For more than 60 years, Juliana Lumba had questions. Who murdered his father? How did Americans help? What did the United Nations do? Did they stand silly, even they felt that they were under their safety?
Those are uncomfortable questions, political questions. And Juliana will not rest until she has.
“You cannot have children of Patriss Lumba without affecting your life” she says.
She has been girate because she appears out of her house window in Kinshsa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Lumbumba murder case can prosecute
On 17 June, the office of the Belgian federal prosecutor announced that it requested that the case be sent to the Brussels criminal court regarding the murder of Juliana’s father. It follows the investigation of more than a decade.
Belgian state is partially responsible for murder. A 2001 parliamentary investment established that King Boutdoin of the then Muniri of Belgium knew that the murder plan was to be stopped.
Juliana’s brother Francois, in a 2011 complaint, the plaintiff, accused the Belgian state of war crimes and torture, and was part of a conspiracy aimed at the purpose of his father’s political and physical abolition.
Lumba fought for the independence of Congo
On 30 June 1960, Patriss Lumba freed the Congo from Belgian’s colonial rule and became the first Prime Minister of the country. He promised democracy, prosperity and exploitation of Congo minerals by foreign powers. But this never happened.
West – especially in Belgium and America – opposed Lumbumba’s plans to nationalize the Raw material of Congo and their closeness with the Soviet Union amid the Cold War.
On January 17, 1961, Lumba, a year and a half, was elected the first Prime Minister of a free Congo, with the Congolemen Sapretts to the hostile province of Katanga with Belgium and American blessings.
Lumba and two of his colleagues were shot in the forest under the command of Belgian officials. The fact came only for thanks to Belgian sociologist and writer, Ludo de Vitte, whose findings were expanded in his 2003 book, “The Assistant of Lumumba”.
Another Belgian official, Gerrard Sleep saw the bodies into pieces and dissolved them in sulfuric acid. There were two teeth all that remained of Lumba. Sleep kept him as a trophy. Juliana learned about this on television, in a report on a 2000 German broadcaster in which Soot Himfel recalled the details and caught the teeth in the camera. This fierce memory still annoys Juliana.
“How would you feel if they told you that your father was not only killed, was buried, was cut into a piece, but some parts of his body were taken?”, She asks. “For many people, he was the first Prime Minister of Congo, a national hero. But for me, he is my father.”
Still fighting for truth
Years later, Juliana wrote a letter to the king of Belgium seeking one of the teeth. Nobody knows where the other is. Sleep claimed that he had thrown it into the North Sea. He died shortly after, but later his daughter showed a journalist to a golden tooth. Ludo de Vitte then sued him and Belgian officials seized the remains.
In 2022, the then Prime Minister Alexander de Crue returned to the children of Lumba at a ceremony at Brussels and apologized – unlike King Philip, a direct descendant of King Bodoine, who requires the word “sorry”. He expressed only “deep regrets” for violence on the congregations under the Belgian rule.
But apology is not a point for Juliana.
“This is not a problem of forgiveness. It is a problem of truth. Verite,” she says. “I need to know the truth.”
Growing in exile
When her father was murdered, what did Juliana do at the age of just five. He learned it in exile in Egypt. A few months before Lumba’s assassination, he and his brothers and sisters were smuggled out of their house in Congo, where his father was kept under the arrest of the house, and was taken to Cairo with a fake passport.
Patriss Lumba knew that he was going to die, saying Juliana. He indicated this in his last letter to his wife.
In Cairo, Lumba’s child Mohammad Abdel Aziz grew up with Ishaq, a diplomat and friend of Lumba. But they could not escape their history.
“We are a political family,” says Juliana. “We came to Egypt due to political reasons, hosted by President Nasar. Politics is the origin of our life, whether we like it or not.”
Children entered politics. Juliana served in various ministerial positions, and her brother Francois is the leader of the congregation national movement, the party was established by her father.
Juliana says that she always knew that her father’s murder was political, even when she was a child in Cairo. The news of Lumba’s death in 1961 spread to the city early.
“She set fire to the library of the American University and looted the Belgian Embassy,” she remembers. “People shouted ‘Lumbumba, Lumba’ on the streets.”
Crime, accountability and colonial continuity
It was not until 1994, when the Congo’s Mobutu was on the verge of dictatorship that Juliana returned to her motherland after years in exile. This was his father’s wish.
“She told us, whatever happens, you have to come back home. So, when it was safe for us, we can come back home, where we are,” she says.
Today, Juliana is less active in the politics of Kangoli. She does not want to talk about the ongoing exploitation of natural resources by the current situation, the conflict between the Kangoli Army and the rebel militia M3, or by western countries, China, Rwanda and other foreign powers.
Nor does she want to speak potential tests in the previous living suspect’s Brussels, which could be complicated in 92 -year -old Etienne Davignon in her father’s murder.
Davignon 10, a former top Belgian diplomatic, is the last of Belgian diplomatic, businessman and former Belgian, who was accused of involvement in murder in the 2011 trial filed by Lumba children.
With a little progress in six decades, Juliana is losing hope that someone will finally face justice for his father’s death.
She says, “No hero is accountable. Any Belgium, no European, no congregation. No white, no black. Everyone agrees that there is murder. There is a murder. There is a crime. But no one has done so,” she says.
On July 2, 2025, bees will be 100 years old in Patriss Lumumba.
Edited by Stuart Braun
