The Belgian diplomat, Patrice Lumumba, and Africa’s sliding doors moment

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Premier Patrice Lumumba, of the Republic of the Congo, exchanging views with Ambassador Omar Loutfi, of the United Arab Republic at the United Nations in 1960 (Source: United Nations)

Opinion

The Belgian diplomat, Patrice Lumumba, and Africa’s sliding doors moment

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By Benjamin Fox,
London
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The death of Étienne Davignon, which was reported on Monday (18 May) is likely to close a chapter of Belgium’s colonial history that the country’s elites have spent decades trying to keep out of public sight. 

In Brussels and EU circles, Davignon, who was 93, is remembered as a former aide to ‘Mr Europe’ – three-time Belgian prime minister Paul Henri-Spaak – as well as for  a distinguished political and business career that included a stint as a vice president of the European Commission. 

But that legacy is overshadowed by his alleged involvement in the illegal transfer and mistreatment of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically-elected prime minister, who was executed in January 1961, at the behest of the United States and Belgium. 

Davignon was a diplomat in his late twenties in Kinshasa in 1960 and 1961 during the political crisis that saw Lumumba removed from office in September 1960 and executed months later. 

A telex from Kinshasa to Brussels, co-authored by Davignon, referred to ‘the overthrow of the government according to our wishes’ 

Some 60-plus years later, in March, the Brussels Court of First instance referred Davignon to face trial on charges related to the illegal transfer of Lumumba and two of his allies, senator Maurice Mpolo and minister for youth and sports, Joseph Okito, who were also murdered, the humiliating and degrading treatment of the men, and depriving them of a fair trial.  

In court, Lumumba family lawyer Christophe Marchand described Davignon as “a link in a grim state-run criminal enterprise”. 

Davignon always denied any wrong-doing, and the chances of him ever going to court were, in truth, always remote. His defence team had advised the Brussels court that his health was too poor for him to stand and had appealed the decision to send him to trial. 

The decision by the Brussels court was welcomed by the Lumumba family and by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, with the latter describing the ruling as “a historical precedent in criminal justice for European colonialism”. 

‘Moral responsibility’

A Belgian parliamentary inquiry back in 2002 stated that the Belgian state bore “moral responsibility” for Lumumba’s killing, though it did not directly implicate Davignon. 

Even so, it is hard not to question why the prosecution against Davignon only started in 2025, by which time all the other Belgian officials implicated in Lumumba’s killing had died. 

Although it is unclear who pulled the trigger that killed Lumumba, there is little doubt that his assassination was carried out at the behest of Belgium and the US. 

Lumumba, who the United States’ CIA spuriously argued was a Russian sympathiser, was one of Africa’s many political victims of the Cold War, when dozens of newly-independent countries found themselves used as geopolitical pawns by Washington and Moscow. 

His eventual successor, Joseph Desire Mobutu, was initially seen as a pro-US puppet and bulwark against communism in Africa – but later became notorious as one of Africa’s ‘dinosaurs’: a group of kleptocratic leaders across the continent that stole billions from their country’s coffers. 

Nearly 30 years after Mobutu’s death, DR Congo is still effectively ungovernable. Its neighbour Rwanda, another former Belgian colony and a fraction of Congo’s size, currently controls swathes of territory in the Kivu region in eastern Congo, a war that was one of the main agenda items for EU development ministers who met in Brussels on Monday (18 May). 

Louis Rwagasore, the first post-independence prime minister to be elected in Burundi, which borders Congo and Rwanda, and was also a Belgian colony, was assassinated in October 1961, again with the connivance of the Belgian state.  

It is hard not to view his death and Lumumba’s as sliding doors moments both for the Great Lakes region and post-independence Africa. 

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Premier Patrice Lumumba, of the Republic of the Congo, exchanging views with Ambassador Omar Loutfi, of the United Arab Republic at the United Nations in 1960 (Source: United Nations)

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Author Bio

Benjamin Fox is our trade and geopolitics editor. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He is based in Nairobi, Kenya, although he often reports from London.

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