Feb 20, 2025 9 min read

A Single Gold Tooth

Why Western powers want to ignore the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Freely elected leader of DRC, Patrice Lumumba and colleagues in Brussels, one year before his murder by the Belgian government. Credit: Harry Pot via Wikimedia

Originally published in my previous publication on 8/22/22. No edits made except to update some video links.

1960 was the Year of Africa.

17 nations declared independence from their colonial parasites and held democratic elections.

But parasites don’t give up the host easily.

In the newly formed Republic of the Congo, Pan-Africanist poet and scholar Patrice Lumumba was elected as the first prime minister, taking office in June of ’60. By September, he was ousted in a CIA-backed plot, and in January of 1961 he was executed and his body dissolved in acid by agents of the Belgian government.

While Lumumba was painted as a communist for daring to even speak with the soviets, western interests stonewalled every effort he made to share Congo’s riches with the Congolese.