Joseph Iléo

Joseph Iléo (later known as Sombo Amba Iléo) was born on 15 September 1921. Upon the dismissal of then-prime minister Patrice Lumumba, Iléo was declared prime minister by Congolese president, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, on 5 September 1960. He held the post until 20 September 1960.

Iléo would later serve as Minister of Information before he was again declared prime minister on 9 February 1961. He remained in this post until 2 August 1961.

Joseph Iléo was one of the authors of Manifeste de la Conscience Africaine, which demanded the right of Africans to self-rule. In 1958, he was one of the founders of Lumumba’s Mouvement National Congolais African nationalist party.

Dag Hammarskjold

Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld was Secretary-General of the United Nations from 10 April 1953 until 18 September 1961 when he died in a plane crash while on a peace mission to the Congo.

Born on 29 July 1905 in Jonkoping in south-central Sweden, to Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, Prime Minister of Sweden during World War I, Hammardkjold was elected UN Secretary-General on 31 March 1953.

Following the Congo Crisis in 1960, when President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba sent a cable asking "urgent dispatch" of United Nations military assistance to the Congo, Hammarskjöld himself made four trips to the Congo in connection with the United Nations operations there. The fourth trip to the country, which began on 12 September 1961 and was intended to negotiate a cease-fire between United Nations Operation in the Congo forces and Katangese troops under Moise Tshombe, ended with a fatal plane crash near Ndola in Zambia on 18 September.

Hammarskjöld perished in the crash, alongside 16 other passengers. The circumstances of the crash are still unclear.

He was described by U.S. President J.F. Kennedy as "the greatest statesman of our century."

Rémy Mwamba

Rémy Mwamba (1921–1967) was a Congolese politician who twice served as Minister of Justice. He was also a leading figure of the Association Générale des Baluba du Katanga (BALUBAKAT).

Together with Patrice Lumumba, he was dismissed by President Kasavubu on 5 September 1960, and fled to Stanleyville (Kisangani). He was later reinstated in the new government led by Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula in August 1961.

Maurice Mpolo

Maurice Mpolo served as Minister of Youth and Sports in Lumumba’s cabinet from June to September 1960.

In July 1960 Mpolo briefly served as commander in chief of the Congolese National Army (ANC), but got in a dispute with the army chief of staff, then Colonel Joseph-Désiré Mobutu. On 13 September Lumumba declared him commander-in-chief of the ANC. However, following Mobutu’s coup later that month, Mpolo was appointed Minister of Defence in Lumumba’s new government and was arrested while attempting to flee to Stanleyville (present day Kisangani), the seat of the new government.

He was executed by firing squad alongside Vice President of the Senate Joseph Okito and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in Katanga in 1961. Mpolo was the second to be shot.

Joseph Okito

Joseph Okito was a close political ally to Patrice Lumumba who briefly served as First Vice-President of the Senate of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was executed alongside Lumumba in Katanga in 1961 and was the first to be shot.

According to Belgian historian Ludo de Witte, as he was led to the tree for execution, Okito said, "I want my wife and children in Léopoldville to be taken care of," to which someone replied, "We're in Katanga, not in Léo!"

Godefroid Munongo

Godefroid Munongo Mwenda M'Siri was interim president of Katanga Province from 26 April to 22 June 1961.

It was Munongo, alongside President Moise Tshombe of Katanga, ministers Gabriel Kitenge and Jean-Baptiste Kibwe, and police commissioner Pius Sapwe, alongside Belgian officers M.P. Julien Gat, Frans Verscheure, Lieutenant Gabriel Michels, and Brigadier Francois Son who accompanied Lumumba to his execution site.

Pauline Lumumba

Pauline Opango Lumumba was wife of Patrice Lumumba. She was born in Wembonyama, Sankuru, in then Belgian Congo.

In his famous letter from Thysville prison, Lumumba seemed to believe he would be killed, and wrote to Pauline encouraging her to carry on his work after his death.

The then 24-year-old Pauline Lumumba, forced to come to terms with the death of her husband at the hands of the Belgians and their Congolese co-conspirators, on February 14, 1961, led a march through the African neighbourhoods of the Congolese capital bare-breasted, accompanied by nearly 100 of her late husband's followers, to protest Patrice Lumumba's death.

Eventually, she was forced to flee Congo and was found refuge in Egypt from where she traveled to Belgium and France before returning to Congo after the government recognized Patrice Lumumba as a national hero.

She died in her sleep on December 23, 2014, in Kinshasa. She was 78.

Andreé Blouin

Born in Ubangi-Shari (in present-day Central African Republic), Andreé Blouin was an advisor to Patrice Lumumba, Sekou Toure, and Kwame Nkrumah, among many other post-Independence African leaders. While, Andrée Blouin’s role as counsellor to Lumumba was until recently understated, recent writings have brought to light her immense contribution to Lumumba’s and other pan-African struggles for Independence.

“Blouin’s influence is said to be behind the women-led armed Kwilu rebellions against Sese Seko’s rule, led by Pierre Mulele and his wife, Léonie Abo, between 1963 and 1968,” wrote the South African publication New Frame.

Blouin's autobiography, My Country, Africa: Autobiography of a Black Pasionaria, was published in English in 1983.

Juliana Lumumba

Juliana Amato Lumumba is the daughter of the DR Congo’s first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.

In June 2020, she called on Belgium to return her father’s tooth seized from a Belgian policeman who admitted taking it while helping to dispose of Lumumba’s body.

In September 2020, a Belgian court ruled that the tooth be returned to Lumumba’s family.

Joseph Kasa-Vubu

The first president of DR Congo, Kasa-Vubu was initially caught between the power play of the country’s two stand out political figures; Mobutu and Lumumba. Kasa-Vubu served as president from 1960-1965 and was said to be cagey in his actions and feared checking Lumumba’s ambition as prime minister or enraging other power players during his presidency. Kasa-Vubu was elected president of Abako, his political party, in 1954 and he slowly built a national profile.

At independence in 1960, Abako won a small majority of seats in parliament but Kasa-Vubu declined the prime minister role in a political compromise. He later successfully contested for the country’s presidency against a party member. The election of Kasa-Vubu as president brought international attention to the politics of Congo.

His reign was marred by secessionist movements in the country and other power struggles at the centre. He was eventually toppled by Mobutu in 1965. Kasa-Vubu died in 1969.

Antoine Gizenga

Gizenga was born October 5, 1925 and served as prime minister of DRC from 2006-2008. He also served as deputy prime minister to Lumumba in the latter’s short reign. An admirer of Lumumba, he was secretary general of the Unified Lumumbist Party which came third in the 2006 general elections. Before that, Gizenga had fled to the eastern part of the country following the coup by Mobutu. During the Mobutu years, he solicited for support from countries like Egypt, Mali, Ghana to build an anti-Mobutu coalition.

Gizenga returned to DRC after the ouster of Mobutu in 1997. When his party came third in the 2006 poll, he backed President Kabila in return for the post of prime minister. He stood down from the position two year later citing ill health. Gizenga died in 2019 in Kinshasa. He was remembered as a staunch anti-Mobutusit in Congo.

Justin Bomboko

At independence in 1960, Abako won a small majority of seats in parliament but Kasa-Vubu declined the prime minister role in a political compromise. He later successfully contested for the country’s presidency against a party member. The election of Kasa-Vubu as president brought international attention to the politics of Congo.

Christophe Gbenye

Another figure influenced by Lumumba, Gbenye joined the former’s party, Mouvement National Congolais in the 1950s. He also joined Lumumba’s cabinet as minister for the interior in 1960. Born in 1927, Gbenye was also a trade unionist, and rebel who, along with Pierre Mulele and Gaston Soumialot, led the Simba Rebellion, an insurrection in Congo after Mobutu’s coups in the mid-1960s. Living and working in Uganda and neighboring Congo Brazzaville, Gbenye was involved in revolutionary movements seeking Soviet support to rid his country of Mobutu’s grip. He died in Kinshasa in 2015 at the age of 88.

Alphonse Ilunga

Born on Christmas Day in 1931, Ilunga was a minister with nine lives. He served in Lumumba’s cabinet as Minister of Public Works. He bounced back as Minister of Art, Culture, and Sports under Joseph Iléo.

In February 1961 he returned to his position as Minister of Public Works. In another stroke of luck, Ilunga stayed put under Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula until July 1962 when Adoula reshuffled his government and appointed him Minister of Communications and Transport.

In 1965 he was elected to the Senate. Following Mobutu's putsch later that year, Ilunga was able to retain government positions due to connections. He reprised his role as Minister of Public Works serving for almost a year.

Pierre Mulele

Mulele was a rebel in the Simba rebellion led by Gbenye and others. His being there wasn’t by surprise as he was in the cohort of Lumumba’s first ministers, in charge of Education and Fine Arts. Mulele had an affection for Communist China under Mao and in 1963, he headed to China for military training. He led his own faction in the Kwilu province during the rebellion. However his own rebellion lost momentum and Mulele was later lured out of it by Mobutu. Unbeknown to Mulele, it was a ruse- the former minister was tortured and died a painful death in 1968. Snuffed out at the age of 39, Mulele was one of the tragic figures that demonstrated the tyranny of Mobutu.

Joseph-Desire Mobutu

Starting out as a journalist and military stalwart, Mobutu was a larger than life figure who dominated Congo’s politics in the last century. Born on October 14, 1930, Mobutu captured power by sheer force and charisma as Army chief of staff. He seized the presidency in 1965 after eliminating opponents like Lumumba and set out on a path of consolidating power by publicly executing rivals, real and perceived, while buying off others. He also set shocking records of opulence while his fellow citizens languished in poverty. Mobutu’s record of public corruption while playing populist and charmer with ordinary folks turned him into an enigmatic figure. He renamed the country Zaire and also played political poker with Western powers. Domestic political pressure in the 1980s forced him into democratic reforms and a regional military effort forced him out in 1997. As president, he did all that was possible to erase the memory of Lumumba’s brutal killing.

Moise Tshombe

Tshombe was a politician who embodied the tumultuous politics of Congo. He served as the president of the secessionist state of Katanga from 1960 to 1963 and as prime minister of the DR Congo from 1964 to 1965.he founded CONAKAT, a party championing interests of the Katanga people. He announced that Katanga was breaking away from Congo at the time of independence claiming that the Kinshasa government was in bed with Communists. The fighting started, typical of the new Congo. When his secessionist movement was defeated, Tshombe returned to Congo in 1964 to serve as prime minister in a new coalition government. President Kasa-Vubu dismissed him in 1965 and he died a mysterious death in 1969 at 49.

Laurent Désiré Kabila

Born on November 27, 1939, Kabila became third president of DRC with the heavy backing of Ugandan and Rwandan armies. No sooner had he settled in the presidency than he fell out with his former compatriots. His story is as Congolese as they come. He was once seen as the hope of a new Congo only for the same corruption and dictatorship to blight his reign. His failure to effectively command the armed forces of the country left his hold on power in quick sand.

In the 1960s, Kabila had a famous association with Che Guevara, the Argentine Marxist revolutionary. Kabila was assassinated in 2001, a day before the 40th anniversary of Lumumba’s killing. He was succeeded by his son, Joseph Kabila days later. According to the book, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters by Jason Stearns, Kabila had not set foot in Kinshasa in 30 years when he became president in 1997 and he had to be shown around the city!