The Assassinated Dreams: Lumumba, Sankara, and the Price of True Independence

The Assassinated Dreams

There's a pattern in African history that doesn't get taught in Western schools.

Whenever an African leader tried to achieve genuine sovereignty — control over their country's resources, independent foreign policy, economic self-determination — they died. Not from old age. Not from illness. They were murdered, usually with the fingerprints of Western intelligence agencies barely hidden on the weapons.

This is not conspiracy theory. This is documented history, confirmed by declassified documents, parliamentary inquiries, and in some cases, confessions.

Patrice Lumumba: 75 Days

Patrice Lumumba was Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for exactly 75 days.

He was a postal clerk who taught himself politics. He was the only Congolese leader whose party had support across the entire country, not just one ethnic region. When Congo gained independence on June 30, 1960, he became its first democratically elected Prime Minister at 34 years old.

At the independence ceremony, King Baudouin of Belgium gave a patronizing speech praising the "genius" of his great-uncle Leopold II — the man responsible for the deaths of up to 10 million Congolese during the rubber terror. Lumumba was supposed to smile and nod.

Instead, he stood up and gave an unscheduled speech that electrified Africa and horrified Europe:

"We have known the back-breaking work exacted from us in exchange for wages that did not allow us to eat enough, to clothe ourselves, to live in decent houses, or to raise our children as loved ones... We have known mockery, insults, blows, which we had to endure morning, noon and night because we were 'negroes.'"

The Belgians were furious. The Americans were alarmed. The Cold War was at its peak, and here was an African leader who seemed willing to accept Soviet help if Western help came with colonial strings attached.

Within ten days of independence, the Congolese army mutinied. Belgian forces intervened without permission. The mineral-rich Katanga province, backed by Belgian mining interests, declared secession. Lumumba appealed to the United Nations for help. When they moved too slowly, he asked the Soviets for planes to move his troops.

That was enough for Washington. President Eisenhower authorized the CIA to assassinate Lumumba. CIA Director Allen Dulles called his removal "an urgent and prime objective." The agency's chief scientist, Sidney Gottlieb, personally delivered poison to the CIA station chief in the Congo — poison meant for Lumumba's toothpaste or food.

The poison plot fizzled, but the CIA found another way. They funneled money and weapons to Colonel Joseph Mobutu, who had been Lumumba's ally. In September 1960, Mobutu seized power in a coup and placed Lumumba under house arrest. When Lumumba tried to escape to join supporters in Stanleyville, he was captured.

On January 17, 1961 — three days before John F. Kennedy's inauguration — Lumumba was flown to Katanga and handed over to his sworn enemies. He was beaten on the plane. He was beaten at the airport. That evening, he and two companions were executed by a firing squad, with Belgian officers present.

But that wasn't enough. The killers worried his grave might become a shrine. So the next day, Belgian police commissioner Gerard Soete and his team dug up the bodies, dismembered them, and dissolved them in sulfuric acid. The bones were ground up and scattered. Soete kept a tooth as a souvenir. He still had it when he confessed decades later.

All that remains of Patrice Lumumba is a single gold-capped tooth, returned to his family by Belgium in 2022 — 61 years later.

The man who betrayed him, Mobutu, ruled Congo for 32 years. He renamed the country Zaire, renamed himself Mobutu Sese Seko, and looted billions while his people starved. The CIA considered him an ally. They had gotten what they wanted.

Thomas Sankara: Four Years of Revolution

Thomas Sankara took power in Burkina Faso in 1983 at the age of 33. He had four years. He used every day.

Upper Volta — the name the French had given the colony — was one of the poorest countries on Earth. Sankara renamed it Burkina Faso: "Land of Upright People." He wrote the new national anthem himself.

Then he got to work.

He sold the government's fleet of Mercedes and made the Renault 5 — the cheapest car in the country — the official ministerial vehicle. He refused air conditioning in his office because most Burkinabè couldn't afford it. His salary was $450 a month. His possessions when he died: an old car, a refrigerator, a broken freezer, and three guitars.

But it wasn't his personal austerity that made him dangerous. It was what he did for his country.

In his first year, he planted 10 million trees to combat desertification. He launched mass vaccination campaigns that immunized 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever, and measles in a single week — a feat that astonished the World Health Organization. He built schools and health clinics in villages that had never seen either. He banned female genital cutting and forced marriages. He appointed women to cabinet positions. He redistributed land from feudal chiefs to peasants who actually farmed it.

And he refused to pay the colonial debt.

At the Organization of African Unity in 1987, Sankara called on all African nations to collectively refuse to repay debts to former colonial powers: "Debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa. Each one of us becomes the financial slave of those who had the opportunity to lend money to our states."

He rejected IMF structural adjustment programs. He promoted local production — Burkinabè cotton, Burkinabè food, Burkinabè industry. He wanted Burkina Faso to feed itself, clothe itself, and stand on its own feet.

France was not pleased. French President François Mitterrand considered Sankara insufferable. Côte d'Ivoire's President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, France's closest ally in West Africa, despised him. At a 1986 conference in Yamoussoukro — under French patronage — neighboring leaders demanded Sankara roll back his reforms.

On October 15, 1987, Thomas Sankara walked into a meeting at the National Revolutionary Council headquarters. Soldiers loyal to his close friend and second-in-command, Blaise Compaoré, were waiting. They opened fire. Sankara was shot more than a dozen times. Twelve of his colleagues died with him.

Compaoré claimed power that night. He immediately reversed Sankara's policies. He privatized nationalized industries, accepted IMF loans, restored the old French relationships. For 27 years, he ruled Burkina Faso as France's loyal partner, until a popular uprising finally drove him out in 2014.

In 2022, a military tribunal convicted Compaoré of murdering Sankara and sentenced him to life in prison. He lives comfortably in exile in Côte d'Ivoire, protected by French influence, never having served a day.

The French government still refuses to release its classified files on Sankara's assassination. President Macron promised declassification in 2017. The files remain sealed.

Investigations revealed that French agents were present in Ouagadougou on October 16, 1987 — the day after the coup. What they were doing there remains, officially, unknown.

Amílcar Cabral: Eight Months from Victory

Amílcar Cabral never got to see the independence he fought for.

An agricultural engineer from Cape Verde, Cabral founded the PAIGC in 1956 to liberate both Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde from Portuguese rule. Unlike the other colonial powers, Portugal refused to negotiate. So Cabral built one of the most effective liberation movements in African history.

By the early 1970s, his guerrillas controlled two-thirds of Guinea-Bissau. They didn't just fight — they governed. In liberated zones, they built schools where none had existed, health clinics that served peasants for the first time, a system of popular justice. Cabral called it "building the state before independence."

Portugal threw everything at him — 42,000 troops, NATO weapons, napalm on civilian villages. They called it "Portugal's Vietnam." Cabral's 7,000 guerrillas kept winning. He personally trained his officers, teaching them not just tactics but philosophy, politics, and the meaning of the struggle.

"Hide nothing from the masses of our people," he told them. "Claim no easy victories."

In January 1973, Cabral announced that the independence of Guinea-Bissau was imminent. He had secured surface-to-air missiles that would neutralize Portugal's air superiority. Victory was months away.

On January 20, 1973, leaving a reception at the Polish embassy in Conakry, Guinea, Cabral was ambushed and shot dead. The killers were members of his own organization — naval commander Inocêncio Kani and others — who had been recruited by Portuguese intelligence. Their confessions named Portugal. Declassified U.S. documents confirm Portuguese complicity "cannot be ruled out."

The assassination failed to stop the movement. Within months, the PAIGC declared independence. Portuguese soldiers, demoralized and seeing no end to the colonial wars, overthrew their own government in April 1974. Guinea-Bissau's independence was recognized that September. Cape Verde followed in 1975.

Cabral was 48 years old when he died. He came within eight months of witnessing the victory he had spent his life building.

The Pattern

Lumumba wanted to control Congo's wealth for Congolese people. Dead.

Sankara wanted Burkina Faso to stand independent of French control. Dead.

Cabral wanted to end Portuguese colonialism through armed struggle. Dead.

They join a long list: Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique, killed by a parcel bomb in 1969. Félix Moumié of Cameroon, poisoned by French agents in Geneva in 1960. Sylvanus Olympio of Togo, shot by soldiers led by Gnassingbé Eyadéma in 1963 — reportedly after France refused to help him create an independent currency. Mehdi Ben Barka of Morocco, kidnapped in Paris and never seen again. Samora Machel of Mozambique, killed when his presidential plane crashed in South Africa under suspicious circumstances in 1986.

Some were killed by Western intelligence agencies. Some by their own colleagues, bought by foreign powers. Some by mechanisms that remain officially unexplained. But they share a common trait: each one tried to chart an independent course, and each one died before their vision could take root.

The message was clear: This is what happens when you try to be truly free.

The Survivors Learned

The leaders who survived learned the lesson.

Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d'Ivoire stayed close to France. He lived until 90. Omar Bongo of Gabon maintained French military bases and French access to oil. He ruled for 42 years. Paul Biya of Cameroon kept the French happy. He's still in power after more than 40 years.

The survivors understood the deal. Political independence, yes. Economic sovereignty, no. Nationalist rhetoric for domestic audiences, but quiet cooperation with the former colonial power. Keep the resources flowing. Don't nationalize. Don't inspire your neighbors.

And if a troublesome leader emerged — one who took the rhetoric of independence seriously — there were ways to deal with that.

What They Were Fighting For

Read their speeches and you'll find they weren't fighting for Soviet-style communism or any foreign ideology. They were fighting for something simpler and more dangerous: the right of African countries to control their own resources and chart their own course.

Lumumba wanted Congo's copper and diamonds to benefit Congolese, not Belgian shareholders.

Sankara wanted Burkina Faso to grow its own food and make its own clothes instead of importing French goods.

Cabral wanted to build a new society from the ground up, starting in the liberated zones before the war was even over.

They wanted sovereignty — real sovereignty, not the flag-and-anthem version that leaves economic control in foreign hands.

For that, they died.

The Question for Today

When we look at Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger today — where military governments have expelled French forces and rejected French influence — we're watching the latest chapter of this struggle.

The juntas wrap themselves in the language of Sankara. Protesters wave his image. The Thomas Sankara Memorial in Ouagadougou, built on the site where he was murdered, has become a pilgrimage site.

Are these leaders the heirs of Sankara? Or new versions of Compaoré, using revolutionary language while building new forms of dependence — this time on Russia or China?

It's too early to tell. But the fact that these questions are being asked, that Sankara's name is invoked in the streets of West African capitals, shows that the dream didn't die with the dreamers.

They killed Lumumba, but they couldn't kill what he represented.

They killed Sankara, but his ideas outlived his assassins.

They killed Cabral, but his movement won.

Ideas, it turns out, are harder to assassinate than men.