is a type of ravine and the mountains, both at Kigoma and on the other side, begin right at the water’s edge.2 At a place known as Kibamba, where the General Staff was located, a difficult climb began 10 paces or so from our point of disembarkation, all the more difficult for us given our lack of previous training.
1. The process of selecting and training the Cuban combatants to participate in the guerrilla struggle in the Congo began toward the end of January of 1965, after Che passed on to the Cuban government the requests he had received from African liberation movements. Men were selected from units of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR). The volunteers selected for this internationalist mission had to be Afro-Cuban in order to facilitate their integration into the African liberation movements. Training took place in the months of February and March in various camps located in the mountains of Pinar del Río province and involved about 500 members of the Cuban military with various military ranks and levels of combat experience from which 113 were selected. Commander Victor Dreke was initially appointed to head the column, but toward the end of March he was informed of the decision to name Che Guevara as head of the mission.
2. This refers to the Mitumba Mountains on the western (Congolese) shore of Lake Tanganyika.
On arrival, after a brief rest on the floor of the hut among backpacks and assorted junk, we began to become acquainted with Congolese reality. We immediately noticed a clear distinction: besides people with very little education (generally peasants), there were others better educated, a distinct style of dress and a better knowledge of French. The distance between the two groups could hardly have been greater.
The first people I got to know were Emmanuel Kasabuvabu and Kiwe, who introduced themselves as officers on the General Staff, the former in charge of supplies and munitions, the latter, information. Both were loquacious and expressive young men and what they said, and what they held back, soon revealed the divisions inside the Congo. Later, “Tremendo Punto” invited me to a small meeting, which was not attended by those compañeros but by another group comprising the commander of the base and several brigade leaders. This included the head of the First Brigade, Colonel Bidalila,1 who commanded the Uvira front; the Second Brigade, under the command of Major-General Moulana, was represented by Lieutenant-Colonel Lambert; and Ngoja Andre, who was fighting in the Kabambare area, representing what seemed likely (from various remarks made) to become a future brigade. Agitated, “Tremendo Punto” proposed that Moja, the official head of our forces, should participate in all meetings and decisions of the General Staff, along with another Cuban chosen by Moja. I observed the others’ faces and noticed no approval of the suggestion; “Tremendo Punto” did not appear to be particularly popular among the leaders.
The reason for the hostility among the groups was that, one way or another, some men did spend a certain amount of time at the front, whereas others merely traveled back and forth between the Congo base and Kigoma, always to go get something that was not to hand. The case of “Tremendo Punto” was more serious in the combatants’ eyes because, being the representative in Dar es-Salaam, he only occasionally came to the Congo.
We chatted on in a friendly manner without mentioning the proposal, and I discovered a number of things that I had not known before. Lieutenant-Colonel Lambert explained with a friendly, cheerful spirit that airplanes had no importance for them because they had dawa, a medicine that makes a person invulnerable to bullets.2
“I’ve been hit a number of times, but the bullets simply fell to the ground.”
He said this with a smile on his face, and I felt obliged to respond to the joke, which I saw as a sign of how little importance they attached to the enemy’s weapons. But I soon realized it was meant seriously, that the magical protection of dawa was one of the great weapons of triumph of the Congolese army.
This dawa did a lot of damage to military preparedness. It operates according to the following principle: A liquid in which herbal substances and other magical ingredients have been dissolved is thrown over the combatant, and certain occult markers—nearly always including a coal mark on the forehead—are administered to him. This protects him against all kinds of weapons (although the enemy too relies upon magic), but he must not touch anything not belonging to him, touch a woman or feel fear, or the protection will be ineffective. The reason for any failure was very simple: a dead man is one who became fearful, stole or slept with a woman; and anyone wounded is someone who succumbed to fear. As fear accompanies war, wounds were quite naturally attributed to fear—that is, to a lack of faith. And as the dead cannot speak, all three transgressions can be readily ascribed to them.
This belief is so strong that no one goes into battle without having the dawa performed on them. I was constantly afraid that this superstition would rebound against us, and that we would be blamed for any military disaster involving a lot of casualties. I tried several times to discuss the dawa with those in leadership positions in an effort to win people away from it—but this was impossible. The dawa is treated as an article of faith. Even the most politically developed argued that it is a natural, material force and that they, as dialectical materialists, recognized the power of the dawa, whose secrets lie with jungle medicine men.
After the talk with the brigade leaders, I met with “Tremendo Punto” alone and explained who I was. He was devastated. He kept talking of an “international scandal” and insisting that “no one must find out, please, no one must find out.” It had come as a bolt from the blue and I was fearful of the consequences, but my identity could no longer be a secret if we wanted to use the influence I could exert.
That night, “Tremendo Punto” left to inform Kabila of my presence in the Congo; the Cuban officials who had been with us on the crossing and the naval technician departed with him. The technician had the task of sending two mechanics—by return mail, so to speak—since one of the weaknesses we had noted was the complete lack of maintenance of the boats used for crossing the lake and their engines.
The next day, I asked that we be sent to the permanent camp, a base five kilometers from the General Staff headquarters, at the top of the mountains that rose (as mentioned previously) from the lake’s shore. The delays began immediately. The commander had gone to Kigoma to sort out some matters, and we had to wait for him to return. Meanwhile, a rather arbitrary training program was discussed, and I made a counterproposal: namely, to divide 100 men into groups no larger than 20, and to give them all an overview of infantry activity, with some specialization in weapons, engineering (especially trench-digging), communications and reconnaissance, in keeping with our capabilities and the means at our disposal. The program would last four to five weeks, and the group would be sent to carry out operations under Mbili’s command. Then it would return to base, where a selection would be made of those who had proved themselves. In the meantime, the second company would be trained, so that it in turn could go to the front when the first one returned. I thought this would allow the necessary selection to be made while the men were being trained. I explained again that, due to the nature of recruitment, only 20 would remain as potential soldiers out of the original 100, and only two or three of them as future leading cadre, in the sense of being capable of leading an armed unit in combat.
The response was evasive as usual and they asked me to put my proposal in writing. I did this but I never learned what became of that document. We kept insisting that we should go up and start work at the Upper Base. We had counted on losing a week there to get things ready in order to be able to work at a certain pace, and now we were waiting for just the simple problem of the move to be resolved. We couldn’t go up to the base because the commander had not arrived; or we had to wait because they were “in meetings.” Days passed like this. When the matter was raised again, as I did with truly irritating tenacity,
