http://youtu.be/di8fIfyBdx0

The central mystery of Lumumba's death remains. Why was he killed? Why was the might of at least three Western powers bent on eliminating this one man—even as he was held prisoner, reviled and beaten by his captors and was without military or political power. Some say the answer is that he posed a threat to the West because he was a committed Pan-Africanist, and since his death he has certainly taken on the status of a Pan-African martyr.

By late 1959 Britain and America had concluded that, far from representing a threat, Pan-Africanism offered the best chance for preventing revolution in Africa. And Pan-Africanists of much longer standing than Lumumba, such as Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Nyerere, Obote and Azikiwe had also come to power around this time.

The experience of the Congo, with its million-strong working class the largest on the continent outside South Africa, was a powerful factor in bringing them to that conclusion. When strikes and demonstrations broke out in 1959 as the mineral boom ended, the Belgian government decided to grant its colony independence. Their repressive apparatus was geared up to brutalising a divided and dispersed rural population, not an increasingly well-organised working class that was losing its local and communal loyalties.

When Lumumba showed that he could not be relied upon to control the Congolese working class, his fate was sealed. The West decided to make an example of him to the masses and to other African leaders, to show what would happen if they opposed imperialist dictates. Mobutu, who had impressed the CIA on his brief visits to Brussels as Lumumba's secretary, was chosen as the better candidate to safeguard Western interests. Through a mixture of brutality and political guile, Mobutu succeeded in ensuring that the Congo (renamed Zaire) did not become the flashpoint for an African socialist revolution.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/01/lum-j10.html

In Congo, Lumumba's assassination is rightly viewed as the country's original sin. Coming less than seven months after independence (on 30 June, 1960), it was a stumbling block to the ideals of national unity, economic independence and pan-African solidarity that Lumumba had championed, as well as a shattering blow to the hopes of millions of Congolese for freedom and material prosperity.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/17/patrice-lumumba-50th-anniversary-assassination

ADAM HOCHSCHILD: Well, Amy, I think the assassination of Lumumba was something that was felt by many people to be a sort of pivotal turning point in the saga of Africa gaining its independence. In the 1950s, there were movements for independence all over Africa. There was a great deal of idealism in the air. There was a great deal of hope in the air, both among Africans and among their supporters in the United States and Europe, that at last these colonies would become independent. And I think people imagined real independence — that is, that these countries would be able to set off on their own and control their own destiny economically as well as politically. And the assassination of Lumumba really signaled that that was not to be, because, for Belgium, as for the other major European colonial powers, like Britain and France, giving independence to an African colony was OK for them as long as it didn’t disturb existing business arrangements. As long as the European country could continue to own the mines, the factories, the plantations, well, OK, let them have their politics.

But Lumumba spoke very loudly, very dramatically, saying Africa needs to be economically independent, as well. And it was a fiery speech on this subject that he gave at the actual independence ceremonies, June 30th, 1960, where he was replying to an extremely arrogant speech by King Baudouin of Belgium. It was a speech he gave on this subject that I think really began the process that ended two months later with the CIA, with White House approval, decreeing that he should be assassinated.

.........

JOHN STOCKWELL: The CIA had developed a program to assassinate Lumumba, under Devlin’s encouragement and management. The program they developed, the operation, didn’t work. They didn’t follow through on it. It was to give poison to Lumumba. And they couldn’t find a setting in which to get the poison to him successfully in a way that it wouldn’t appear to be a CIA operation. I mean, you couldn’t invite him to a cocktail party and give him a drink and have him die a short time later, obviously. And so, they gave up on it. They got cold feet. And instead, they handled it by the chief of station talking to Mobutu about the threat that Lumumba posed, and Mobutu going out and killing Lumumba, having his men kill Lumumba.

INTERVIEWER: What about the CIA’s relationship with Mobutu? Were they paying him money?

JOHN STOCKWELL: Yes, indeed. I was there in 1968 when the chief of station told the story about having been, the day before that day, having gone to make payment to Mobutu of cash — $25,000 — and Mobutu saying, "Keep the money. I don’t need it." And by then, of course, Mobutu’s European bank account was so huge that $25,000 was nothing to him.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/21/patrice_lumumba_50_years_later_remembering

Patrice Lumumba's letter: "My Dear, I am writing this without knowing whether you will ever get it or when or whether I shall still be alive when you read it.
Dead or alive, free or imprisoned by the colonialists, it is not I who matter, it is the Congo, it is our poor people whose independence has been turned into a cage.
For where there is no dignity there is no freedom and where there's no justice there's no dignity and where there's no independence there are no free men.

"History will have its say one day.

Not the history they teach in Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations but the history taught in the country set free from colonialism and its puppet rulers.

Africa will write her own history and it will be a history of glory and dignity."

"Do not weep my love; I know that my country, which has suffered so much, will be able to defend its independence and liberty."

Long live the Congo. Long live Africa.
Patrice.

http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/Lumumbascript.html

http://rajpatel.org/2010/08/20/fyi-new-evidence-shows-us-role-in-lumumbas-death/

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2010.489277

http://www.thebellforum.com/showthread.php?t=16687

It is apparent that international capitalism—the warlords behind the warlords—does not care which black face they put on Congo to mask their predatory white enterprises. Like Patrice Lumumba, General Sani Abacha, Thomas Sankara and Laurent Kabila, those who step out of line are removed, one way or another. Chaos and deconstruction are often favored. Atrocities and genocides are selectively declared, selectively punished. Those black leaders who cooperate to further the fictions of Africa controlled by Africans are rewarded, the corruption and atrocities are ignored, and the page is turned.

http://maravi.blogspot.com/2009/02/keith-harmon-snow-peoples-history-of.html