Movie review – “Lumumba” (1998) ***

Lumumba was the Congo politician who copped it from the Western press because of his anti-imperial comments and links to Russia, but he died early into the job and certainly couldn’t have been worse than Mobutu. Does anyone really think Lumumba would have been better? Probably not – but he couldn’t have been worse, and he didn’t deserve to be killed. Foolish superpowers, playing their cold war games in Africa, backing dictators if it meant the other side didn’t get in. This film treats him sympathetically, a kindly family man and loyal friend, although it doesn’t shy away from showing him to be a troublemaking firebrand. Tshombe comes out of it awfully, fully implicated in Lumumba’s murder; so, too, does the Belgian government and companies who thought they could rue the Congo by proxy. Like most Congo stories, ultimately depressing because you know it all ended badly. The budget is well used. The device of having the film narrated by the corpse works.