Cuba’s Fidel Castro: A hero or tyrant?

LAST Friday the Cuban revolutionary giant Fidel Castro

the commander-in-chief of the famous island’s revolution who ruled his country for about 50 years fell. His death marked the end of an era.

Naturally, given his complex history and legacy it was not easy for the world to write epitaphs and obituaries for the El Comandante.

His admirers always said Castro was first and foremost always committed to a dream of an egalitarian society. He despised any system in which one class or group of people dominated and lived much better than another. He wanted a system that provided the basic needs to all enough to eat, health care, water, housing and education. They also said the authoritarian nature of the Cuban revolution and his rule stemmed largely from his commitment to that goal. Castro was convinced that he was right, and that his system was for the good of the people. Thus, anyone who stood against the revolution stood also against the Cuban people and that, in Castro’s eyes, was simply unacceptable. There was, then, very little in the way of individual freedoms, especially freedom of expression and assembly. And there were political prisoners those who have expressed positions against the revolution, fierce repression and human rights abuses, as well as rigid dogma and economic ruin. Lionised by many, dismissed by others as a man who locked his people in a socialist prison, there is no doubt that Cuba’s former leader made the island matter.

For opponents, he was a tyrant who locked his people in a socialist dungeon and threw away the keys.

To his supporters including Africans whom he helped to liberate from colonial rule he was a revolutionary, an anti-imperialist and a hero. Indisputably, however, Castro was one of the most remarkable political figures of his generation and time.