Let’s emulate the revolutionaries of the ’60s
I’VE always felt a deep sense of envy towards the ’60s. It’s as if all monumental things happened and ended then.
There were the Kennedy brothers taking the lead in the introduction of a new order of things; Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X charging the walls of the continental US; the young Patrice Lumumba – a symbol of African unity and solidarity; Amilcar Cabral, the leader of the west African liberation movement for the Independence of Guinea; and Cape Verde, the intellectual, poet, theoretician, revolutionary, political organiser, nationalist and diplomat.
Then there was Mehdi Ben Barka, the leader of the Moroccan opposition and Eduardo Mondlane, the leader of Mozambique’s Frelimo who laid down his life for the truth.
Thomas Sankara had the courage to turn his back on the old formulas and invent the future; Oliver Tambo sold a vision of a South Africa in which black and white would live and work together as equals; Che Guevara and Fidel Castro were fully aware the burden on them was greater than any other given to a generation.
The loss 50 years ago of most of these leaders who had a common political project based on national dignity, crippled each of their countries. The effects are still evident today. Those who worked with Joseph Kennedy speak of the many times Kennedy would watch Che Guevara from a distance with admiration, seeing a lot of the same revolutionary passion of seeking a new world order as he had.
On November 18, 1963 at the Americana Hotel in Miami Beach – four days before John F Kennedy’s assassination, he instructed his delegate to the UN, to secretly call Castro’s aide and physician, Rene Vallejo, to discuss a possible secret meeting in Havana between ambassador William Attwood and Castro that might improve the Cuban-American relationship. Unfortunately JFK made that trip to Texas from which he never came back. Kennedy was fully aware there wasn’t much separating the thinking of young people; they all represented this palpable new thing, a world without war, acknowledging what an international community we had become.
The Kennedy brothers were the first to challenge the belief there was nothing one man or woman could do against the world’s ills.
The belief one person can change the world, drove Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Felix Moumie of Cameroon, Sylvanus Olympio of Togo and many others. Many of the greatest movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man.
The first thing that was clear from the ’60s was the world demanded the qualities of youth – not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure. It was an understanding that made a monk begin the Protestant Reformation, a young general extend an empire from Macedonia to the ends of the Earth, a woman reclaim French territory and an Italian explorer discover the New World.
All continents and countries had similar stories: the young leaders inherited countries that were divided into a rich and predominantly white half and a poor and predominantly black half.
The world couldn’t be guided by one set of thinking: Che, Castro, Kennedy, Tambo, Lumumba gave the world a leap forward and could have done even better had they reached out to one another the way they secretly wanted to.
President Jacob Zuma is correct to say: “We must endeavour to take forward the ideals that Castro espoused – internationalism, freedom, equality, justice and a better and more just world.”
This internationalism and fight for justice led Robert Kennedy to say: “We could agree on what kind of a world we would all want to build. It would be a world of independent nations, moving toward international community, each of which protected and respected the basic human freedoms. It would be a world which demanded of each government that it accept its responsibility to insure social justice. It would be a world of constantly accelerating economic progress – not material welfare as an end in itself, but as a means to liberate the capacity of every human being to pursue his talents and to pursue his hopes. It would, in short, be a world that we would be proud to have built.”
When the DA walked out of Parliament when it was time to honour Castro, its ignorance and political shallowness betrayed it. It’s the ignorance that can accept Mandela and reject Castro, welcome Kennedy but reject Guevara.
Even at the height of the antagonism between the US and Cuba in 1961, two weeks after the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Castro was overheard saying: “We do not endanger the life or security of a single North American family. We are making co-operatives, agrarian reform, people’s ranches, houses, schools, literacy campaigns, and sending thousands and thousands of teachers to the interior, building hospitals, sending doctors, giving scholarships, building factories, increasing the productive capacity of our country, creating public beaches, converting fortresses into schools, and giving the people the right to a better future. We do not endanger a single US family or a single US citizen.”
Castro deserves his honour, here on God’s Earth as a man who did all he could to develop his people and forge relations with all those who would extend a hand of friendship. Yonela Diko ANC Western Cape Media liaison officer Cape Town