DRC, Lumumba and the CIA
"One speech, one plane, one very ugly plot."
Patrice Lumumba lasted 200 days. This is why, who wanted him gone, and what they were willing to do to make it happen.
Drink pairing · Primus beer. And then a stiff whisky. You'll need it.
Full show player. This exact episode drops on Spotify Mon 7 July.
Independence Day, and the speech that broke a room
30 June 1960. King Baudouin flies in for a ceremony he thinks is about him. He gives a speech thanking Leopold II — yes, that Leopold — for his 'genius'. Then Patrice Lumumba, uninvited to the microphone, stands up and describes, in front of the king, exactly what Belgium did in the Congo. Slavery, mutilation, forced labour, the lot. The room does not recover. Neither does he.
Two months of chaos, engineered
Within weeks the army mutinies, Katanga secedes with Belgian help, and the UN mission that arrives to help refuses to let Congolese troops retake their own province. Lumumba, cornered, asks the Soviets for logistical support. That is the moment Washington decides he has to go.
The plot
The CIA sends toothpaste laced with poison. When that fails, they don't have to try again — Mobutu's coup, Belgian officers, and Katangan gendarmes finish the job in January 1961. Lumumba is beaten, shot, and dissolved in acid. A Belgian police commissioner keeps a tooth as a souvenir. It is returned to his family in 2022.
The receipts
This is not conspiracy theory. The Church Committee (1975), the Belgian parliamentary inquiry (2001), and declassified CIA cables all confirm the plot. What is still contested is exactly who gave the final order — and whether anyone in Washington ever really wanted an independent Congo at all.
Patrice Émery Lumumba
First Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo
Lasted 200 days. Deserved 20 years.
King Baudouin
King of the Belgians
Thanked Leopold II for his 'genius' on Independence Day. Read the room afterwards.
Joseph-Désiré Mobutu
Army chief of staff, later dictator Mobutu Sese Seko
The coup that finished the job in 1961. Ruled for 32 years.
Moïse Tshombe
President of the seceded State of Katanga
Belgian-backed. Cobalt-funded. Present the night Lumumba died.
Dag Hammarskjöld
UN Secretary-General
Died in a plane crash over Ndola, 1961. Nobody has ever fully explained the flight.
Allen Dulles
Director of the CIA
Signed off on the plot. The toothpaste was real.
Gerard Soete
Belgian police commissioner
Kept two of Lumumba's teeth in a drawer. Returned in 2022.
Full biographies in the reading list below ↓
"We are no longer your monkeys."
— Patrice Lumumba, 30 June 1960
"The Congo was never allowed to be a country. It was allowed to be a resource with a flag."
— Sarah
"He lasted 200 days because 200 days was already too many for the people who owned the cobalt."
— Line
- 00:00A king, a speech, and a very awkward silence
- 07:45Who Lumumba actually was
- 16:20The Katanga secession, sponsored by Brussels
- 27:10Hammarskjöld, the UN, and a strange plane crash
- 38:00The CIA toothpaste era
- 46:30January 1961: what happened in Élisabethville
- 54:00Sixty years of receipts
- §01Ludo De Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba (2001)
- §02Belgian Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, Final Report (2001)
- §03US Senate Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots (1975)
- §04Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila (2002)
- §05Stuart A. Reid, The Lumumba Plot (2023)
We read the books so you can pretend you did at dinner.
Read the full transcript▾
SARAH: Content note before we start. This episode discusses political assassination, colonial violence and torture. Look after yourself. Pour something strong. We are.
LINE: We are drinking Primus. Because we are going to Léopoldville. And later, whisky. Because we are going to Élisabethville, and there is no drink strong enough for what happens there.
SARAH: 30 June 1960. Independence Day. The Belgians have finally agreed that the Congo can be a country. King Baudouin flies in for the ceremony. And he gives a speech.
LINE: He gives a speech in which he thanks his great-great-uncle, Leopold II, for his 'genius' in bringing civilisation to the Congo.
SARAH: Leopold II. Who personally owned the Congo Free State as a private business. Who is responsible, by conservative estimates, for the deaths of ten million Congolese. Whose agents cut off the hands of children when their parents didn't meet rubber quotas.
LINE: That Leopold. Thanked, in Léopoldville, in 1960, by his great-great-nephew, as an act of civilisation.
SARAH: And in the audience is the new Prime Minister of the Congo. A 34-year-old former postal clerk called Patrice Émery Lumumba. And Lumumba was not scheduled to speak. But he stands up anyway. And he walks to the microphone.
LINE: And he says: 'We are no longer your monkeys.'
SARAH: And then he describes, in front of the king, in front of the international press, in front of everyone, exactly what Belgium did in the Congo. The forced labour. The mutilation. The humiliations. The insults. All of it. On the record. On Independence Day.
LINE: The room does not recover. King Baudouin nearly walks out. The Belgian press calls the speech 'inexcusable'. Washington cables home that this man is a problem.
SARAH: And in that moment, in that speech, Patrice Lumumba signs his own death warrant. He has 200 days left to live.
LINE: 200 days. Let's just sit with that for a second. The first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congo lasts 200 days before he is beaten, shot, and dissolved in a barrel of sulphuric acid by Belgian officers and Katangan gendarmes, with, as we will see, the active blessing of the CIA and the passive blessing of the UN.
SARAH: And for sixty years, the story we were told in the West was that it was tragic. Chaotic. Nobody's fault, really. Africans, you know. Complicated situation.
LINE: And then the archives opened. The Church Committee in 1975. The Belgian parliamentary inquiry in 2001. Declassified CIA cables. And it turns out it was not complicated at all. It was a plot. With a budget line.
SARAH: So tonight we are going to walk through it. The speech. The mutiny. Katanga. The toothpaste. Yes, the toothpaste. Élisabethville. The tooth in a Belgian policeman's drawer, which was returned to the Lumumba family in 2022. All of it. On the record.
LINE: Because Patrice Lumumba deserves better than the passive voice.
[Full transcript continues in the episode. Take a breath.]
Transcripts are lightly edited for readability. If you spot a typo, tell us kindly.
Comoros · Mon 9 June
Comoros, on repeat
The islands that kept getting couped.
Togo · Mon 16 June
Togo and the very first coup
How independence turned on a single Sunday morning.
Ghana · Mon 23 June
Ghana, Nkrumah and the Accra Riots
Ex-servicemen, boycotts and a very British ambush.
Botswana · Mon 30 June
Botswana and a very forbidden romance
A king, an English typist, and an empire losing its mind.