The Assassination of Lumumba.

• Author: Gallagher, Tom
• Position: Good Books Lately - Brief Article

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...