Christophe Gbenye
| Christophe Gbenye | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Minister of the Interior of Congo-Léopoldville | |
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In office 30 June 1960 – September 1960 |
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| President | Joseph Kasa-Vubu |
| Preceded by | position established |
| Succeeded by | Cyrille Adoula |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1927 Orientale Province, Belgian Congo (Now Congo-Kinshasa) |
| Died | 3 February 2015 (aged 88) |
| Political party |
Mouvement National Congolais Comité National de Libération |
Christophe Gbenye (c.1927 – 3 February 2015) was a Congolese politician, trade unionist, and rebel who, along with Pierre Mulele and 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.
Christophe Gbenye was born in the Orientale Province in the Belgian Congo in 1927 as a member of the Mbua tribe. Relatively little is known about his early life. 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 Federation of Belgian Labour which in 1951 became the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of the Congo.
Gbenye joined Patrice Lumumba's independence oriented Mouvement National Congolais (MNC-L) in the late 1950s, and became a prominent leader of the party by 1959. Lumumba appointed him minister of the interior in the first Congolese parliament in 1960 following independence. In September, President Joseph Kasa-Vubu dismissed Lumumba from his position as prime minister. Gbenye was also dismissed, and he retired to Stanleyville where he enjoyed political support. Lumumba's eventual arrest and execution in January 1961 deeply angered Gbenye, though he did briefly return to his position as interior minister under Cyrille Adoula's coalition government. He replaced Lumumba as president of the MNC-L. However, Gbenye was seen as a political liability by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, which was largely responsibly for Adoula's rise to power. Adoula then dismissed Gbenye, ostensibly because of his political rivalry with the Victor Nendaka Bika, though Gbenye remained in parliament through early 1962. He then briefly returned to eastern Congo, then under the control of Antoine Gizenga's rebel government.
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