Obama--
Have You Ever Heard the Story about the First Democratically-Elected President of the
My Dear Wife,
I am writing this without knowing whether you will ever get it or when or whether I shall still be alive when you read it...
Dead or alive, free or imprisoned by the colonialists, it is not I who matter, it is the
For where there is no dignity there is no freedom and where there's no justice there's no dignity and where there's no independence there are no free men...
History will have its say one day…
Not the history they teach in
Do not weep my love; I know that my country, which has suffered so much, will be able to defend its independence and liberty.
Long live the
He didn’t sit atop a throne, or darn himself in gold chains or a uniform heavy with shiny metal. He didn’t ask the people to bow but rather rise with him. Stand side by side with him. He point to their condition: colonized, enslaved, abused. Worse, their history had been stolen. Memory of another time when they honored the land and each other had been replaced with a history that spoke of their inferiority. Recount how we are depicted as animals. See the demoralization of our children. Feel how we are made to live in fear. We are equals to the white man, the Belgian. We are a people from a great civilization beyond this imposed “civilization” that has made us the “wretched of the earth.”
Above ground, men from other lands surround our material resources while we labor beneath the ground pulling up copper, cobalt, diamonds, and other minerals that are shipped off to other lands to provide “civilization” for Europeans and
And what do we know about freedom?
The people came. They wanted to hear more. They had been thinking but dared to articulate what this man was saying to them. Take responsibility, he said. Stand up and we’ll stand together. To the elite Blacks he said, join us, for we are human and this is our land and we have a right to control our land. Lies for generations tell us otherwise. Lies tell us that we belong to the King and the land, too. We can’t remain silent any longer. The “wretched of the earth” must rise! We want a democracy here in the
All of
Patrice Lumumba—not monkey, not ape—but the son of a farmer, the son and brother of Congolese who declare independent, freedom, the right to form a democracy and rid the Congo of the corruption and violence of the Belgian rule.
Patrice Lumumba and we are organizing to take control of our people and our land.
Patrice Lumumba and we are taking responsibility for the
This was not the first time a people rose up and took responsibility for their destiny, a people rose up and said enough of watching people suffer, people brutalized, people staving and dying from thirst, people without shelter, without education, without medical care, but forced to work until they died while others lived from the human carnage.
Another democratically-elected president Arbenz in
Yes, declared the CIA. He’s a communist! And again the CIA swooped down and reestablished order. Arbenz ran for his life. The elites and foreign took control again and the peasants, evil’s accomplices, were imprisoned, tortured and slaughter by the thousand. Even closer than
Did Lumumba know of this traditional method of securing democracy in post-colonial countries?
He has hope and big ideas. The people were willing.
The Europeans and the
On
But Lumumba, first democratically-elected president of the
Good to see King Baudouin and the other
For this independence of the Congo, even as it is celebrated today with Belgium, a friendly country with whom we deal as equal to equal, no Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that is was by fighting that it has been won [applause], a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for which we gave our strength and our blood.
We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force.
This was our fate for eighty years of a colonial regime; our wounds are too fresh and too painful still for us to drive them from our memory. We have known harassing work, exacted in exchange for salaries which did not permit us to eat enough to drive away hunger, or to clothe ourselves, or to house ourselves decently, or to raise our children as creatures dear to us.
We have known ironies, insults, blows that we endured morning,
We have seen our lands seized in the name of allegedly legal laws which in fact recognized only that might is right.
We have seen that the law was not the same for a white and for a black, accommodating for the first, cruel and inhuman for the other.
We have witnessed atrocious sufferings of those condemned for their political opinions or religious beliefs; exiled in their own country, their fate truly worse than death itself.
We have seen that in the towns there were magnificent houses for the whites and crumbling shanties for the blacks, that a black was not admitted in the motion-picture houses, in the restaurants, in the stores of the Europeans; that a black traveled in the holds, at the feet of the whites in their luxury cabins.
Who will ever forget the massacres where so many of our brothers perished, the cells into which those who refused to submit to a regime of oppression and exploitation were thrown [applause]?
All that, my brothers, we have endured...
But we, whom the vote of your elected representatives have given the right to direct our dear country, we who have suffered in our body and in our heart from colonial oppression, we tell you very loud, all that is henceforth ended.
The Republic of the
Together, my brothers, my sisters, we are going to begin a new struggle, a sublime struggle, which will lead our country to peace, prosperity, and greatness.
Together, we are going to establish social justice and make sure everyone has just remuneration for his labor [applause].
We are going to show the world what the black man can do when he works in freedom, and we are going to make of the
I call on all Congolese citizens, men, women and children, to set themselves resolutely to the task of creating a prosperous national economy which will assure our economic independence.
Glory to the fighters for national liberation!
Long live independence and African unity!
Long live the independent and sovereign
[applause, long and loud]
The Congolese can thank themselves. The Congolese always knew they were human; they were the rightful owners of the
Jacques Brassine, Belgian diplomat, said Lumumba was “dangerous for us.” Belgian Secret Service called him a communist. They called in the CIA who seized up the matter and confirmed: Lumumba “was a danger” to the West.
The Belgians set up listening devises in his office and huddled in meetings with the CIA. What do you think? What do you think? You watch and listen and we’ll get to work with the public. We’ll find some on the Congolese who find this man a horror. We’ll tell get to the press. And the white people! Yes! Let’s get to work!
Mr. Cash, Moise Tshombe, bowed and said yes. And the Belgians handed him the presidency of
In the press around the world, bulletins went out warning of the imminent danger of violence in the
The Ape has escaped! Satan himself in person!
The
The diamond and copper mines were secured. The peasants were pushed back. People stayed home. Lumumba heard his president. He could recognize the words. He ordered Kasavubu to step down. We will stand fast and for the people, for the struggle. But Kasavubu went to the Belgians.
The Belgians and CIA found in Mobutu Sese Seke a man of ambition, a man who would take responsibility! Head of the army, Mobutu, too bowed, and said yes, Master! You will be prime Minister. Yes, Master. Guns and money! Good, Master!
Lumumba looked to the
It was called Operation Barracuda.
Lumumba, at wits end, called to the world: will anyone step in and help us?
But President Eisenhower didn’t like what he was hearing about Lumumba. Allen Dulles is called to the White House. How fast can this communist, this ape, this man who dares to pull the wealth of the
Do it!
Done!
Where would the
A totalitarian regime in the
The people receive death. Mobutu knew how to torture and imprison. He knew how to slaughter. Individuals who dared to think Lumumba was still alive would finally come to understand their error. Opponents were executed until the people finally got the point. Elections? Lumumba is DEAD! Elections are for the electing of me, Mobuto! Dictator Mobuto!
Foreign dignitaries couldn’t miss that Mobutu was everywhere. The people couldn’t dare forget. Mobuto news, too, 24/7 reminded them. Mobutu repression kept them silent. Watch the greatest show on earth: Mobutu cars and homes, Mobutu family members as government military official. Mobutu! Never mind the Congolese workers didn’t receive pay for work. That’s called slavery—and that’s fine for the
He helped the
In 1990, came the end of the Cold War and the fall of the
An oversight!
The riots and anti-Mobutu movements finally drove the dictator out of the
We gave you billions, said the
The people of the
The Belgian secret service and the CIA assassinated Patrice Lumumba while the world watched, thanks to the
In other words, the CIA, on behalf of democracy, had business elsewhere. In the meantime, the Belgians were left to dispose of the body and they dissolved the corpse in sulfuric acid.
But two of Lumumba’s teeth refused to burn, and they are souvenirs for the assassins to this today—reminders for them of the audacity of this African to think the people of
“The future of
You have the audacity to tell the people to take responsibility. Applause from the CEOs sharing the throne here in the
Admit it: You, Mr. Barrack Obama, a capitalist, are proposing a continuation of imperialist policies in
Remember Lumumba: the people will resist!
Note:
[1] Corporations benefited from the Mobutu regime or “from the World Bank and IMF funds used to compensate them for money stolen by Mobuto…” According to International Relations, Foreign Policy in Focus, 1997:
In recent years
The
Mobutu reciprocated by providing bases and supply routes for UNITA rebels and by backing the
