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Cover story 1: Great Lives
She may be "the forgotten widow", but on 5 February, when Belgium was offering its official "regrets" and "excuses" for its role in the assassination of Congo's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, his widow, Pauline Opango, now 64, was in Belgium to hear it for herself. She was in the country for medical treatment. Our correspondent, Francois Misser, went to meet her.
At long last, the lot fell to Louis Michel, the Belgian foreign minister, to offer his country's "deep and sincere regrets" and "excuses" for its role in the 17 January 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, and his two companions, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito (see NA March).
Mpolo was Lumumba's minister for youth and sports and briefly army chief of staff, while Okito was the vice-president of the Congolese senate.
In admitting that "certain Belgian actors bear an irrefutable responsibility in the events that led to Lumumba's death", Michel went a step further than the Lumumba Commission itself which had only admitted Belgian "moral responsibility" in the assassination.
Pauline Opango, Lumumba's widow, was 40 kms away from Brussels as the Belgian parliament debated the Lumumba Commission's report, during which Michel offered the long overdue "regrets".
"The forgotten widow" watched it live on TV, and later told Colette Braeckman, the Congo expert of the.Belgian daily, Le Soir, that she was in tears as the "regrets" and "excuses" fell from Michel's lips.
"I guessed what the minister said," Pauline told Braeckman, "but I didn't understand everything because the sound [of the TV set] was not good."
But what sweet revenge? For, it was to Pauline that Lumumba, under arrest and beaten mercilessly by his captors, wrote that famous letter in early January 1961 in which he prophesied that "history will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that is taught in Brussels.. it will be a glorious and dignified history".
Sadly Pauline did not receive the letter and has since not seen "the original" with her own eyes.
"I know that from his prison in Thysville [now Mbanza Ngungu] where access was denied me," Pauline told Braeckman, "he wrote me a letter to encourage me. But I only read the text later in...