Few speeches have marked our history as much as that given by the Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba on 30 June 1960, the day that Congo achieved its independence.

This speech could be considered the birth certificate of modern Congo, a country that was then emerging from eighty years of colonialism and which looked with confidence to its future.

In Africa this speech is considered one of the key moments in propelling the continent onto the international stage. In the West, many have seen it as a call to arms opening up Belgian-Congolese hostilities, plunging this former Belgian colony into chaos.

A chaos marked by the fall of the Lumumba government in 1960 and, the following year, by the assassination of the man considered in Congo to be the country’s first ‘national hero’.