Demonstrators Protest Over Execution of Pierre Mulele | Lumumbist Guerrilla Leader | October 1968

Footage from Brazzaviile, capital of the Congo Republic where demonstrators protested over the execution of Pierre Mulele in his native Congo-Kinshasa.

The demonstration took place outside the Embassy of Congo-Kinshasa whose leader President Joseph Mobutu had lured Mulele, who had been living in exile, back to the Congo by Mobutu under the pretext of an amnesty. However, Mulele was seized, tortured and then executed a day after Mobutu had rejected an appeal for clemency after a military tribunal had sentenced him to death.

Some of the 1,000 demonstrators attacked the embassy after climbing fences surrounding the buidling. They broke doors and smashed windows with stones.

Mulele was a Lumumbist who wanted to continue the ideas of Congo's fallen leader Patrice Lumumba. The Kwilu Rebellion of 1963 to 1965 was led by Mulele, and like the Simba Rebellion of 1964, was an attempt to dislodge the Western-backed central government and create a socialist state.

This was done with the backdrop of the Cold War struggle between the Western powers and the Communist world, that is the Eastern Bloc led by the USSR and Red China.

Mulele, who was Minister for Education during Lumumba's period as head of government, was a Chinese trained guerrilla. It was a bloody affair and the rebellion was eventually put down.

The ideological rivalry between Congo Brazzaville and Congo Kinshasa would become one of the lesser known flashpoints of the Cold War on the African continent.

The Congo-Brazzaville government formally protested to their Congo-Kinshasa counterparts because they claimed that they had been given guarantees about the safety of Mulele when his contacted the embassy of his homeland ith a view to returning to his homeland.