Congo Diary. Ernesto Che Guevara

      1. Osmany Cienfuegos was the brother of Commander Camilo Cienfuegos. He was minister of public works of the Cuban revolutionary government and president of the foreign relations commission of the first Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, whose members were Foreign Minister Raúl Roa and Commander Manuel Piñeiro Losada. Osmany Cienfuegos was also general secretary of the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL), and, until 2009, vice-president of the Council of Ministers.

      2. This painful moment for Che is reflected in the autobiographical short story, The Stone, which shows his great sensibility and literary talent. See: Self-Portrait: A Photographic and Literary Memoir by Ernesto Che Guevara (Ocean Press).

A HOPE DIES

      The days that followed were much like the preceding ones. It was a distressing time because we started to hate the angle formed by the two hills that led down to the lake, affording a glimpse only of the stretch of water that they defined as the horizon.

      In spite of his goodwill, Mitoudidi did not find the formula that would have allowed us to get down to work. He was most likely restrained by a concrete order from Kabila, whose arrival he anxiously awaited. We all waited, while days passed, one after another, with no change for our expeditionary force.

      Moja returned from his tour of inspection to Baraka, Fizi and Lulimba. The impression he brought back was really disastrous. Although he had been received with enthusiasm by the local population, and quite correctly by the leading compañeros, a number of dangerous symptoms were obvious. The first was the open hostility with which people spoke of Kabila and Massengo, as well as Compañero Mitoudidi. All of them were accused, more or less, of not only being outsiders in the region but also of being mere transients who were never where their people needed them.¹ There were plenty of armed men in the zone, but they were held back by appalling disorganization, the effects of which, it can be said, were not just similar but even worse than in other cases we had encountered. The big shots spent the day drinking until they got into the most incredible state, without worrying how it might appear to the local people because they considered it the natural behavior of “men.” Considering the facilities at that time for the transport of essential materials across the lake, they had access to enough gasoline to keep traveling back and forth from one end of their extensive sector to the other, although no one could believe these trips served any purpose.

      The barrier near Lulimba was seven kilometers from the town, in the highest part of the mountains. It had been a long time since the revolutionary forces had come down to launch an attack, or even to carry out any reconnaissance in the zone; their only activity was to fire off a recoilless 75 mm. cannon. Without knowing the rules of indirect fire (that gun can be used to score a direct hit on a target only up to a distance of 1.5 kilometers), and without knowing the enemy’s exact position, they entertained themselves with massive rocket displays with 75 mm. shells.

      I drew all this to Mitoudidi’s attention, and he affirmed the envoys’ impressions, that Moulana, a self-styled major-general in charge of the area, was an anarchist devoid of all revolutionary consciousness who had to be replaced. Mitoudidi had called him in for discussions, but he had refused to come, suspecting that he would be arrested.

      As nothing else could be done, we kept insisting on reconnaissance missions and again sent Nane and Nne leading small groups to continue the inspections of the Front de Force and Katenga zones that seemed to offer some possibilities. Aly also set out on a mission to reconnoiter the area around the town of Kabimba and the road from Kabimba to Albertville, and to find some practical route between Front de Force and Kabimba. But he found himself impotent in face of the obstacles put in his way by the head of that sector.

      Each morning we heard the same old tune: Kabila has not arrived today, but tomorrow for sure, or the day after tomorrow…

      Boats continued to arrive with plenty of high-quality weapons; it was a great pity to see how they squandered the resources of friendly countries (mainly China and the Soviet Union), the efforts of Tanzania, and the lives of some combatants and civilians with so little results.

      Mitoudidi, now committed to organizing the [Upper] Base, took on the no small task of cracking down on the drinkers and thereby confronted 90 or 95 percent of the men. He also put a freeze on the delivery of arms and ammunition and, among other things, demanded that those who were using heavy weapons should show proof of their ability before they were given anything else, which at least ensured that nothing more would be distributed. But the challenges were too great and he was only one man; his assistants gave him very little help in this task.

      We became quite good friends. I explained that my greatest handicap was my lack of direct contact with the combatants who didn’t speak French, so he sent one of his aides to teach me Swahili, so that I could communicate directly with the Congolese in that language. Ernest Ilunga, charged with initiating me into the mysteries of the language, was an intelligent young man. We began our classes with great enthusiasm, dedicating three hours a day, but the truth is that I was the first to reduce this to one hour, not for lack of time—I had too much of that, unfortunately—but because my character is completely incompatible with learning other languages. Another difficulty I was unable to overcome during my time in the Congo was the fact that Swahili is a language with quite a rich and advanced grammar, but in this country it is used as what they call their national language, alongside the mother tongue or dialect of their own tribe, so that Swahili has to some extent become the language of conquerors and a symbol of superior power. It is the second language of nearly all the peasants, but the backwardness of the region means that what they actually speak is a highly simplified “basic Swahili.” Moreover, they adapted very easily to our halfway language, because they found it easier to communicate in this way. Bound up as I was in these contradictions, I could not speak either grammatical Swahili or the peculiar regional version in that part of the Congo in my entire time there.

      During these days I also got to know Mundandi, the Rwandan commander at Front de Force. He had studied in China and made quite a good impression of being firm and serious; but in our first conversation he revealed he had caused 35 enemy casualties in one battle. I asked him how many weapons he had captured as a result of the 35 casualties. He answered “none,” explaining that they had attacked with bazookas and that the enemy weapons had been blown into tiny fragments. My diplomatic qualities have never been very refined, and I told him quite bluntly that he must be lying. He then exonerated himself, on the grounds that he had not been present at the actual fighting but had been informed by his subordinates, etc. The matter was left to rest there—but since exaggeration is the norm in that region, to call a lie a lie is not the best way to establish fraternal relations with anyone.

      On June 7, I set out for the Upper Base, after having consulted with Mitoudidi about the veracity of the promises that Kabila would be coming in the morning. He tacitly led me to believe that he was not expecting Kabila to return in the near future, especially as Chou En-lai² was visiting Dar es-Salaam at the time and it made sense for Kabila to go there to try to put various requests with the Chinese leader.

      As I was making the difficult climb back to the Upper Base, a messenger caught up with us to say that Mitoudidi had just drowned. His body remained in the water for three days, before being discovered on the 10th, when his body rose to the surface of the lake. Due to the fact that two Cubans had been in the boat at the time of the accident, I was able to reach the following conclusion from a series of personal conversations and inquiries.

      Mitoudidi had been on his way to Rwandasi, the place where he was thinking of transferring the General Staff. It was hardly three kilometers from the Kibamba [Lake] Base,³ but he went by water because of the poor state of the road. There was a strong wind and big waves on the lake. It would appear that he accidentally fell into the lake. From then on a series of strange events occurred that could be attributed to outright stupidity, extraordinary superstition (the lake supposedly being inhabited by all manner of spirits), or to something more serious. The fact is that Mitoudidi, who could swim a little, managed to remove his boots and—according to various witnesses—called out for