14 Facts About Lucas Samalenge

Lucas Samalenge was a Congolese and Katangese politician who was Katanga's Secretary of State of Information.

Lucas Samalenge became a nationally elected Member of Parliament for the CONAKAT party for the district of Elisabethville.

Lucas Samalenge was the only MP of his party to vote the investiture at the Lumumba Government in June 1960.

Public relations officer for Lucas Samalenge's office was Christian Souris, who later wrote a novel based on true facts under the pseudonym Christian Lanciney, named Les heros sont affreux.

Ugeux's son Dominique Ugeux claimed that Tshombe alerted Etienne Ugeux that Lucas Samalenge had no experience in the field of information and was only picked for political and ethnic reasons.

Lucas Samalenge characterised Samalenge as an "inveterate show-off" who "liked the good life".

Lucas Samalenge issued a statement in October 1961 in which he boasted that the 1.7 million Katangans have defeated the whole United Nations of more than 2 billion people, which succeeded because Katanga was in the right, according to him.

At the time of the arrival of prisoners Patrice Lumumba, Maurice Mpolo, and Joseph Okito in a Douglas DC-4 plane at the airport of Luano in Katanga's capital Elisabethville during the afternoon of 17 January 1961, Lucas Samalenge was at the Cinema Palace movie theatre with his Chef de cabinet Etienne Ugeux and Tshombe at a screening of the Moral Re-Armament campaign when Tshombe was called to his residence somewhere between 16:00 and 17:00.

Minister of Finance Jean-Baptiste Kibwe later denied that Lucas Samalenge was present when the three Congolese politicians were assassinated near Elisabethville, but other sources place him at the execution.

Lucas Samalenge was one of the first individuals, or perhaps the first individual, to reveal Lumumba's death.

Lucas Samalenge then went around repeating the story until the police took him away.

Lucas Samalenge died on 19 November 1961 under suspicious circumstances.

Lucas Samalenge's body showed gunshot wounds in his neck, and when he was found, the people accompanying Samalenge already disappeared.

In 1961, a literary competition named "Lucas Samalenge" was organised in Elisabethville.