Mercenary rebellion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1967

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The mercenary rebellion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1967 was a military conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo , which from July to November 1967 first struck Stanleyville ( Kisangani ) and then the region around the city of Bukavu .

background

Belgium withdrew from the Belgian Congo in early 1959 . On June 30, 1960, the Congo became an independent state. Patrice Lumumba became the first Prime Minister and Joseph Kasavubu became the first President of the Congo. But the country could not stabilize. A civil war began as a result of the independence of the Congo . In the course of the Simba uprising , the rebel chief Moïse Tschombé employed around 1,500 mercenaries . Many prominent mercenaries such as Siegfried Müller ("Kongo-Müller") or Mike Hoare were active in the Congo during this time. With his mercenaries, Tschombé managed to rule large parts of the Congo for a time. However, Mobutu Sese Seko subsequently succeeded in displacing the troops and mercenaries from Chombé. Under the leadership of Jean Schramme , the mercenaries and 950 former gendarmes of the former free Katanga province occupied an area around the city of Bukavu on August 8, 1967 . The aim of the occupation was to free the former Prime Minister Moise Tschombé, who had been arrested in Algeria on June 30, 1967. Schramme offered Mobutu peace negotiations and otherwise threatened to attack the capital Kinshasa . Mobutu refused to negotiate. Mobutu's troops were able to encircle the city. The mercenary leader Bob Denard tried to end the encirclement of the city with other mercenary units coming from Angola. Mobutu's troops could also defeat Denard's unit. The city was then besieged by an army of 15,000 men. This represented around half of all troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo . Mobutu's attempts to mediate through the Red Cross failed. As a result of the siege, the mercenaries ran out of ammunition and supplies. The remainder of the mercenary army fled on October 29, 1967 and on November 6, 1967 the last survivors of the mercenary army were able to cross the border into Rwanda . In Rwanda, the mercenaries and their allies were fed and cared for by the Red Cross. Mobutu asked for the mercenaries to be extradited from Rwanda, but the President of Rwanda Grégoire Kayibanda refused. The Belgian airline Sabena flew the mercenaries out of the country. Fearing that the mercenaries might force the plane to take a different route by force of arms and force a stop in what was then Portuguese, Angola or South Africa , several African countries refused to grant overflight rights. During the period of occupation, there were massacres of civilians in Bukavu. The death toll of the civilian population is estimated at around 1,020 people. The city of Bukavu was almost completely destroyed in the fighting.

Trivia

The reporter Randy Braumann documented the uprising for the magazine stern .

Schramme and numerous other mercenaries were repatriated in Belgium, but only received passports with a visible note "not valid for Africa".

literature

  • SJG Clarke: The Congo Mercenary: A history and analysis , South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), 1968, pp. 68–78, here :, accessed April 10, 2014
  • Ruth Margaret Delaforce: A Mafia for the State. Mercenary Soldiers and Private Security Contractors 1946–2009 , Thesis, Griffith University 2010, pp. 158–165, here :, accessed April 10, 2014
  • Hans Germani : The beautiful days of the mercenaries in Bukavu are drawing to a close. Schramme's men enjoyed the "sweet life" for a long time . In: Die Welt , November 3, 1967, p. 3.
  • Anthony Mockler: The new mercenaries . Corgi Books, London 1986, ISBN 0-552-12558-X , pp. 131-161
  • Burkard Freiherr von Müllenheim-Rechberg : Abduction and death of Moïse Tshombe: the end of a hope for the Congo . LIT-Verlag, Münster 1998, ISBN 3-8258-3940-0
  • Peter Scholl-Latour : Murder on the great river - A quarter of a century of African independence . DVA, 1986, ISBN 3-421-06307-9
  • Jean Schramme: Le Bataillon Léopard. Souvenirs d'un Africain blanc . Paris 1969
  • Torsten Thomas, Gerhard Wiechmann: Modern Landsknechte or Military Specialists? The “rebirth” of mercenaries in the 20th century in the Congo, 1960–1967 . In: Stig Förster, Christian Jansen, Günther Kronenbitter (eds.): Return of the Condottieri? War and the military between state monopoly and privatization: from antiquity to the present . Paderborn u. a. 2009, pp. 265-282.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ German mercenaries abroad . ( Memento from May 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , July 29, 2006
  2. ↑ White giants . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1967 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Mobutu drove out the mercenaries . In: Die Zeit , No. 45/1967
  4. ^ The Congo: Ultimatum from Bukavu . In: Time , August 18, 1967
  5. ↑ Bob Denard - On a secret mission .
  6. ↑ Fear of departure . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1968 ( online ).
  7. ↑ Report from the University of Hamburg on the mercenary leader Jean Schramme and the occupation of Bukavus ( Memento from August 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Jürgen Sieber: Where, please, is the next war going? In: Tagesspiegel , February 10, 2008 (portrait of Randolph Braumann; Braumann reports there that he wrote the government declaration of the mercenary republic.)
  9. ↑ Munzinger Archive : Article on Jean Schramme (Internationales Biographisches Archiv 20/1968 of May 6, 1968)