Credit given to Soviets was long overdue

I WAS LISTENING to President Jacob Zuma’s speech on Sunday on arrival of the mortal remains of the late JB Marks and Moses Kotane in South Africa from Russia.

I was extremely happy to hear him crediting the former Soviet Russia and all its satellite states (Bulgaria, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia). This was long overdue. The incumbent South African president is not my favourite person, but I was happy to hear him recognise the role the Soviets played in our liberation struggle.

We should not forget that the Nationalist government feared what they called communist expansion in southern Africa and they used all their military power to fight whoever was assisted by the Soviets and its satellite states.

Their involvement in Angola and Namibia are examples of this. I will not forget the late and former leaders of the Soviet Union such as Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Andrei Gromyko, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev.

We would not be where we are without them.

They provided us with the capacity that enabled the liberation movements to end apartheid. China, Cuba and Libya must also be recognised.

Today we have new friends like England, the US and France, but these countries denied us support during our political struggle, labelling our liberation movements “terrorist organisations”. I just wonder if comrades Marks and Kotane would have been happy with our government under the ANC if they were still alive.

Durban