The Long Arc of Atonement: Belgium to Try Nonagenarian Nobleman For Six-Decade-Old Congolese Murder  

On June 30, 1960, Patrice Lumumba gave a landmark speech at a handover ceremony marking the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s independence from Belgium, telling the audience in an indictment of colonialism that “…(it was a) humiliating slavery which was imposed on us by force.” 

With that speech, the fiery critic of colonial rule became an African icon. But the country’s first prime minister also angered the West, especially Belgium and its ruler, King Baudouin, who was in attendance that day, and who, according to witnesses, spoke about independence as if it were a gift from his country. 

Seven months later, Lumumba was dead, ousted in coup, shot and dismembered with his body burned in acid – essentially disappeared – with the backing of Belgium and the United States: Belgium opposed Lumumba’s plans to nationalize the country’s mines, while the US was threatened by his closeness to the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War. 

Now, more than six decades later, Belgium is set to try one of its scions of society, Étienne, Count Davignon, 92, for complicity in Lumumba’s murder in what is the latest attempt by European countries to atone for their colonial legacies.  

“There are very few cases where a former colonial state agrees to address colonial crimes and to consider (trying perpetrators) … even if it’s a very long time after,” Christophe Marchand, a lawyer for the Lumumba family, told the Guardian. “The idea is to have a judicial trial and to (discover) the truth about what happened, and not only the role of Étienne Davignon – because he was just one part in the whole criminal enterprise.” 

In June, Belgian prosecutors announced they would try Davignon, who in 1961 was a well-connected diplomat-in-training in the Congo when Lumumba, 35 – along with two other officials – were killed. Davignon is the only one out of 10 Belgians accused of complicity in the murders who is still alive. 

If he goes on trial, Davignon would be the first Belgian to face justice in Lumumba’s killing.  

“We’re moving in the right direction,” Juliana Lumumba, the daughter of the former Congolese leader, told Belgian broadcaster RTBF. “What we’re seeking is, first and foremost, the truth.”  

The “truth” about Lumumba’s murder has been the subject of numerous books and articles over the past few decades, and now even two recent films. 

Lumumba became Congo’s first prime minister after it gained independence from Belgium, whose rule was brutal even by colonial standards. Meanwhile, besides being despised and feared by Belgium and the United States, he was presiding over a divided country and was ousted in a coup orchestrated by separatists a few months after taking office.  

Imprisoned, he escaped but was recaptured and transferred to the southern region of Katanga, where he was executed on January 17, 1961, with the support of Belgian mercenaries.  

His body was never recovered.  

Davignon, meanwhile, who went on to serve in high-level positions in the Belgian government and also in business, also served as vice president of the European Commission in the 1980s. He is accused of involvement in the “unlawful detention and transfer of a prisoner of war,” his “deprivation of the right to a fair trial,” and his “inhuman and degrading treatment,” Belgian prosecutors said. He had also been charged with intent to kill but that charge is expected to be dropped.  

The first hearing in the case is set for January 2026. 

The case is the latest effort by Belgium to reckon with its role in Lumumba’s killing.  

In 1999, Belgium launched a parliamentary commission to examine the murder after the publication of an explosive book on the subject. The commission concluded that Belgium had “moral responsibility” for the assassination. The government apologized to the Democratic Republic of the Congo a year later.  

About a decade later, Juliana Lumumba’s brother François filed a complaint with the courts, accusing the Belgian state of war crimes and torture, and of complicity in the murder of his father.  

In 2022, Belgium returned a tooth belonging to Lumumba to his family: It was seized by Belgian authorities in 2016 from the daughter of a policeman, Gérard Soete, who had admitted to dismembering Lumumba and the other two officials, and taking two teeth, while working in the Congo.  

These efforts fall short, say Lumumba’s family members, who add that his murder reverberates to this day. 

“It was Congolese democracy that was beheaded with Lumumba’s assassination – Congo still suffers from it today,” a relative of the former prime minister, Jean-Jacques Lumumba, told Afrique XXI. “The fact that this democracy was halted in its early stages plunged the country into the chaos we still know.”