allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Cuba - Farewell Fidel, Farewell Commandant (Page 1 of 4)

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."

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