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Biography of Patrice Emery LumumbaName: Patrice Emery LumumbaBirth Date: July 2, 1925 Death Date: January 18, 1961 Place of Birth: Kasai, Congo Nationality: Congolese Gender: Male Occupations: prime minister Patrice Emery Lumumba Patrice Emery Lumumba (1925-1961) was the first prime minister of the Republic of the Congo. His fame rests on the manner of his death and on the symbolic character of his short public life.Patrice Lumumba was born on July 2, 1925, at Onalua near the town of Katako-Kombe in the Sankuru district of northeastern Kasai. His tribe, the Batetela, is a peripheral but dynamic branch of the Mongo-Nkutshu family of central Congo. He attended Protestant and then Catholic missionary schools and, after completing his secondary education, found a job as a postal clerk in the provincial capital of Statesville (now Kisangani) in 1954.Political LeaderLumumba rapidly emerged as a leader of the évolué community and organized a postal workers' union. He also became a protégé of local sympathizers of the Belgian Liberal party at a time when the policy of the Liberal minister of colonies Auguste Buisseret toward …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…train of events which led to the restoration of a civilian regime in Léopoldville and to the eventual liquidation of all secessionist movements.Lumumba had not been a Communist, had little interest in ideologies, and was more opportunistic than truly radical, but this has not prevented his name from being invoked after his death from a number of different quarters. The most legitimate use of Lumumba's memory is probably that which associates it with an attitude of intransigent nationalism and opposition to neocolonialism. Associated Organizations Associated Events Congo Civil War, 1960-1971 Further Reading Studies of Lumumba are R. Lermachand's "Patrice Lumumba" in W. A. E. Skurnik, ed., African Political Thought: Lumumba, Nkrumah, and Touré (1968), and G. Heinz and H. Donnay, Lumumba: The Last Fifty Days (1970). Profiles of Lumumba are in Catherine Hoskyns, The Congo since Independence, January 1960--December 1961 (1965), and Crawford Young, Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence (1965). |