Christophe Gbenye
Christophe Gbenye | |
|---|---|
| President of the People's Republic of the Congo | |
| In office 5 September 1964 – c. 1965 | |
| Minister of the Interior of Congo-Léopoldville | |
| In office 30 June 1960 – September 1960 | |
| President | Joseph Kasa-Vubu |
| Preceded by | position established |
| Succeeded by | Cyrille Adoula |
| In office 2 August 1961 – 13 February 1962 | |
| Vice-Prime Minister of Congo-Léopoldville | |
| In office February 1962 – July 1962 | |
| President | Joseph Kasa-Vubu |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1927 |
| Died | 3 February 2015 (aged 88) |
| Party | Mouvement National Congolais Conseil National de Libération |
Christophe Gbenye (c. 1927 – 3 February 2015) was a Congolese politician, trade unionist, and rebel who, along with Gaston Soumialot, led the Simba rebellion, an anti-government insurrection in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the Congo Crisis, between 1964 and 1965.
Biography
Christophe Gbenye was born in Bagbe,[1] Bas-Uélé District, Orientale Province in the Belgian Congo[2] in 1927 as a member of the Mbua tribe.[1][3] Relatively little is known about his early life.[4] Gbenye received his secondary education at the Marist Brothers school in Buta.[1] He served as a clerk for the Stanleyville municipal government's finance department and became a trade unionist. He later served as the vice president of the eastern Congo branch of the General Labour Federation of Belgium which in 1951 became the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of the Congo.[1][3]
Gbenye joined Patrice Lumumba's independence oriented Mouvement National Congolais (MNC-L) in the late 1950s, and became a prominent leader of the party by 1959.[4] In the 1960 Belgian Congo general election, he was elected as MNC-L national deputy for Bas-Uélé.[1] Lumumba appointed him minister of the interior in the first Congolese government in 1960 following independence.[2][1] In September, President Joseph Kasa-Vubu dismissed Lumumba from his position as prime minister. Gbenye was also dismissed, and he retired to Stanleyville where he enjoyed political support. Lumumba's eventual arrest and execution in January 1961 deeply angered Gbenye.[3] On 3 March 1961, an extraordinary assembly of the MNC-L elected Gbenye to replace Lumumba as the party president.[1] Despite his anger over Lumumba's removal from power, he did return to his position as interior minister under Cyrille Adoula's coalition government,[3] serving in this role from 2 August 1961 to 13 February 1962. From February to July 1962, he served as Vice-Prime Minister in the Adoula government.[1] However, Gbenye was seen as a political liability by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, which was largely responsible for Adoula's rise to power. Adoula then dismissed Gbenye, ostensibly because of his political rivalry with Victor Nendaka Bika, though Gbenye remained in parliament through early 1962.[4] He then briefly returned to eastern Congo, then under the control of Antoine Gizenga's rebel government.[4]
After a visit to the United States, Gbenye was arrested on his return by Congolese security forces in October 1962, being accused of plotting secessionism in the eastern Congo. After being released on 26 November 1962, he became involved in a feud with the Kasonga-Lassiry faction in the MNC-L.[1] In September 1963, he was made president of a new MNC-L national committee [1] and subsequently relocated to Brazzaville in the neighbouring Republic of the Congo. On 3 October, Gbenye, Egide Bocheley-Davidson, Gaston Soumialot, and other dissidents established the revolutionary organization Conseil National de Libération (CNL).[4][5] Assistance was sought from the Soviet Union in the form of equipment and training.[6] In late 1964, under the leadership of Gbenye, Mulele and Soumialot, much of the eastern Congo was overrun by young rebel fighters who called themselves simba (lions). He returned to the country via Bujumbura in Burundi. On 5 September 1964, Gbenye was declared President of the People's Republic of the Congo, the state established by the rebels in Stanleyville (modern Kisangani).[1]
In January 1965, held a meeting at Mbale with Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta and Ugandan President Milton Obote; a meeting in Cairo with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser; and a meeting in Algiers with Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella.[1] In March 1965, he organized a press conference with Soumialot in Cairo, and was made a member of the "Upper Council of the Revolution" (Conseil Superier de la Revolution, CSR), the Simba high command, in April of that year. From 27 April to 4 May 1965, he was at Buta before relocating to Sudan where he called for greater unity among the infighting Simba leaders. He made more international trips over the next months, but was removed from the CSR by Soumialot in September 1965.[1] By the end of 1965 the rebellion had been suppressed by the Congo's central government, under the tacit control of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu.
From 1966 to 1971 Gbenye lived in exile in Uganda. He returned to the Democratic Republic of the Congo after being granted amnesty in 1971.[7]
In 2010 the then 83-year-old Gbenye was living in retirement in Kinshasa.[8] He died on 3 February 2015.[9][10]
See also
- Gold Scandal (1965)
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Le Courier Africain 1967, p. 17.
- ^ a b Villafana 2017, p. 66.
- ^ a b c d LaFontaine, J.S. (1986). City Politics: A Study of Léopoldville 1962–63. American Studies. Cambridge University Press Archive. pp. 222–223.
- ^ a b c d e Dictionary of African Biography. Vol. 6. OUP USA. 2012. pp. 438–439. ISBN 9780195382075.
- ^ Kisangani, Emizet Francois; Bobb, Scott F. (2009). Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Historical Dictionaries of Africa. Vol. 112 (3, illustrated ed.). Scarecrow Press. p. 110. ISBN 9780810863255.
- ^ Van Reybrouck, David (2014). Congo. Fourth Estate. p. 320. ISBN 978-0-00-756291-6.
- ^ Milutin Tomanović, ed. (1972). Hronika međunarodnih događaja 1971 [The Chronicle of International Events in 1971] (in Serbo-Croatian). Belgrade: Institute of International Politics and Economics. p. 2612.
- ^ "Congo begins its "second independence" | Radio Netherlands Worldwide". Archived from the original on 18 July 2010. Retrieved 21 July 2020.
- ^ Itimbiri ya Sika, 5th of February 2015
- ^ Roberts, Sam (11 February 2015). "Christophe Gbenye, Radical Nationalist in Congo, Dies at 88". The New York Times. New York. Retrieved 18 January 2016.
Works cited
- Le Courier Africain (1967). "Biographical Information of Rebel Leaders". Translations on Sub-Saharan Africa, No. 524. United States Joint Publications Research Service. pp. 15–21.
- Villafana, Frank (2017) [1st pub. 2009]. Cold War in the Congo: The Confrontation of Cuban Military Forces, 1960-1967. Abingdon; New York City: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-4128-4766-7.