Patrice Lumumba: Who murdered him?

For over 60 years, Juliana Lumumba has been haunted by these questions: Who murdered her father? How did the Americans assist in the assassination? What did the United Nations do? Did they stand by and watch, even though he was under their protection? These are uncomfortable, political questions. And Juliana won't rest until she gets answers.

"You can't be Patrice Lumumba 's daughter without it determining your life," she says. Her gaze is composed. She's not looking at the camera, but to the side, out the window of her house in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo , her chin slightly raised.

On June 17, the 1961 murder of her father will be tried again in Brussels . It is clear that Belgium bears some responsibility. In 2001, a parliamentary investigation found that the then Belgian King Baudouin knew about the murder plans and did nothing to stop them. But that's not all. Juliana's brother, François, the plaintiff, accuses the Belgian state not only of war crimes and torture, but also of being part of a conspiracy aimed at the political and physical elimination of his father.

Lumumba fought for the independence of the Congo

Patrice Lumumba liberated Congo from Belgian colonial rule on June 30, 1960, and became the country's first prime minister. He promised democracy, prosperity, and an end to the exploitation of Congolese natural resources by foreign powers. But this was never to happen.

The West – especially Belgium and the United States – did not like Patrice Lumumba's plans to nationalize Congo's natural resources, and certainly not his proximity to the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War.

On January 17, 1961, six months after Lumumba was elected the first Prime Minister of the Free Congo, Congolese separatists, with Belgian and American blessing, brought him to the hostile province of Katanga. There, he and two of his confidants were executed under the orders of Belgian officers. The details only came to light through research such as that of Belgian sociologist Ludo De Witte in "The Assassination of Lumumba."

Another Belgian officer, Gérard Soete, sawed the bodies into pieces and dissolved them in acid. Two teeth were all that remained of Lumumba. Soete kept them as a trophy. His daughter Juliana learned about it on television, in a 2000 ARD report – in which Soete himself recounted the details and held the teeth up to the camera. A gruesome memory that still angers Juliana today.

"How would you feel if they told you that your father was murdered, buried, dug up, and cut into pieces, and that parts of his body were also taken?" she asks. "For many, he was the first prime minister of the Congo, a national hero. For me, he is my father."

Juliana Lumumba fights for the truth

Years later, Juliana wrote a letter to the Belgian king demanding one of the teeth back. No one knows where the second one is. Soete claimed to have thrown the teeth into the North Sea. He died shortly thereafter. Later, however, his daughter showed the golden tooth to a journalist. Ludo De Witte sued her, and the Belgian authorities confiscated the tooth.

In 2022, then-Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo returned the tooth to Lumumba's children in a ceremony in Brussels and apologized—in contrast to King Philippe, a direct descendant of King Baudouin, who apparently could not bring himself to apologize. He merely expressed his "deepest regret" for the violence inflicted on the Congo under Belgian rule.

But for Juliana, the apology isn't enough. "It's not about apologies. It's about the truth, about la verité (French for truth, editor's note) ," she says.

Children grew up in exile

When her father was murdered, Juliana was just five years old. She learned of it while in exile in Egypt. A few months before Lumumba's murder, she and her siblings had been smuggled out of their house in Congo, where their father was already under house arrest, and brought to Cairo with false passports. Patrice Lumumba knew he was going to die, Juliana says. He also wrote this in his last letter to his wife.

In Cairo, Lumumba's children grew up with Mohamed Abdel Aziz Ishak, a diplomat friend, his wife, and their children. Juliana calls them Papa Abdel Aziz and Mama Zizi. She speaks of a wonderful childhood: "We grew up with a lot of love and empathy."

Nevertheless, the Lumumba children couldn't escape their own selves. "We are a political family. We came to Egypt for political reasons, to be guests of President Nasser. Politics is the core of our lives, whether we like it or not." It's no wonder that the children also entered politics. Juliana held various ministerial posts, and her brother François is the leader of the Congolese National Movement – ​​the party his father founded.

Juliana was always aware that her father's assassination was political, even as a child. She learned this in Cairo from Mama Zizi, who first told her eldest son, François, and then the other children. Mama Zizi and Papa Abdel Aziz were also the ones who taught the Lumumba children their own story.

News of Lumumba's death in 1961 spread quickly in Cairo. "They set fire to the library of the American University and looted the Belgian embassy. In the streets, people shouted 'Lumumba, Lumumba,'" Juliana recalls.

Guilt, recognition and colonial continuities

It wasn't until 1994, when the Mobutu dictatorship was on the verge of collapse, that Juliana returned to Congo after years in exile. Her father had instructed his children: "He told us, no matter what happens, you have to come back home. When it was safe for us again, we went back home, where we belong."

Today, Juliana is less active in Congolese politics. She doesn't want to talk about the current situation in Congo, the conflict between the Congolese army and the rebel militia M23, or the ongoing exploitation of natural resources by the West, China, Rwanda, and other foreign powers. Nor does she want to talk about the ongoing trial in Brussels.

She'll just say this: "Nothing has happened in the last ten years. Eleven of the twelve defendants have died." The inaction of the Belgian justice system speaks for itself, Juliana believes. She doesn't have much hope that someone will finally be held accountable for her father's murder. The last living defendant is 92 years old. He is none other than Étienne Davignon, a Belgian businessman and politician, and former Vice President of the European Commission.

For Juliana, this is a difficult and frustrating experience: "No one has been held accountable. No Belgian, no European, no Congolese. No white, no black. Everyone agrees that there was a murder. But no one wants to have committed this murder."

On July 2, 2025, Patrice Lumumba would have turned 100 years old.