“…Africa will write its own history and, in both North and South, it will be a history of glory and dignity.” —Patrice Lumumba (July 2, 1925 - January 17, 1961).
Patrice Émery Lumumba was a Congolese politician and independence leader who served as the first... #Thread
...Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Republic of the Congo) from June until September 1960. He played a significant role in the transformation of the Congo from a colony of Belgium into an independent republic.
Ideologically an African nationalist and Pan-Africanist, he led the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) party from 1958 until his death.
For 126 years, the US and Belgium have played key roles in shaping Congo's destiny.
In April 1884, seven months before the Berlin Congress, the US became the first country in the world to recognise the claims of King Leopold II of the Belgians to the territories of the Congo Basin.
And it was during the colonial period that the US acquired a strategic stake in the enormous natural wealth of the Congo, following its use of the uranium from Congolese mines to manufacture the first atomic weapons, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.
Declassified documents reveal that the CIA had plotted to assassinate Lumumba. These documents indicate that the Congolese leaders who killed Lumumba, including Mobutu Sese Seko and Joseph Kasa-Vubu, received money and weapons directly from the CIA.
In 2013, the U.S. State Department admitted that President David Eisenhower authorised the murder of Lumumba as the inauguration of President-elect John F. Kennedy in January 1961 caused fear among Mobutu's faction and within the CIA that the incoming administration would...
...shift its favour to the imprisoned Lumumba.
While awaiting his presidential inauguration, Kennedy had come to believe that Lumumba should be released from custody, though not be allowed to return to power.
However, Lumumba was killed three days before Kennedy's inauguration on January 20, 1961, though Kennedy would not learn of the killing until February 13, 1961. #HistoryVille
Credits: Wikipedia, The Guardian UK (Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja).
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