Today, June 30, 2025, the new clothes of Congo’s independence still conceal the old chains of imperialist oppression that still weigh on our people.
Your words, spoken in the historic speech of June 30, 1960, are like knives that expose the colonial lie. They hunted you down like a buffalo, you, the lion who refused the zoo.
On January 17, 1961, they thought they could erase your name from the history of this republic by throwing your body into acid, but how can you dissolve a flash in memory? How can you dissolve a doctrine, a political movement, an ideology of the liberation of peoples in acid?
You are absent to celebrate June 30th with your people, but your voice and your action for their liberation roll into the hands of the Wazalendos, who oppose the balkanization of the Congo, in the cries of indignation of our people of Kivu under occupation of the Rwandan terrorists of the M23, in the cries of bitterness of the minor children. Slaves of the multinationals in Kivu, formerly Katanga and in Ituri, become the theater of imperialist domination, the silence of the women raped by Rwandan soldiers in Kivu rises, without justice because your people have become a race that imperialism cannot believe or treat fairly.
Le peuple congolais est une race qui ne peut pas avoir justice, la colonisation impérialiste frappe encore notre économie et notre peuple. Nous sommes là pour reprendre ton combat avec dignité et combattre les puissances impérialistes jusqu’à la victoire, car notre cause est juste.
They killed Lumumba to destroy independence and its people, but the seed germinates in the cries of indignation of the Marsavoco civil servants who march every day to the Ministry of Justice without anyone listening to their cries of distress. There are also the cries of youth struck by unemployment, the cries of injustice that Western multinationals steal our wealth to leave poverty and misery to our people. The independence of the Democratic Republic of Congo is sullied and flouted, this “gift” independence is not the one you evoke in your political testament. Yes, the seed germinates every day to reject imperialist domination.
We are going through a period of negation of Pan-Africanism, which you adapted together with Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria, Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, Omar Mukhtar of Libya, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Agostino Neto of Angola, Samora Machel of Mozambique, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Milton Obote of Uganda, Ahmadou Ahidjo of Cameroon, Barthélémy Boganda of the Central African Republic, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sékou Touré of Guinea, Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal, Modibo Keita of Mali, Hamani Diori of Niger, Hubert Maga of Benin.
These emblematic figures of the struggle for African independence are today hidden by the act of treason that Paul Kagame has just committed by massacring the Congolese people to satisfy the Americans and the Europeans. Since your struggle, Africa has become a vast fairground for Western imperialism, without a master because of unworthy sons like Paul Kagame and Museveni who work on behalf of imperialism to sabotage the continent.
African solidarity is being sabotaged within the African Union, which is merely following the dictates of the United States and Europe. We are living in a time of shame and humiliation for our African independence. Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Amilcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau, as well as Steve Biko, the great anti-apartheid activist, are weeping in their graves over this denial of the history of the African struggle for independence. President Paul Kagame has betrayed Africa; may he henceforth be the plaything of the African wind and his descendants, for having openly killed Africans in the Congo to satisfy his imperialist masters.
The Congo is at the heart of Africa, the trigger of the revolver that is the continent. Whoever controls the Congo controls Africa, because you, Patrice Emery Lumumba, believed in the influence of all of Africa based on the riches of the Congo. The imperialist powers of our time want to control the minerals of the Congo to better dominate the continent. The DRC is this geological scandal where a corrupt elite minority and imperialist foreigners enrich themselves, while the majority of our people live in poverty.
As long as the neocolonial system persists, the Congo will not benefit from its riches. Thus, we have adopted your philosophy of the liberation of the Congo as our doctrine, and we will continue the fight until victory. We will never again accept forced child labor in mines under inhumane conditions, and we will continue to demand the economic independence of this beautiful country.
Dubai has become a laundering ground for illegal Congolese gold. Rwanda and Uganda, under the cover of imperialist nations, illegally export gold, coltan, and cobalt from the Congo, with the complicity of armed terrorist groups like the M23, but also, and above all, thanks to local production. Mafia networks linked to corrupt elites in the army and the civilian population are betraying your struggle and your people. You, Lumumba, wanted political and economic independence. This position is ours. We will bring a different rhythm to the struggle against Western imperialism and its vassals in Africa for the liberation of the Congo.
Foreign companies are taking control of the mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with leonine and opaque contracts. Everyone wants to systematically plunder the DRC’s riches. With this approach, the influence of all of Africa, as advocated by Pan-Africanism, will remain an illusion. We pledge not to give in to blackmail and fear: imperialism will not forever reign over the Congo. We will defeat imperialism. The Congo is the land of our ancestors, not the storehouse of multinationals.
The Cold War between China and the United States has just begun in the DRC. Kagame has just facilitated Western imperialism by allowing the plundering of our wealth. A Black man in a colonial uniform is worse than the European colonizers. The people of Kivu are under domination, but today we celebrate 65 years of our independence. I believe in the pure sunshine of Congolese independence, I believe in your struggle. The chains of imperialist domination must fall.
Sixty-five years after our independence, the Congolese people are still under the yoke of the hypocrisy of the imperialist colonists. A lion does not fear the capacity of the corrupt political elites and addresses you directly on this Independence Day, because I believe in your phrase: “Without dignity, there is no freedom; without justice, there is no dignity.” We have known the whip of slavery, we will never tolerate it again.
The Congolese people will never again submit to the chains of domination and slavery. To resist is to exist. We will resist and fight the imperialists until victory. Oppression will not reign forever.
Long live Emery Patrice Lumumba, he is great.
Long live the independence of the DRC!
Long live Emery Patrice Lumumba, he is great!
Long live the DRC, long live Emery Patrice Lumumba, long live Boswa Isekombe, long live Sylvere.
Homeland or death, we will win!
Boswa Isekombe Sylvere,
Secretary General of the Congolese Communist Party. The lion with the red heart.