Sixty years ago: the Stanleyville massacre remembered
Major 'Mad Mike' Hoare and four units of his mercenary army stormed into Stanleyville, the rebel capital in the Republic of the Congo, on 24 November 1964, 60 years ago this month. But they were too late. The Simba rebels had just massacred 27 of the several hundred innocent hostages whom they were holding, and wounded many more. Even the 350 elite Belgian paratroopers who had dropped on Stanleyville airport early that morning from American C-130 transport aircraft, were unable to stop the carnage entirely.
Of this event, Mike Hoare later wrote in his first-hand account of the fighting in the Congo titled 'Congo Mercenary': "It was an act of unparalleled savagery. Stanleyville bore witness on 24 November 1964, to one of the most hideous and barbaric crimes of the century, a premeditated act of murder, for which the leaders of the rebel regime must one day be held accountable."
As it turned out, most of them were not. According to Chat GPT, post Stanleyville Gaston Soumialot, Christophe Gbenye and Nicolas Olenga fled to neighbouring countries. Pierre Mulele, however, a Maoist ideologue and a key figure in the rebellion, fled to Congo-Brazzaville but was lured back to the Congo with promises of amnesty by President Mobutu in 1968. He was arrested, tortured and executed in a truly gruesome manner as a warning to other rebels, according to Chat GPT.
Earlier in 1964 the communist-backed Simbas had overrun about half the country, and the Congolese government, with the support of America and Belgium, had brought in the mercenaries. The government wanted the Simbas out, the Americans wanted to secure their source of cobalt, an essential mineral in the race against Russia to the moon; and for the Belgians, it would keep their staggeringly wealthy copper mines of Katanga province in production.
Post Stanleyville, the mercenaries, also known as the Wild Geese, were given an extra task, to rescue about 2000 nuns and priests from depraved captivity, but again, tragically, they could not save all of them. Then 5 Commando cleared the north-east and north of the country, followed by a successful amphibious attack on the town of Baraka on Lake Tanganyika, near where, according to their intel, Che Guevara and about 110 Cuban revolutionaries were training local rebel units – without success.
By the end of 1965, the fire was out. Mike Hoare, who always said he had gone to the Congo to prevent his children from growing up speaking Russian, had had enough of "the horror" and left.
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