Patrice Emry Lumumba, a martyr for a worthy cause, a foolish man with unrealistic hopes and ambitions? Thanks to his hard work, relentless persistence and aspirations, his homeland of Congo gained independence from the colonizing country of Belgium on July 1, 1960. Not long after, however, there was a bounty on his head, and only managed to do so. see the fruits of his labor for just under six months. What killed Patrice Lumumba is a combination of many actors, including actions he himself took, other political powers such as Sese Seko Mobutu, Moise Kapensa Tshombe and Joseph Kasavubu and other influential nations including the colonizing country of Belgium. In the struggle for independence for his country, Patrice Lumumba had been in all the right places at the right times. He knew exactly what he wanted and how he was going to get it, but he didn't do it without stepping on a few people's toes along the way. When he was appointed the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congolese people, on Independence Day he gave a speech that was awe-inspiring to the country's citizens, but dangerous to him because the political leaders were shocked. He stated: "This has been our fate for eighty years of colonial rule; our wounds are still too fresh and too painful for us to erase from our memory. We have known harassing jobs, extended in exchange for wages that did not allow us to eat enough to ward off hunger, or to dress ourselves, or to house ourselves decently, or to raise our children as creatures dear to us. We have known ironies, insults, blows that we have endured morning, noon and night, because they are not blacks. Who will forget that to a black person they said "tu", certainly not as if to a friend, but because the most honorable "vous" was reserved for whites only?" He gave a voice to the people who had been detained for a long time. down, spit on, hit and beaten, but little did he know that the voice he was speaking with would stop in the near future. He was too powerful for what an African leader should have been at that time, he had too many supporters behind him, he was threatening. He can be partially blamed for his own death because he wasted no time with his completely radical views.