"Black Jack" Jean Schramme: Congo Mercenary, Part Two

 In 1964, when the Simba Rebellion broke out, Schramme, along with Mike Hoare, Bob Denard, and others, were recruited into the ANC by Moise Tshombe. Schramme was active between 1964-67 in the Congo up until the Mercenary Revolt when General Mobutu assumed control of the Congo and began to reduce the amount of active White mercenaries. Mobutu felt that the White mercenaries undermined the competence of the ANC as a whole.

Bob Denard warned Jean Schramme that General Mobutu was ready to dissolve the last of the mercenaries left and keep Tshombe from being reinstated as the Prime Minister. On July 3rd, 1967, Schramme started an uprising in the Tshopo province against Mobutu along with fellow mercenaries Bob Denard and Jerry Puren. According to Puren, the uprising was part of a plan to restore Moise Tshombe back to power but it ended up being derailed by the hijacking. Tshombe was imprisoned in Algeria for over 2 years and ended up dying from "mysterious circumstances.

The mercenaries planned to move south and link up exiles in Katanga crossing from Angola. Jack Malloch, the Rhodesian pilot and gun-runner, supplied Schramme's forces with flights and began supplying him with weapons. On the morning of July 5th, 1967, 10 Commando launched surprise attacks on Stanleyville, Kindu, and Bukavu. Schramme led the attack on the ANC army's barracks at Stanleyville, with a force of only 11 white mercenaries and about 100 Katangese exiles.

The attack killed hundreds of ANC soldiers and their families, and ended up with the ANC retaliation being that 30 mercenaries not involved in the coup attempt were to be executed. Schramme's plans had been described as "badly executed" and he was criticized for behaving with over-confidence in believing that his small force would be enough to take the whole of Stanleyville. The ANC took back Stanleyville in about a week. In 1968, the European mercenaries returned to Belgium, and almost 20 years later, on April 17th 1986, Jean Schramme was sentenced to 20 years in prison for murder. Schramme was not in Belgium at the time of the sentence and died in Brazil 1988.