And when independence finally came in 1960, the company supported plans for Katanga to become a breakaway republic, similar to South Africa’s apartheid state. The plot failed, but Congo’s first post-independence leader, Patrice Lumumba, was deposed in a CIA-backed coup and handed over to secessionists who later killed him and disposed of the body, though an officer kept one of Lumumba’s gold-crowned teeth as a trophy.
