Soundtrack to a Coup d'État

I don't understand those composers.

Nowadays, when I turn on the radio, I immediately switch it off.

It drives me crazy.

It's not music, but a cacophony.

Are you a communist, Mr. Lumumba?

I always have to laugh when they ask me that question.

I'm not a communist at all.

I'm an African.

Death to colonial slavery!

Bury it!

Bury it deep in the ground!

The deeper, the better!

Humanity has designated 1960 as The Year of Africa.

Never has there been such a year at the United Nations.

At its 15th session, the General Assembly has adopted 16 newly independent African countries.

Placing the protocol in my hands, Lumumba said, "if the Belgians learn of this document,

this would be a death warrant for us."

That day, I was wearing my hair in a bun in which I hid the secret document.

In the crowd, a Belgian official was spying on me.

For seconds, our eyes locked.

Would he arrest me here?

Right now?

I could only think of the document burning in my neck.

But it gave me the strength to brave anything.

Even death.

As I landed in Rome, journalists were crowding around me.

I read the declaration denouncing Belgium's plot to install a puppet government.

The plot was already in the make to impose a government against the will of its people.

The revelation of the protocol created a sensation.

We won!

That evening, I phoned Lumumba at Leopoldville.

"We know," he shouted.

"Everyone is talking about it.

The Belgians are dumbfounded."

Later that day, the phone rang in my room.

I was surprised to speak to the Czech ambassador.

"You must leave now," he said.

"Hurry! Pack your things.

I'll pick you in five minutes.

Your life is in danger."

He had already booked my flight to Paris and on to Guinea.

I was rushed onto the plane feeling death on my heels.

Diplomacy is like walking a tightrope.

If you raise your voice half a note too high, you can end up soiling your pants.

On the other hand, if you keep your voice too low, your opponent will hit you hard.

And this is America, our biggest enemy.

But once you take a misleading path...

...history will not forgive you.

And the memory will haunt you forever.

Eisenhower confessed he was really troubled.

"I've spent my whole life as a military man, but I'm absolutely horrified by war."

I replied, "Mr. President nothing would make me happier than to prevent another world war."

Any fool can start a war that even a wise man cannot end.

In the name of the United Nations,

I salute Your Excellency, Mr. Nikita S. Khrushchev.

Decisions were hard to take about these big international questions.

I devoted hours and hours to the Congolese question.

Days and weeks of effort and contemplation.

Sure, I'd rather be a poet than a politician.

I'm suspicious of the written word.

I prefer the spoken word.

I trust it more in the world of politics.

How to reconcile what the Europeans taught us with what they perpetrated against the Black people?

Danger exists that Euratom won't possess enough uranium.

Mr. Sassen, is there really need for so much uranium?

Yes. We need loads of uranium.

Depending on how many nuclear plants...

The British called me, Gamal Abdel Nasser, a dog.

Remember the insults written on the walls of Port Said?

You said your queen is what?

A bitch!

And today, Port Said toppled the Prime Minister of Britain.

The world has turned upside down.

The world has changed.

Yes... no!

Nobody wanted to follow the colonials any longer.

Men, women and children...

the whole population demanded immediate independence.

Uganda Premier Milton Obote calls out American racists:

"How can we believe America's sincerity towards African people,

when inside the U.S. itself, 'Negroes' are still subjected to terrible racial discrimination?"

Black children cannot attend school together with white children!

Isn't this embarrassing for such a civilized country?

In America, Blacks get lynched.

They get hanged.

Is that democracy? Is that respect for man? No!

Mr. Vloer, beer plays a central role in a Black person's life?

Yes. This has now turned political, of course.

But when talking politics, they like to drink a pint of beer. Just like in Belgium.

One day, driving my Deux Chevaux...

...a truck was heading straight at us.

I stepped on the gas.

We shot past, but the rear end of my car was hit,

making us skid crazily out of control.

Right then...

...we saw who was in the truck.

Our political opponents.

Days later, when crossing the savannah, a brush fire was moving towards us.

I slowed down and looked behind, but the road we just passed was now engulfed in flames.

The severity of my situation suddenly hit me.

Twice...

Twice, I was nearly murdered.

But this did not deter me from my purpose.

On the contrary, I felt an extraordinary sense of being alive.

It only reinforced the will to fight for my people.

It's Kwame Nkrumah who asked me to call upon Africa's women...

...to unify the continent...

...envisioning a new political entity:

The United States of Africa.

At our national congress in December,

a woman spoke up:

"if we're not allowed to vote, we will sabotage these elections."

The frenzy of the electoral campaign across the country made me forget that I was the only woman in the team.

I was presented as a woman from Guinea, a country that had gained independence.

People sat down in a circle, asking me questions:

How is it there?

What did people do to gain independence?

If Guinea is independent, why aren't the Congolese?

As we talked about the need to free our continent, I saw that the women actually needed to liberate themselves.

As they started to tell their story, I realized that these women had really suffered.

I understood we could not separate the problem of Africa's resources from that of the African women.

If they wished, these women could become the first bearers of independence.

By May 1960, I had enrolled 45,000 members for the Association of African Women of Solidarity.

Never have I felt so alive.

But our movement sounded threatening to the colonials.

When you defend the cause of freedom, they immediately label you.

The officials claimed: "Lumumba is dangerous...

...because people follow him everywhere...

...we must arrest him."

So, they threw me in jail...

I was brutally assaulted.

Locked into a pitch dark cell.

I was scoffed at, vilified, and dragged through the mud...

...simply because I claimed freedom for our country.

I was released from prison to head for Brussels.

But I was left with nothing.

No clothes.

No shoes. Absolutely nothing.

The authorities had to get me a suit.

And Africans collected money to buy the rest of my clothes.

Upon arrival at the airport, 10,000 Congolese were shouting:

Down with the colonialists!

Down with colonialism!

We want independence right now!

And it was a whole other ballgame...

We heard rifle shots.

Right after, we saw bodies laying all over.

People asked: "Why?

What have we done?"

I was sentenced to six months in prison because no one would point at the colonials.

Thirty Congolese murdered for no plausible reason.

A challenging adventure lies ahead of you.

I'm Patrice Lumumba.

I'm delighted with the results of the Round Table conference.

On June 30th, the Congolese people will gain their freedom.

Let me assure the Belgians that a lasting friendship will remain between our countries.

We needed a song to make everybody dance and kick off our independence that was so hard to achieve.

Colonel Vandewalle, you were head of Intelligence in the Belgian Congo:

When you saw the list of ministers of Lumumba's government...

...you smiled as you discovered that some had been your intelligence assets?

Yes, correct.

Within his cabinet at least three guys were ours.

Backstage deals by elite circles conspired during the Round Table.

So, what does this independence mean if tomorrow we're sucked dry by new masters?

What is the significance of this independence if tomorrow, it is to set us against each other?

All my life I kept wondering:

"I was in a hole.

But what was that hole?"

Only 50 years later I realized that it was a chicken coop.

It was right after Congo's Independence.

We got independent on June 30th.

We were all living at Karawa at the time, in the northeast of Congo.

Shortly after they sent the Belgian paratroopers in.

So the war started.

My mother had married Mr. Casse.

A Belgian man.

And he had a 19-year-old son with the ex-wife of my stepdad and he was in military service.

But the Congolese soldiers discovered Mr. Casse had a son among the Belgian paratroopers.

"This guy married our Congolese sister and now he's sending his son to kill us.

So let's kill his children ."

That's how the soldiers arrived at our place.

I grabbed my brother Claude and my sister Jacqueline and rushed to hide in a hole.

Strange that it all came back to me 50 years later.

I was walking in a street of Brussels.

The sun was shining.

I could smell chicken poop.

The inside of a chicken coop is magical.

There are feathers all around.

They shine, they look like diamonds.

Feathers everywhere...

My little brother was a bit boisterous and started moving so they caught us.

Then everybody screamed:

"Kill them! Kill the whites! Kill the kids of the whites."

Then, a soldier entered my step dad's store and came out with a brand new machete.

When my mother saw the machete, something clicked in her mind.

She looked at him and said, "Hey you! Where are you going with this machete?

You took this machete from my husband's store.

You didn't pay for it!"

My mom was very fond of money.

"You didn't pay for it and you want to kill his kids with it.