BARAKA, DR Congo: “This is the story of a failure,” Marxist guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara wrote in his journal after a bid to bring “revolutionary war” to the Congo 50 years ago.

Che arrived secretly at the head of a dozen Cuban fighters of black African origin on April 24, 1965, to join rebels in what today is the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Their aim was to make the heart of Africa a bulwark against neocolonialism and “Yankee imperialism.”

Sent by Cuba’s communist leader — and Washington’s arch-enemy — Fidel Castro, the expeditionary force disembarked in the east after crossing Lake Tanganyika from Tanzania, then moved onto the lakeside town of Baraka.

“He came as a friend and a lover of revolution,” recalled Andre Shibunda, local branch leader of the main party behind current President Joseph Kabila, son of a former rebel chief in the eastern mountains.

The Argentine-born guerilla “spent a while with us in the forest, but he found that our leaders lacked political maturity and he preferred to go,” Shibunda said of Che’s seven-month adventure with the Simba (“Lion” in Swahili) rebels in South Kivu province.

In “The African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo,” Che wrote that Baraka had “displayed traces of its former relative prosperity, including a cotton-baling machine, but everyone had been ruined by the war and the little factory was bombed out.”

In five years after rushed independence from Belgium in 1960, the Congo endured successive conflicts, including a secession bid by the mineral-rich southeastern province of Katanga.

Independence leader and first elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba sought help from the United States, but tarnished his image in Washington’s eyes during a disastrous visit. He then turned to the Soviet Union, making him a prime Cold War target and — though still held in high regard by many in his divided country — was assassinated in January 1961. The question of direct US involvement is still being debated today.