The year Che was "nowhere"
In 1965, after leaving Cuba and before surfacing in Bolivia, Ernesto Guevara took part in an unsuccessful armed struggle against the neo-colonial regime in the Congo (Zaire) as leader ot a contingent of 125 black Cubans. Zbigniew Kowalewski "Victory is a great source of positive experiences, but so is defeat", he later wrote In particular the defeat of "foreigners who have risked their lives in terrain... to which they are attached only by the bonds of proletarian internationalism, thus launching a means of struggle unprecedented in the history of wars of
Che's presence in the Congo was acknowledge by the Cuban authorities several years after his death, but without providing many details. It remained until recently a blank chapter in his biography. Gabriel Garcia Marquez offered a few specifics on the occasion of the arrival of Cuban troops in Angola,' and Carlos Moore has given many more, although he utilised sources that are often unreliable.? The history of the Cuban expedition in the Congo was only recently reconstructed by the Mexican writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II, based on the testimony of Che's comrades
The events that took place in the former Belgian Congo in the 18 months following its achievement of independence in June, 1960, formed one of the great dramas of the period of de-colonisation in Africa. The stakes were enormous: the whole question of whether the independence of the colonial countries would open up a permanent process of national democratic and socialist revolution or end in the victory of neo-colonialism was decided in the Congo.
Belgian military intervention, the secession of the rich mining province of Katanga (Shaba) orchestrated by the Belgian colonialists, the UN military intervention, the assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba who had supported a unified and truly independent state, the war of the Luba people against the white mercenary-backed Katangan regime, then the final fall, in January, 1962, of the nationalist government - none of these were decisive. The Congolese revolution was always capable of reviving. Insurrections
The new Congolese political elite began to break up as soon as independence was proclaimed. The split climaxed in 12 International Viewpoint #294
1963 when the right wing drove the left from the state apparatus. The left, which lumumbist, took advantage of the overthrow of the puppet regime in the former French Congo ("Congo-Brazzaville" as opposed to "Congo-Kinshasa," later known as Zaire). They established a Conseil National de Libération (National Council of Liberation - CNL) there in October, 1963. A second base was established in Burundi, one of Congo's western neighbours.
In Burundi the CNL forged an alliance with the Burundi Tutsi party, the nationalists of the Unité pour le Progres National [Union for National Progress UPRONA] and the Union Nationale Rwandaise [Rwandan National Union UNAR] which was the party of the Tutsi refugees after the "Hutu revolution" that began the genocidal process in Rwanda.
But the CNL in exile was not the only nationalist centre. Pierre Mulele, a former minister in the Lumumba government, had established another guerrilla base in Kwilu province, in the west of the country. Mulele had undergone a period of political and military training in the People's Republic of China. In January, 1964, a mass insurrection erupted in Kwilu under Mulele's leadership, independent of the CNL.
In April, 1964, another insurrection broke out in Kivu, organised by Gaston Soumialot, president of the eastern sector of the CNL. The insurgents quickly seized the towns of Uvira and Fizi while failing to take Bukavu. From Kivu, the insurrection spread to North Katanga whose capital Albertville (Kalemie) was for two and a half months in the hands of the Armée Populaire de Libération [Popular Liberation Army - APLJ. The APL was supported by the Armée Populaire de Libération Rwandaise [Rwanda Popular Liberation Army - APLR], which was formed among the masses of Tutsi
In July and August, under the command of Nicolas Olenga, the AOL took the provinces of Maniema (capital, Kindu), Sankara (capital, Lodja) and finally, the Eastern Province. The Eastern provincial capital, Stanleyville, became the provisional capital of the People's Republic of the Congo. Christopher Genye, leader of the most opportunist, most right wing component of the nationalist movement, proclaimed himself President and Prime Minister.*
The strike force of the uprising in the East was built from the youth of the Mouvement Lumumba [National Congolese Movement-Lumumba - MNC-L] and other nationalist parties. The Belgian sociologist Benoit Verhaegen characterised the social nature of this force as follows: "Youth between 16 and 22-25 were predominant; there was also a certain number even younger, including children. The greater part of these youth came from villages and provincial towns. In reality, these were students without schools, those excluded from the school system, the young unemployed. For them, the hope born with independence was definitively broken. They alone had nothing to lose, and left behind neither wives, nor houses, nor fields to engage in the revolutionary war. They were marginal in relation to all social structures: of family, school, city, work or
The destructive acts, the violence and atrocities committed by these youth are to be explained in part by their largely declassed character, but also by the fact that their revolutionary impulses remained frustrated. Their actions were directed against the entirety of the political structure and social forces of the neo-colonial regime and especially against the alliance of the new state bureaucracy with imperialism and the traditional leadership.
But the nationalist petit bourgeoisie who led the uprising in the East only aspired to expel the current personnel of the state apparatus and take their positions, or at least force them to share these positions. The numerous, often public executions of military personnel, policemen and state functionaries were not accompanied by the destruction of the neo-colonial power, either state-based or traditional. The command of the APL and the leaders of the CNL ascended to the new organs of power with the help of sectors of the bureaucracy who had been separated from the state apparatus, and of those traditional leaders who declared their allegiance.
On the other hand, the young combatants of the nationalist parties and the liberation army were not let into the structures of the rebel power and they expressed themselves in their own manner: erratic, arbitrary and "anarchic".
"The fundamental difference between the rebellion in Kwilu and those in the East of the country lay in its revolutionary radicalism," writes Verhaegen. mulelist leadership in Kwilu intended to destroy the very bases of the existing social, political and economic order and to reconstruct a new society. It is undoubtedly only in the case of Kwilu that the term revolution' can be used in place of
The leaders of the uprising all called themselves revolutionary nationalists, but in the nationalist movement of the times, few elements were really revolutionaries.
It was above all in Mulele that the revolutonary spirit prevailed: their very radical nationalism expressed the conviction that real national independence would not be possible without a break from capitalism.
In the East, the insurgents were not controlled by any political or even military organisation. Not only at the beginning, when they lacked firearms, but even after they were bolstered by the governmental army or received significant modern weaponry from abroad, they wielded almost exclusively lances, machetes, sticks, bows and arrows or bicycle chains. They were convinced that magic rituals of immunity, bearing of amulets and generous consumption of hemp would render them invulnerable to bullets, grenades and bombs.
At first, these rituals represented a forceful weapon, insofar as the government soldiers also believed in the efficacy of the rebels magic, and retreated or dispersed before the attacks of the unarmed insurgents. But when the enemy passed over to a counter-offensive, it proved to be a double-edged sword: the insurgents were shot down, not knowing how to use their
In addition, an entire hierarchy of medicine men had been established and incorporated into the APL. Their rituals were at the same time combatants' initiation rites and admission to the APL, which gave this army the character of a secret society separate from the masses of the civilian population. Internationalisation
In July, 1964, central state power was seized by Moise Tshombe, the Katanga secessionist. He immediately invited in Belgian officers to restructure the army and ordered the recruitment of his old friends: white mercenaries, especially South African, Rhodesian and German. From the United States, he obtained an air force piloted by counter-revolutionary Cuban exiles. Increasingly severe aerial attacks sowed terror and death among the civilian population and shook the insurgents' whole system of magic immunity.
The leaders of the uprising responded by ordering that citizens of NATO states be taken as hostages and executed if bomb attacks continued. In fact, few hostages were executed, but in November, 1964, under the pretext of putting an end to the "widespread massacre of whites," the American Air Force, taking off from a British base, parachuted elite Belgian
The open internationalisation of the civil war in the Congo and the massacre of thousands of Congolese civilians at Stanleyville by the Belgian parachutists detonated a powerful anti-imperialist wave in Africa and elsewhere. The governments of Algeria and the United Arab Republic announced their support, including sending of arms, to the Congolese insurgents and called for other African states to follow their example. At the United Nations General Assembly, the imperialist powers were under such forceful attack that the bourgeois press accused the delegates of the African states of "racism against the white man."
As Cuban representative, Che Guevara launched an appeal before the General Assembly "to all free men to be ready to avenge the crime committed in the Congo in the name of defence of the white race." Following consultations in New York with Abdul Rahman Babu, leader of the revolution in Zanzibar and minister in the united government of Tanzania, and with Malcolm X, the African American nationalist leader, Che left for Africa. He was convinced of the necessity of a counter-internationalisation of the civil war in the Congo from the side of the anti-imperialist forces.
Several African governments, including Algeria, Congo-Brazzaville and Tanzania, gave their approval to Cuban military involvement, which had been requested by Congolese nationalists. According to the testimony gathered by Carlos Moore, Guevara investigated in Africa "the possible role Cuba could come to play in the struggle against colonialism, che imperialism, and white supremacy on the black continent," and inquired into "how Africans would react to an internationalist brigade made up of black Cubans and black Americans fighting alongside liberation movements in Africa."
In Dar-es-Salaam, Guevara reached an accord with Gaston Soumialot and Laurent-Desire Kabila on sending arms and a group of Cuban military advisors to the Congo. Kabila had by 1960 already led the struggle of the youth of the Luba people against the Katanga police force. From the launching of the uprising, he was one of the principal leaders of the CNL East, as part of its left wing. He commanded the battle front along the shores of Lake Tanganyika, extending to the province of Kivu in North Katanga. A tricontinental strategy
Guevara's plan flowed from his strategy of tricontinental revolution, which he proclaimed openly two years later in launching the slogan "Create two, three, many Vietnams." With a force of combatants not only from the Congo but also from other African countries, the Cuban soldiers and Che himself were to construct, in the course of guerrilla war, the backbone of the mobile strategic force of the Congolese and Panafrican revolution. Gradually, as it grew, the guerrilla legion would give rise to others, progressively opening other battle fronts, in the Congo and elsewhere on the continent. The main blow of the revolutionary African forces would be directed against the white racist power bloc, whose principal base was the South African apartheid regime.
Che hoped that the military experience of the small Cuban brigade in the Congo would allow a selection from its ranks toward the creation of another column, which would later be established in Latin America under Guevara's command. Thus the rise of the African revolution would be followed by the launching of the revolution on the Latin American continent.
In Guevara's eyes Africa held certain strategic advantages over Latin America, since it was " further from the United
States and has at its disposal greater logistical possibilities (USSR, China, United
Arab Republic, Algeria)." › Of course,
Latin American already had movements which were inspired by the Cuban revolution. But the political conditions for the victory of a strategy of continental revolution were not favourable. For example. at the end of his stay in Africa, Guevara conveyed to the leadership of the Venezuelan
Communist Party his intention to participate in the guerrilla struggle which they led. Their reaction was negative: one shouldn't internationalise the struggle.
In mid-March, 1965, Guevara obtained a full approval from Fidel Castro for his political project. The assassination of Malcolm X in February of that year had obliged him to abandon the idea of relying on
African American combatants. He took command of a military contingent com-
posed of black Cubans and, on April 2, left
Cuba.
He left with Fidel his famous letter of farewell, announcing to the Cuban people that "other lands of the earth will lay claim to the contribution of my modest efforts."
In this letter, he explained that it was a matter of accomplishing the most sacred of duties: to struggle against imperialism everywhere it exists." On 24 April 1965 he entered the Congo across Lake Tanganyika.
Down to earth
Three days earlier, the leaders of the
Congolese revolt had formed a Supreme
Revolutionary Council (Conseil supreme de la Revolution). The President was Gaston Soumialot, with Laurent-Desire Kabila as Vice-President.
The eastern rebellion had been in retreat since November 1964. The rebel forces were seeking refuge in the neighbouring countries, and units of white mercenaries were helping the army to seal the border to keep them out. All the rebel leaders, and all the field commanders had already left the country. This did not prevent Kabila from distributing a report "on the situation at the front." claiming that "The war constantly brings victories to the young popular army, which is acquiring considerable experiences which are preparing it for the final assault. In the current phase of our revolutionary war, things progress as they did at the beginning of the insurrection. Our combats are usually offensive. Our forces have the initiative, while the phantoms are beginning to tire of being constantly forced into defensive positions."
He also claimed that, in the liberated regions, the level of mass political and military organisation was constantly growing, in a process where social relations were being radically transformed "The insurrection has blocked the bourgeois right from acquiring property... it shows everyone that it is more rational and completely natural that the means of production should remain communal property." •
Anyone reading Kabila's report could think that the national democratic revolution was not only progressing solidly along the shores of Lake Tanganyika, but that it was already taking a socialist direction. They would be completely wrong. There were no mass organisations. There wasn't even a political leadership of the rebel forces. All there was were a few thousand armed fighters, operating in autonomous guerrilla units. They were not subordinate to the Central Command of the Front, which only existed on paper.
The guerrillas camped "in well-chosen spots from a tactical point of view, on high hills, difficult to get to," Che noted. But they did not move. They did not take offensive action, and relied instead on the passivity of the enemy army. "The Popular 14 International Viewpoint #294
Liberation Army was a parasitic force. It did not work, it did not train and it did not extremely harshly, that the population feed and work for it." What most shocked Che and the Cubans was the violence with which the Congolese rebels treated the peasants, and their atrocious treatment of prisoners of war.
"The biggest problem with the Congolese is that they don't know how to shoot, Che wrote. "This causes an enormous wastage of ammunition. This is where we have to start." Although both sides were increasingly armed with foreign-supplied firearms, magic and "immunity" charms were just as important as at the beginning of the struggle. Even the rebel commanders, even those who considered themselves to be Marxists, explained to the Cubans that for them the enemy aeroplanes "do not count, because they have dawa, medicine which makes them invulnerable to bullets... The most politically advanced say that it is a natural material force and that, as dialectical materialists, they recognise the power of dawa," wrote
Only one Congolese leader, Leonard Mitudidi, supported the Cuban attempt to create a genuine military front. Trained in and part of Mulele's team, Mitudidi knew that the rebellion lacked political leadership. Convinced that it was necessary to centralise, and to impose a united front on the rival nationalist fractions, he played an important role in the construction of the Revolutionary Supreme Council, of which he was a
In early June, shortly after being named Chief of the General Staff of the Front, he drowned while crossing the lake. It was an irreplaceable loss. "We have lost the only efficient man in this guerrilla movement," Che commented. One week later, there was a second blow, international this time. The Algerian army had overthrown Ben Bella, breaking Cuba's radical alliance with Algeria.
understanding reality of the front he "led" from abroad, "Mad" Mike Hoare
Kabila ordered the capture of Albertville.
Guevara protested: the town could only be taken at the culmination of a guerrilla struggle which would sap the morale of the government's army, destroy its communications, weaken its reinforcements, and wipe out its forward posts. Very reluctantly, he accepted Kabila's second instructions, imposing a more. modest, but still extremely risky objective. A Cuban-Rwandan force was to attack Front de Force, the main government forward position, near the Bendera hydroelectric power station. It was defended by a Congolese battalion and a hundred white mercenaries. Kabila forbid Guevara from personally participating in the attack.
On June 29th, a Rwandan battalion stiffened by 43 Cubans carried out the attack. Although the rebel commander Joseph Mudandi had undergone military training in China, his men had precious little training or experience. The attack collapsed, as the Rwandan soldiers fled in all directions. A second, mixed unit, supposed to ambush the reinforcements from Albertville, mistakenly attacked a nearby special forces training school. The Cuban commander Norberto Pío Pichardo, three other Cubans and at least 14 Rwandans
Finally, Kabila arrived, and apparently began re-building the liberation movement. He agitated the peasant masses and the combatants, trying to raise their morale, impose discipline, and organise defensive work round the base, target practice and so on. But after only five days, he left the country again. He did not return. "We cannot pretend that the situation is good," Guevara wrote in August. "The leaders of the movement spend most of their time abroad. There is almost no organising work, since the middle cadre do not work, in fact do not know what work is, and since no-one has confidence
Split between various units, the Cubans tried to instruct the Congolese and Kwandan fighters in basic guerrilla tactics, to organise them more efficiently, and to harden them for combat. Slowly, they began to see results. There were more and more successful small ambushes. But, since they were spread over a large territory, the small number of Cubans could not form the core of a mobile force undertaking even the most modest military actions. proved impossible to bring more than 30-40 Cubans together for any single
At the end of September, Guevara insisted: most of the
Cubans would form a new, independent column, along with selected Congolese and Rwandan fighters. It was to be "a striking force, and a model." He declined
Fidel Castro's offer to send another 200 Cuban soldiers, insisting that the Congolese revolution must be above all
The Maoist project tested in the struggle for power
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Mulelist fighters, 1966 the work of the Congolese. Otherwise, he explained, "we risk committing some very expensive mistakes, in the name of internationalism."
In October, Moise Tshombe was overturned, and army leader Joseph-Desire Mobutu became the new regime strongman. The presidents of the neighbouring countries began pressing for "national re-
" The withdrawl of the white mercenaries and the Cuban advisors was to be part of a "non-intervention" pact.
On the ground, the Cubans were increasingly surrounded, strategically and tactically, by "Mad" Mike Hoare's mercenaries. In one attack Che had to flee from a rebel camp as the South Africans overran
On 17 November 1965, the outer circle of defence of the central rebel base was broken. Che admitted defeat and, four days later, crossed lake Tanganyika with the surviving Cubans.
This was not the end of Cuba's commitment to the Congo rebels. For several years, Cuba tried to establish contact with Pierre Muele, who led the reminder of his Kwilu rebel movement. In June 1976, the Cuban-backed Bataillon Patrice Lumumba left Brazzaville, led by the Congolese revolutionary Thomas Mukwidi. It never met up with Muele's troops, and disappeared without trace."
In 1969, the Cuban leadership published its evaluation of the defeat in the Congo. Though they were silent about the presence of Che Guevara and the Cubans *The failure to resist the offensive of Tshombe's troops, supported by South
African and Belgian mercenaries, and commanded by the bloodthirsty Mike Hoare, was not primarily due to their military superiority, but rather to the hesitations of those who, instead of being at the head of those fighting and risking their lives of the liberation of their country, made war calmly from a town where they faced no danger, and could enjoy all the pleasures of urban life. From where, they determined "strategy," without being strategists. Like Laurent Kabila, who's command centre was in a well-furnished apartment in Kigoma, Masengo, the Chief of the General Staff. A man for whom we can find no evidence of ever having genuinely directed any action against the imperialist troops on the eastern front."
The Cuban leadership assured that it was "disposed to stand alongside those who are ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for the revolutionary victory, provided that they prove by their acts their consciousness of revolutionary duty... in a direct, definitive struggle with imper-
A struggle with only two outcomes: victory or death.") 1. G. García Márquez, «Operación Carlota», Tricontinental #53, 1977. 2. C. Moore, Castro, the Blacks, and Africa, University of California, Los Angeles 1988. 3. P. I. Taibo II, F. Escobar, F. Guerra, El año en que estuvimos en ninguna parte, Editorial J. Mortiz, Mexico
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1994, and P. I. Taibo II, Ernesto Guevara, tambien conocido como El Che, Editorial J. Mortiz, Mexico 1996. See also R. Gott, "Che Guevara and the Congo", New Left Review #220, 1996. 4. B. Verhaegen, Rebellions au Congo, 2 volumes, CRISP - IRES, Bruxelles - Leopoldville/Kinshasa 1966, 1969; H. Weiss, B. Verhaegen (eds.), "Les rebellions dans l'Est du Zaire (1964-1967)", Les Cahiers du CEDAF (Brussels) #7/8, 1986: C. CocqueryVidrovitch, A. Forest, H. Weiss (eds.). Rebellionsrevolution au Zaire 1963-1965, 2 volumes, L'Harmattan, Paris 1987. For a Stalinist-Maoist analysis, see Pierre Mulele ou la seconde vie de Patrice Lumumba, EPO, Antwerp, 1985. 5. "'Statement of C. R. Bustos to Bolivian soldiers," in A Saucedo Parada, No disparen... soy el Che, Editorial Oriente, Santa Cruz 1987, p. 63. 6. H. Vargas, "Cuando el PCV rechazó al Che: Entrevista con Douglas Bravo y Francisco Prada", Dí (Mexico) #66. 1982, p. 40. 7. R. 1. Lukale, "Les progres du peuple congolais en armes", La Voix du Peuple (Brussels) #14, 1965, p. 14. 8. In September 1968, Pierre Mulele surrendered to troops of the Mobutu dictatorship, and was assassinated by them in an atrocious manner. 9. A. Zapata, "En defense de Lumumba", weekly round-up. Granma #8, 1969. p. 12.
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