PROLEGOMENON
No continent suffered the horrendous effects of slavery as much as Africa; no continent was ravished by colonialism as much as the land that is the cradle of civilization, and no continent has been exploited and is being exploited like the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent. When we take into account the fact that the African continent is more resources-endowed than the others; when the harsh reality hits us that it is the least developed of the world's main continuous expanses of land; and when we observe that it is haunted by an unbelievable disconnect between the ruling elites and the masses, we then find ourselves confronted by many unavoidable questions such as:
Why is Africa in such a pathetic state?
- Is the continent incapable of coming up with leaders that can take it out of its current impasse and futile consensus to a future that would advance the wellbeing of the African people?
- Are Pan-Africanists (Africans who are selflessly dedicated to the well-being and development of the land and its people) capable of overhauling its few Indigenous dictators and the forces controlling the African puppets — political leaderships and political establishments put in place by foreign powers and foreign interest — and so bring about the long-awaited reality of a "New Africa" that is economically united, politically integrated and that is in control of its sovereignty?
The first paragraph in a way answers the first question. The second and third questions are in the affirmative because of the obvious reasons. Pan-Africanist leaders dominated Africa's history in the 1950s and 1960s, and many of them were killed by the colonial and former colonial powers or their agents. In fact, six African independence leaders were assassinated by their ex-colonial rulers between 1961 and 1973.
Were it not that it is sadly true, the list of the killed leaders of African independence movements and the stories behind their deaths or assassinations would make an espionage bestseller.
The first major test of killing the leader of an African independence movement began in Cameroon following the return to power of General Charles De Gaulle in France in June 1958. We are talking here about the September 13, 1958 assassination of Ruben Um Nyobè. He was the leader of the "Union of the Populations of the Cameroons" (UPC), a civic-nationalist political party that was advocating for the reunification and independence of French Cameroon and British Cameroons (territories of the former German Kamerun that was partitioned between France and Britain following the defeat of Germany in the First World War).
Cameroon suffered another traumatizing assassination two years after Um Nyobè's gruesome political murder. This was the assassination of Ruben Um Nyobè's successor and second leader of the UPC, Dr. Felix Moumie. He died on November 3, 1960, in Geneva, Switzerland from thallium poisoning that the French secret agent William Bechtel administered during dinner that they were having together at a restaurant in the Swiss city. The French man had won the Cameroonian's trust by posing as a journalist.
Then there would be Patrice Lumumba, the prime minister of the newly independent Congo, the cruelly ravished former Belgian Congo that from 1885-1908 was known as "The Congo Free State" — essentially the private possession of the Belgian King Leopold II where more than half of the population died from the effects of exploiting the land's resources. Lumumba's death involving four major Western countries and their agents in Congo is the single biggest cause of the chronic malady of that country, which like Cameroon, is yet to recover from the trauma it suffered during the early years of its so-called independence.
Sylvanus Olympio, the leader of Togo would be killed in 1963, barely two years after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.
Sylvanus Olympio's death would be followed shortly after by that of Mehdi Ben Barka, the leader of the Moroccan opposition movement who got kidnapped in France in 1965, never got released, and whose body has not been found since then.
Eduardo Mondlane, the leader of Mozambique's FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) or Liberation Front of Mozambique, which was fighting for the colony's independence from Portuguese rule, would die from a parcel bomb in 1969.
The 1973 assassination of Amilcar Cabral, the leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde or PAIGC), the West African liberation movement against Portuguese colonial rule in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, would herald the transition to a new phase of neocolonialism dominated by puppet dictators in the continent who would face little or no pushback from the Pan-Africanist, except in the case of Guinea Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa under Portuguese colonial rule, and under the quasi-colonial rule of Apartheid South Africa respectively.
In the last six decades, there have been several other traumatizing assassinations against progressive African political figures. However, the ones below have been the most reverberating, with unintended consequences as the legacies of these felled African heroes are expanding every day to become the basis for the rebirth of Pan-Africanism, the ideal around which the economic union and political integration of Africa would be realized.
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