Congo's Patrice Lumumba: The Winds of Reaction in Africa

http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/23/congos-patrice-lumumba-the-winds-of-reaction-in-africa/
Date Written:  2019-08-23
Publisher:  Counterpunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23772

A brief history of Patrice Lumumba who was briefly Prime Minister of an independent Congo.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The Congo won independence from Belgium in June 1960 with Patrice Lumumba, age 35, as Prime Minister. Immediately it began to fall apart, under revanchist Belgian assault, Cold War pressures, adjacent settler colonial reaction and collaborationist Congolese elites like Moise Tshombe and Joseph Desire Mobutu. On 12 July Lumumba and President Kasavubu asked UN Secretary General Hammarskjold to urgently despatch military assistance "to protect the national territory of the Congo against the present external aggression" (Katanga had broken away under Tshombe with big Belgian support)....

Hammarskjold was reportedly 'devastated for days' after the news of Lumumba's torture and death, but he also thought it was 'an entirely senseless act' when it was clearly planned and purposefull. He makes reference to 'the winds of change', in Harold Macmillan's famous phrase. But the winds of reaction were then as or more powerful, and they eminated directly from Pretoria and Salisbury.