Cuba can show us the way forward
THE street sweeper in the Plaza de Los Armas paused to light and enjoy a cigar. Not that there was much to sweep: in Cuba they don’t go in for plastic and packaging and disposable containers. But a job had thus been created and the streets are certainly clean.
And safe. In our three weeks in Cuba, we never felt threatened or uneasy, though we were carrying large amounts of cash. Credit cards are little used so you have to keep ready money.
“I feel safer here than at home,” a visitor from London confirmed. True, there is visible policing: a uniformed figure stands quietly at the street corner, neither menacing nor aggressive, just there.
“Are they oppressed? Do they live in fear?” I have been asked. Unless the whole population has conspired to deceive, the answer is a resounding “no!”
For one thing, this is a Caribbean society: lively, noisy, colourful, uninhibited, with the sound of music everywhere. Cuba is the powerhouse of Latin American music, constantly throwing up new forms (rumba, salsa, son).
Every café-bar and restaurant has its group of players, and if you don’t have a gig you take your instrument and sit on the sea wall of the Malecon, the 8km promenade that bounds the bay of Havana, and play for the joy of it.
The world’s last socialist society, poor though it may be, is yet rich in social capital: trust, co-operation, “Team above Self ” as the local T-shirt proclaimed, and equality.
Cuba demonstrates the thesis put forward by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in their important book The Spirit Level that the more equal a society is, the more happy, healthy and cohesive.
Class and colour are no longer of any significance in Cuba. As the preacher remarked in his sermon in Santa Clara Cathedral on Epiphany Sunday, referring to the traditional typology of the Wise Men, “one was black, one white, and one inbetween, just like us here in Cuba”. (Conversely, we often had the following exchange: “Where are you from?” “South Africa” Pause “But you’re not black”!)
Now that the neo-liberal consensus has collapsed, Cuba has something to teach the world and in particular it has lessons for South Africa.
One of the first achievements of the Revolution, within two years, was the eradication of illiteracy by means of an army of volunteers, and education remains free at every level.
So does health care: Cuba has more doctors per capita than any other country in the world, and despite its much lower income levels the life expectancy and infant mortality rates are almost identical to those in the US.
Right from the start too it was government policy to put resources into both sport and the arts, for the training and development of youth. Sportsmen in Cuba are strictly amateur but they consistently bring home Olympic gold medals.
The National Ballet of Cuba, one of five ballet companies, ranks with the best in the world. We were lucky to get into a gala performance on the eve of the 53rd anniversary of the Revolution.
The celebrated Alicia Alonso, invited by Fidel Castro to take over, remains director-general at the age of 91. Her birthday is a national holiday.
What the country has managed to do in the face of great difficulties is impressive.
The US economic blockade remains unrelenting after 50 years and the currency is worth little. But, ever resourceful, the Cubans have developed a dual economy, one for the locals trading in the National Peso, the other for visitors in the Convertible Peso which is fixed at 25 times more and therefore brings in much-needed foreign currency while also leading to anomalies.
A lavatory attendant earns more than a lawyer, from tips.
Another unforeseen consequence (though surely it should have been obvious) is blatant prostitution. Women approach you – politely – in the street; men offer you their sister; and the signs are unmistakable of a de facto sex tourism.
The government cautiously encourages other forms of private enterprise. You can open a restaurant in your house or let out rooms for bed and breakfast.
Such “paladars” and “casas particulares” are officially vetted and approved and rates set. Farmers, too, and holders of urban allotments can now sell their produce directly on farmers’ markets.
How far will Cuba go in developing a market economy? Alternatively, how far will the market economies go in emulating Cuba’s example?
Making a virtue of necessity, Cubans are past masters at making do and recycling.
They don’t throw their old cars on the scrapheap: dented and patched, 1950s Buicks and Chryslers and Dodges keep going and get you there just the same.
The bicycle too in the form of a bicycle-taxi is a standard form of transport: Havana has long been doing what other cities across the world, including Cape Town, are now trying to bring in.
In the provincial cities, buses are horse-drawn. No fumes, no traffic jams; and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves on stone cobbles is wonderfully de-stressing.
Animal traction is widely used in agriculture, and once I even saw a man walking up and down a field casting seed (“A sower went forth to sow … .”).
World Wildlife Fund named Cuba as the only country in the world to combine quality of life with an ecological footprint that is globally sustainable.
Far from being a backward country, Cuba in this respect points the way forward.
In other respects, a balance sheet can be drawn up. There are no squatters or shanty towns in Havana but that’s because there’s influx control. You can’t move to the capital unless you have a job there. But government policy from the start has been to assign resources to the countryside equally with the city so you already have all you need.
Similarly, there is no problem of homelessness. Contrary to what you would expect, 85 percent of the population own their own home. But they can’t sell it – there’s no property market.
They can only pass it on, thus, biblical-style, confirming each family in its patrimony.
Much of the fine heritage of colonial architecture in central Havana is crumbling and dilapidated. But never mind if the top storey has disappeared and the ground floor is boarded up, there will be people living in-between, as evidenced by the washing fluttering from the ornate balcony.
The City Historian, however, has developed a business plan for restoration and as the work proceeds the profits go towards the next phase. Given time, Havana will again become the beautiful city it must once have been.
Beggars? Very few. There’s a system of food rationing so nobody goes hungry. (Something to think about in South Africa?)
Food seems to be plentiful if monotonous. You don’t go to Cuba for the cuisine: pork, chicken, sometimes lobster, salad, and a black-andwhite rice that is known as “Moorish and Christian”.
On that point, relations between Church and State have varied but there has never been any hostility or persecution.
A Papal visit took place in 1998 and preparations are in hand for another one next month. In 2008, a new Russian Orthodox Cathedral was blessed by the Patriarch of Moscow in the presence of Raul Castro, who took over from his brother Fidel.
There is no self-serving political class. As representatives of the people, members of parliament are not paid and continue at their old job. Of course, it’s a one-party state and while people may talk freely there is no allowance for official opposition.
Wilmar Villar Mendoza, a jailed dissident, died recently from the effects of a hunger strike.
The US condemns Cuba for its lack of human rights but they themselves hold prisoners without trial and torture them at Guantanamo, the naval base they have retained on the east of the island.
For the US, as evidenced in the current Republican primaries, Cuba has become a political abstraction and a bogeyman, unconnected to life on the island as it is actually lived.
The image of the Revolution is changing: instead of a bearded macho man in fatigues, Raul Castro’s daughter has emerged as a leader of gay rights.
What will happen when the two brothers depart the scene is anybody’s guess.
But the revolution needs to succeed to show the world that there’s another way based on a different set of social and economic principles.
The Rev Dr James Patrick is Minister of the Gardens Presbyterian Church.