Chapter III · Speeches, thought and letters
A voice
before a pen
Steve Biko is remembered for his essays and Amílcar Cabral for his theory. Lumumba is remembered for what he said aloud — at rallies, on the radio, before a king — and for the letters he wrote from prison.
He had little time to write. His one book was written in 1956–57; most of what survives are speeches, broadcasts, press statements and correspondence, collected after his death. Where a full text is available online, the entry links to it.
Historic speeches
December 1958
Accra, Ghana
Address to the All-African Peoples’ Conference
His first appearance on a continental stage. Lumumba presented the MNC to the liberation movements gathered by Nkrumah and set the Congo’s struggle inside Africa’s: independence for a united Congo, as part of a free continent.
28 December 1958
Léopoldville
Report from Accra
Back from Ghana, he told a crowd of thousands what he had seen and heard there, and turned the MNC’s demand into one word: independence.
20 February 1960
Brussels
Closing statement at the Round Table
Speaking for the MNC as the conference fixed 30 June for independence: ‘We demanded the immediate and unconditional independence of our country. We have just won it.’
30 June 1960
Léopoldville
Speech at the proclamation of independence
The address that answered King Baudouin, named the experience of colonial rule, and set out a programme for a free and united Congo.
July 1960
Léopoldville · Thysville
Addresses to the army
Facing the Force Publique mutiny, he went to the barracks with President Kasa-Vubu and, on 8 July, announced the Africanisation of the officer corps of what became the Armée Nationale Congolaise.
August 1960
Radio address
Address to Congolese youth
A call to the young to carry a ‘peaceful revolution’, and a reminder that liberation would have to be political, economic and spiritual at once.
25 August 1960
Léopoldville
Opening of the All-African Conference
Hosting ministers from independent African states in the middle of the crisis, he presented the Congo’s fight against secession as a test for the whole continent.
5 September 1960
National radio
Broadcast rejecting his dismissal
Within hours of Kasa-Vubu’s announcement: ‘The Government, which has been democratically elected by the nation and has won the unanimous confidence of Parliament, can only be dismissed when it loses the trust of the people.’
10 September 1960
To the UN Security Council
Solemn appeal to the United Nations
An appeal to the Council and every member state against what his government saw as UN obstruction — the closure of airports and the radio station — in the days before Mobutu’s coup.
Political philosophy
Eight recurring ideas
Lumumba was a practical politician, not a systematic theorist, and his views moved quickly — from the reformism of 1956 to the radical nationalism of 1960. These themes run through the speeches of his last two years. Quotations are from his own words.
- 01
African nationalism
A nation is made by its people’s will, not by colonial maps or ethnic lines. Independence was the precondition for everything else.
- 02
Unity beyond ethnicity and region
Against federalists and secessionists, a single Congo. ‘I ask you all to sink your tribal quarrels: they weaken us and may cause us to be despised abroad.’
- 03
Pan-African unity
The Congo’s independence was ‘a decisive step towards the liberation of the whole African continent’ — and its survival depended on Africa standing with it.
- 04
National sovereignty
Foreign help was welcome when it came ‘in a spirit of friendship’, not when it sought to impose ‘an alien policy’. Sovereignty meant the right to choose one’s partners.
- 05
Economic independence
Political independence without control of land, mines and revenue would be a flag without a state. He called on Congolese to build ‘a national economy’ and ‘our economic independence’.
- 06
The rejection of colonial domination
Not only of Belgian rule, but of the paternalism behind it — the belief that Africans must be guided, schooled and supervised before they could govern.
- 07
Human dignity and equality
‘Without dignity there is no freedom, without justice there is no dignity and without independence there are no free men.’
- 08
International solidarity
Non-alignment in practice: aid from any quarter that respected the Congo’s choices, and a common front with Asia and the newly free nations.
Letters and correspondence
The last letter
Written in Thysville prison to his wife, Pauline Opango, in the last weeks of his life, the letter is the closest thing Lumumba left to a testament.
« Nous ne sommes pas seuls. L’Afrique, l’Asie et les peuples libres et libérés de tous les coins du monde se trouveront toujours aux côtés des millions de Congolais qui n’abandonneront la lutte que le jour où il n’y aura plus de colonisateurs et leurs mercenaires dans notre pays. »
We are not alone. Africa, Asia, the free peoples and the peoples fighting for their freedom in all corners of the world will always be side by side with the millions of Congolese who will not give up the struggle while there is even one colonialist or colonialist mercenary in our country.
« Ne me pleure pas, ma compagne. Moi je sais que mon pays, qui souffre tant, saura défendre son indépendance et sa liberté. »
Do not weep for me. I know that my tormented country will be able to defend its freedom and its independence.
English: The Truth about a Monstrous Crime of the Colonialists (Moscow, 1961). Read the full letter
July — August 1960
Correspondence with Dag Hammarskjöld
Public letters to the UN Secretary-General on the withdrawal of Belgian troops and the UN’s refusal to act against the Katanga secession.
Read4 January 1961
Letter to Rajeshwar Dayal
From Thysville, to the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative: a description of the conditions in which he and seven other parliamentarians were held.
Read1950s
Dawn in the Heart of Africa
His poem ‘Aube dans le cœur de l’Afrique’ — a reminder that the politician began as a writer.
Read