In response to Mel's comment to my previous post

It's so strange that you, of all people, would not give me the benefit
of the doubt, that I could be speaking from personal political
conviction--however wrongheaded this choice might seem to you. Once
again, I don't belong to Kabila's propaganda machine and if I did I
would be directing my energies to writing pamphlets for the Congolese
domestic audience and in French. Besides, I'd be living large in Kin,
not bumming survival money from my US-based family or wasting precious
time of enjoying the many bounties of the Congolese capital in dreary
business consultancy for my friends who own small businesses in
Kinshasa. I have a witness from London, a reader of this blog, who
recently visited Kin: he can back my claim--he saw me operate in Kin
and even met my boss at one of the businesses where I work as a
consultant...

This being said, I think you need a refresher class on the history of
American-Congolese relations of the 1960s. There are a few scholarly
books on the subject--both in English and French. There are also
scholarly works in French that point to Tshisekedi's responsibility in
Lumumba's demise. As for Tshisekedi's statements to the European press
after the hanging in 1966 of Prime Minister Evariste Kimba and his
companions, there are contemporaneous TV footages that still exist.
You are a scholar, or so I thought: do your work of a sleuth!

So, before making sweeping statements, you better have your facts
straight and backed by solid evidence.

Anyway, the CIA actively planned the assassination of Patrice
Lumumba--though at the last minute Belgian operatives carried out the
actual assassination. At one point, Langley even dispatched to
Léopoldville (Kinshasa) one Dr Gotlieb, a professional assassin who
was supposed to inject into Lumumba's toothpaste a potent poison whose
effects would have mimicked symptoms of a violent malarial bout. This
also figures in the Congressional records--a Commission to investigate
attempted assassinations of foreign leaders was even set up (in the
early 1970s if I'm not mistaken).

So I did have my facts straight before saying that the US lacked the
moral creditt to lecture Congo TODAY on democracy when it is a matter
of public record that it once actively attempted to assassinate
Congo's first democratically-elected Prime Minister, Patrice Emery
Lumumba.