Belgian authorities have returned to their children a tooth of the murdered Congolese pro-independence hero Patrice Lumumba, in a new step towards the recognition of the atrocities that accompanied the brutal exploitation of the former colony by the country.
The relic is all that remains of Lumumba, the prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), under his former name Republic of the Congo, and an icon of the fight against colonialism in Africa, who was assassinated by Belgian separatists and mercenaries in 1961. His assassins dissolved his remains in acid, although some retained their teeth as macabre memories.
The gold-capped tooth was handed over to a group of relatives on Monday morning at Brussels’ Egmont Palace in a light blue case. He was placed in a casket to be taken to the DRC embassy as a first step before repatriation.
Lumumba’s son Roland said last week that the return of the tooth meant his family could “end their grief.”
By returning the tooth, Belgium hopes to draw a line under one of the most brutal and shameful episodes of the country’s bloody exploitation of Central Africa.
Alexander de Croo, the Belgian prime minister, acknowledged his “moral responsibility” for the Lumumba assassination. “This is a painful and unpleasant truth, but it must be said,” De Croo said. “A man was killed for his political convictions, his words, his ideals.”
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo is speaking at an official ceremony at Egmont Palace on Monday. Photo: Rex / Shutterstock
Earlier this month, the King of Belgium paid his first visit to the DRC, although he offered no formal apology. King Philip expressed “deepest sorrow for the wounds of the past”, describing a “regime … of unequal, unjustifiable relationships in themselves, marked by paternalism, discrimination and racism” that “lead to violent acts and humiliations ”.
A charismatic but volatile pan-Africanist who played a key role in the struggle for independence, Lumumba became his country’s first democratically elected leader in 1960. Within a year, he had fallen victim to the politics of the Cold War. and internal power struggles as order collapsed in the new state and mineral-rich rebel groups in Katanga province tried to break up.
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Western officials were concerned that Lumumba would favor the Soviet Union as a protectorate and allow Moscow access to strategically critical resources such as uranium.
After a military coup, Lumumba was imprisoned, tortured and shot dead by a hastily assembled firing squad. After 40 years, Belgium acknowledged that it had “moral responsibility” for his death. The CIA had also drawn up plans to kill the 35-year-old politician.
However, it took decades for the truth about the circumstances of Lumumba’s assassination to emerge.
In 2000, Belgian police commissioner Gerard Soete confessed that he had dismembered Lumumba’s body and dissolved the remains in acid. In a documentary on German television, Soete showed two teeth that he said belonged to Lumumba.
In 2016, a Belgian scholar, Ludo de Witte, filed a complaint against Soete’s daughter after she showed a gold tooth, which she said belonged to Lumumba, during a newspaper interview. The tooth was then confiscated by the Belgian authorities.
For many in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lumumba remains a symbol of what the country could have become after independence. Instead, it became embroiled in decades of dictatorship and conflict that drained its immense mineral wealth.
Two years ago, the 60th anniversary of Congo’s independence sparked new calls to put Lumumba’s “soul at rest.” Protesters gathered in front of the Belgian embassy in Kinshasa to demand the restitution of their remains along with cultural artifacts taken during colonial rule.
In Belgium, international protests against racism following the death of George Floyd in the US have given new impetus to activists fighting to remove monuments to King Leopold II.
The DRC government has decreed three days of official mourning ahead of the official burial of the tooth in Kinshasa later this month.
Belgium has recently begun to address the legacy of the exploitation of rubber, ivory and wood from the Congo. Up to 10 million people died of starvation and disease during the first 23 years of Belgian rule from 1885, when King Leopold II ruled the Congo Free State as a personal feud. Others were deliberately murdered or mutilated to encourage others to work harder to meet impossible profit-sharing quotas.