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Justice delayed: After 65 years, Lumumba’s family stands at the threshold of reckoning

Justice delayed: After 65 years, Lumumba’s family stands at the threshold of reckoning

IN the annals of colonial violence, few cases illustrate the glacial pace of accountability quite like the murder of Patrice Lumumba. Sixty-five years after the Congolese independence leader was executed and his body dissolved in acid - a grotesque attempt to erase him from history itself - his family gathered outside a Brussels courtroom this week with something they've been denied for generations: hope that justice might finally arrive. "We cannot turn back time," said Yema Lumumba, 33, the slain leader's granddaughter, her words carrying the weight of three generations who have pursued answers in a legal wilderness. "But we…
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How AFCON’s ‘Lumumba’ became football’s most powerful statue

How AFCON’s ‘Lumumba’ became football’s most powerful statue

WHILE 40,000 fans jumped, screamed, and lost their voices across Morocco's stadiums, one man stood absolutely, defiantly, gloriously still. Michel Nkuka Mboladinga didn't need to move. He was already making history. Draped in suits so bright they could guide ships to shore - electric blues, sunshine yellows, eye-watering greens - this self-appointed guardian of memory transformed himself into a living sculpture. His right arm thrust skyward, his gaze fixed on some distant horizon of justice, he channelled the spirit of Patrice Lumumba, the martyred hero of the Democratic Republic of Congo's independence, murdered in 1961 by Belgian colonial interests who…
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Patrice Lumumba’s tooth represents plunder, resilience and reparation

Patrice Lumumba’s tooth represents plunder, resilience and reparation

PATRICE LUMUMBA is the hero of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s truncated bid for complete independence. He was assassinated by local counter-revolutionary forces with the help of the CIA and Belgian authorities in 1961. Since then, all over the developing world, Lumumba’s name has come to stand for defiance against colonialism and imperialism. Author SANYA OSHA, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape Town The manner of his death was particularly distressing. He was humiliated and tortured before he was murdered. His body was then doused with acid to facilitate decomposition. A Belgian official reportedly kept…
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Congo buries murdered independence hero Lumumba’s only remains

Congo buries murdered independence hero Lumumba’s only remains

THE family of Democratic Republic of Congo's murdered independence hero Patrice Lumumba buried his only known remains, a tooth, in the capital Kinshasa on Thursday, 61 years after his death at the hands of Belgian-backed secessionist rebels. Hundreds gathered in a vast square for the occasion, waving flags and looking upon a large photo of Lumumba, with his trademark horn-rimmed glasses and side-swept hair, framed by white flowers. Lumumba was killed by a firing squad on January 16, 1961 in the southeastern province of Katanga after being ousted as prime minister the previous year, all within months of Congo's independence…
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Can a tooth settle the mystery over Congo’s independence hero?

Can a tooth settle the mystery over Congo’s independence hero?

FISTON MAHAMBA  and MARINE STRAUSS BELGIUM’S federal court has said it would hand over a tooth, suspected to be the only remains of the murdered Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba, to his family, a move that could finally unlock the secret behind his death. Lumumba, a firebrand political leader, became the Democratic Republic of Congo's first democratically-elected prime minister after independence from Belgium in 1960, but alarmed the West with overtures to Moscow at the height of the Cold War. His government lasted just three months before he was overthrown and assassinated by firing squad, a killing for which the…
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