Christophe Gbenye

Christophe Gbenye ( 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.

Early life Christophe Gbenye was born in Bagbe, Bas-Uélé District, Orientale Province in the Belgian Congo in 1927 as a member of the Mobua tribe. Relatively little is known about his early life. Gbenye received his secondary education at the Marist Brothers school in Buta. 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. Gbenye led the CNL's more moderate faction and was opposed to the pro-Mulele CNL radicals under Egide Bocheley-Davidson. At first, he supported continued attempts to rally international "progressive" states to pressure the Léopoldville leadership into forming a new "public salvation" government, controlled by the Lumumbists in the Congolese parliament.

When peaceful efforts to oust the Adoula government failed, Gbenye ultimately led his CNL faction into an open uprising. This insurgency escalated into the Simba rebellion, as CNL-affiliated forces -dubbed "Simbas" and prominently led by commanders like Gaston Soumialot, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, Nicholas Olenga- overran much of the eastern Congo. Gbenye returned to the Congo 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). Yet Gbenye's regime effectively collapsed when the Simba rebels were driven from Stanleyville during Operation Dragon Rouge in November 1964, though Simba groups persisted across eastern Congo and Gbenye continued to claim the presidency from exile.

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. 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. 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.

In 2010 the then 83-year-old Gbenye was living in retirement in Kinshasa. He died on 3 February 2015.