Yesterday, Thursday 30, June 2022, was a remarkable day in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa and the Black World.

It was a day that the “remains” of the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrice Emery Lumumba, was finally interred in his native country after its recent return from the custody of the country’s former colonial overlord, Belgium.

Inside a blue box brought back from Belgium was Lumumba’s golden tooth, the only article of his body that survived the demonic brutality meted out to the fearless freedom fighter.

Lumumba was 34 when he was killed by a firing squad on January 17, 1961 in Lubumbashi. The Belgian Commissioner of Police, Gerard Soete, had issued the order.

Days after he was buried in a shallow grave, his body was exhumed, decapitated and dissolved in acid in a failed attempt to wipe him off the pages of history!

When the golden tooth was found, Soete said it was for him, “a kind of hunting trophy”.

Recall that on February 6, 2022, the Foreign Minister of Belgium, Louis Michel, formally apologised for the killing of Lumumba on behalf of the government. This was followed on June 8, 2022 by the visit of the Belgian King Phillipe, to the DRC where he also profusely apologised for the killings and human rights abuses during his grandfather’s tenure as the colonial overlord of the Congo.

The burial of Lumumba’s golden tooth was meant to bring a symbolic closure to that barbaric piece of history.