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Flashmag February 2021 www.flashmag.net
One thing is certain, however: this killing came after several months of plots and intrigue. Throughout the year 1960, the Western camp convinced themselves that Lumumba was a dangerous man and convinced themselves that he had to be politically neutralized, even assassinated.
Brussels, January 27, 1960.
The Belgian-Congolese round table has been open for a week. It is now time to determine the date of independence. The atmosphere is electrified with the arrival, in the ranks of the Congolese delegation of a young politician who focuses attention, Patrice Lumumba, just released from his cell in Stanleyville (current Kisangani) He still wears bandages around wrists.
At the end of the session, this Wednesday, the spokesman of the Congolese Front Jean Bolikango tries everything for everything: "The date of independence will be June 30, 1960". Cornered, the Belgian authorities accept. The end of the afternoon is festive. In a few hours, Kabasele and the African Jazz orchestra, will be performing their new creation “Independence Chacha” for the first time on stage during an “Independence Ball” at the Hotel Plazza in Brussels, where the African delegation resided. For now, African delegates have called a press conference in the basements of a large hotel in the square. Patrice Lumumba is the one who speaks first. He is also the one who closes the conference.
Work sessions of the next days, will confirm this positioning at the heart of the debates. “With the roundtable, Lumumba’s prestige has grown considerably. He appeared as a strategist,” explain researchers Jean Omasombo and Benoît Verhaegen. “Lumumba,” add the two authors, “joined the Brussels conference, which has just started without him, and he will make all his demands come to fruition. More radical than most of the other Congolese delegates, he refuses to reserve any power to the metropolis government, he strongly rejects the hypothesis of the King of the Belgians or his father Leopold III at the head of the independent Congo, he demands to bestow all the wheels of the country to Congolese hands”. The first part of the round table ends on February 20, 1960. A week later, the office of Belgian Prime Minister Gaston Eyskens considers that one of the first objectives to be achieved is to bring about the emergence in the Congo of a moderate government "fundamentally willing, to collaborate with Belgium ", and avoid” to have in its ranks, at least in a preeminent position, personalities such as Kasa-Vubu (strictly regional interest) "or Patrice Lumumba who might play “the game of the East”. One of the members of this cabinet will not leave us until the death of Lumumba: his name is Harold d'Aspremont Lynden. This man, from the nobility of Namur, was then deputy chief of staff of Eyskens.
On March 1, this collaborator of the Prime Minister has a new working session, this time with Professor Arthur Doucy, an adviser on African issues. The two men are considering a comprehensive plan for the management of the Congo in the coming months. "The man to be eliminated is Lumumba" agree the two officials who make two recommendations: "As far as possible evaluate his foreign contacts " and regroup political forces which are opposed to him. On March 10, d'Aspremont Lynden wrote a letter this time to Paul de Woot de Trixhe, the deputy administrator of State Security, in which he asked "that all the elements we have on contacts with the East and the Communist Party, of Lumumba and his entourage have to be collected in a summary”. The security note given to him and which he forwards to Minister Raymond Scheyven on the 16th is, however, ill inspired by the Congolese leader's links with international communism.
The Congolese elections of May 1960 allowed the emergence of a majority led by the MNC-L, the wing of the MNC that follows Lumumba. Despite everything, it took several weeks of negotiations and political tension to arrive, a week before the proclamation of independence, in the inauguration of the government led by Patrice Lumumba. When on June 30, 1960, Patrice Lumumba spoke at the independence ceremony and delivered the historic speech which would anger King Baudouin, he was therefore already perceived by the Belgians as an embarrassing political leader.
Less than a week after independence, on July 5, African soldiers of the Public Force make a mutiny in Thysville, now Mbanza Ngungu, and Léopoldville, now Kinshasa. Panic spreads to the white community which begins to flee the country. Belgian nationals are victims of abuse. And on the 10th, the Brussels authorities launch a military intervention. On the 11th, Katanga proclaim its independence.
On the 14th, the Congo cut diplomatic relations with Belgium. Kasa-Vubu and Lumumba send a telegram to the Soviet leader, Khrushchev in which