19/05/2026
This is Patrice Lumumba’s tooth.
For decades it was kept in Belgium before it was finally returned to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2022.
Patrice Lumumba was the first Prime Minister of independent Congo, modern day DRC. He was assassinated in 1961, during the Congo Crisis.
The people who killed him tried to erase all the evidence. They cut his body into pieces and dissolved it in acid so that no grave would exist for people to visit or turn into a political symbol.
Years later, a Belgian police commissioner named Georard Soete admitted that he had taken one of Lumumba’s teeth and kept it as a trophy.
For more than 60 years, the tooth was kept in Belgium.
In 2022, Belgium officially returned the tooth to Lumumba’s family. A handover ceremony was held in Brussels before the remains were taken back to Congo for national mourning and burial ceremonies.
During the ceremony, the Belgian Prime Minister admitted that Belgium carried a “moral responsibility” for the events that led to Lumumba’s death.
Today, the tooth is kept in a mausoleum in Kinshasa and is treated as an important national historical relic.
