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The Beer Salesman Who Had to Die

The Beer Salesman Who Had to Die

Illuminating History's Strangest Corners | Issue #8 | November 2025

November 10, 2025

June 30, 1960: The Speech That Signed a Death Warrant

King Baudouin of Belgium stood before the gathered dignitaries in Léopoldville, now known as Kinshasa, his voice dripping with colonial nostalgia. Independence Day for the Congo—but first, a history lesson from the former master. He praised his great-uncle Leopold II as a visionary, spoke of Belgium's "civilizing mission," and congratulated the Congolese on finally being ready for self-governance after 75 years of tutelage.

Then Patrice Lumumba rose to speak.

The 34-year-old Prime Minister wasn't scheduled for remarks. Protocol demanded grateful acceptance of Belgium's magnanimity. Instead, Lumumba delivered what one historian called "the most important speech in African history"—and what Western intelligence agencies immediately recognized as an unforgivable act of defiance.

"We have known ironies, insults, blows that we endured morning, noon, and evening, because we are Negroes," Lumumba declared, his voice steady with controlled fury. "We have known that the law was never the same whether dealing with a white or a Negro... We have seen our lands seized in the name of allegedly legal laws which in fact recognized only that might is right."[^1]

In the audience, Belgian officials sat frozen. CIA station chief Larry Devlin watched carefully. In Washington and Brussels, the cables would soon begin flying. Lumumba had committed the cardinal sin of speaking truth to power on the global stage—and worse, he'd done it at the moment of Belgium's carefully choreographed exit, when they'd planned to maintain control through more subtle means.

Seventy-five days later, Lumumba would be removed from power in a CIA-backed coup. Seven months after that speech, he would be dead—beaten, tortured, shot, and dissolved in acid. One of his teeth would remain in Belgium as a macabre trophy for 61 years.

The Beer Salesman Who Dreamed of Freedom

Patrice Lumumba was never supposed to lead a nation. Under Belgian colonial rule, the Congolese were systematically denied education, political rights, and any preparation for self-governance. Belgium's philosophy was brutally paternalistic: Africans were children who needed indefinite European supervision.

Born in 1925 in Kasai province, Lumumba was one of the few Congolese who received a mission school education—enough to make him literate, not enough to threaten colonial order. He worked as a postal clerk, then as a beer salesman for Polar, a Léopoldville brewery. He wrote poetry. He devoured books about African history and anti-colonial movements. He was, by all accounts, a man of remarkable charisma and eloquence.

In the 1950s, as independence movements swept through Asia and began stirring in Africa, Lumumba joined the Liberal Party of Belgium (the Congolese chapter) and wrote essays calling for reforms. In 1956, he was convicted of embezzlement from his postal job—a charge he claimed was retaliation for his political activities—and served a year in prison. Some historians believe it was indeed political persecution; others note the evidence was substantial. Either way, it radicalized him.

Upon release, he helped found the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) in 1958—the first nationwide Congolese political party, deliberately multi-ethnic in a country where Belgium had encouraged tribal divisions. While other Congolese political movements were regional or ethnic, Lumumba's vision was pan-Congolese: one nation, genuinely independent, controlling its own resources.

His timing was impeccable. By 1959, the era of formal European colonialism was ending—not from European benevolence, but from necessity. World War II had bankrupted the colonial powers and exposed the hypocrisy of fighting fascism abroad while maintaining racist empires. Anti-colonial movements were winning bloody struggles from Indochina to Algeria. The United Nations, dominated by newly independent Asian nations, was increasingly hostile to colonialism. The Suez Crisis of 1956¹ had demonstrated that European powers could no longer act unilaterally against colonial independence movements. Maintaining empires by force was becoming politically and economically untenable.

Belgium, watching France bleed in Algeria and Britain retreat from Asia and Africa, suddenly announced in January 1960 that Congo would receive independence in six months. Six months. For a territory of 14 million people where fewer than 30 Congolese had university degrees, where no Congolese had been allowed to hold positions above clerk-level in the colonial administration, where political parties had barely begun to organize.

It was chaos by design—Belgium hoped the Congolese would fail and beg them to return.

In the rushed May 1960 elections, Lumumba's MNC won a plurality. At 34 years old, the former postal clerk and beer salesman became Prime Minister of Africa's second-largest country, leading a shaky coalition government. President Joseph Kasa-Vubu (a more conservative, Belgian-friendly politician) would serve as head of state, but Lumumba, as Prime Minister, would run the government.

Belgium expected gratitude. King Baudouin arrived for the independence ceremony on June 30, 1960, expecting a carefully scripted celebration of Belgian benevolence. Instead, he got Patrice Lumumba with a microphone and a lifetime of rage to express.

Congo. Wikimedia Commons

The Richest Poor Country on Earth

To understand why Lumumba had to die, you need to understand what the Congo represented: a geological jackpot wrapped in a humanitarian catastrophe.

The story begins with one of history's most audacious frauds. At the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, where European powers carved up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium convinced them he was a humanitarian bringing "civilization" to the Congo basin. What he actually created was history's largest privately-owned slave state—76 times the size of Belgium itself, run as his personal rubber plantation.

During Leopold's Congo Free State (1885-1908), an estimated 10 million Congolese died—half the population.[^2] The system was diabolically simple: villages received rubber quotas. If they failed to meet them, hostages were killed. To prove bullets weren't wasted on hunting, soldiers had to present a severed hand for every cartridge fired—turning human hands into currency and creating an incentive to mutilate the living.[^3] Baskets of smoked hands were delivered to collection posts. Missionaries photographed children staring at their own severed hands, and these images eventually sparked international outrage.

When scandal finally forced Belgium to take the colony from Leopold's personal control in 1908, the brutality merely became bureaucratized. The rubber terror ended, but forced labor, racial humiliation, and resource extraction continued for another 52 years under Belgian state administration.

By 1960, the Congo contained approximately 80% of the world's cobalt, 50% of its diamonds, significant uranium deposits (including the uranium used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs), along with copper, gold, and countless other minerals. The southern Katanga province alone generated enough revenue to dwarf the budgets of most African nations.

Belgium had no intention of actually leaving. The plan was independence in name only—keep Belgian officers commanding the army, Belgian administrators running the infrastructure, Belgian mining companies extracting the wealth. Install a pliable government, maintain the fiction of sovereignty, continue the profit.

Patrice Lumumba had other ideas.

Patrice Lumumba. Wikimedia Commons

"An Urgent and Prime Objective"

Lumumba's sins accumulated quickly in Western eyes. He advocated for genuine Congolese control of Congolese resources. He spoke of pan-African unity and economic independence. When Belgium-backed Katanga province attempted to secede just days after independence—a transparent attempt to keep mining revenues flowing to Brussels—Lumumba asked the United Nations for help. When the UN dithered, he turned to the Soviet Union.

That sealed his fate.

On August 18, 1960—less than two months after independence—CIA Director Allen Dulles sent a cable to the Léopoldville station. Lumumba's "removal must be an urgent and prime objective," it read.[^4] President Eisenhower himself, in a National Security Council meeting, reportedly expressed that Lumumba should be eliminated.[^5]

The CIA station chief Larry Devlin later wrote that he received explicit orders to assassinate Lumumba. A scientist from the CIA's Technical Services Division arrived in Congo with a tube of poisoned toothpaste.[^6] The plan was considered too risky to execute directly, but the intent was clear: Lumumba had to go.

Instead, the CIA backed Colonel Joseph Mobutu—a former army journalist who'd been on the CIA payroll—to stage a coup on September 14, 1960. Lumumba was placed under house arrest, surrounded by UN peacekeepers who had orders to protect him but did nothing when his enemies came.

The Murder: A Joint Belgian-American Production

On December 1, 1960, Lumumba escaped house arrest and attempted to reach Stanleyville, where his supporters controlled territory. He almost made it. His convoy was captured on December 2nd by Mobutu's forces—tipped off, many historians believe, by the CIA tracking his movements.

What followed was torture. Photographs exist of Lumumba being paraded before journalists, his hands bound, blood on his face, soldiers pulling his hair and beating him. He was imprisoned in Thysville military camp, where the abuse continued.

But Léopoldville wasn't safe for the final act. Lumumba still had too many supporters in the capital. On January 17, 1961, he was transferred—along with two of his ministers, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito—to Élisabethville in Katanga province, where Belgian-backed secessionist Moïse Tshombe held power.

Belgian officers were waiting. The plane landed after dark. According to later testimony from Belgian police commissioner Gerard Soete, Lumumba and his companions were driven to a remote location, beaten savagely throughout the journey, and executed by firing squad.[^7] Soete himself admitted to supervising the disposal of the bodies—they were cut up, dissolved in sulfuric acid, and scattered.

But Soete kept a souvenir. He pulled out two of Lumumba's teeth with pliers and took them home to Belgium.

Belgian government ministers knew. They'd approved the transfer to Katanga, knowing execution awaited.[^8] Belgian officers participated directly in the killing. The CIA knew—Devlin was informed immediately. For decades, both governments denied any involvement.

The official story: Lumumba was killed by angry villagers during an escape attempt.

The Thirty-Two Year Nightmare

With Lumumba dead, Mobutu eventually seized full power in 1965. He would rule for 32 years, renaming himself Mobutu Sese Seko and the country Zaire. He became one of history's most accomplished kleptocrats, stealing an estimated $5 billion while his country crumbled.⁹

The CIA and Belgium had gotten exactly what they wanted: a stable, anti-communist dictator who'd let Western companies extract Congo's wealth. What they'd killed was any possibility of genuine Congolese self-determination.

But this raises an obvious question: why did the CIA—an American agency—care so much about Belgium's colonial problems? And was Mobutu really the anti-colonialist nationalist he claimed to be?

Independence as Theater: The Neo-Colonial Bargain

The answer to both questions reveals how post-colonial exploitation actually worked.

Mobutu was no anti-colonialist. He was the perfect neo-colonial puppet—a strongman who performed nationalism while facilitating the same resource extraction that had always defined Congo. The arrangement was brutally simple:

What Mobutu Provided:

Western mining companies (Union Minière du Haut Katanga and others) continued operating with preferential access to cobalt, copper, diamonds, and uranium
Any leftist opposition was crushed, keeping Congo firmly in the Western sphere during the Cold War
A facade of African independence that made continued exploitation politically palatable

What He Received:

Between 1965-1988, Zaire received over $1 billion in US aid, making it one of America's largest aid recipients in Africa¹⁰
CIA backing and military support to crush any challenges to his rule
Diplomatic cover—the US blocked UN investigations into his human rights abuses
Complete freedom to loot the country's wealth, with his stolen billions deposited in Swiss and Belgian banks

Mobutu's "Africanization" program was pure theater. He renamed the country Zaire, took the name Mobutu Sese Seko, banned Christian names, and promoted "authenticité"—African cultural pride. But economically? The extraction continued unchanged. When he nationalized businesses, he simply handed them to cronies who maintained Western partnerships. The profits still flowed out.

Meanwhile, Mobutu's family lived in European luxury—estates in France and Switzerland, shopping trips to Paris, his children educated in Belgium. He was what's called a comprador: a local strongman who facilitates foreign exploitation in exchange for personal enrichment. As CIA station chief Larry Devlin later admitted with pride, Mobutu was "our man."

Why America Killed for Congo's Independence

The CIA's involvement wasn't about helping Belgium—it was about Cold War strategic calculations that made Congo's resources a matter of American national security:

Strategic Minerals: Congo's Shinkolobwe mine had provided uranium for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Its cobalt was essential for jet engines and military hardware. In a nuclear-armed Cold War, denying these materials to the Soviets while securing them for the West was considered paramount.

The Domino Theory Applied to Resources: If Congo—one of Africa's largest and richest nations—went communist or even genuinely nationalist and controlled its own wealth, it might inspire other African nations to do the same. The US feared a cascade of nationalizations across the developing world that would deny Western corporations access to vital raw materials.

Cold War Zero-Sum Thinking: Lumumba wasn't a communist (he was a nationalist who wanted Congolese control of Congo), but he'd accepted Soviet aid when the West refused to help defend his government. In American thinking, this made him an enemy. There was no conception that a third option existed—that Congolese might control Congo for Congolese interests rather than serving either Cold War bloc.

Belgium's Incompetence: Belgium had catastrophically botched decolonization, leaving virtually no educated Congolese administrators or democratic institutions. When Lumumba emerged demanding real independence, Belgium panicked but lacked the covert capabilities to eliminate him. The CIA had the tools—assassination expertise, covert operations experience, no democratic oversight—so they took over. This pattern repeated globally: when European colonial powers couldn't maintain control, America stepped in to do it for them.

The tragic irony is that Congo's formal independence became the mechanism for continued exploitation. Under Belgian colonial rule, the theft was obvious and generated international criticism. Under Mobutu's "sovereign" government, the same theft continued with American blessing—but now it could be blamed on African corruption rather than Western imperialism.

The Congo never recovered. After Mobutu's fall in 1997, civil wars killed millions more. Today, despite resources that should make it one of earth's wealthiest nations, the Democratic Republic of Congo remains among its poorest. Children mine cobalt for our smartphones in conditions that would have been familiar to Leopold II's rubber slaves.

The Pattern: A Dark Constellation

Lumumba's murder wasn't an isolated incident—it was the template for how the West managed "independence" when former colonies threatened to become actually independent.

Iran, 1953: Mohammad Mossadegh, democratically elected Prime Minister, nationalized Iranian oil. The CIA and MI6 orchestrated Operation Ajax, overthrowing him and installing the Shah. The 1979 Islamic Revolution was a direct consequence of this betrayal.[^10]

Guatemala, 1954: President Jacobo Árbenz initiated land reform that threatened United Fruit Company's holdings. The CIA's Operation PBSUCCESS overthrew him, leading to 40 years of military dictatorships and civil war that killed 200,000 Guatemalans.[^11]

Indonesia, 1965: When President Sukarno moved too far left, the CIA supported General Suharto's coup and subsequent massacre of up to one million alleged communists. The CIA provided kill lists with the names of thousands to be executed.[^12]

Chile, 1973: Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist president, was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup on September 11, 1973. General Pinochet's dictatorship tortured and killed thousands, but he was friendly to American business interests.[^13]

Brazil, 1964: President João Goulart's land reforms and nationalist economic policies triggered a military coup backed by the US. The subsequent dictatorship lasted 21 years.[^14]

The pattern is unmistakable: democratic leaders in resource-rich countries who threatened Western economic interests were systematically eliminated during the Cold War. Democracy was praised in the abstract but destroyed in practice whenever it threatened to redistribute wealth or resources toward the populations who actually lived atop them.

The Reckoning That Never Came

In 2001—forty years after the murder—the Belgian parliament finally launched an inquiry. In 2002, it concluded that Belgium bore "moral responsibility" for Lumumba's death.[^15] No one was prosecuted. The officers involved were long dead or protected by immunity.

Gerard Soete, the police commissioner who'd dissolved Lumumba's body in acid, gave interviews in the 1990s. He showed journalists the tooth he'd kept. "I'm just doing my job," he said, with chilling banality. When he died in 2000, his daughter inherited it.

In 2016, Belgian authorities seized the tooth from Soete's daughter. It sat in storage for six more years. Finally, on June 20, 2022—almost exactly 62 years after that independence day speech—Belgium returned Lumumba's tooth to his family in a ceremony in Brussels.[^16]

The Belgian prime minister apologized. The tooth was placed in a coffin and returned to Congo, where it was buried with state honors. Lumumba's daughter, Juliana, wept over the only physical remnant of her father.

The CIA's role remains officially obscure. Documents have been released admitting the agency planned his assassination, but the exact extent of American involvement in his actual murder remains classified. In 2013, the US finally admitted to "a moral responsibility" for Lumumba's death.[^17] No prosecutions, no real accountability—just a footnote in declassified documents that scholars have to fight to access.

The Darkness We Inherited

The tragedy of Patrice Lumumba isn't just that a visionary leader was murdered. It's that his murder worked.

Congo never became the beacon of African independence he envisioned. Instead, it became a cautionary tale—a demonstration of what happens when you challenge Western economic interests, no matter how democratic your mandate. Other African leaders watched and learned: accommodation was safer than defiance.

The minerals still flow out of Congo. The profits still flow elsewhere. The children still mine in dangerous conditions. The governmental dysfunction, the perpetual civil conflicts, the grinding poverty—all of it traces back to that original sin in January 1961, when the Western powers decided that Congolese democracy was less important than Congolese cobalt.

In history's darkest corners, we find not just individual murders but the murder of possibilities. Lumumba's death killed more than a man—it killed the idea that former colonies might genuinely control their own destinies. It established that sovereignty was conditional, that independence required permission, that democracy was acceptable only when it produced acceptable results.

The tooth came home after 62 years. The justice never did.

This is the darkness we illuminate at Obsucrarium—not to revel in it, but to ensure that the lies told over mass graves don't become the official history. Lumumba spoke truth on June 30, 1960, and for that truth, he was erased. But the truth survives him, persistent as the ghost of a stolen tooth, impossible to fully dissolve no matter how much acid you pour.

Notes & Sources

[^1]: Full text of Lumumba's independence speech available at: Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History (Zed Books, 2002), 91-93.

[^2]: Death toll estimates vary from 1-15 million. The 10 million figure is considered conservative by most modern historians. See: Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 233.

[^3]: The Hand-Severing System: Under Leopold II's Congo Free State (1885-1908), the territory was run as his personal rubber plantation. Belgian officers and their African enforcers (the Force Publique) would hold women and children hostage while men ventured into the jungle to harvest wild rubber vines to meet quotas. If quotas weren't met, hostages were killed. To prove they hadn't "wasted" bullets on hunting, soldiers had to present a severed right hand for every bullet used. This created a perverse economy where hands became currency—soldiers would cut off hands of living people to cover shortages or save bullets. Baskets of smoked hands were presented for inspection. Photographs taken by missionaries (particularly Alice Seeley Harris) documenting children with severed hands sparked international outrage. Edmund Morel and Roger Casement's exposure of these atrocities forced Belgium to take the colony from Leopold's personal control in 1908. See: Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost, 165-166, 225-232; Neal Ascherson, The King Incorporated: Leopold the Second and the Congo (Granta Books, 1999).

[^4]: U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Church Committee), Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (1975), 13-70. Declassified CIA documents available at: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/

[^5]: Church Committee minutes suggest Eisenhower expressed desire for Lumumba's removal in strong terms at NSC meeting, though exact wording is disputed. CIA officials interpreted it as authorization for assassination. See: Church Committee Report (1975), 52-58.

[^6]: Larry Devlin, Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone (PublicAffairs, 2007), 96-98.

[^7]: Ludo De Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba (Verso, 2001), 75-88. Based on Belgian parliamentary inquiry testimony and declassified documents.

[^8]: Belgian Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, Report on the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Patrice Lumumba (2001). Available at Belgian Federal Parliament archives.

[^9]: Michela Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo (Harper Perennial, 2001), estimates range from $4-15 billion stolen.

[^10]: Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Wiley, 2003). CIA's role officially acknowledged in 2013: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/

[^11]: Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Harvard University Press, 1982); CIA documents declassified: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/guatemala/2016-05-16/

[^12]: Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World (PublicAffairs, 2020). Declassified documents: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB52/

[^13]: Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New Press, 2013). National Security Archive: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/project/chile-documentation-project

[^14]: James N. Green, We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States (Duke University Press, 2010). US involvement documented in declassified State Department cables.

[^15]: Belgian Parliamentary Commission, final report (November 2001): Commission found "certain members of the Belgian government and other Belgian actors" bore responsibility.

[^16]: "Belgium returns Lumumba's tooth to family after 61 years," Reuters, June 20, 2022: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/belgium-returns-lumumbas-tooth-family-after-61-years-2022-06-20/

[^17]: US acknowledgment via spokesperson statement reported in: "US acknowledges role in Congo independence leader's death," Associated Press, February 2013.