Lumumba and Witch Hunt
A Glimpse into the Past
I grew up in a village in the south of the Netherlands during the 1950s and ’60s in a family of 9 children. One summer day in 1960, I found myself lost in thought about a name I kept hearing: Lumumba. “Who is Lumumba? Why is everyone talking about him? What had he done?” I was only nine years old, and the world around me seemed preoccupied with his name. The radio crackled with excited voices discussing Lumumba, the 8 o’clock news on our black-and-white television spoke of him, and newspapers were filled with his image and headlines. My oldest brother even laughed at the cartoons mocking Lumumba and other Black people.
As I stood pondering these things, I looked up through the tiny window in the sloping roof of the attic in my parents’ house. The room was dimly lit, but outside the sun was shining. And then, all at once, I felt as though I had been pulled into a distant, frightening reality — a time when being a woman was dangerous and risky. Dark, heavy emotions of fear and anger flooded me. Faces of anguished women flashed before me, their expressions twisted in confusion and torment. I saw elderly, white women with dishevelled hair, and somehow, I understood — they had been accused of being witches. I could feel their agony, see the despair in their eyes, and sense their utter helplessness; they were broken and tortured into madness.
This glimpse into the past was deeply unsettling. It was something sinister, and I felt an overwhelming sadness. I was relieved to see the blue sky and sunshine still visible through the small window. I rushed down the stairs, back to the comfort of the present.
As a child, I didn’t know how to process or even articulate that strange experience. I knew it had been triggered by thoughts of Lumumba, and even now, more than 60 years later, I can recall exactly where I was when it happened. I never spoke to anyone about it because it seemed like just a fleeting moment — something no one would understand, and certainly nothing I could explain at that age.
However, with the knowledge I’ve gathered over the years, I can now interpret that experience and its connection to Lumumba. Patrice Lumumba was a leader of the African independence movement and became the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1960. He was a staunch advocate for African self-determination, condemning the exploitation and oppression of Belgian colonial rule. His vision of Africanization made the Belgian government and its imperialistic allies uneasy, because they feared the nationalization of foreign industries in Congo. Fearing Lumumba would align with communism, they launched a smear campaign against him, a modern-day witch hunt, which ultimately led to his assassination in 1961.
This concept of a “witch hunt” is not new. It originated in Europe and became a tool for the internal colonization of women. The women accused of witchcraft were victims of toxic patriarchal norms and values, which justify and legitimize violence against those who did not act, behave or dress conform to the assigned gender roles imposed by the male-dominated hierarchy, in which most power is assigned to men, who are seen as very different from and more highly valued than women. Patriarchy didn’t emerge as a natural process; in Europe, it was violently enforced. Between the 14th and 18th centuries, millions of women were terrorized during witch hunting and witch trials, tortured, and burned alive after being accused of witchcraft. This brutal misogyny laid the groundwork for a gender-apartheid system that relegated women to inferior status, stripped them of property rights, barred them from education and paid work, and excluded them from decision-making processes. Family laws reduced women to the property of their husbands, confining them to unpaid domestic labour while public spaces remained exclusively male domains.
This patriarchal model was then exported globally during the colonial era, where it fused with racial oppression to create systems of gender and racial apartheid. In South Africa, for example, these dynamics were institutionalized. Black women were confined to their homelands, while Black men were allowed to enter public spaces solely as labourers for the white ruling class. Family structures were torn apart, and even today, women-led households in rural areas suffer from extreme poverty and struggle for survival. In the ruling capitalist industrialised nations however, the gender-segregation evolved into the breadwinner-housewife model, confining women to the home and legitimising a private slave for every married man in exchange of being exploited in the factories of the ruling class.
Patrice Lumumba sought to dismantle this toxic, exploitative colonial order, one that was deeply rooted in patriarchal and racist oppression.
