By Badylon Kawanda Bakiman
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will observe a national mourning for 4 days. This will begin Monday, 27 until Thursday, June 30, 2022. So decided, Thursday, the central government in Kinshasa.
Assassinated 61 years ago in Elisabeth city, current city of Lubumbashi in the province of Haut-Katanga, the mortal remains of the national hero arrived in Kinshasa, in the early hours of Wednesday June 22. This, after the last tributes that were paid to him, Monday June 20 by the Congolese of Brussels (Belgium) and Tuesday June 21 by those of Paris (France).
That same Wednesday, a delegation led by the President of the National Assembly accompanied the body to the province of Sankuru, the province of origin of the illustrious departed, where tributes will be paid to him in the traditional way. After the stage of Sankuru will intervene that of Tshopo then of Haut-Katanga.
The remains will then be brought back to Kinshasa. It is on June 30, 2022, the date of independence, that the remains will finally be buried in the mausoleum set up at the Place de l’échangeur in Kinshasa.
During these four days, flags are flown at half-mast throughout the DRC.
“His spirit, which was imprisoned in Belgium, is coming back here,” said Maurice Tasombo Omatuku, a traditional chief and Lumumba’s nephew, who is torn between the joy of finally being able to “mourn” his uncle and the “sadness” of knowing that he had “really been assassinated.
But why has Belgium never revealed the name of the Belgian policeman who murdered our national hero?” asks Benjamin Nkoko, a human rights defender in the DRC.
Nkoko invited Belgium to apologize to the Congolese people for this ignoble act that this colonizing country carried out in 1961 by killing the very first “Prime Minister” of this vast country.
