Kasavubu asked the UN to disarm the army to purge Patrice Lumumba

By Harlan Pryce · August 16, 2026

Patrice Lumumba was marked for erasure as Joseph Kasavubu cited Communist advisers to attempt to neutralize a prime minister the Congolese parliament had already upheld.

Patrice Lumumba was a man marked for erasure the moment he imagined a Congo that belonged to Congolese people rather than Belgian shareholders or Washington strategists. The cost of that imagination was a systematic campaign to delegitimize his leadership and, eventually, his life.

A confidential telegram from the Embassy in the Congo to the Department of State, dated September 9, 1960, captures the precise moment when the Congolese state began to eat itself, guided by a hand from Washington. The cable, sent by an official named Timberlake, details a conversation between Joseph Kasavubu, the Chief of State, and W. Averell Harriman, who was then on a fact-finding mission for presidential candidate John F. Kennedy.

"Evil Influence" In the record, Kasavubu is a man clinging to a dismissal that the Congolese people had already rejected. Only days prior, both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate had voted to overrule Kasavubu’s decision to fire Lumumba. Yet, in the hour-long meeting described by Timberlake, Kasavubu remained adamant. He claimed he was "going to stick to his guns," insisting that the population was behind him, even while he remained "vague" on how he actually intended to impose his authority.

To Kasavubu, Lumumba was not a legitimate prime minister but an "evil influence on country." He blamed the Prime Minister for the "malaise and agitation" that had plagued the new republic since independence, arguing that as long as Lumumba held power, the nation would "flounder deeper into political and economic anarchy." It is a familiar script: the nationalist leader who refuses to be a puppet is recast as the source of the very chaos his removal is meant to cure.

September 9, 1960 The telegram captures a jarring disconnect between the legal reality of the Congolese parliament and the desires of the Chief of State. Kasavubu expressed surprise that Lumumba had secured victory in the Chamber and the Senate. He lamented that "anti-Lumumba forces" lacked the "courage to stand up and be counted," admitting that senators had been too afraid to vote against the Prime Minister because Lumumba controlled a "major portion military and police."

Harriman, representing the interests of a future US presidency, pointed out the obvious: a parliamentary victory signaled to the "outside world" that Lumumba had the support of the government. When Harriman pressed Kasavubu on how he planned to counter-attack this growing strength, the record notes that Kasavubu was "nonplussed" and simply "asked for advice."

Disarming the Force Publique Lacking a political strategy, Kasavubu turned to the machinery of international intervention. He argued that the Force Publique—the national army—should be "disarmed by UN." He claimed that Lumumba had "succeeded converting army into political weapon" by installing friends in key positions. Once stripped of their weapons, Kasavubu wanted the army reorganized by General Kettani to "reorient" the troops toward his own interests.

This request for disarmament was not merely about security; it was about neutralizing the only institution that might have protected Lumumba’s mandate. While Kasavubu spoke of "peace and security," he was essentially asking the United Nations to perform a surgical strike on Lumumba’s power base.

The cable further documents the standard Cold War pivot: the invocation of the "Communist" specter. Kasavubu declared that Lumumba was "surrounded by Communist advisers" and maintained "frequent contact" with Czech and Russian officials. He urged the UN to take "countermeasures" against Soviet military aid, praising the closing of airfields that had blocked Soviet planes. For the US Embassy, these claims provided the necessary geopolitical cover for the destabilization of a sovereign leader.

The conversation ended with a calculated piece of advice from the embassy. Timberlake told Kasavubu that the Congolese themselves had to resolve their "internal struggle for power," noting that "friendly foreign countries could help only up to a point." It was a hollow sentiment. The very presence of Harriman and the embassy's role in recording and reporting these vulnerabilities ensured that the "internal struggle" was never truly internal.

The telegram closes with Kasavubu’s insistence that the Force Publique, the police, and the courts were the "major contributors to atmosphere of anarchy throughout country."