to visit me, but I sent him back as he was needed in the clinic and I was already feeling better. On the third or fourth day they brought in a man wounded in some skirmish at Front de Force; he had not received medical attention for six days, so his arm that had been fractured by a bullet was now suppurating profusely. I had to get up to attend to him in a cold drizzle, and this may have caused my relapse with a very high fever and delirium, bringing Kumi up to the base for a second time. It was like climbing Mount Everest for him, and according to eyewitnesses—because I was in no state to appreciate the fact—his condition after the long, steep ascent appeared worse than that of the patient he had come to attend.
The relapse didn’t last long either—about five days in all—but the effect left was an extraordinary weakness that overcame me and even took away my appetite. During the first month, no less than a dozen compañeros paid for their novitiate in this hostile land with raging fevers whose aftereffects were equally troublesome.
The first formal order that we received was issued by Mitoudidi, who had returned from Kigoma, was to prepare for an attack on Albertville to be carried out by two columns. It was assumed we would play the main role in the fighting. The order was absurd; there had been no preparation, we were only 30 in number, and 10 of these were sick or convalescing. But I explained the instructions to the men and told them they should be prepared to go into battle, although I would try to change or at least postpone the plans.
On May 22 we heard one of the many crazy reports that worried us greatly: “A Cuban minister is crossing the hills and many more Cubans have arrived.” This was so irrational that no one believed it, but I went a way down the mountain to get some exercise and, to my great surprise, encountered Osmany Cienfuegos.1 Embraces were followed by explanations: He had come to hold talks with the Tanzanian government and, in passing, had asked for permission to visit the compañeros in the Congo. He had been refused as a matter of principle, on the grounds that other Cuban ministers would then want to visit the operations center; but in the end they relented and here he was. I also discovered that the Tanzanian government was not yet aware of my presence.
Along with Osmany came 17 of the 34 men who had arrived in Kigoma. In general, he brought good news, but for me personally it included the saddest news of the whole war. Telephone calls from Buenos Aires reported that my mother was very ill, leading me to expect the worst. Osmany had not been able to get any further information and I had a month of uncertainty, waiting to hear something that I already suspected, but hoping that there had been a mistake, until finally my mother’s death was confirmed.2 She had wanted to see me shortly before my departure, probably because she was already feeling unwell, but the advanced state of the preparations for my trip had made this impossible. Moreover, she never received the farewell letter addressed to her and my father that I had left in Havana; it would only be delivered in October, when my departure was made public.
Mitoudidi came to the Upper Base, and we discussed various aspects of the military situation. He insisted on drawing up a grand strategic plan for the capture of Albertville, but I managed to convince him that at this stage this was too ambitious, and hence too risky, to deal with Albertville, and that it was more important to acquire real knowledge of the whole zone of operations and of the resources at our disposal as the General Staff had no clear picture of what was happening at each of the isolated fronts. Everything depended on reports from the field commanders, but in order to get what they wanted, they inflated their figures and, in order to escape blame, attributed disasters to a lack of weapons or ammunition. We agreed to send delegations to the various fronts, in order to clarify the respective situations of our men and the enemy, as well as the relationship of forces.
Four groups were organized to conduct the appropriate investigations: Aly, with three other compañeros, was to go to the Kabimba area; Nne, with two others, to Front de Force; Moja and Paulu, to the area of Baraka, Fizi and Lulimba; Mitoudidi and I would go to Uvira. The last of these trips did not happen in the end. First, there were the usual delays: a lack of boats, shortage of gasoline and unforeseen circumstances; then Kabila announced his imminent arrival, and we had to wait for him day after day—in vain.
The first reports of the inspections in Kabimba and Front de Force showed that there were real armed forces there, apparently with a will to fight, although in the case of Kabimba with no training or discipline, and only a certain amount in the case of Front de Force, but all with the same degree of disorganization in keeping track of weapons, observation of the enemy, political work, etc.
In summarizing the situation at the end of May, roughly a month after the first group arrived on April 24, I noted the following in my field diary:
Until Mitoudidi arrived, it was time lost; since then, we have been able to do reconnaissance and have found good receptivity to our suggestions. Perhaps tomorrow, serious training will begin with a group of men that has been promised. It is almost certain that, in the month of June, we will be able to show something by engaging in combat for the first time.
The main defect of the Congolese is that they don’t know how to shoot, so ammunition is wasted; so it’s necessary to begin there. The discipline here is very bad, but one has the impression that things change at the front, where the guys are subject to an accepted discipline although there is always a notable lack of organization.
The most important tasks are: teaching them how to shoot, to fight by laying ambushes (real guerrilla warfare), and establishing certain military norms of organization that will allow us to concentrate our full strength at the point being attacked.
Today we can recognize that the apparently greater discipline at the front was false, and that our three priorities—shooting, ambush technique and the concentration of units for major attacks—were never achieved in the Congo.
The groupings had a tribal character and adopted a positional warfare approach; that is, the combatants occupied what they called barriers. They were generally located in well-chosen places from a tactical point of view, in very high hills to which access was difficult. But camp life for the men meant carrying out no military operations or even undergoing training, confident in the enemy army’s inactivity and relying on the peasants for supplies. The peasants had to bring them food and were frequently humiliated and mistreated. The fundamental character of the People’s Liberation Army was that it was a parasitic army that did not work, did not train, did not fight, and demanded provisions and labor from the local population, sometimes with extreme brutality. The peasants were at the mercy of groups who came on leave from the camps to demand extra food, and who repeatedly consumed their poultry and little luxury food items they kept in reserve.
The revolutionary soldier’s staple food was bukali, which is prepared in the following way: cassava root is peeled and left to dry in the sun for a few days; then it is ground in a mortar exactly like those used for grinding coffee in our mountainous regions; the resulting flour is sifted, boiled in water until it forms a paste, and then eaten. With a good effort, bukali provides the necessary carbohydrates, but what was eaten there was semi-raw, unsalted cassava; this was sometimes complemented with zombe, cassava leaves pounded and boiled, and seasoned with a little palm oil and the meat of some hunted animal. There was plenty of game in that region, but meat was eaten only occasionally. It cannot be said that the combatants were well fed; very little was caught in the lake. But one of their bad habits was their incapacity to march to the base to look for food. On their shoulders they only carried a rifle, a cartridge-belt and their personal effects, which generally was no more than a blanket.
After a while, when we had begun communal living with this unique army, we heard some statements typical of their view of the world. If someone was given something to carry, he would say: “Mimi hapana motocari!” (“I’m not a truck!”). In some cases, when he was with Cubans, this would become: “Mimi hapana Cuban!”(“I’m not a Cuban!”). The food, as well as the weapons and ammunition for the front, therefore, had to be transported by the peasants. It’s clear this type of army can only be justified if, like its enemy counterpart, it actually fights now and again. But as will be seen, this requirement was not met either. And if this state of affairs did not change, the Congolese revolution was inevitably doomed to failure as a result of its own internal weaknesses.