Africa Is a Country

Congo: The benefit of the doubt has expired

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Congo: The benefit of the doubt has expired

By
Allison Swank

Anyone who knows anything about Cold War politics, knows the CIA had a hand in Lumumba's murder. The only difference now is that it's been proven.

A captured Patrice Lumumba, on 6 December 1960, one month before he was murdered.

Here’s what we know now: The Eisenhower administration wrongly cast Patrice Lumumba as a proponent of Soviet ideology; the CIA provided Joseph Mobutu with the support he needed for a military coup; CIA Station Chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin, was a dirty scoundrel; and a 1975 U.S. Senate committee (The Church Committee) investigated U.S. involvement in Lumumba’s murder but failed to uncover incriminating evidence due to inattention to detail.

This “new” declassified information from the Church Committee and more is analyzed in a recent article by political scientist, Stephen Weissman, in the academic journal, Intelligence and National Security, vol. 25, no. 2. This article is not available for free, but Weissman gives a fair amount of details in a great guest column for AllAfrica.com.  Weismann’s conclusion: “There can no longer be any doubt that the U.S., Belgian and Congolese governments shared major responsibility for the assassination of Lumumba in Katanga. The young prime minister was an imperfect leader during an unprecedented and overwhelming international crisis. But he continues to be honored around the world because he incarnated – if only for a moment – the nationalist and democratic struggle of the entire African continent against a recalcitrant West.”

My first thought is: Duh. Anyone who knows anything about Cold War politics, knows the CIA had a hand in Lumumba’s murder. The only difference now is that it’s been proven.

In 2002, the Belgian government admitted partial responsibility for his death, now it’s time for the other half to fess up. But I’d have to agree with a friend of mine when she says “when pigs fly.” Unfortunately, for the United States to admit responsibility for covert Cold War operations may suggest that such despicable operations are taking place during the War on Terror – and that just won’t do.

Further Reading

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.