Not all MPs mourn passing of Castro
WHILE the ANC and EFF heaped praise on late Cuban President Fidel Castro, MPs differed on his legacy with the DA labelling him a “murderer”.
The DA also refused to stand for a moment of silence and to send its MPs as part of a multiparty delegation to his funeral in Havana.
MPs delivered motions in the National Assembly to note Castro’s death.
It was the first time parliament received a motion of a political leader from another country.
In its motion, the ANC’s Moses Masango said the “Cuban revolutionary” leader built the first communist state in the Western hemisphere.
“Since democracy, Cuba and the Republic of South Africa have enjoyed a special bond founded on mutual interests and co-operation, and that President Nelson Mandela bestowed on President Castro the Order of Good Hope in 1998,” said Masango.
He said Castro even addressed a joint sitting of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces “reflecting on the enormous responsibility and historical task in creating the new South Africa”.
Masango said Castro campaigned for the release of Nelson Mandela and unbanning of the ANC.
Masango added that Deputy Speaker Lechesa Tsenoli will lead a multi-party delegation to Cuba to pay last respects, but the DA had refused to attend.
The DA’s Michael Cardo said there can be no doubt that Castro was a friend to the ANC and “an ally of the oppressed” in apartheid South Africa.
“Yet that was not the totality of his life history. Amidst the euphemistic eulogies and honeyed homages – beyond the hackneyed verbiage of internationalism and solidarity – the world would do well to remember that, at home, Castro was an oppressor, a torturer and a murderer,” said Cardo.
EFF chief whip Floyd Shivambu said his party saluted the life of a revolutionary and “de facto leader” of the anti-colonial movement all over the world.
Writing in the SACP’s online publication Umsebenzi, the party’s general secretary and Higher Education Minister, Blade Nzimande, said the SACP dipped its red flag “to mourn ... undoubtedly one of the greatest revolutionaries human society has ever produced”.