Patrice Lumumba
The story of Patrice Lumumba is one of the revolutionaries that could have been, and should have been. His place in the pantheon of African revolutionaries derives from the fact that he was killed for his efforts, and was therefore martyred to the cause of the African revolution.
The Belgian Congo probably suffered the worst experience of all the European colonial territories in Africa. It began its modern existence as the private fiefdom of Belgian King Leopold II, the infamous Congo Free State, and as such, it was ruthlessly exploited. It was taken over as a possession of the Belgian nation in 1909, and received its independence in 1960.
Most historians agree that the Belgian Government, in its haste to divest itself of the colony before it found itself with a war on its hands, made very little effort to prepare the ground for an indigenous takeover of power. Blacks in the colony had never been permitted to rise above the level of junior administration, or the lower ranks of the military, and as such, there was no one in a position to responsibly assume power when the Belgians handed it over.
Lumumba was born into humble circumstances in the deeply rural eastern region of Congo, and he received his early education, as most prominent Africans of that period did, from Christian missionaries. Later, he was drawn to the enlightenment ideals of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Molière and Victor Hugo, and later still, of Marxism and Leninism. These he adopted as a composite ideology of revolution, developing them, as many other enlightened Africans did, into a philosophy of ‘African Socialism‘.
African Socialism is hard to specifically define. It was a widely quoted doctrine that varied considerably, depending on where and by whom it was spoken. A common denominator of African Socialism, however, was a rejection of the capitalist, imperialist system, and an acknowledgment that pre-colonial and pre-slavery Africa existed as an egalitarian, socialist society in its natural form. Thus the utopian view of the past was seen as an ideal pivot upon which a future African society, in a modern context, could turn.
Lumumba gained membership of the Congolese revolutionary party, the Mouvement National Congolais, and espousing these generally pacifist principles, was seen by the Belgians as the least seditious of potential leaders, and he was groomed to inherit power. Despite this, he was staunchly pan-African, and highly revolutionary in outlook. When independence was granted to Congo in July 1960, and Lumumba was sworn into office, he made quite clear the changes that he had in mind.
However, the vast territory of the Congo was made up of a kaleidoscope of ethnicities, many mutually antagonistic, and when the Belgians left, a pressure cooker of tension exploded almost immediately. The army mutinied, separatist movements began and a civil war erupted. Lumumba, the idealist revolutionary, simply lacked the moral authority to impose order. He was deposed, imprisoned, tortured and eventually murdered, and the Congo, almost inevitably, fell to a military coup. A thirty-year dictatorship followed, and it is arguable whether the Congo ever recovered. Lumumba, however, is remembered, and celebrated, as one of the original African revolutionaries.