How Africa
In seeking help, Lumumba made one grave mistake. He sought help from the Soviet Union. This was to orchestrate a string of events that would ravage Congo’s politics up to this day, which has also had an adverse effect on the economy.
Africa has been blessed exceptionally and abundantly with revolutionaries who were capable of embracing the values of peace, family spirit, equality and justice. These were the values which the Western powers perceived as threats, and threats which had to be immediately thwarted.
Such was the case with Patrice Lumumba, who was the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Upon assuming the reins of an infant republic, he was determined to propel the DRC to great heights. This was not going to rosy, as enemies soon besieged his values, ideals and hopes. His determination had crossed swords with the Western powers.
The DRC is a country with superfluous natural resources, rich, precious and the same resources which have been source of bitter animosities up to this day. Lumumba had sought to have full control of the resources and use these for the benefit of the country.
The United States of America had entrenched interests in the Congo from the days of the Berlin Conference in 1884. It is essential to note that the US had been the first country in the world to recognise the claims of King Leopold II of the Belgians to the territories of the Congo Basin. When the atrocities related to brutal economic exploitation in Leopold’s Congo Free State resulted in millions of fatalities, the US joined other world powers to force Belgium to take over the country as a regular colony.
The US acquired a major stake in the control of the resources in the Congo. The uranium that was used in the manufacturing of the atomic bombs that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki was obtained from the Congo. The US has since found a permanent haven when it comes to the extraction of natural resources at the detriment of the locals.
Lumumba was soon beset with peace problems in the Congo. He had to deal with the resource rich provinces of Katanga and Kasai that were strong proponents of secession, and there were several governments in the country, ostensibly sponsored by the CIA of America.
In seeking help, Lumumba made one grave mistake. He sought help from the Soviet Union. This was to orchestrate a string of events that would ravage Congo’s politics up to this day, which has also had an adverse effect on the economy.
The US had to do something. And their only accomplice in devising such maliicous machinations only had to be Belgium. Recent reports have also revealed that the Britain’s intelligence service MI6 also had a hand in the assassination of Lumumba. The US feared the Soviet being in control of the DRC with their communist ideals and principles.
Various methods to kill Lumumba were designed. By January 1961, Lumumba’s existence on Earth was now history. In his place was installed a pro-Western government, tasked with re-uniting Congo while maintaining the interests of the West. It was this that would lead to the rise of the most infamous dictator in the history of the world, Mobutu Sese Seko.
Lumumba’s assassination boils down to geo-political wars of the 1960s, when the Cold War was fresh and the CIA would exterminate any government with links to the Soviet Union. It was the greed of the US, to maintain control over the Congo’s vast and enormous natural resources.
