeting for the descendants of King Leopold II, whose monarchy has now admitted to having set up “a regime characterized by paternalism, discrimination and racism” in the Congo at the end of the 19th century.
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