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How The American Government Assassinated A Very Great African Leader #Threader
Patrice Emery Lumumba was the first Congolese Prime Minister to lead the Congolese independence struggle and was assassinated by the CIA.

He was born in 1925 in a Congolese village in the province of Kasai in the Belgian colony of Congo. Lumumba attended a local mission school and after graduation worked as a clerk at the colonial tax office and later in the postal service, where he served as assistant postmaster.

In the 1950s, Lumumba began writing and promoting, writing articles for anti- colonial publications on behalf of the Congolese anti- colonial movement, and in 1956 his book Congo, " My Country" , explored Congolese problems and conveyed people' s...

ideas and aspirations the Congolese people published. Lumumba and the others immediately sent a memorandum to the Governor- General of Belgium demanding Congo' s independence. The search continued with the formation of the Congolese national movement known as MNC.

Under Lumumba' s leadership, MNC became a mass political movement, and after Lumumba participated in the Ghanaian independence celebrations, Lumumba announced to 7, 000 people in Congo that no African country could remain under foreign

rule since 1960 because African independence was a fundamental right. Riots broke out in Congo in 1960 and Lumumba was tried, arrested and sentenced to six months in prison. However, he was soon released and the Belgian government agreed to grant

Congolese independence in late June 1960 following that year' s general election. On 23 June 1960, Lumumba became the first Prime Minister of the Free Congo.

Just days after independence, Belgian army officers provoked riots in the Congolese national army, which resulted in the Belgians sending reinforcements to Congolese troops. Lumumba rejected Belgium' s action and asked the United Nations and the United States for help

Belgian and American corporations then turned to facilitate the separation of the mineral- rich Katanga province, and amidst the crisis, Mobutu, a former commander of the Congolese national army appointed by Lumumba, announced that he was

carrying out a CIA- backed campaign. coup in the removal of Lumumba. The United States supported the coup because it saw Lumumba' s government as a threat from the point that Lumumba asked for Soviet help to deal with the Belgian invasion, although the

Americans rejected Lumumba when he first came to them, he turned away. After the coup, Lumumba was arrested and placed under house arrest. Although he escaped house arrest, he was later captured by the military and transported to

Katanga, where he was killed in a shootout in January 1961. After his death, Lumumba represented the struggle for self- determination for black people in Africa and around the world.

His tragic death can also be seen as a reflection of the weakness of the United Nations in not intervening and preventing Lumumba' s death by neo- colonial forces who wanted to keep control of the Congolese kingdoms after Congo' s independence.

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