A Jacana Pocket Biography: Patrice Lumumba

Patrice Lumumba was a leader of the independence struggle in what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the country’s first democratically elected prime minister. After a meteoric rise in the colonial civil service and the African political elite, he became a major figure in the decolonisation movement of the 1950s. Lumumba’s short tenure as prime minister (1960-1) was m…