I write about Cde Fidel Castro with a sense of pride. What gives one this pride is the contribution that he and his brother Raul have and continue to make to the advancement of the human race. Their fight against injustice, human suffering, a better and just society. An internationalist to the marrow who understood the need for solidarity.
Mandela, in notes for what was intended to be a sequel to his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” wrote: “Men and women, all over the world, right down the centuries, come and go. Some leave nothing behind, not even their names. It would seem they never existed at all.”
We will always know a man named Fidel Castro who lived in this world and helped in the liberation struggle. He will never be forgotten, not even by his enemies. His unshakable anti-colonial and anti-apartheid beliefs guarantee a special place for him in our hearts. This however does not mean he was perfect. He obviously wasn’t. But then who is? But still his outstanding support for our struggle against colonialism and racism cannot be denied.
The Cubans came to liberate us but did not seek our resources. Mandela explains further, “it was the first time that a country had come from another continent not to take something away, but to help Africans to achieve their freedom.” While the small country called Cuba was giving much needed support to the liberation movements, the US in particular was aiding apartheid dominance. Even after our liberation as Southern Africa from the racist South African Apartheid regime, the developing world continue to receive humanitarian assistance from the Cubans.
Cuba helped in Algeria’s liberation struggle against France and in Congo, now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Acting under instructions from Fidel Castro, Che Guevara in 1964 went on a three-month visit to a number of African countries. “The Cubans believed there was a revolutionary situation in central Africa, and they wanted to help” says the historian Piero Gleijeses.
Amilcar Cabral, who fought against Portuguese colonialism in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, sought Cuban assistance. Following the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974, and with the support through a small Cuban force, Guinea-Bissau finally won independence in an insurgence that lasted nearly a decade.
The Cubans helped in the defeat of a US-supported proxy force of the South African apartheid army and Angolan “rebels”. These instances were the first times South Africa’s army was defeated, a humbling experience that the apartheid regime’s white generals still, in retirement, find hard to stomach. It also prove that the apartheid regime was not invincible and could be defeated.
Gleijeses went further to say that in December 2013, at the time of Mandela’s passing, black South Africans understood the significance of these defeats. A black South African newspaper, The World, wrote about the skirmishes: “Black Africa is riding the crest of a wave generated by the Cuban victory in Angola.”
In 1966 Cuba hosted the Tri-Continental Conference, a meeting of leaders from national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It also provided military training and other support to them. One can give examples of Operation Vula, Cassinga Massacre, Cuito Cuanavale. The most significant of them being Cuito Cuanavale. Defeat for the liberation movements in Cuito Cuanavale would have set the struggle for the liberation of Southern Africa backwards. Around this time the ANC and Swapo had their main camps in Angola. South Africa and America fought hard to destabilise Angola under the rooi gevaar context and ensured that it never enjoyed its hard fought independence. Through the tacit support of the Cubans they survived this onslaught. Cubans sacrificed their lives for us. It lost its soldiers in the biggest proxy war that the region has ever experienced. Cde Castro had deployed thousands of elite Cuban troops to fight for freedom. Loss at Cuito Cuanavale would have been defeat for all the oppressed people of Southern Africa and victory to racist South Africa and the imperialism they represented”, says Cde Dr Hage Geingob. The defeat of the South African apartheid regime led to an accord signed in 1988 which paved the way for Namibian Independence. It also pushed the regime to the negotiations table with the African National Congress.
But who is this Fidel Castro? The man reactionaries love to hate. This charismatic and unrelenting man who survived about 600 CIA assassination plots and became the longest serving non-royal leader in the 20th century. The man who refused to accept a yearly lease rental from the US over a piece of land that short to prominence following the 9/11 attacks and was used as a detention camp. Although his country was short of money, Cde Castro refused to accept the money from the US labeling the lease agreement entered into with his predecessors, illegal occupation. To some he is a ruthless autocrat while to others he is a symbol of hope.
Cde Castro lived with poor Haitian labourers in his father’s farm. The interaction with them shaped his politics as he was able to interact with poverty first hand. He excelled in sports, especially basketball.
“I did not rebel against my father, that was hard as he was a man with a good heart. I rebelled against authority”, he said on his rebellion. Castro was also impressed by Chibas’ popular message of social justice and the fight against corruption, as he wrote in a Youth newspaper, Juventud Rebelde in August 26, 2007.
He was brave and encouraged his people to be tenacious in the face of imperialist onslaught. When Gorbachev introduced his policies of perestroika and glasnost in the then USSR which were seen as a capitulation of socialism, Cuba lost subsidies worth about $6 Billion from the USSR. It greatly affected its ability to deliver to its people but it soldiered on. Said Castro, within a week weak men surrender and go back to slavery, but we will not go back to slavery”. This inspired his people who resolved to defend the revolution.
Castro was a student of Karl Marx. He used his writings to search for a solution to the Cuban problems. “Marxism taught me what society was. I was like a blind man in a forest who does not even know where north or south is”. Together with his brother Raul, they began military training. This led to an attack on Moncada Garrison in Santiago. Due to the 140 cadres being outnumbered, they retreated. Fidel and Raul were imprisoned while some from the group of 140 who took part in the attack were executed. Like Mandela did in his famous treason trial, Castro, in his ‘History shall Absolve Me Speech’ used the opportunity to launch an attack on the Batista Regime. Batista had turned the trial into a media spectacle which Castro used to his advantage. Though he got a 15 year jail term, he had sent message across to the Cubans. ” With what right do the courts send to prison citizens who have tried to redeem their country by giving their own blood, their own lives?”
22 months later the Castro brothers were released from prison. In the midst of poverty, the country was a playground for the Mafia and rich American tourists. He together with his brother fled to Mexico where they met Ernesto “Che” Guevera. Said Che, ‘I had been linked to him… by the conviction that it would be worth dying on a foreign beach for such a pure ideal’. With him and other rebels adding up to 80 , they formed the “26th of July movement”. July 26th being the date of the Moncada Barracks attack. In 1956, when they arrived in Cuba, they were ambushed by Batista’s men and fled to the mountains. They regrouped and continued recruiting more people to their side. Cuba was getting more and more unequal and corrupt. In 1958, they launched a major onslaught on big towns. Batista fled Cuba and Castro entered Havana in 1959.
In 1960, he engaged the country in a campaign to eliminate illiteracy. 700 000 people were taught to read in just one year. In 1961, with the support of the CIA, exiled Cubans launched an invasion in the Bay of Pigs. It failed. The revolution was now under attack and it had to be defended. Forces of imperialism were at work. In May, 1961, multi-party elections were abolished. He said, “we accept opposition within the revolution, not outside the revolution”. The US and other counter-revolutionary forces were on a sworn mission to distabilise his country and would use the system to reverse the gains of the revolution.
In less than 72 hours we had totally wiped out that expedition A hard defeat for the empire. And a great humiliation, is how the leader summed it up.
The story of Cde Castro’s life, his lack of hesitation to give support where it mattered and his ability to raise his hand to fight against inhuman systems of the world, can best be summed up by a quotation from Jose Marti who said, ‘A true man does not seek path where advantage lies, but rather, the path where duty lies’.
