The memory of the movement: Black Cubans in east Zaire
Che Guevara knew what to do
* Great Lakes crisis In 1965-66 Che Guevara brought 800 Black Cuban soldiers to the aid of the national liberation movement in the lake Kivu region of the Belgian Congo, as Zaire was then called. Alain Mathieu explains. The "Congolese" insurgents claimed the heritage of Patrice Lumumba, the premier of the independent Belgian Congo, who was murdered in 1961. The imperialists wanted to maintain their control over the Congo's enormous resources. They had supported the secession of the rich province of Katanga under Moise Tshombe. To fight the independence forces, they sent European mercenaries to help Tshombe's forces. These were commanded by a certain Mobutu. He later took power, and has held it ever since.
From June 1965 to January 1966, the Cubans fought alongside the Congolese resistance. So did 700 Rwandans, who were fighting in the ranks of the Congo liberation forces with the intention of returning later to Rwanda to overthrow the dictatorship there. Between 1959 and 1962, the Belgian colonial regime organized a revolution" in Rwanda, to drive out and massacre the Tutsis and those Hutu oppositionists who wanted independence
Guevara and Cuban leader Fidel Castro asserted a Cuban internationalist policy largely independent of the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies, and based on the liberation struggles in the third world. The Cuban revolution had developed in the context of third world revolutions whose linchpin was the liberation of African states. "Perhaps the most important battle field...with great chances for victory, but also with many dangers," Che said. The Congo was the key.
In December 1964 at the UN, Che issued an angry indictment of both the treatment of Blacks in the United States and of "white racist imperialism" in Africa, which had just been responsible for the massacre of 10,000 civilians in the Congo during what was supposedly a humanitarian operation to evacuate Europeans from Stanleyville (now Kisangani.) Columns of white mercenaries recruited in South Africa, Rhodesia, and Europe were the striking force of this operation. They were supported by U.S. bombers piloted by white Cuban exiles from Miami.
In New York, Guevara had a long meeting with Malcolm X, and was supposed to speak at a rally in Harlem organized by Malcolm's organization. He was prevented from appearing, but he sent a message that was read from the platform by Mohammed Babu, a Tanzanian minister. "Dear brothers and sisters in Harlem, I would have liked to be with you. I send you warm greetings 6 International Viewpoint from the Cuban people United we will win."
Malcolm was coming back from a tour of Africa, and wanted to strengthen the fighting solidarity between American Blacks and their African brothers. In November 1964, he mobilized Blacks by saying: "If the Western powers have the right to send antiCastro Cubans to pilot the airplanes that are bombing African people, then the AfroAmericans also have the legitimate right to aid their African brothers."
He was looking forward to Afro-American volunteers from the U.S. ghettos going to reinforce the struggle in the Congo. Che left for a tour of Africa. In Algiers, together with Ben Bella, he set up the infrastructure of an expedition to the Congo, and participated in the conference that was preparing the Tricontinental Congress, which was to be coordinated by the Moroccan rebel
On Feb. 20, Che gave his famous Algiers speech, in which he criticized the Soviet Union's third world aid policy. "By engaging in the same mercantile practices as the capitalists, the socialist countries are making themselves, in a way, into accomplices of imperialist exploitation." In March 1965, Che disappeared from the political scene. He did not reappear until 1967 in Bolivia. Guevara is where he is most useful to the revolution," Fidel Castro had said
But while Che entered the Congo clandestinely, the imperialists were already engaged in a large-scale international counteroffensive, in the wake of the Cuban and Algerian revolutions and the rise of the African independence movements.
Che's plans were upset. Malcolm X was assassinated in February 1965. Ben Bella was overthrown by Boumedienne in July 1965. Ben Barka was murdered. In March
1965, U.S. Marines landed en masse in Da Nang, Vietnam, to launch a merciless war. When the Cubans arrived in the Congo, the Congolese rebellion was already in retreat before the advancing forces of Mobutu. The Congolese rebel organizations were splitting. They were also suffering the impact of the conflicts and pressures of the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies, which looked with a jaundiced eye on the Cubans defending the cause of the third world. After eight months of fighting, when the white mercenaries had only just missed killing him, Che had to make up his mind to leave Congolese soil for Tanzania, along with the Cuban soldiers. Shortly afterward, they returned to Cuba, and some of them accompanied
Several books have dealt with this episode. These are fascinating accounts, even if they are not always free from a condescending attitude toward Africa and Africans. Hopefully, Cuban authorities will publish Che's diary of this episode Che ended his diary by writing "this is the story of a defeat." But it also is the story of an internationalist involvement that left an imprint.
One of the Congolese leaders who worked with Che Guevara to organize the resistance was Laurent Kabila. Today he is the spokesperson of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo/ Zaire, the force that controls Kivu after repelling Mobutu's army. Today, you see youngsters in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda], wearing Che Guevara t-shirts bearing the slogan "Ever onward until the victory!"
In the minds of many Rwandan and Zairian veterans who fought with Che, the episode remains an inspiration.. Some of them are among the fighters in Kivu. Thirty years later, it is striking to see the same actors. Mobutu, with the help of genocidal Rwandan militiamen and European mercenaries trying to uphold his dictatorship and imperialist domination and hiding behind the pretext of humanitarianism.
But this time the story may become one of victory. It is up to us to draw strength from Che's example to build solidarity with those who are fighting the oppression that the Zairian dictatorship and French imperialism have maintained for 30 years. This year will mark the 30th anniversary of Che's death. The African witnesses of those inspiring months of 1965-66 will have to be given the opportunity to recount this experience from their point of view. *
Mauritius: "All Workers Conference"