Would a surviving Patrice Lumumba be a dictator

No, I don't think he would have been although certainly any newborn democratic institution in the Congo would have had rocky origins. As Franz Fanon said, "Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a programme of complete disorder."
 
Everything points to probably yes, at least in the limited sense in which you could say that people like Kaunda or Nyerere were dictators. Except that basis for democratic institutions in Congo would be even weaker than it ever was in Zambia or Tanganyika/Tanzania. Maybe Sekou Touré or Sédar Senghor are better parallels. Feeling that the need to preserve the fragile post-colonial state requires authoritarian approaches that the leaders involved may have had personally disliked before but deemed necessary.
 
What people fail to realize about Lumumba is that, while he had lofty goals, he was an incredibly incompetent politician.

His Independence speech, for example, is the prime example. While it might have been awesome for him to call out the King of Belgium for his patronizing nonsense, even many Congolese nationalists thought it was a stupid thing to do.

Remember, Congo was still Belgian-run, and many politicians, like Moise Tshombe, understood that working with Belgium was the best option.

Lumumba's speech was basically biting the hand that still fed Belgium.

Also, his attempt to escape from Mobutu's clutches was clumsy. Had he not paused to give a speech, he might've lived.

Lumumba may have been awesome, but what he did implies he lacked any political sense and might have mismanage the country anyways.
 
What people fail to realize about Lumumba is that, while he had lofty goals, he was an incredibly incompetent politician.

His Independence speech, for example, is the prime example. While it might have been awesome for him to call out the King of Belgium for his patronizing nonsense, even many Congolese nationalists thought it was a stupid thing to do.

Remember, Congo was still Belgian-run, and many politicians, like Moise Tshombe, understood that working with Belgium was the best option.

Lumumba's speech was basically biting the hand that still fed Belgium.

Also, his attempt to escape from Mobutu's clutches was clumsy. Had he not paused to give a speech, he might've lived.

Lumumba may have been awesome, but what he did implies he lacked any political sense and might have mismanage the country anyways.
Even if Lumumba was absolute political genius and made all the right moves, the chances for Congo to be mismanaged are fairly high. The place had deep problems, including a serious lack of educated people to administer it.
 
Even if Lumumba was absolute political genius and made all the right moves, the chances for Congo to be mismanaged are fairly high. The place had deep problems, including a serious lack of educated people to administer it.

Yeah. One of Tshombe's motivations for secession was that maintaining Belgian support maintained Katanga's (and by extension, his) prosperity.
 
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