Published by the government of Zimbabwe
23 February 2008
opinion
Harare — THIS week we witnessed a momentous development, one quite poignant to me personally. Let me confess, I have a soft spot for Cuba, Cuban Revolution and Cuban Leadership. A real soft spot. I have devoured literature on the Cuban revolution as if there is no tomorrow. Within that broad read, I have traced striking strands, which coalesce to make what is known as the Cuban Revolution. You are struck by the sheer depth of that revolution, the sheer numbers of historical personages which that Revolution yielded, all of them individuals of consequence in their own right.
Each life in that struggle is an admirable lesson in struggle. I am talking of other personages drawing from the Revolution, other than Fidel Castro and the late Che Guevara. Even Sierra Maestra, itself a mere mountain range, gets animated, indeed becomes a guerrilla fighter, so trenchantly opposed to America's Batista. Its dense vegetation, its bitter cold, its awesome ravines, its swift streams, its falsely serene and dozing but deadly sloughs, all these became part of the arsenal of the Cuban Revolution. The story starts variously for different readers. I chose the leaky Granma --that small wretch of a boat into which Castro, his few men, fewer victuals and fewest guns, flung their intertwined and inseparable fates. It was a dark odyssey, one rendered madder by the sheer enormity of its hemispheric goal. That wretched collective sought to topple an American-backed dictatorship!
Saved by an assassin
I found quite riveting Che's account of an encounter in Sierra one night. The column, which Fidel led, had been infiltrated. One they took to be of their own, had been sent to eliminate Castro in order to stop the revolution. On this very cold night, blankets were too short to go round. Fortuitously, among those who could not cover their shaking limbs was the traitor. In a show of camaraderie, Castro elected to share his wafer-thin blanket with this agent and turncoat who was fully kitted for a remarkable assassin. What saved Castro was not training. It was the sheer enormity of his imposing personality, which simply sapped the assassin's urge to kill. Che's description of the hindsight fear is so forceful that you relive the moment.
Has he left, has he departed?
This week Castro formally resigned as Head of State of Cuba, and conjecture is that his brother Raul, will take over. It has been a drawn out succession, one America would have wanted to destabilise through sponsored rumours. Little does George Bush know that from 1959 when revolutionary Cuba was founded, to this day, Cuba has exhausted all its tricks in America's psych-op bag. We are talking here of a mature revolution, indeed one with depth. Still unrelenting America wants to know whether Fidel's departure means he has left.
It is a very stupid enquiry by an unthinking bully. Just how does a revolution depart or leave? It is the same folly we see here with their obsession with whether or not Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, has had another good morning, a long 84 years after. Castro can never leave; he only takes a walk. Such a tremendous character made all the more heroic by whose enemy he has been, cannot possibly die in Cuba when he lives so well on America's campuses and psyches. If America wants to know whether Castro has left, let them go to the John Kennedy School of Government and read what is on her children's T-shirts. The Commandant lives!
Defending the revolution
But I have personal encounters with this iconic figure. On at least four occasions, starting with our NAM of 1987. The latest was a mere two years back. The Commandant walked with a limp; often looked wizened and lost. Then his intellect would just burst into an avalanche of very penetrating questions, all of them demanding encyclopaedic detail. His intellect rang against yours, and you wilted. He would want to know the output of each mineral; the earnings from each, know how many listeners' radios there were in Zimbabwe, and where? You fumbled, you stammered.
He was so tolerant; he would suffer your little knowledge and vain attempt to stretch it or make up for it through volume and verbosity. At the end of it all, he got to me, this giant man of Cuba, leered and softly warned: "Young man, the defence of the revolution is in your hands. A revolution communicates and is always in the home of the people, talking to them." The advice rings deafening every day, and everyday ndinokakama. Farewell Commandant and well-deserved rest before your next revolutionary bustle.
Just this one question please!
But before I leave you Commandant, answer me this short one. Someday in April 1965, Major Che Guevara disappeared, the public knew not for where. There was intense speculation, including that you had killed your comrade-in-arms. No doubt the last interpretation had an American patent to it, all designed to destabilise your Cuba. You held your silence for a very long while, amidst all these searing rumours. Then you decided -- on October 3, 1965 -- to break that silence at a public square in the presence of Aleida, Guevara's wife fated to be widowed a mere two years later.
You produced a piece of letter that turned out to be epistle of a decisive moment in world history. Its most striking part read: "I feel that I have fulfilled that part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution in its territory and I say good-bye to you, to our comrades, to your people, who are my people. I formally resign from my responsibilities in the leadership of the Party, my post as Minister, my rank as Major, my Cuban citizenship. I have no legal ties to Cuba, only ties of another sort -- ties which cannot be given up as appointments to office can."
Here is my last embrace.
The writer was the legendary Che, your comrade-in-arms, the Argentinean who became a Cuban through struggle. Apart from this letter to you, Ernesto had also written his mother and father, in part stressing "In essence, nothing has changed, except that I am much more aware. My Marxism is firmly rooted and purified. I believe in the armed struggle as the only solution for the peoples who are struggling for their freedom and I act in accordance with my beliefs.
Many would call me an adventurer, and I am one; only of a different sort, one of those that risks his skin to demonstrate what he believes to be true. This may be the end. I do not seek it, but it is in my calculus of probabilities. If that is the way it turns out, here is my last embrace. I loved you very much, only I didn't know how to express my affection...." Two years later at Valle Grande, Bolivia, at exactly 1:40pm on October 9, Warrant Officer Mario Teran, having hesitated once, took a few steps forward to where Che lay, injured in a dilapidated rural classroom.
He pulled the infamous trigger of his American M-2 rifle, and fired. In moments, Che slipped "from a legend to a myth". Commandant, you used an epistle as a vehicle for announcing your resignation. Deliberately or otherwise, you throw memories back to Che, leaving many wondering what is it about Cuban politics and the letter form? But that is not my question to you Comrade. If you were to write a valediction to your comrades in the world -- to Southern African comrades with whom you fought and won wars -- what would you say to them? When will I receive it, Fidel?
Memories of Amilcar Cabral
There is no better way of paying homage to Fidel than to recall another revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral of Guinea Bissau and of PAIGC. This late revolutionary -- again slain by forces linked to America -- is in league with the likes of Nkrumah and Fanon, in developing a framework for Africa's unfolding revolution. I choose to highlight his thoughts shared with the rest of the world in January 1966 at the first Tricontinental Conference of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America held in Havana and graced by Fidel.
In his paper entitled "The weapon of Theory", Cabral challenges and broadens parameters of Marxist theory on class struggle, particularly its idolisation and fascination with the working class. Challenging the Marxist belief that history only starts moving once given modes of production create and differentiate classes, Cabral counter-argues that such a view suggests Africa which is largely a peasant continent under classical colonial foreign domination, would thus pass for terra incognita, a dark continent existing outside history. In place of this theory, he advances an alternative, founded on accent on how racist colonial strictures do fetter national forces of production and ownership structure in a way that turns a whole nation, a whole people, into a national working class.
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