'The Colonialist Hand Is Visible In The Congo'

Castro, Guevara speak out against 1960s UN intervention in central Africa, The Militant, Vol.60 no.42, 25 November 1996

Reprinted below are excerpts of speeches by Cuban president Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara on events in the Congo (now Zaire) during the early 1960s. They are taken from Pathfinder's To Speak the Truth: Why Washington's `Cold War' Against Cuba Doesn't End by Castro and Guevara.

In September 1960, at the instigation of the U.S. government, a section of the Congolese army led by Col. Mobutu Sese Seko seized power in a coup. Five months later, Patrice Lumumba, the country's first prime minister and a central leader of Congo's anticolonial movement, was killed by the forces of Moise Tshombe, a wealthy plantation owner who was backed by 10,000 Belgian troops. The government of Belgium was Congo's colonial master until June 30, 1960, when the country won independence.

After Lumumba won the presidency in a general election, Belgium's rulers backed an antigovernment rebellion by Tshombe's forces in Katanga province. To counter the Belgian-backed uprising, Lumumba invited the United Nations to send peacekeepers. But instead of fighting the rebellion, UN troops disarmed Lumumba's forces, thus aiding Belgian troops. Following Mobutu's coup, Lumumba was arrested and handed over to Tshombe, who had him murdered.

After Lumumba's death, anti-imperialist forces continued the fight to liberate their country. By early 1964 these young rebels known as simbas (lions)—often armed with spears, bows, and arrows—had chased Mobutu's troops out of large parts of the Congo.

Facing this critical situation, Mobutu brought back Tshombe, who was in exile for a brief period of time, and named him prime minister. Tshombe recruited an army of mercenaries from South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Europe, and the United States. Of the latter, many were CIA-trained Cuban counterrevolutionaries from Miami.

With U.S. air protection, mercenaries traveled freely through rebel-held areas, killing villagers indiscriminately. In the town of Kindu alone, they massacred more than 3,000 people of all ages. The mercenaries termed their butchery a rabbit hunt.

On Nov. 24, 1964, U.S. air force escorts ferried 600 Belgian paratroopers in an attack on Stanleyville, allegedly on a humanitarian rescue mission to save white hostages. Thousands of Congolese died in the attack. So many bodies were left lying in the street that a typhoid epidemic broke out.

The killing was still going on when Guevara addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Dec. 11, 1964.

Several months later, Guevara led a contingent of Cuban internationalists to the Congo to lend assistance to the liberation fighters there.

Tshombe's mercenaries and their imperialist backers eventually crushed the anti-imperialist rebels. In 1965, Mobutu ousted Tshombe and proclaimed himself president. He has remained in power ever since with the backing of Washington, Paris, and other imperialist powers who are today vying over a new intervention in Zaire.

The excerpts below are copyright Pathfinder Press and are reprinted by permission.

Fidel Castro, September 1960

We condemn the way in which the intervention by United Nations forces was carried out in the Congo. First of all, the UN forces did not go there to counter the invading forces, for which they had originally been sent. All the time necessary was given to bring about the first dissension [within the Congolese government], and when this did not suffice, further time was given enabling the second division to occur in the Congo.

Finally, while the radio stations and airfields were being occupied, further time was given for the emergence of the third man, as such saviors who emerge in these circumstances are known. We know them all too well, because in 1934 one of these saviors also appeared in our country, named Fulgencio Batista. In the Congo his name is Mobutu.... Mobutu became a frequent visitor to the U.S. Embassy and held long talks with officials there.

One afternoon last week, Mobutu conferred with officers at Camp Leopold, and got their cheering support. That night he went to Radio Congo—the same station Lumumba had not been allowed to use—and abruptly announced that the army was taking over. In other words, all this occurred after frequent visits and lengthy conversations with officials of the U.S. embassy. This is what Time magazine says, a defender of the monopolies.

In other words, the hand of the colonialist interests has been clearly visible in the Congo.

Che Guevara, December 1964

I would like to refer specifically to the painful case of the Congo, unique in the history of the modern world, which shows how, with absolute impunity, with the most insolent cynicism, the rights of peoples can be flouted. The direct reason for all this is the enormous wealth of the Congo, which the imperialist countries want to keep under their control....

Those who used the name of the United Nations to commit the murder of Lumumba are today, in the name of the defense of the white race, murdering thousands of Congolese. How can we forget the betrayal of the hope that Patrice Lumumba placed in the United Nations? How can we forget the machinations and maneuvers that followed in the wake of the occupation of that country by UN troops, under whose auspices the assassins of this great African patriot acted with impunity? How can we forget, distinguished delegates, that the one who flouted the authority of the UN in the Congo—and not exactly for patriotic reasons, but rather by virtue of conflicts between imperialists—was Moise Tshombe, who initiated the secession of Katanga with Belgian support? And how can one justify, how can one explain, that at the end of all the UN activities there, Tshombe, dislodged from Katanga, should return as lord and master of the Congo? Who can deny the sad role that the imperialists compelled the United Nations to play?...

And as if this were not enough we now have flung in our faces these latest acts that have filled the world with indignation. Who are the perpetrators? Belgian paratroopers, carried by United States planes, who took off from British bases....

Our free eyes open now on new horizons and can see what yesterday, in our condition as colonial slaves, we could not observe: that Western civilization disguises behind its showy facade a picture of hyenas and jackals. That is the only name that can be applied to those who have gone to fulfill such humanitarian tasks in the Congo. A carnivorous animal that feeds on unarmed peoples. That is what imperialism does to men. That is what distinguishes the imperial white man.

All free men of the world must be prepared to avenge the crime of the Congo.

Perhaps many of those soldiers, who were turned into subhumans by imperialist machinery, believe in good faith that they are defending the rights of a superior race. In this assembly, however, those peoples whose skins are darkened by a different sun, colored by different pigments, constitute the majority. And they fully and clearly understand that the difference between men does not lie in the color of their skin, but in the forms of ownership of the means of production, in the relations of production.