Claude Makélélé has today completed a move from Chelsea to Paris Saint German. While Makélélé is famous as a French international, he was actually born in Kinshasa, during the reign of Mobutu.
Last year he talked toThe Independent about his father's experience in what was then Zaire.
"My father came from Zaire to play football but the problem was he was quite old, 26," Makelele says. "It was because of President Mobutu, he wouldn't let any of the national team players in Zaire leave. My father's nickname was 'Soucousse' [it means a dance or shimmy]. He played in the No 10 role, behind the strikers but he had to stop because he was living in a different country and my mother wanted him to be with us."
Today would have been the 83rd birthday of Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba became the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Congo in 1960, but was murdered in 1961. Both Belgium and the USA had been involved in plots against his life.
Perhaps his most famous moment came at the Congo's independence ceremony, when he refused to quietly accept the Belgian King's patronising notion that the Congo should be grateful to Belgium. His speech that day was referenced by Malcolm X when he paid tribute to Lumumba in 1964:
"Lumumba [is] the greatest black man who ever walked the African continent. He didn't fear anybody. He had those people so scared they had to kill him. They couldn't buy him, they couldn't frighten him, they couldn't reach him. Why, he told the king of Belgium, Man, you may let us free, you may have given us our independence, but we can never forget these scars. The greatest speech— you should take that speech and tack it up over your door. This is what Lumumba said: You aren't giving us anything. Why, can you take back these scars that you put on our bodies? Can you give us back the limbs that you cut off while you were here?
No, you should never forget what that man did to you. And you bear the scars of the same kind of colonization and oppression not on your body, but in your brain, in your heart, in your soul, right now."
- Malcolm X, June 28, 1964
In 2000, Raoul Peck directed an award-winning biopic of Lumumba:
The Democratic Republic of Congo is a vast country, with a population of over sixty million spread over almost a million square miles. The river that gives the country it's name supports a teeming rainforest and land rich in natural resources - including diamonds and coltan, an essential component in the manufacture of mobile phones and computers.
However, since Patrice Lumumba led the country to independence from Belgium in 1960, the Congo has been ravaged by war and instability. Between 1965 and 1997, President Mobutu's kleptocratic regime ruled over the country he renamed Zaire. The Second Congo War, between 1998 and 2003, contributed to instability which has claimed 5.4 million lives in the past decade, more than any other war since World War II. The vast majority died because of the lack of health and food infrastructure - causes such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition.
Congolese Dawn, named for Lumumba's poem 'Dawn in the Heart of Africa', is written by volunteers who are travelling and working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Claude Makélélé has today completed a move from Chelsea to Paris Saint German. While Makélélé is famous as a French international, he was actually born in Kinshasa, during the reign of Mobutu.
