Page 180 - Volume 1_Go home mzungu Go Home_merged with links

Decades of post-colonial chaos

"Veni, Vidi, Vici, numquam reliquit - ego adduxit inimici mei !"

The British-based company Sandline also helped Sierra Leone fight the Revolutionary

United Front rebels. "

"Mercenaries in Africa's Conflicts." 167
BBC News

***** ***** *****
Dag Hammarskjold & Patrice Lumumba

Patrice Lumumba
“ Patrice Émery Lumumba (2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961) was a Congolese politician

and independence leader who served as the first Prime Minister of the independent
Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Republic of the Congo) from June until

September 1960. He played a significant role in the transformation of the Congo from a
colony of Belgium into an independent republic. Ideologically an African nationalist and
pan-Africanist, he led the Congolese National Movement (MNC) party from 1958 until his

assassination.

Shortly after Congolese independence in 1960, a mutiny broke out in the army, marking
the beginning of the Congo Crisis. Lumumba appealed to the United States and the

United Nations for help to suppress the Belgian-supported Katangan secessionists led by
Moïse Tshombe.

Both refused, so Lumumba turned to the Soviet Union for support. This led to growing

differences with President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and chief-of-staff Joseph-Désiré Mobutu,
as well as with the United States and Belgium, who opposed the Soviet Union in the Cold

War.

Lumumba was subsequently imprisoned by state authorities under Mobutu and executed
by a firing squad under the command of Katangan authorities. Following his

assassination, he was widely seen as a martyr for the wider Pan-African movement. In
2002, Belgium formally apologised for its role in the assassination.

*****
Foreign involvement in the Assassination

Belgium

In the late 20th and early 21st century, Lumumba's assassination was investigated. In a

1999 interview on Belgian television, in a program about his assassination, Soete
displayed a bullet and two teeth that he claimed he had saved from Lumumba's body.
According to the 2001 Belgian Commission investigating Lumumba's assassination: