Che in the Congo

Che in Africa, a review of "THE AFRICAN DREAM: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo", by Ernesto Che Guevara.

By Michela Wrong

Published: November 11, 2001

It takes an exceptional man to admit to a resounding defeat. Recounting the almost farcical story of how a group of Cuban fighters set off to save Congo's revolution, only to need saving themselves, a lesser individual would have been tempted to airbrush his memories. Not so Che Guevara. ''This is the history of a failure'' is the frank opening line of ''The African Dream.''

Convinced that the ''Yankee imperialism'' he detested had to be confronted not only at home but in its bases of support, the developing nations emerging from colonialism, Guevara had slipped into Congo in 1965, in the midst of rebel uprisings against the American-supported government that followed the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961. In sending a vanguard of black fighters to pass on to their Congolese brothers the guerrilla tactics that had succeeded in Cuba, Fidel Castro and the Argentinian-born Che Guevara were undertaking a daring experiment in the internationalization of the Communist revolution.

 

 It all looked so good on paper. But the Congolese regarded carrying heavy loads as below their dignity and would wander off, bored, when the Cubans tried to stage ambushes. Superstitious, they relied on ''dawa,'' magic potions whipped up by witch doctors, for victory, emptying their magazines into the sky with eyes shut tight. Worse, ''each of our fighters had glumly witnessed assault troops melt away at the moment of combat and throw away precious weapons in order to flee more quickly,'' Guevara recorded. Their leaders' failings overshadowed the foot soldiers' shortcomings. Laurent Kabila, the supposed head of the revolt, rarely deigned to visit the front. As Guevara sheltered from torrential rain in lice-infested huts, plagued by malaria and dysentery, he received reports of Kabila's drunken binges in Dar es Salaam. Soon, in terms that would be instantly recognizable to a World Bank representative, he is urging Castro to halt unconditional aid. Within seven months the revolution turned into a rout.

 

But Guevara is too intelligent to put all the blame on the Congolese. The Cubans, he confesses, were overconfident and made amateurish mistakes. They arrived so poorly briefed, they expected to be operating in flat terrain, not mountains. Most tellingly, they simply hadn't done their homework, blithely assuming that the conditions that fueled Latin America's revolutions -- exploitative feudal estates and a land-hungry peasantry -- were reproduced in Africa. In his epilogue, Guevara asks the question that should have been posed long before he booked passage: What did the revolution actually have to offer the peasants of the fertile eastern Congo?

It is a tragicomic tale, cleanly translated by Patrick Camiller, and bleakly funny in parts. For if Guevara must have been a driven, painfully worthy leader, he was also an elegant, ironic writer. There are lessons here for every dewy-eyed aid worker setting off to rescue a doomed community, every International Monetary Fund official proposing to rein in an errant government, every African politician who thinks he knows best.

Published 35 years after it was drafted, the book retains its freshness. The Kivu area the Cubans operated in is still a lawless zone in which ragtag groups of fighters -- known as Mai Mai -- douse themselves in magic water. With their country split by a civil war that Laurent Kabila, once president, had neither the desire nor ability to end, 52 million Congolese can attest to the character faults spotted by Guevara, who would have been amazed by his former ally's successful ousting of Mobutu Sese Seko, if not his assassination earlier this year. In both government territory and rebel-held areas, warlords squabble over turf while taking for granted a grass-roots support they have never worked to acquire. The Congolese people remain as sidelined and irrelevant to proceedings as ever.

Michela Wrong is the author of ''In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo.''