Emmanuel Gerard Death in the congo

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• Death in the Congo is a gripping account of a murder that became one of the defining events in postcolonial African history.
• It is no less the story of the untimely death of a national dream, a hope-filled vision very different from what the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo became in the second half of the twentieth century.
• When Belgium relinquished colonial control in June 1960, a charismatic thirty-five-year-old African nationalist, Patrice Lumumba, became prime minister of the new republic.
• Yet stability immediately broke down.
• A mutinous Congolese Army spread havoc, while Katanga Province in southeast Congo seceded altogether.
• Belgium dispatched its military to protect its citizens, and the United Nations soon intervened with its own peacekeeping troops.
• Meanwhile, behind the scenes, both the Soviet Union and the United States maneuvered to turn the crisis to their Cold War advantage.
• A coup in September, secretly aided by the UN, toppled Lumumba's government.
• In January 1961, armed men drove Lumumba to a secluded corner of the Katanga bush, stood him up beside a hastily dug grave, and shot him.
• His rule as Africa's first democratically elected leader had lasted ten weeks.