Remains Of Independence Hero Lumumba Return To DR Congo

The coffin of slain Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba returns to his homeland on Wednesday for an emotionally charged tour and burial, more than six decades after his assassination.

A plane will take Lumumba’s last remains — a tooth that ex-colonial power Belgium handed over to his family on Monday — from Brussels to Kinshasa for a nine-day trip around the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The coffin and an accompanying delegation will then fly to the central province of Sankuru, where the country’s first post-independence leader was born in the village of Onalua in 1925.

The remains will visit sites symbolically important to Lumumba’s life and be laid to rest in a mausoleum in the capital Kinshasa on June 30, following three days of national mourning.