Nov 27
Cuba’s direct, extensive, critical and decisive role in the struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa is little known in the West. As 2012 marches into 2013, we are in the midst of the 25th anniversary of a series of military engagements that profoundly altered the history of southern Africa…
KAREN LEE WALD:
One reader commented that he believed most Cubans who fought alongside the Angolans and Namibians against South Africa’s apartheid regime were black. Isaac Saney clarifies this.
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From: Isaac Saney
The Cuban soldiers who served in Angola were black, white. and “mixed”.
Because I wanted to limit the length of the article, I did not deal in detail with:
1. How quite a few Black soldiers reconnected with their African roots., especially as so many Cubans can trace their African roots to Angola via the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade;
2. How the fact that white soldiers would shed their blood for Africans and against racism, says a lot about the reality that racism is not eternal and can be significantly altered/mitigated by a genuine revolution. I am not saying that Cuba has eliminated racism (there are still consider problems on this front), but it has made significant progress in the struggle to create a society and ethos that is anti-racist;.
3. The Cuban nation that emerged out of the independence struggles of the 19th century was re-affirmed by the Cuban Revolution. This nation is a fusion of Africa and Spain (together with the Taino, Chinese etc).
At one point Fidel declared Cuba to be a “Latin-African nation. He further argued (as have others in the revolutionary leadership) that Cuba had a debt to repay to Africa because of the horrors of slavery and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Cuba has been on the most consistent and vociferous supporters of reparations to Africa and members of the African Diaspora for the predations of slavery and colonialism.
I deal with the issue of “race” in Cuba’s internationalist mission in Angola two articles published in the academic journal Latin American perspectives in 2006 and 2009, respectively: “African Stalingrad: Cuba, the War in Angola and the End of Apartheid’, and “Homeland of Humanity: Internationalism Within the Cuban Revolution.” Both available in PDF at:
http://www.normangirvan.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/saney-african-stalingrad-pdf-111.pdf
http://www.normangirvan.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/homeland-of-humanity.pdf
In my forthcoming book, I will also engage this subject again.
Karen Wald’s additional comments re Cuba & Angola:
– From 1982-2001 I was based in Cuba as a foreign correspondent, stringing for a variety of media. One of the papers I wrote for –The Christian Science Monitor — at one point asked for an article about how sending troops to Angola affected and was viewed by families in Cuba. One of the most unexpected and memorable responses I received was, “Yes, my daughters really miss their grandmother, who is in Luanda.”
– A driver for the Friendship Institute in Cuba, who had grown up in a rural area without schools, and only finished high school after the Revolution, was one of the tens of thousands who volunteered to go to Angola. He talked about the impact witnessing Angola poverty had on him. “I thought I knew what being poor was all about,” he told me.
“But being in Angola was a real eye-opener. I had never imagined even in the worst periods of my childhood that people could have such a total lack of food, housing and clothing. In a lot of ways it was like the lessons that young urban-dwelling students who went out to the Cuban countryside on the literacy brigades got. They often said they learned more than they taught from that experience. Angola was this generation’s literacy brigade experience.”
–After Angola became independent, and revolutionary leaders like Agostinho Neto had died, Angola was free, but did not turn towards socialism. I asked one Cuban leader if Cubans were disappointed by this. “You know, we didn’t fight so that Angola would become socialist,” he answered thoughtfully. “We fought so that they could make the decision for themselves.”Wald also points out.
The significance of the defeat of South African,US backed forces,by the Cuban and Angolan is not generally known here. In fact the US independence legend is known by our “half-educated” – we still do not understand they were not fighting for freedom as the US claims, but they were fighting to keep the profits of their colony for themselves – this profit though depended on genocide of the native population and the enslavement Africans! It should be a source of pride to all Caribbean persons. I first came across this blow against imperialism,more than a decade after it happened – an article discussing why Nelson Mandela hugged Fidel Castro at his inauguration ceremony,while a handshake was reserved for all the other world leaders present. A proud moment for the people of Africa and the Caribbean. My Caribbean pride was dented a bit,when I learned that the Eric Williams led government of my country succumbed to pressure from the US and refused to refuel the Cuban planes – so well explained by Caribbean icon Bob Marley, “when you gonna get some food huh brother gotta be your enemy” (Ambush in the night)
(In reply to Ravi) Your point is well taken. We – in the Caribbean – can recite the US national anthem and name every State capital of the Union. Yet, what do we know of each other? Cuba’s selfless assistance to Africa ever since the triumph of the Revolution should be a source of immense pride for the entire Caribbean. Too many of us remain aloof, disdainful, suspicious and even condemnatory of all that Cuba has done for herself; for Africa and for us, in terms of educational and medical assistance. It is good that we have stood by Cuba politically in her battles against the United States embargo. Caribbean people must go one step further in embracing Cuba AS ONE OF US; a sister country with so much to offer and in need of our solidarity. Viva Cuba!!