African Revolutionary: Che Guevara in the Congo

Aug 5, 2011
Christopher Clark

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara - Nelson Piedra

Che Guevara's African diaries shed new light on the Argentine revolutionary's final years as well as the turbulent history of the Congo itself.

In April 1965, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, one of the most iconic and recognisable revolutionary figures of the twentieth century, disappeared, seemingly without trace. He would not be seen again in public until his CIA-ordered assassination in Bolivia, more than two years later, in October 1967. For almost thirty years this period preceeding his lonely demise remained a mystery.

Goodbye Cuba

A picture shows Che in a smart suit, trousers pulled high with braces. He is uncharacteristically clean-shaven and his hair is slicked back from his forehead. He looks young and his eyes are bright and sharp. A familiarly heavy-bearded Fidel Castro smiles at Che in the background. The two comrades appear to be sharing a joke. Mere hours later, Che would leave Cuba headed for a revolution brewing in the heart of the African continent in disguise as a doctor on a false Russian passport. On arrival in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, even the Cuban ambassador, an old comrade-in-arms, did not recognise Che.

Some years previously in 1959, Che had been instrumental in the Cuban guerrilla offensive that ousted the despot leader Fulgencia Batista. He had also been an important figure in the development of the new socialist order that followed under the rule of Fidel Castro. Having decided on his departure from Cuba, Che wrote a letter to his comrade Fidel, renouncing his position in Castro’s government and bidding farewell to the country that had adopted him as one of their own: “I formally renounce my posts in the leadership of The Party. . . I have lived through magnificent days and at your side I felt the pride of belonging . . . Other regions of the world claim the support of my modest efforts . . . The time has come for us to separate . . . I embrace you with all my revolutionary fervour”. This letter would not be known to the public until six months after Che left Cuba.

Arrival in the Congo

Che set off for the troubled Congo to further his ambition of constructing a “third world alliance” opposed to “yankee imperialism”. This would later be the basis for Cuba's determined military support of the MPLA movement in Angola.

Young and recently independent, Congo had quickly become a country divided and at war with itself, especially since the assassination of its first Prime Minister, the charismatic visionary Patrice Lumumba, with alleged compliancy from the Eisenhower government in Washington as well as the former colonial ruler, Belgium. Having been denied help from the UN to quell a Belgian supported secession movement in the mineral rich Katanga region, Lumumba looked to the Soviets. Considering the “tense Cold War footing” of the time, the Americans were not about to let that happen. Lumumba needed to be shut up.

Whilst US-backed future dictator Joseph-Desiré Mobutu led the Congolese Army in Kinshasa, revolution simmered in the Eastern Congo. Aside from the US, Mobutu’s forces were further strengthened by South African mercenaries under the leadership of ‘Mad’ Mike Hoare and Belgian paratroopers as they endeavoured to crush the uprising by groups of left-leaning rebels operating in the region, who included in their ranks another future Congolese president: Laurent Kabila. This was the situation that Che entered into when he crossed the border by boat from the shores of Lake Tanganyika with fourteen Cuban fighters on the 22nd of April 1965. Later joined by further groups, his Cuban forces would eventually number roughly 150 fighters. All besides Che were black, supposedly to make sure they would not be mistaken for Hoare's white mercenaries.

"The History of a Failure"

"This is the history of a failure." So reads the ominous first line of Che's African diaries, kept secret in Havana for thirty years. Once in Congo, Che's Cuban forces moved into the wild Fizi Baraka mountains where they soon joined up with members of the Congolese rebel groups, as well as ethnic Tutsis from neighbouring Rwanda who had fled a Hutu massacre in the midst of their own country's independence. Even in these early building stages, the cracks that would eventually lead to the mission's collapse were all too evident. Rebel leader Laurent Kabila, who failed to impress Guevara, seemed to be permanently absent. Another important rebel authority drowned in Lake Tanganyika. There were also issues with language and communication, the Tutsis, for example, not speaking the commonly-used Swahili.

On the 20th of June a combined force of Cubans, Tutsis and Congolese fighters attacked a power plant and army barracks in Bendera that were under the authority of former Katanga secession leader and then Prime Minister, Moises Tshombe. This attack was to set the tone for much of what followed.

The Tutsis turned and fled whilst many of the Congolese simply didn't take part. Four Cubans were killed. In retaliation to the attack, Hoare recruited 500 more mercenaries on a joint contract from Mobutu and Tshombe. The mercenaries and the Congolese government remained, however, unaware of Che's presence in the country.

On top of the calamitous mission, just twenty-four hours previously, Algerian President and rebel ally Ben Alla had been overthrown in a military coup. From this moment on, international support for Che and the Congolese rebels began to gradually unravel.

Whilst the rebels were to enjoy some small skirmish successes, disunity prevailed and the increased mercenary forces were too strong. With the help of gunboats, helicopters and planes, within six months the mercenaries had begun to draw a circle around Cuban positions. And rebel confidence was flagging. The Congolese rebels failed to see Che's vision of a war against a common US enemy. Most of them could not grasp anything beyond the struggle within their own fixed borders. Meanwhile back in Cuba, under increasing pressure to explain his long absence, Che's farewell letter was released to the public. Che saw that he no longer had any power over his Cuban comrades and came to believe that he could no longer ask them to stay with him in Congo.

The Congo Crisis

Che's Cuban forces fled Congo in November 1965, during the same week that Mobutu was inaugurated as the new Congolese president, beginning a reign that would last more than thirty years and leave the country with a ravaged economy and in the grip of a brutal war that would claim over five million lives and whose aftershocks have still not entirely subsided.

Having spent just over a month in the Cuban embassy in Dar es Salaam, Che returned to Cuba, still incognito. Almost immediately, he began preparing forces for Bolivia. He reached Bolivia in November 1966, exactly a year after the end of his "unmitigated disaster" in Congo. Less than a year later, he was dead.

Former rebel leader, Joseph Kabila, backed by Rwanda forces, went on to become Congolese President, in place of the deposed Mobutu, in 1997. But he soon turned against Rwanda and rekindled a war that drew in rebel and government forces from up to eleven African nations. Adding to the equation the vast swathes of jungle that cover much of the Congo and the abundant mineral resources that lie beneath the soil and help support corruption and rebel movements, Congo has remained the "immense field of struggle" that so frustrated Ernesto 'Che' Guevara.