June 30, 1960, Léopoldville.
King Baudouin spoke first, praising the genius of his great-granduncle Leopold II, whose colony was one long atrocity. Outside, thousands were furious.
Lumumba was not on the program. He had asked anyway. That morning friends crossed out whole paragraphs in the car, softening his sharpest words. He thanked them, read some, improvised the rest.
No Congolese will ever forget, he said: independence was won in struggle, undaunted by privation or suffering, stinted neither strength nor blood. The truth he named: forced labour, land taken, racial contempt.
The king left the room; then a gentler speech, then one written for him. Papers called him ungrateful. Months later deposed and killed, with Belgian and Congolese complicity. He was thirty-five.
The record was edited. Fragments of the film survive; after his death the printed speech was altered to flatter him. Even his voice was not allowed to stay his own.
Years on, his daughter asked Belgium for his remains, a hero without a grave. They sent a gold-capped tooth.
I am from the country of that speech, still learning what it costs to say what is yours. He paid in full. The people kept the words.