Gongo Lutete

[1] As a boy Ngongo Lutete was enslaved by Arabs, but after winning his freedom he became a respected leader of the Watetera & Kilembwe people in Maniema.

[2] This infuriated Sefu, who sent the Free State a message demanding that they surrender Lutete to him and threatening to drive his forces all the way to Stanleyville in the western Congo if they did not comply.

[4] Lutete was executed after a drumhead court-martial chaired by a young Belgian lieutenant at which no credible evidence was presented.

It was only when they removed his amulets and fired into his ear, as directed by his Luba magician, that the spirits who had been protected him left and he died.

[7] It is believed the soldiers he had brought over to the Belgians considered the trial to be a miscarriage of justice, and in 1895 historians assumed this was the cause of the Batetela rebellion 2 years later though other earlier sources cannot determine the cause of this revolt.