Belgium’s Lumumba case raises a question Africa still avoids

On January 20, a tribunal successful Brussels, Belgium, convened a procedural proceeding successful the long-running lawsuit concerning the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the archetypal premier curate of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The proceeding did not revisit the afloat past of the killing, but was constricted to determining whether the lawsuit should proceed nether Belgian law.

At the centre of the proceedings stands Etienne Davignon, a 93-year-old erstwhile Belgian diplomat and elder authorities official. Federal prosecutors are seeking to prosecute Davignon connected charges linked to Lumumba’s unlawful detention and degrading attraction successful the months preceding his execution, allegations helium denies. The lawsuit follows Belgium’s acknowledgement of motivation work for Lumumba’s death, and represents an incomplete, belated effort to reckon with assemblage unit done ineligible means.

That specified a reckoning is taking spot astatine all, nevertheless limited, raises a much uncomfortable question. While a erstwhile assemblage powerfulness is revisiting aspects of its relation successful Lumumba’s killing, overmuch of postcolonial Africa is inactive failing to face the governmental imaginativeness for which helium was eliminated. Lumumba’s assassination is mourned, but his investigation is seldom taken seriously. His sanction is invoked, but his demands are softly acceptable aside.

Lumumba is often remembered arsenic an anti-colonial martyr and periodically rediscovered crossed Africa, but the substance of his governmental thought is seldom engaged. The questions helium raised astatine the infinitesimal of independence, astir sovereignty, onshore and the limits of governmental state successful postcolonial Africa, stay mostly unresolved.

That neglect is not accidental.

Many post-colonial African leaders person not honoured Lumumba’s bequest precisely due to the fact that of the extremist clarity of his critique, and what it would request of those successful powerfulness today, including governing coalitions that person learned to nett from the systems helium sought to dismantle. To recognize wherefore his ideas inactive unsettle truthful galore successful Africa and abroad, it is indispensable to instrumentality to the code that announced his authorities publicly, and to the reactions it provoked astatine the time.

On June 30, 1960, astatine the Palais de la Nation successful Leopoldville, present Kinshasa, Lumumba addressed the authoritative independency ceremonial successful the beingness of Belgium’s King Baudouin. The code has since been recognised arsenic 1 of the astir consequential governmental interventions of Africa’s decolonisation era. At the time, however, it was treated by overmuch of the Western property arsenic an enactment of provocation.

Writing the adjacent time successful The New York Times, overseas analogous Harry Gilroy described Lumumba’s code arsenic “militant” and claimed it had “marred” an juncture meant to observe independency successful a tone of assemblage goodwill. Gilroy contrasted Lumumba unfavourably with a conciliatory code by President Joseph Kasa-Vubu, observed that “the Soviet diplomats contiguous seemed to beryllium enjoying the occasion”, and framed the infinitesimal done a Cold War lens that formed Lumumba arsenic erratic and ideologically suspect. This framing was not incidental, but portion of a broader Western media reflex that treated uncompromising anti-colonial code arsenic a menace to bid alternatively than an assertion of governmental agency.

A peculiar study by The Guardian connected July 1, 1960, was arsenic revealing, if much detailed. The British insubstantial described Lumumba’s code arsenic “pugnacious” and disruptive to royal dignity. Much attraction was paid to etiquette, to the king’s discomfort, to the hold successful the authoritative programme and to the expected embarrassment caused to Belgium connected what was meant to beryllium a ceremonial handover.

According to contemporaneous reporting, Baudouin astir abandoned the independency ceremonial altogether arsenic officials scrambled to incorporate the fallout. What went mostly unexamined successful the West was the accuracy of Lumumba’s relationship and however it came into being.

Lumumba revised and expanded his remarks portion seated wrong the Palais de la Nation, aft listening to Baudouin’s address, and without having been scheduled to talk astatine all. His code was not portion of the authoritative programme.

It was a response.

The gulf betwixt the king’s self-congratulatory communicative and Lumumba’s prophetic code could not person been clearer. Baudouin praised the “genius” of King Leopold II, nether whose idiosyncratic regularisation an estimated 10 cardinal oregon truthful Congolese died done forced labour, unit and famine successful the pursuit of rubber and ivory. He spoke of Belgium’s alleged civilising ngo and presented independency arsenic benevolent stewardship, without acknowledging the radical terror, dispossession oregon wide decease it caused.

Lumumba rejected that framing outright.

“We person known ironies, insults and blows,” helium said, speaking of a strategy that reduced Africans to subjects alternatively than citizens. He described onshore seized done racially discriminatory laws, governmental prisoners exiled wrong their ain state and forced labour paid astatine wages that could not prolong quality life. Independence, helium insisted, was not a acquisition but the result of struggle, and it would beryllium meaningless without dignity, equality and power implicit nationalist wealth.

What unsettled Western observers was not that Lumumba was inaccurate. It was that helium spoke plainly, successful public, and successful the beingness of European power. Colonial self-vindication was acceptable. Anti-colonial truth-telling was not. Lumumba paid with his beingness for naming realities that others would aboriginal larn to manage, soften and nett from. The fixation connected his tone, timing and expected militancy functioned arsenic an aboriginal delegitimisation of African governmental agency.

History would beryllium Lumumba’s diagnosis correct.

One of the cardinal demands of his code was that “the lands of our autochthonal state genuinely payment its children”.

More than six decades later, the contradiction persists.

The DRC holds immoderate of the world’s astir strategical mineral reserves, including those indispensable to planetary vigor transitions. Yet astir three-quarters of the colonisation lives successful poverty, portion mining revenues are dominated by overseas corporations. In the DRC, World Bank-backed reforms and liberalisation programmes, peculiarly from the 1980s onwards and formalised successful the aboriginal 2000s, dismantled authorities power implicit mining, driving privatisation that returned cobalt and copper to overseas companies and weakened nationalist power implicit strategical resources.

Resource extraction has continued alongside displacement, conflict, and biology degradation, peculiarly successful the east.

The aforesaid signifier is disposable elsewhere.

In Nigeria, crude lipid exports person generated hundreds of billions of dollars since the 1970s, yet much than 133 cardinal Nigerians unrecorded successful multidimensional poverty. Different nationalist contexts, akin outcomes: governmental independency without economical sovereignty. Communities successful the Niger Delta endure chronic pollution, underdevelopment and violence, portion wealthiness flows outward.

Lumumba besides spoke straight to governmental freedom.

He pledged to “stop the persecution of escaped thought” and to guarantee that “all citizens bask to the fullest grade the basal freedoms provided for by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.

This, too, was not lofty speechmaking.

It was a warning.

Across the continent, simple antiauthoritarian commitments person been repeatedly breached done violence, repression and profoundly compromised electoral processes, including successful Uganda, Tanzania and Eritrea.

Militarisation has go a default mode of politics, with wars, coups and powerfulness struggles present recurrent features crossed the continent, from protracted conflicts successful the Horn of Africa to repeated subject takeovers elsewhere.

Lumumba cautioned explicitly against regularisation by unit successful Africa. “We shall institute successful the state a bid resting not connected guns and bayonets,” helium said, “but connected concord and goodwill.”

That imaginativeness has been steadily abandoned.

Africa is autarkic successful form, not substance.

Corruption, repression and neocolonial systems proceed to hollow it out.

The African Union estimates that Africa loses astir $89bn annually done illicit fiscal flows, portion CFA franc controls and indebtedness conditionalities proceed to impede socioeconomic progress. Courts tin analyse idiosyncratic acts, but past judges systems, and the systems Lumumba warned against stay firmly successful place. That is wherefore the lawsuit unfolding successful Belgium matters beyond its ineligible scope.

The Belgian courtroom process revisits the mechanics of Lumumba’s death, but it cannot resoluteness the deeper humanities and governmental wounded his sidesplitting represented.

Lumumba’s family, the DRC, and the continent are owed afloat accountability for his assassination, conscionable arsenic Africans merit reparations for slavery and colonialism.

However, justness for the past is inseparable from work successful the present.

His bequest requires much than statues and memorials.

Continued nonaccomplishment to conscionable the modular Lumumba articulated has produced not stableness oregon dignity, but extraction, inequality and recurring cycles of violence.

That remains the unfinished concern of Patrice Lumumba’s beingness and death.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.