Lumumba´s Ghost: A Birthday Reflection on Congo’s Unfinished Fight
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 28 Jul 2025
Raïs Neza Boneza – TRANSCEND Media Service
Turning forty-six on July 29, just a few days after what would’ve been Patrice Lumumba’s 100th birthday. I’ve lived through enough history to feel the weight of his story, but standing here in 2025, it’s like I’m holding a cracked mirror—his dreams for Congo reflecting back at me, warped by time and betrayal. Growing up, I remember my father, a history buff, telling me about his encounter with Lumumba over dinner with the elders of my dad´s village, his voice low like he was sharing a secret. “He was a fire,” Dad said, “and they snuffed him out because he burned too bright.” That stuck with me, especially now, as I think about my own life’s battles always on the “qui vive”— maybe different, sure, but still tied to that same hunger for justice.
Lumumba came into the world in 1925 as Isaïe Tasumbu Tawosa, in a village called Onalua, where the Congo’s red clay clings to your shoes like it’s got a story to tell. He wasn’t born with a silver spoon—just a sharp mind and a fire in his gut. From postal clerk to prime minister, he climbed through sheer will, reading Rousseau and Nkrumah, mixing Enlightenment ideas with a rage against the Belgian chains that bound our people. By 1960, he was leading the Mouvement National Congolais, a movement that dared to dream of a Congo for all Congolese horizons, not just the ethnicity or the elites.
I think about my own 20s, back when I thought I could change the world too. Networking, writing, active and in solidarity with different causes through peace by peaceful means or rather by Africans’ peaceful means. From Nomad: A Refugee Poet or White Eldorado, Black Fever to formless; I’ve carried Congo’s wounds and dreams with me, weaving them into my poetry, my novels, and my fight for peace. Lumumba’s story isn’t just history—it’s personal, a mirror to my own journey as exiled , a writer/poet , and someone who refuses to let the fire of justice go out. And again, Lumumba’s story feels like that—a guy who refused to stay small. His big moment came on Independence Day, June 30, 1960. While the Belgian king droned on about how great colonialism was, Lumumba stood up and let loose. “We are no longer your monkeys!” he said, tearing into 80 years of whippings, theft, and murder. I can imagine the crowd holding their breath, half-thrilled, half-terrified.
I felt that same defiance in my teen years, when forced to fly around the Great-Lakes region of Africa, scribbling poems in cramped safehouses around the region. I’d seen horrors—women buried alive, babies killed in hospitals—that forced me to write, just as Lumumba’s truth forced him to speak. Today standing up at a poetry reading around the world, my voice cracking as I read about Congo’s pain, I feel his courage in my bones. But like him, I know speaking out came with a price.
Lumumba’s courage was on another level, though—he knew he was signing his own death warrant.
The price of dreaming too big
Seventy-nine days. That’s all he got as prime minister. His crime? Wanting Congo’s copper, uranium, and rubber to feed Congolese kids, not Belgian bank accounts. He dared to talk to the Soviets during the Cold War, which made the West twitchy. The CIA, Belgian officers, even the UN—they all had a hand in what came next. They arrested him, beat him, and shot him in January 1961. Then, in a final insult, they dissolved his body in acid. All that was left was a single tooth, kept like a sick souvenir by a Belgian cop until it was sent back to Kinshasa in 2022.
Lumumba’s betrayal was a whole machine: foreign powers, local sellouts, and a world that stood by. Frantz Fanon, who I read in college, put it best: “Lumumba was sold—to Africa. He could no longer be bought.” That line hits me hard now, at 46, when I think about how easy it is to compromise, to take the safe path. Lumumba didn’t. And it cost him everything.
Congo now: the same old chains
Today, Congo’s still bleeding. It’s got 70% of the world’s cobalt—stuff that powers your phone, our electric cars or electronic appliances—but 73% of its people live in poverty. Foreign companies pull out $24 billion in minerals every year, while kids as young as six works in mines. In Kinshasa, they’ve got shiny monuments, but the real stories in the east, where militias like M23, backed by Rwanda and Uganda, carve up the land. “Puppet leaders trading sovereignty for private jets,” a young activist from Sankuru told me—or, well, told a reporter, but it feels like she’s speaking to all of us.
Belgium’s trying to make nice. They sent back Lumumba’s tooth in 2022 and mumbled an apology. Now they’re digging up old files, even chasing down a 92-year-old diplomat for his part in the murder. But it’s not enough. Not when the mines are still foreign playgrounds, not when Congo’s kids are still hungry. I think why we should not fight like hell to give them (the new and next generation) a better shot. Lumumba wanted that for a whole nation.
The fire still on
Lumumba’s story isn’t just Congo’s. It’s Chile’s Allende, Burkina Faso’s Sankara—anyone who dared to say no to the big dogs and got crushed for it. The UN, which let Lumumba die, still plays the same game, looking the other way in places like Rwanda or the Central African Republic. Russia and China talk a big game about “anti-imperialism,” but their mercenaries and loans are just new chains. Still, there’s hope in the kids. In Sankuru, young artists are turning Lumumba’s words into songs, chanting for a Congo that belongs to its people. I get chills thinking about it, like when I heard this Congolese refugee in Kampala, recite a poem she wrote about standing up for what’s right or seeing hearing the youth in Oslo mobilizing in solidarity with youth in the Congo stand in front of the “Stortinget”(Norwegian parliament), giving touching appeals.
Maybe that’s Lumumba’s real legacy—the fire in the next generation.
Or what next? A wish on my birthday
As I hit 46 in a few days, and I’m thinking about what it means to keep fighting for what’s right, even when the odds are stacked against you. Lumumba’s vision—economic justice, national unity, dignity for all—feels like a birthday wish I’d make if I could blow out candles for Congo. To honor him, they’d need to nationalize those mine or at least give them back to the people it belongs too, ban child labor, and build a real economy for the people. They’d need to say no to deals that smell like colonialism 2.0. And maybe, just maybe, Africa could come together, from the Sahel to the Great Lakes, to finish what Lumumba started.
Langston Hughes wrote, “They buried Lumumba in a tomb without epitaph. / But he needs no epitaph— / For the air is his tomb.” His words are still in the air, thick with the promise of a revolution that’s not done yet. On my birthday, I’ll raise a glass to that—a Congo where Katanga’s copper feeds its kids, not foreign wallets. Until then, Lumumba’s story is my reminder: keep the fire burning, no matter how hard they try to snuff it out.
“Africa will write its own history, and it will be a history of glory and dignity.”
— Patrice Lumumba, 1960
Aksanti!
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Tags: Africa, D.R. Congo, Patrice Lumumba
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 28 Jul 2025.
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