Patrice Lumumba: Speech at the Proclamation of Congolese Independence

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Lumumba's speech at the ceremony celebrating Congolese independence contrasted sharply with the contributions of King Baudouin and President Kasavubu. It was reported that Lumumba was writing while the king and the president were speaking, giving the impression that he composed his speech on the spot. In fact, the speech was written several days before and was made available in mimeographed form by the prime minister's office. In delivering the speech, Lumumba made several changes from the prepared text. The speech as delivered was recorded, broadcast, and subsequently transcribed. Three versions of the speech survive.

The Independence Day ceremony was held in the Palais de la nation (Palace of the Nation), built as the residence of the governor-general of the Belgian Congo. Following the speeches of Belgium's King Baudouin and Congo's president, Joseph Kasavubu, Lumumba took the microphone after he was introduced by the president of the lower house of parliament, Joseph Kasongo of the MNC-Lumumba. Lumumba spoke as prime minister, head of the Council of Ministers. He did not address himself to King Baudouin or to the president of the republic, Kasavubu. Instead, he addressed the Congolese population. He saluted them because this day marked their triumph. They had struggled for independence and now they had achieved it, he said.

There is a slight shift in the third paragraph, in that Lumumba addresses his “friends”—perhaps not all the Congolese but all of those who “have fought unceasingly at our side”—and gives them the task of passing on to their children and grandchildren the true meaning of this date of independence, a meaning that he then defines. The day does not mark merely a transfer of sovereignty but, in fact, the culmination of the people's struggle for independence.

In the fourth paragraph Belgium is mentioned, although King Baudouin still is not. Belgium is Congo's equal, a friendly country but not the one that has given Congo its independence. Rather, the Congolese have taken it. The tears, fire, and blood of the independence struggle were necessary if the Congolese were to put an end to “humiliating slavery.” Colonialism, according to the new prime minister, was not merely oppression and not merely exploitation, but a form of slavery, which wounded the slaves. Congo had suffered eighty years of colonialism, according to Lumumba, who lumps together the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo that followed it. He argues that the main characteristic of colonial rule had been forced labor, for which the monetary return was very low. In the sixth paragraph, Lumumba addresses more specifically the humiliation of daily life under colonial rule. He refers to the fact that whites typically addressed Congolese in the second person singular (tu, toi), used for friends and loved ones, children, and servants. It is the equivalent of calling an adult black man “boy” in the Jim Crow American South.

When the Europeans arrived, they declared their sovereignty within boundaries negotiated with other Europeans. They took from the Congolese control over their land. So-called vacant land—a meaningless concept in a country of shifting cultivation and of hunting rights over vast forests—was declared to belong to the colonial state. Large tracts of land were given as “concessions” to mining companies, ranches, and religious missions. By 1960 a substantial number of Congolese lived in cities and towns, but the loss of control over land was still a burning issue to them, as it was to the rural majority.

As Lumumba notes in the seventh paragraph, “The law was quite different for whites and blacks.” It is a point that would have been recognized as valid by all the Congolese hearing him. Colonial rule in Congo was rather like the apartheid regime in South Africa. The colonial administration told the Congolese where they could live. They had to carry a card identifying them by their parentage and their ethnic origin. They had to obtain permission to move or to travel from one place to another. Their court cases were tried in a separate set of tribunals.

So-called relegation (alluded to in the ninth paragraph) was a fairly common practice under Belgian rule. The most famous case was that of the prophet Simon Kimbangu, founder of what became a church of millions of members. Kimbangu was arrested, found guilty of sedition (a capital offense), and condemned to die. Belgium's King Albert commuted his sentence, and instead he was relegated to Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi), where he died in 1951. Thousands of followers of Kimbangu and members of other religious movements were “banished,” based on the naive belief that they would be harmless far from their home areas. In fact, many soon learned the local languages and recruited local people to their beliefs. Segregation in housing and in public facilities existed for all Congolese but was particularly resented by those (the so-called évolués) who had obtained some Western education, had learned French, and had worked in public sector or private sector jobs without receiving equal pay for equal work. Segregation was very strict in the Belgian Congo.

The eleventh paragraph, which concludes the section on grievances, dwells on prison. Of course, Lumumba himself had been sentenced to prison twice. He asks, “Who can forget, finally, the burst of rifle fire in which so many of our brothers perished, the cells into which the authorities threw those who no longer were willing to submit to a rule where justice meant oppression and exploitation?” As strong as this statement is in the form read at the ceremony, it could have been stronger still. According to Jean Van Lierde, the mimeographed text of Lumumba's speech read, “the cells into which the authorities brutally threw those who had escaped the bullets of the soldiers whom the colonialists had made the tool of their domination” (p. 222). The words are true enough but unwise, since the soldiers in question were going to constitute the army of the newly independent Congo Republic. Presumably he thought better of it or was persuaded by trusted advisers not to read the sentence as written. At any rate, the soldiers were suspicious of Lumumba and would mutiny against his government a few days later.

At the beginning of the next section, Lumumba insists that his government is doubly legitimate: It is made up of children of the country (not foreigners from Europe) and was voted into office by deputies elected by the country's voters. The struggle for independence is over, he tells the Congolese, but the struggle to achieve their goals is just beginning. He begins with vague goals, which become slightly more specific in the following passages. “We are going to institute social justice together,” he says. Among other goals he names ending “suppression of free thought,” doing away with “every sort of discrimination,” and bringing “peace to the country … the peace that comes from men’s hearts.”

In paragraph 22, Lumumba refers to Congo's immense riches—and they are immense—with no suggestion that those riches could pose any problem. In the event, mineral-rich Katanga would attempt to secede a week later. If that secession had been allowed to succeed, it would have carried with it half of the revenues of the Congolese state. Lumumba also hints at a policy of nonalignment—the Congo would rely on the assistance of many countries as long as they did not try to impose any policy. This was said at the time of the cold war—the nearly fifty-year-long state of tension and rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States in the aftermath of World War II. The U.S. administration of President Dwight Eisenhower considered “nonalignment”—the political attitude of one country's refusing to align itself or abide by the political policies of another country—to be immoral.

Van Lierde notes that the first sentence in paragraph 23 in the mimeographed text read: “Belgium herself has finally realized what direction history was moving in and no longer attempted” to oppose Congo's independence (p. 223). Lumumba dilutes it slightly in his oral version when he says, “Belgium has finally realized what direction history was moving in and has not attempted to oppose our independence.” Although he suggests that he is optimistic (“I am certain that this cooperation will be beneficial to both countries”), the phrase “though we shall continue to be vigilant” conveys wariness regarding Belgian intentions.

In paragraph 24 the new prime minister asks for the help of all the legislators and the citizens in the task of state building that he will lead. It is questionable whether all of the quarrels they are asked to set aside were “trivial.” The questions of federalism versus a strong unitary state, of close cooperation with Belgium versus a radical break, to mention only two, were not trivial.

Paragraph 28, more than most of the speech, raises the question of Lumumba's foresight. Some bad behavior on the part of foreigners in Congo and on the part of Congolese toward the foreigners had already taken place. Did he fear (with reason) that both were about to get much worse? He would not have long to wait, in that the mutiny of the army was only a few days away.

“The independence of the Congo represents a decisive step toward the liberation of the entire African continent,” does not appear in the mimeographed text. It reflects the influence of Kwame Nkrumah and other Pan-African activists, whom Lumumba had met at the First All-African People's Conference in Accra, Ghana, in December 1958. The sentence is prophetic, in that the Congo crisis of 1960 was indeed a turning point in the struggle for African liberation. The position of various governments—pro- or anti-Lumumba—led to the split between the Casablanca group of radicals and the Monrovia group of moderates, a split that was papered over when the Organization of African Unity was created in 1963.

Winding up his speech, Lumumba begins paragraph 30 with the words “Your Majesty, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,” which do not appear in the mimeographed text. Lumumba apparently added this reference to the presence of the Belgian king as he delivered his message. In a rousing climax, he also extemporaneously added, “Long live independence and African unity!” before closing with “Long live the independent and sovereign Congo!”