Lumumba Vea lives for us all

Sarath S De Silva’s ‘Kotuwa Pitakotuwa 1’ is a book I haven’t read. Vihanga Perera WhatsApped me the cover page and also a couple of pages from the book. He did so because there’s a reference to my father, Gamini Seneviratne.

De Silva recollects a couple of poetry magazines published in the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, back in the early nineteen sixties. He says they were titled ‘Nisades I’ and ‘Nisades II’. From what I remember, there was a magazine titled ‘Poetry Peradeniya’ and later, ‘Peradeniya Kavi’ which I believe was bi or tri lingual. My father was associated with both.  

De Silva remembered but a few lines from a poem he believes my father wrote:

‘Meruva namuth lumumbaava
merune naa
aprikaava.’

[Although Lumumba was killed, Africa did not die]

Years ago, decades in fact, my father related a story about Lumumba. This was when he saw a photograph of the statue of Governor Ward in Kandy and in front of the Dalada Maligawa being removed (to be replaced by one of Madduma Bandara). It appeared on the front page of the Daily News or the Island, I can’t remember which.

‘When Lumumba was killed, we marched from Peradeniya to Kandy,’ that’s how he started the story.

He told me about Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first Prime Minister after gaining independence from Belgium in June 1960. He was assassinated in January 1961. He was just 35.

Lumumba was a symbol of Congolese nationalism during the struggle against Belgian colonial rule which began when the butcher King Leopold established the Congo Free State in 1885. Around 10 million Congolese were killed between 1885 and 1908, even as Leopold plundered rubber and ivory.

His ‘Independence Speech’ is hailed as one of the most important in the 20th Century. Malcolm X observed that Lumumba was ‘the greatest Black man who ever walked the African continent.’ He spoke before King Baudouin of Belgium, the great-great-nephew of the aforementioned butcher.

Lumumba was ousted in a military coup led by Mobutu Sese Seku who captured and flew him to Katanga where he was tortured and eventually executed by a firing squad. Then his body was thrown into a shallow grave only to be dug up later, dismembered and his remains dissolved in acid.

It is said that the only remnant of Lumumba was a gold-crowned tooth, which Belgian police officer  Gérard Soete kept for 39 years until his death in 2000. Soete confessed that he was the one responsible for dismembering the body and dissolving Lumumba’s remains.

Africa did not die then. Lived. Lives. Present. Continuous. And while the continent lives, the people of at least 10 countries cheer their heroes playing their hearts out at the Football World Cup. They turn up, they cheer. But one man stands out.

Michel Kuka Mboladinga, better known by his nickname ‘Lumumba Vea,’ or ‘Lumumba Lives. He is the Congolese national team’s most famous fan. It all began during the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco, when he stood upon a pedestal with a steely gaze during every Congo match, remaining perfectly still with his right arm raised from beginning to end.

He was not granted a US visa to watch the Democratic Republic of Congo play Uzbekistan, but he was in Guadalajara, Mexico, to watch them against Colombia. He stood still throughout the game. The picture says it all.

Lumumba was killed, my father told me. Lumumba lives, says Michel Kuka Mboladinga. Africa lives, says Africans, as did my father, more than 60 years ago.

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There are wells even in the desert, thankfully

Pic by Gerry Hill

Today (as I write), June 30, I am thinking of deserts. And wells. Deserts and wells mark this day on account of two notes sent to me, the first a quote and the other a speech, the first a timeless love story and the second a signal to two murderous governments and a most ‘natural’ death.

The first, a line from Antoine de Siant-Exupery’s lovely story, ‘The Little Prince’: ‘What makes the desert beautiful,’ (says the Little Prince), ‘is that somewhere it hides a well.’ Now these are not happy times for Sri Lanka, some might say, what with Ban Ki-moon in his wisdom appointing a panel (supposedly) to advise him on Sri Lanka in a rank insult to our status as a member state of the United Nations (and in blatant abuse of office and contravention of protocol) and the European Commission imposing a set of conditions that no government of a sovereign country with any sense of dignity could agree to and as such would inevitably lead to the withdrawal of GSP Plus concessions.

On the other hand, as many have argued, beggars cannot be choosers and if we continue to see ourselves as the mendicants that outfits such as the UN and EC want us to believe we are, then we have no cause for complaint. The plus side is that we are beggars more by choice rather than by circumstances. So when my friend Errol Alphonso sent me this lovely quote, it was, well, a well of pure spring water, unadulterated by the poisons that ‘development’ and its necessary accompanist, dependency, inject into the groundwater reserves of our sense of being and becoming.

There are, then, deserts and deserts, some which are dry and some which though verdant beyond belief still appear arid and barren simply because we’ve been divested of the eyes to see green, wealth and potential and therefore necessarily see dust, desolation and nothing. Withdrawing GSP Plus does not amount to sealing the wells that could quench our national thirst, no. It is a measure that can, unintentionally of course, help open eyes so that we can see the reservoirs that we have access to.

GSP Plus was a special concession that we were offered post-tsunami. As the President has pointed out, we’ve all but completed post-tsunami recovery. There’s a point beyond which we should not willingly see or subject ourselves to mollycoddling. We crossed that point years ago.

We need money, yes. There are two ways of obtaining money. We can borrow or make use of concessions (the Begging Bowl Option or BBO). We can save (the Thrift Option or TO). It looks like BBO hasn’t got us very far. There is therefore only TO left.

Starting from the top. Cut corruption and wastage, prune down tamashas and we will have all the money we need. Every project, from the construction to a public lavatory to the building of a state-of-the-art harbour comes with dozens of hoardings and newspaper advertisements. It is one thing to claim credit and quite another to brag to puke-point.

This is not a Sri Lanka specific phenomenon. We have not been singled out for punishment. It’s a long story. And here’s where the second note comes. June 30, 1960, exactly 60 years ago, someone made a speech. That someone was assassinated a little over six months later. There is a personal dimension to this story. 

My father, then a student at Peradeniya, helped organized a march to protest this assassination, orchestrated by people who, ironically, talk about fair play, democracy, decency and civilization. The march ended in Kandy where the protestors tried to bring down the statue of Henry Ward. The rope had snapped, but legend has it that the Ward Statue was brought down that day. My father told me this story years later when the Ward Statue was finally taken off and replaced with that of Madduma Bandara the child hero chosen deliberately for martyr-branding by the British (as opposed to the daughter of Kivule Gedara Mohottala).

The man who was assassinated made a speech on June 30, 1960, exactly 50 years ago, Tissa Pilimatalawa, Tissa Maama to me, reminded me. This was Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the Congo (Zaire). Independence Day. He outlined eloquently the struggle, the sacrifice and the challenges ahead.

‘We have known ironies, insults, blows that we endured morning, noon, and evening...’ he reminded his people. We can say the same thing today, 50 years later (thank you Ban Ki-moon). ‘We have seen our lands seized in the name of allegedly legal laws which in fact recognized only that might is right,’ he said.

‘We can see the same thing. ‘We have seen that the law was not the same for a white and for a black, accommodating for the first, cruel and inhuman for the other.’ This is not Malinda Seneviratne calling Ban Ki-moon a spade or perhaps a more appropriate evacuating tool. This is Patrice Lumumba. In the year 1960.

Lumumba thought the bad days were a thing of the past: ‘we tell you very loud, all that is henceforth ended.’ Six months later, he was assassinated. He thought the Republic of the Congo was now in the hands of its own children. He was wrong.

‘The Congo’s independence marks a decisive step towards the liberation of the entire African continent,’ he proclaimed. It was not to be. Not then, not 50 years later either. Patrice Lumumba was murdered in circumstances suggesting the support and complicity of the Governments of Belgium and the United States of America.

My father told me about the signature slogan of the protest: ‘Meruwe namuth lumumbaawa, merune nehe aprikaava’ (Lumumba was murdered, but Africa did not die!). That was a well in the desert. Africa is not dead. Neither is Sri Lanka. We have to understand that there will always be wells. Wells for the willing, those who have the eyes to notice them, those who have the will to look for them. Our wells. Our water. Our life-blood. The future of our children.

This article was first published in the 'Daily News' (July 1, 2010)

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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Patrice Lumumba did not die on January 17, 1961

Fifty six years ago almost to the day a man was killed.  Now that’s not news.  Every single day thousands of people are killed.  Thousands perish in war.  Thousands die of curable diseases.  It was like that back in 1961 as well.  

But this murder was different.  It has been referred to as the most important assassination of the 20th century.  Patrice Lumumba was killed on the 17th of January 1961.  This was seven months after he was elected as the first Prime Minister of independent Congo. He was 34 at the time.

In September he was deposed through a coup d’état by  Joseph-Désiré Mobutu who proceeded to arrest him in December with logistical support from Belgium and the United States of America.  Lumumba was first brutally beaten and tortured by Katangan and Belgian officers while President Moïse Tshombe (President of the State of Katanga that had newly declared independence) and his cabinet decided what to do with him.  On the 17th of January, sometime after 10pm, Lumumba, along with two political associates, was lined up against a tree and shot.   It is claimed that the Belgians and their counterparts later wished to get rid of the bodies, and did so by digging up and dismembering the corpses, then dissolving them in sulfuric acid while the bones were ground and scattered.

Efforts to get the UN to intervene and prevent all this failed.  The UN Security Council of the time voted 8-2 against the pro-Lumumbaresolution.  Several countries withdrew military contingents serving the UN in protest, including Ceylon.  Secretary-General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld was party to the crime that took place thereafter.  

There’s a long and brutal history behind all this and a long and brutal history that followed the assassination.  It’s not just Lumumba and it is not the the Congo.   But that’s a different essay altogether.  Well, a whole library of theses, rather.  

The assassination horrified the world.  There were demonstrations in many cities on all continents.  in Yugoslavia, protesters sacked the Belgian embassy and confronted the police. In London, a crowd marched from Trafalgar Square to the Belgian embassy, where a letter of protest was delivered and where protesters clashed with police. In New York City, a demonstration at the United Nations Security Council turned violent and spilled over into the streets.  There was also a demonstration in Kandy, organized by left-wing students of the University of Peradeniya.  They marched to Kandy and attempted unsuccessfully to pull down the statue of Governor Henry Ward.  They made speeches.  

It was 16 years later that I first heard of Lumumba.  The Daily News carried a picture. I can’t remember what exactly it was.  Perhaps it was one of the statue being removed or else that of Madduma Bandara being put up in its place.   Seeing this, my father, Gamini Seneviratne, related a story.  

He told me about the protest.  And he told me how ‘legends’ are born.  He had been one of the students who took part in that march.  He said that they tried to pull down the statue but the rope had snapped.  However, he was known for awhile as the man who pulled down (not tried to pull down) the Ward Statue.  

He went on to tell me about Patrice Lumumba and sketched for me the history.  Then he shared with me a slogan they had shouted:  මැරුවේ නමුත් ලුමුම්බාව මැරුණේ නෑ අප්රිකාව (meruve namuth lumumbaava, marune naha aprikaava, ‘although Lumumba was murdered, Africa did not die’).

That line, apparently, he had included in a poem which was later taken as an example of the direction in which Sinhala poetry ought to go by someone who wrote an article on the subject.   

That’s what interests me right now.  Taking down a statue is a symbolic act.  Easy.  Perhaps even necessary in the process of what some might call necessary exorcism.   Makes sense only if other more pernicious processes are taken on and defeated though.  

People are not statues.  They are not taken down.  They are silenced, enslaved and even murdered.  Lumumba is still iconic.  He still inspires.  His murder was not the original sin in the Congo as some claim, but it is still as heinous as any committed in that country or elsewhere.  He still inspires people in that country and in that continent and in fact in other parts of the world as well.

Africa did not die on account of that vile act that the worst perpetrators of human right violations in this world sanctioned and participated in.  

Faiz Ahmed Faiz in a poem ‘We who were executed,’ dedicated to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (legally murdered in the so-called ‘Land of the Free and Home of the Brave’) had something to say about these kinds of murders.  Agha Shahid Ali’s translation has the following lines:

Holding up our sorrows as banners

new lovers will emerge

from the lanes where we were killed

and embark, in caravans, on those highways of desire.

It’s because of them that we shortened the distances of sorrow,

it’s because of them that we went out to make the world our own,

we who were murdered in the darkest lanes.

Or shot at night in an isolated spot just as Lumbumba was.   Africa is not dead, but then one could also say ‘Perhaps Africa will die’ and if that’s a tragedy it will only be stopped because people like Patrice Lumumba stand up and because their assassinations inspire others to remember brutality, dream of better times and resist. And resist. And resist.  

This, then, is a salute to a warrior who saw beyond both warrior and war, thereby differentiated himself from brutes who quickly forget what they are fighting for, and most importantly provided an example, a template and a dream worth pursuing.  

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindasenevi@gmail.com. This article was first published in the Sunday Observer (January 21, 2018)

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