Kisangani Mutinies

The Kisangani Mutinies, also known as the Stanleyville Mutinies or Mercenaries' Mutinies, were a continuation of the Congo Crisis. The First Kisangani Mutiny was in 1966, the Second was in 1967.

First Mutiny

Amid rumours that the ousted prime minister Tshombe was plotting a comeback from his exile in Spain, some 2,000 of Tshombe's former Katangan gendarmes, led by mercenaries, mutinied in Kisangani (formerly Stanleyville) in July 1966. The mutiny was unsuccessful and was crushed.

econd Mutiny

Exactly a year after the failure of the first mutiny, another broke out, again in Kisangani, apparently triggered by the news that Tshombe's airplane had been hijacked over the mediterranean and forced to land in Algiers, where he was held prisoner. Led by a Belgian settler named Jean Schramme and involving approximately 100 former Katangan gendarmes and about 1,000 Katangese, the mutineers held their ground against the 32,000-man Congolese National Army (Armée Nationale Congolaise; ANC) for four months until November 1967, when Schramme and his mercenaries crossed the border into Rwanda and surrendered to the local authorities.