The Assassination of Lumumba. . - Good Books Lately - book review

The Assassination of Lumumba By Ludo De Witte Verso. 240 pages. $27.

Patrice Lumumba, the first premier of the Replublic of Congo, was assassinated in January 1961. Then his body was exhumed, hacked to pieces, and dissolved in sulfuric acid, and his bones were ground up and scattered. There was not even a corpse to rally around. But forty years later, the matter of the Republic of Congo's first prime minister still won't die--due in significant part to this book by Belgian sociologist Ludo De Witte.

Lumumba earned the wrath of the West for refusing to accept the secession of Katanga, the copper-producing province led by Moise Tshombe, whom then-U.N. special assistant for the Congo Ralph Bunche referred to as "a puppet maneuvered by the Belgians."

This short, impassioned, intensely researched book--De Witte apparently consulted 8,000 U.N. telegrams--casts U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, who lost his own life in a mysterious plane crash while trying to negotiate an end to the Congo conflict, in a somewhat less heroic light than usual.

COPYRIGHT 2001 The Progressive, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group