This month in history - Jul 2017

International relations / Africa news

Patrice Lumumba is born 2 July 1925

Patrice Lumumba was born in today’s Democratic Republic of Congo, then the Belgian Congo, in 1925. For decades his country had suffered terrible atrocities under its Belgian colonial masters.

Lumumba helped win the Congo’s independence from Belgium in 1960, and was elected Prime Minister. But after only 12 weeks in power, the new democratic government was deposed in a coup, and Lumumba was arrested.

He was executed by a firing squad on 17 January 1961. It later emerged that Lumumba’s death had been orchestrated Belgian and US forces who opposed his vision of a free and united Congo.

Source: South African History Online – www.sahistory.org.za