Posted on 01/17/2021 6:35:30 AM PST by CheshireTheCat
One person’s “murdered under controversial circumstances” is another person’s “executed.” By most unbiased accounts, Patrice Lumumba was both.
A strident anti-colonialist caught in the most inflammatory of Cold War power struggles, Lumumba remains a controversial figure.
In 1956, Patrice Lumumba was a mail clerk in Belgian Congo recently out of prison for embezzlement of post office funds. Though previously involved with the Liberal Party of Belgium, a colonialist political party, after prison, he helped found the Mouvement National Congolais, a pro-independence national party (an important distinction at the time, as most pro-independence parties were at least partially tribal in nature).
Convicted in 1959 of inciting an anti-colonial riot and sentenced to 6 months in prison, Lumumba was released early as Congo won its independence and the MNC became an important political force. Just how important became apparent the following June, when the 35-year-old Lumumba was ratified as the newly independent Congo’s first prime minister.
From criminal to high statesman in just over a year, Lumumba took his new power in stride, and watched in disgust as the deposed King Baudouin of Belgium attended the new nation’s first Independence Day celebration, and before a fawning international media condescendingly congratulated Belgium’s colonial beneficence to its former slave plantation....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
To be replaced, albeit some years later, by Mobutu Sese Seko, who changed the name of the country to Zaire, even though that wasn’t an African name but rather came from a French novel. Like all tyrants, he responded to this by doubling and tripling down in numerous ways, including changing the name of the currency to the zaire.
I can see there being groups that hold both of those opinions about someone, but I can't see how both could be true at the same time.
The Soviets named The Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow after him which they used to train communist revolutionaries to send back to Africa.
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