A look at Lumumba, an African visionary

PATRICE Lumumba was an icon of African liberation, a hero who represented a brief ray of hope for true democracy in his country.

In Patrice Lumumba – which Leo Zeilig wrote as part of the Human Sciences Research Council’s Voices of Liberation series, he offers readers an opportunity to engage with the assassinated Congolese leader’s original voice through carefully selected writings and speeches.

The book contains previously unpublished interviews.

Here’s an edited interview with Lumumba’s daughter, Juliana, that was conducted in Kinshasa in November 2006, days after the first elections in the Congo since her father was elected 46 years before. Leo Zeilig: Can you tell me about yourself?

Juliana Lumumba: I was born in Stanleyville in 1955; we left the city in October 1960 and completed our schooling in Egypt.

We had been invited by President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser’s family became our friends. We were considered guests of the president of the republic and we never had the status of refugees.

I was in a French boarding school until the end of my secondary studies.

I received my baccalaureate in Cairo. I then spent one year in Belgium and afterwards completed all my university studies in France. I was a minister for five years under Laurent Kabila, who came to power in 1997; he had been a long-standing Lumumbist. Now I have a communication company. What memories do you have of your father?

I have lots of memories of my father because when I was small I was very close to him. I was often in his office. My father was someone very affectionate; when he was with us he chatted, played. He worked hard. When I was in his office, I would watch him work, rewriting a speech or practising one of them. Of course he was busy and he was often absent, but when he was there, he was really present.

I remember when he came home back late, he would come and see me. He was always available to us; he brought up his children. My mother didn’t want us to call him Patrice, so he was always Papa. Apparently your parents had a difficult relationship?

My parents were very young; when my father died he was 36 years old. My mother was a widow at 28. It was a marriage that had all the problems of marrying at such a young age and with a couple who often didn’t see each other.

She knew that he was totally preoccupied by politics and that our house was open to everyone. I don’t think that they had any more problems with this. My mother has never remarried; she never wanted to. She had an enormous amount of love for her husband. You had an extraordinary childhood, one that was very difficult. Can you describe it to me?

I never had the life of a young Congolese girl brought up in her country. I often say that we were the children of violence, in that we left the country in such painful and difficult conditions, hidden in a military jeep and then flown secretly to a foreign country where we could not speak a word.

Then living with people that we didn’t know. But despite all of the violence, we were very fortunate. We lived with an Egyptian family; the father brought us over from the Congo had worked in the Egyptian embassy in Léopoldville. We were brought up like his children.