It is interesting to note that although Che’s mission to the Congo was a bitter defeat for him and his Cuban companions, the lessons Cuba’s leaders learned from this unsuccessful effort to assist the Congolese rebels helped them to be much more successful in the military and political support they provided to liberation movements and leftist governments throughout Africa during the following decades. Without a doubt, the best example of this success was Cuba’s involvement in Angola.
Between April 1965, when Che fi rst promised Antônio Agostinho Neto the leader of the liberation movement fi ghting the Portuguese co- lonial rulers of Angola that Cuba would assist the liberation struggle in his country, and May 1991, when the last Cuban combatants left An- gola, some 450,000 Cubans (7% of the Cuban population) had served in this worn-torn country (Harris 2009). They helped the liberation move- ment gain Angola’s independence and then helped the new government of President Neto defeat two South African military interventions and a bloody insurgency backed by the U.S. government. They also helped the Angolan government repulse an invasion from Zaire (now the Dem- ocratic Republic of the Congo) in the longest and largest military cam- paign in Africa since World War II.
Cuban support played a key role in Angola’s liberation and defense and in the liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde from Portuguese
colonial domination, and Cuba also helped defend the newly indepen- dent government of the Congo Republic (Brazzaville), formerly a French colony, from neocolonial forces intent on overturning it. They played an important role in the liberation of Mozambique from Portuguese co- lonial rule, as well as the liberation of the white-settler-controlled for- mer British colony of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Moreover, the Cuban military victories against the white South African forces in Angola greatly contributed to the liberation of Namibia and to the ultimate downfall of the white supremacist apartheid regime in South Africa it- self. This regime was greatly weakened by the demoralizing defeat the combined Cuban, Angolan, and Namibian forces infl icted on the white South African troops in Angola and Namibia.
Nelson Mandela, the fi rst president of the new Republic of South Africa, established after the downfall of the racist apartheid regime in that country, is among the many African leaders who have praised the Cubans for the assistance they provided in these struggles for indepen- dence. He has repeatedly thanked the Cubans for their contribution to the victory of his people over racist domination and imperialism. For example, at the public opening of the Southern Africa–Cuba Solidarity Conference in 1995, President Mandela (1995) said:
Cubans came to our region as doctors, teachers, soldiers, agricul- tural experts, but never as colonizers. They have shared the same trenches with us in the struggle against colonialism, underdevelop- ment, and apartheid. Hundreds of Cubans have given their lives, literally, in a struggle that was, fi rst and foremost, not theirs but ours. As Southern Africans we salute them. We vow never to forget this unparalleled example of selfl ess internationalism.
At a more individual level, Che’s brief presence in the Congo changed dramatically the life of the Congolese teenager who served as his trans- lator during the months he and his companions operated in the Fizi Baraka mountain range near the border between the Congo and Tan- zania. Freddy Ilanga, who spoke both Swahili and French, had been a newspaper vendor and was just 16 years old when he was assigned by the rebel leadership to serve as Che’s translator during the time he and his Cuban comrades carried out their then secret mission of providing
support to the Congolese rebels. Freddy Ilanga’s brief encounter with the legendary Che and his Cuban companions placed him on the path of an incredible journey that took him from being a teenage rebel in the eastern Congo to Cuba where he studied medicine, married a Cuban woman, and became a brain surgeon.
As a young African who saw the whites in his country as racist op- pressors, he knew nothing about the Cuban Revolution and at fi rst he considered Che to be a sarcastic white man (Doyle 2004). But he soon came to admire Che. He was particularly impressed with how Che treated the Africans around him with respect. In those days in the Congo, this was something Freddy had never seen.
Shortly before Che and his companions pulled out of the Congo, they arranged for Freddy to be sent to Cuba, where he fi nished his schooling, went to the university to become a doctor, and then specialized in pedi- atric neurosurgery. Although Freddy never returned to the Congo before he died in Cuba, today in Africa there are hundreds of Cuban doctors and African doctors who were trained in Cuba (Harris 2009).
Ironically, Kabila seized control of the government of the Congo in 1997, at the head of a military force that originated in the same region of the country where Che and his Cuban comrades had established their training base in 1965. Backed by the governments of Rwanda and Uganda, Kabila’s forces managed to topple the long-time dictato- rial regime of General Mobutu Sese Seko, the U.S.-backed military strongman who had seized power in November 1965, the same month Che and his men were forced to abandon their mission in the Congo. Kabila was assassinated by a member of his own staff in an unsuccess- ful coup attempt in 2001, and his son replaced him as the Congolese head of state.