KINSHASA – The tooth of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s independence hero, Patrice Lumumba, said to be kept in a mausoleum which was vandalised earlier this week, is “secure”, the interior minister said yesterday.

«The relic has been secured, and it is protected,» Jacquemain Shabani said in a recorded statement sent to AFP. The minister did not specify where the gold-capped tooth – all that is left of Lumumba – is currently located or if it was in the mausoleum when it was vandalised. The mausoleum, which is in Kinshasa, was vandalised on Monday. The glass door was broken, an AFP photographer saw.

 A police forensic team attended the scene on Monday. The site is now closed to the public, and the entrance is sealed. Six people have been placed in detention after an inquiry was opened into the incident, Shabani said. “Two other people are being sought, and will be arrested very soon,” he added.

The culture ministry described the vandalism as a “heinous act, aimed at desecrating the burial place”. The tooth was returned by Belgium in 2022, and interred during a solemn ceremony attended by president Felix Tshisekedi. It was placed under heavy guard in the concrete mausoleum at the foot of a tower which is a symbol of Kinshasa. Nationalist politician Lumumba became an anti-colonial icon when he gave a fiery speech against racism on independence day on 30 June 1960. He then became Congo’s first post-colonial prime minister.

But only a few months later, he was forced out by a coup fomented with the help of Belgium and the Central Intelligence Agency, which also opposed the support he had requested from the Soviet Union. – Nampa/AFP