The African Dream

by Ernesto Che Guevara

  A couple of matters: A group of men are going there to organize a training base, where it will be possible to train compañeros from Mozambique and from other movements in the region. This group was originally requested by the Tanzanian government for the purpose of instructing the Mozambicans and to carry out an action that Osmany will probably have explained to you. But due to special circumstances, the plans were postponed and a request was made for the group to go to Tabora to take charge of a base there in order to train Congolese. But now, with Soumialot’s agreement, they plan for the base to be inside the country, so they don’t have to take personnel outside and so they can also use it to train Mozambicans and members of other liberation movements in the region.

  The other matter refers to various groups of Congolese who have visited me in the last few days and who know you in one way or another. Using the pretext that Kabila does not want to get involved, they are trying to work on their own. This is no more than a wish on their part, reflecting a little ambition to command and they want to use you and our men as a cover to create their own group. I explained to them this was dangerous as it tends to divide the movement, and that to carry out any activity they must first discuss it with Kabila and yourself. I said we have made a commitment to work in this way.

  Kabila visited us and explained the situation, saying that he had expelled these compañeros and had spoken to the Tanzanian government so that, whenever anyone shows up claiming to be a combatant, he should be sent there. He also explained the situation to the embassies that these compañeros had visited.

  He departed promising that he would go there himself.

  Warm regards,

  Pablo

  I answered Pablo saying that, although I didn’t have confidence in Kabila, all the others there were worse—they were not even intelligent and besides it was necessary to hitch ourselves to Kabila’s wagon. Kabila should be given assurances that we would work honestly to consolidate unity under his command; he should have no fears on that score. I expressed my reservations about the order to send instructors to create a base here because men from other movements would be so distressed to see the indiscipline, disorganization and complete demoralization that it would be a very cruel shock for anyone coming to be trained in the tasks of liberation. I told Pablo I hoped that the initiative had not come from him because it was politically dangerous.

  We set off for Calixte’s camp, leaving behind the men as we had agreed along with Moja plus a few others to wait for Zakarias, who had left on a supply mission. He had promised to bring 10 men to take part in an action alongside the Congolese, and we waited for him, hoping he would keep his word.

  Calixte’s camp is two-and-a-half hours away by foot, at the end of the mountain chain where it drops down to the plains; it cannot be surpassed from the point of view of defense as the bare and extremely steep slopes make it easy to block access just with rifle fire. The camp consisted of little straw huts that could accommodate four to 10 people in cane bunks. We were allocated a few unoccupied ones. The place was more comfortable and less cold than Bendera, but it had the same number of lice.

  Calixte was about to leave for Lulimba having been summoned by Lambert. He greeted me cheerfully enough and said he was glad we had come, but he wasn’t happy we had brought the Rwandans along. I explained that we had carried out orders by training this group, but that we wanted to work with him. Our conversation was amicable, although we could not have the same direct communication that we had had with the Rwandans; Calixte did not speak a word of French and my Swahili was still far from perfect, so we had to rely on Cuban translators who did not appreciate every shade of meaning. It was very difficult to give complicated explanations.

  From the camp we looked down on the whole plain close by, the settlements of Makungu, Nyangi and Katenga, and even Front de Force. I told Calixte it was necessary to get closer to keep harassing the guardsmen and temper our troops, and I suggested that this should be done immediately. He agreed, and I sent a group led by Azi to explore the area provisionally based in a village some four kilometers from Makungu. We prepared to go down at once with the help of Calixte’s second-in-command, the temporary base commander, who called his men together and struggled against their reluctance to confront the enemy.

  Taking advantage of the fact that it was a Sunday, the peasants held a party in our honor before we left; men were dressed in wood demon’s clothes, or something similar, and performed ritual dances and everyone went to pay worship to the idol, a simple stone placed near the top of the mountain and surrounded with a reed circle that was sprinkled occasionally with the blood of a sacrificial animal. In this case it was a lamb, which everyone present then ate. The ritual seems complicated, but in essence it is extremely simple: sacrifice is made to the god, the stone idol, and the sacrificed animal is then consumed as people take the opportunity to eat and drink plentifully.

  The peasants were extremely friendly toward us, and I felt very much in their debt so that I returned to my old profession as a doctor, reduced under the circumstances to the bare minimum of penicillin injections against gonorrhea, the local disease, and tablets against malaria.

  Again we began the fatiguing task of teaching the basic elements of warfare to people whose commitment was not obvious, in fact, we seriously doubted they had any commitment at all. In this way we desperately scattered seeds around us in the hope that some would germinate before the bad times came.

  1. Che’s note: This refers to the instruction to travel every fortnight from Dar es-Salaam; this was never carried out.

  ATTEMPTING “PURSUIT”

  With a new bunch of aspiring guerrillas in the Makungu area, we tried to resume the little classes in ambush that we had given on the road from Albertville to Front de Force. The troop became more heterogeneous when Captain Zakarias arrived with 10 more Rwandans; we would try to draw them closer in order to establish a united front.

  Enemy troops were located at several places: Front de Force, three or four hours on foot from our camp; opposite us at Nyangi, two hours away at Katenga, and 50 kilometers away at Lulimba. Our objective was to attack on the Katenga-Lulimba road and stop them if they tried to advance from Nyangi. The latter is a village on an abandoned road closer to the mountains, where Makungu is situated and we had our headquarters. Katenga is on the new road that has modern bridges able to withstand flooding rivers.

  We assigned Azi and a group of six Cubans and 10 Congolese to stopping any forces that might advance from Nyangi. The attack on the road would involve some 40 Congolese, 10 Rwandans and 30 Cubans—more than enough to eliminate any enemy forces that might come along.

  A group of 10 Cubans had recently arrived who, it was thought at first, could be the instructors at an international training base not only for Congolese but also Africans from other movements. But given the conditions, we had seen that it was impossible to keep a stable group studying these arts, so we decided to incorporate the instructors into the struggle beginning with this next action. It was not a particularly strong reinforcement because the compañeros had an education in the theory, in order to give more or less orthodox instruction in weapons, but with a few exceptions, they lacked experience in guerrilla combat.

  I personally accompanied the combatants. After crossing the Kimbi River, which during the rainy season has a very strong current, but at this time we could cross easily in waist-high water, we established ourselves in the area we had selected.

  Our tactics were simple: The center of the ambush was the strongest point and was where the brunt of the fighting would occur. We had enough men on both sides to stop any part of a convoy so large that some of it might remain outside the main ambush, and to prevent any enemy troops from escaping—although ideally they would have no chance to defend themselves because of the surprise factor. As usual, we would begin firing with rocket launchers. A small group five or six kilometers down the road to Katenga had the task of wrecking a wooden bridge after the trucks had passed and f
allen into the ambush to prevent their escape and the arrival of reinforcements. Moreover, as our lack of detonators (which never arrived) made it impossible to use anti-tank mines directly, we placed one on a little wooden bridge two or three meters wide in the center of the ambush and attached a grenade fuse and a piece of cord so that it would explode within five or six seconds. The device was unreliable because its detonation at the right moment depended on the skill of the user and the speed of the passing truck, so we kept it as a last resort in case other elements failed.

  I established the little command post by a well some 500 meters away from the ambush. In actions like this, you must consider your supply of water and food because you may have to wait days and days for the vehicles to come along. The water was stagnant and dirty and, despite our use of disinfectants, many combatants came down with diarrhea during our time there; the food was not varied but it held out, because the ambush was right in the middle of a neglected mountain of cassava, with giant roots that had been growing for years and years, tough but edible if you were really hungry. Rain made our stay less pleasant. But on the first and second days there were no significant difficulties; the men were both tense and bored as the hours passed interminably, but at the same time any noise breaking the silence became the sound of an engine and immediately put everyone on alert. Even I, several hundred meters from the frontline, repeatedly suffered these aural hallucinations.

  Until Sunday, the fifth day of our wait, we managed to keep control of the men. Then the Congolese began to show signs of impatience, inventing supposed information that trucks came here only once every fortnight, adding that because the last convoy had passed the day before we laid the ambush, it would be best to pack up and return later. They did not insist too much, however, despite the fact that the enforced idleness, the foul water and the cassava diet, occasionally varied with a tiny amount of canned food or bukali, did nothing to boost the combatants’ morale. On the fifth day, a comical event again exposed our weaknesses. While I was lying lazily in my hammock at the command post, I heard a sound like that of stampeding elephants; the six or seven Congolese in charge of the food said to me with bulging eyes, “Askari Tshombe, askari Tshombe” (Tshombe soldiers). They had seen them right there, some 20 or 30 meters from their position. I had scarcely had time to throw on my battle gear, leaving my hammock and backpack to their fate, when one of the Cubans with me also saw the “askari Tshombe.” The situation grew more complicated, for I couldn’t rely on the Congolese and I had only four Cubans with me, one of them Singida, who was sick, but I quickly sent him to Moja for reinforcements. I also got him to remove the Congolese, who in these circumstances were more of a hindrance, and walked a few meters toward the river to get beyond the strip of land visible to the enemy. Following those who were on their way back, I intended to withdraw along the same road after making contact with the guardsmen, but shortly after heard that the people spotted were not enemy soldiers but local peasants, who had fled at the sight of us and one of our men had gotten a good look at them from afar.

  We were discussing these events when a scout sent by Moja arrived to find out what was happening. He approached us from behind, overheard us talking, and ran off to report that the guardsmen had already captured the command post and taken it. There was total confusion as it appeared that the ambushers had been ambushed. Moja, who was directly in command of the action, immediately called off the ambush and took refuge nearby, giving orders to search for me in the direction of the Kimbi River, where I had supposedly gone.

  We were still meandering around after a couple of hours but some of the Congolese took advantage of the situation to go back to the camp and did not return. We suffered several losses like this as a result of the confusion. The infantile reaction of the Congolese, who ran off like badly behaved kids, was compounded by the mistakes of some of our compañeros with less battle experience.

  We decided to move the site of the ambush a few hundred meters, as the peasants had seen us and we didn’t know which group they belonged to. I had to return to the camp, as I learned that Compañero Aragonés was on his way. The ambush lasted 11 days, September 1-11, and several times, when the Congolese argued more and more insistently to leave, Moja had to say that he would remain with only the Cubans—although because of this attitude, the Congolese stayed at their posts.

  Finally the trucks turned up, just two of them. The first was destroyed, seven or eight soldiers were killed and the same number of rifles captured; they were carrying nothing but their weapons, a large amount of marijuana and some unimportant papers, except for the Lulimba payroll. The second vehicle was not destroyed because the bazooka failed to fire, and the occupants (more than in the first vehicle) took cover and forced our left wing to flee. Most of those who fled were Congolese, but some Cubans were alarmed by this and also withdrew. Thus, instead of completely eliminating the two trucks, at a certain point we were pursued and had to retreat. As always happened under such circumstances, this became a total rout. The Congolese rapidly crossed the Kimbi, and didn’t stop until they reached the General Staff headquarters, so we were left with mainly Cubans, although this time the Rwandans who had more experience of battle also remained. One of them even fired his bazooka at the truck, and another, who was part of our contingent, proudly displayed the boots he had taken from a dead soldier because his own were ruined. The Rwandans also helped to retrieve weapons.

  This action showed how far we still were from organizing forces that could wage at least such minor battles, and the deficiency in the training of some of the Cubans, who became alarmed at conditions different from those they were used to in their army, such as the conditions of guerrilla warfare, and failed to act with initiative and in a coordinated manner.

  On the enemy side, the soldiers defended themselves well, showing by their response to the destruction of the first vehicle that they were trained and making progress. They were all Africans, but our enemy was obviously far from being a push-over, contrary to what the Congolese claimed when they blamed all the problems on white mercenaries who they said had instilled terror in the Africans.

  Before the clash began, Calixte’s chief lieutenant told me his men refused to fight alongside the Rwandans because they ran off shooting all over the place and were capable of killing their own compañeros. We had no doubts about this, having had the same experience ourselves, but we had every reason to be more dubious about the Congolese as they never fired at the enemy and ran away at the first sound of gunfire. This didn’t worry us much because the same thing had happened with the Rwandans at first, but now, in this third action—admittedly with a smaller number of men—they had shown a new mentality. Nevertheless, any attempt to unite the two groups seemed doomed to fail. We were able to avoid the first crisis and persuade Calixte’s group to fight alongside Mundandi’s, but then a dispute broke out over weapons. I insisted that they be given to the Congolese as a gesture of goodwill, but the Rwandans argued that they were their weapons and that the Congolese had done nothing to deserve them. There was an attempt to resolve things by force, but after talking to Captain Zakarias we were able to get the situation under control and the rifles were reluctantly handed over to the Congolese but without any show of friendship. Not wanting to remain any longer, the Rwandans immediately returned to their part of the front. This happened a day after I informed Massengo of my views about Zakarias and the need for unity in the struggle.

  The result of this clash was satisfactory, insofar as we had suffered no casualties. In a reconnoiter some hours later with Mbili, Compañero Anzali set fire to the abandoned enemy truck and suffered some quite serious burns when the gasoline ignited.

  For his part, Azi had ambushed some enemy soldiers at Nyangi and maybe wounded one or two, but the action was largely ineffective.

  Nevertheless, I still hoped that things might work out. I gave instructions for new ambushes to be laid on the road, while I prepared to go to Lulimba to persuade Lambert of the need for actio
n. Among the documents in the truck, mentioned before, we had found a payroll mentioning 53 men in Lulimba, and we thought this would be the ideal opportunity to attack there with Lambert’s numerically superior forces, thereby opening the road to Kasengo. If the ambushes between Katenga and Lulimba were successful, we would have a few days’ breathing space to draw a circle around Lulimba and to assemble all our scattered forces from that large region.

  In accordance with our principles, we launched the beginnings of social programs. Dr. Hindi, who had arrived from the base, began seeing the local peasants and established a schedule of visits to the mountain villages. I distributed legume seeds brought from the lake, so that some vegetables could be sown and cultivated and later provided to us. We managed to create a different, more communicative atmosphere. Like peasants anywhere in the world, they were responsive to any human interest shown to them; they were grateful and very cooperative. It was painful to think that these same people who showed genuine trust in us and real interest in work could, when they joined the Liberation Army, become the undisciplined, battle-shy idlers we saw before us. Our military units, instead of being factors in the development of revolutionary consciousness, were a dumping ground in which everything became rotten as a result of the disorganization and lack of leadership we have already lamented so frequently in these notes.

  THE PATIENT GROWS WORSE

  At the end of August I made my usual analysis, more optimistic this time than any of the others I had written during my seven months in the Congo.

  My scholarship has run out, which signifies an advance. This month can be recorded as generally very positive, with a qualitative change in the men in addition to the action at Front de Force. The presence of Zakarias with 10 men is a good indication of this, as is the fact that nearly all the rest at the front are down on the plain. Now we need to come up with some results and to make the situation here more stable. My next steps will be to visit Lambert in Lulimba and to make a trip to Kabambare, then to convince them of the necessity of taking Lulimba and continuing on from there. But for all this to happen, this ambush and the following actions must produce results.