"Mr. Lucas Samalenge, Secretary of State of Information, is characterised by his anti-Belgian sentiments and his Francophilia which moved him to introduce people to his cabinet who were equally picturesque and adventurous as incompetent.

When Katangese provincial governor Moïse Tshombe declared the independence of the State of Katanga from the Congo, four delegations were sent out abroad to explain what happened in the region.

[11] In March 1961, Tshombe sent out Samalenge to Paris for several months in order to negotiate with ORTF the creation of a television station in Katanga, which did not exist at the time.

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.

[13] 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 Élisabethville during the afternoon of 17 January 1961, Samalenge was at the Cinéma Palace movie theatre with his Chef de cabinet Etienne Ugeux[14] 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.

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

According to Carlo Huyghé, he went on a pub crawl on the streets of the capital on 18 January and drunkenly confided to journalist Léopold Daffe of the Secretariat of Information the details of the assassination.

[20] According to the official version, Frédéric Vandewalle wrote, Samalenge was the victim of a hunting accident caused by a member of his cabinet, but the public rumour suggested an assassination.