MALCOLM X ON U.S. COMPLICITY IN DRC

Sixty years ago on this day, 21 February, in 1965, Pan-Africanist revolutionary and human rights activist Malcolm X was assassinated at the age of 39 when he was about to address a meeting of the Organization for Afro-American Unity at Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom in New York City.

However, a few months earlier, in 1964, Malcolm criticised Moïse Tshombe (1919-69), a former Katanga separatist leader in Washington’s good books who played a role in Lumumba's assassination and later served as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)’s prime minister. Malcolm denounced Tshombe for being a Western puppet, much like how many today call out Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for enabling a three-decade-long, Western-backed mineral war that rages in the eastern DRC.

In this clip, Malcolm responded to a CBS News reporter's inquiry about 'Operation Dragon Rouge,' a covert military operation executed by Belgian forces, US forces, Congolese troops and mercenaries from apartheid-era South Africa on 24 November 1964. It k*lled two dozen out of 1,000 hostages in the short-lived People's Republic of the Congo, specifically in Stanleyville, now known as Kisangani. Congolese fighters loyal to assassinated Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba (1925-61) used European and US hostages to protect their villages from US-backed aerial assaults.

Just 10 days before his assassination, Malcolm adeptly highlighted for an audience at the London School of Economics how imperialist media manipulates language and imagery to oppress Black people, both in Africa and the diaspora. He pointed out that the term ‘rebel-held’ was a strategic choice, framing the freedom fighters as enemies and justifying any violence inflicted upon them.

The US supported Tshombe and later the tyrannical Mobutu Sese Seko (1930-97), who permitted foreign corporations to exploit the DRC's vast resources. Today, many monitoring organisations and activists say Rwanda and Uganda are guilty of taking part in exploiting the DRC’s mineral resources whilst receiving foreign aid.

Video credit: @cbsnews

Sources:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2015/02/11/brilliant-rhetoric-malcolm-x-at-lse-11-february-1965/

https://www.hnn.us/article/malcolm-x-called-him-the-most-impressive-black-man

https://web.mst.edu/lib-circ/files/Special%20Collections/mxebook.pdf

https://medium.com/ummah-wide/the-final-international-speech-by-malcolm-x-74f4e90f97a4

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/congo-decolonization