An inspiring model of statesmanship
IN HIS book World Order, Henry Kissinger writes that “to strike a balance between the two aspects of order – power and legitimacy – is the essence of statesmanship”.
How ironic that these words come from the pen of a quintessential cold warrior since it is precisely these qualities which Fidel Castro embodied from 1959 to 2008 to challenge the shibboleths of a world order shaped and defined in the image of the United States.
Before Castro and his band of guerrillas rode atop a tank into Havana to inaugurate the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the island was a bohemian satrapy for a wealthy and decadent American elite who were aided and abetted by its then ruler, General Fulgencio Batista, a corrupt caudillo and US puppet.
From the moment that Castro took power, he not only went on to establish a socialist regime as one of a kind in the western hemisphere, but became one of the avatars in shaping the Cold War’s geo-strategic environment by advancing the cause of the developing world.
It was his life’s mission to not only safeguard the dignity and self-determination of Cubans, but to confront the intrusive imperial weight of the United States.
This took the form of an economically crippling blockade, enforced through six statutes and nine different administrations since February 1962. It is estimated that the US spent more than $1 billion in an attempt to dislodge Castro from power.
The comical CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, using a rag-tag mob of 1 400 Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro, represented the height of American desperation.
Only recently under the Obama administration has there been a rapprochement, but this could quickly dissipate if president-elect Trump’s insipid and tasteless rhetoric about Castro’s death is anything to go by.
Castro’s clarion call, patria o muerte, venceremos (fatherland or death, we shall overcome) had great ideological resonance not only in embedding his revolution as a collective gestalt in Cuba, but also in shaping its radical internationalism.
As if anticipating the international impact of Cuba’s revolution, the celebrated journalist Walter Lippmann could write in Newsweek (April 27, 1964): “The greatest threat presented by Castro’s Cuba is as an example to other Latin American states which are beset by poverty, corruption, feudalism and plutocratic exploitation.”
It was precisely Castro’s transformative vision at home and abroad that endeared him to a cross-section of leaders from the developing world but especially those from Africa who were locked in anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles of their own.
Together with Kwame Nkrumah, Jawaharlal Nehru and Gamal Abdel Nasser, Castro became a symbolic fixture of the Non-Aligned Movement, whose agenda was pre-occupied with these struggles.
Castro proceeded to forge a strategic alliance with the Soviet Union as a counter-hegemonic thrust to American military bombast and economic vindictiveness.
This alliance almost resulted in nuclear Armageddon during the Cuban missile crisis between 1962 and 1968 when the US and Soviet Union came eye-to-eye over the placement of ballistic missiles on the island.
The end of the Cold War and the loss of Soviet patrimony was particularly severe on Cuba; its economy contracted by 40 percent.
Reviled and admired, Castro was a polarising figure and his legacy will remain controversial for years to come. To some he was a totalitarian tyrant; to others he was a defender of the poor. With his passing, we witnessed images of solemn citizens in Havana and exuberant exiles in Miami.
This is perhaps an apt metaphor of a statesman who defined the limits of his own power and legitimacy in terms that ran counter to the established principles of an American-led global order. For here was an impoverished island of 11 million people whose sacrifices in the service of developing country solidarity were legion. While its citizens have experienced great material scarcity, they enjoyed health care and education that was the equivalent of any developed country.
Under Castro, Cuban doctors and nurses were regularly despatched to countries in need. During the Ebola crisis in West Africa, while rich countries and international organisations dithered, 450 Cuban doctors and nurses spread out to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, representing the largest medical contingent of any country.
We also cannot forget Cuba’s support for liberating countries from colonial rule in Africa. And here Castro conducted a foreign policy that was independent of the Soviet Union’s attempt to carve its own sphere of influence in its Cold War contest with the United States.
Beginning in earnest in the mid1970s, Cuba provided military aid and personnel of around 65 000 across 17 countries. Angola was the main beneficiary in its confrontation with apartheid South Africa.
Here, some 30 000 Cuban troops reinforced by tanks, artillery, planes and anti-aircraft weapons shipped from Cuba faced the SA Defence Force at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988.
This battle in many ways changed the geo-strategic calculus of southern Africa since it accelerated the pace of liberation in the entire region, including South Africa as the last bastion of White minority rule.
South Africa and Cuba have also enjoyed warm fraternal relations, and the chemistry between president Mandela and Castro was palpably warm. Relations were forged in the crucible of party-to-party relations between the Communist Party of Cuba and the SACP and the ANC.
As a matter of fact, in 1989, the SACP held its 7th Congress in Cuba where it adopted its famous “Path to Power” document. After official relations were established in 1994, Cuba has become a close partisan in assisting South Africa’s transition to democracy.
There has been robust co-operation, particularly in the area of health care where Cuban doctors work across South Africa’s rural areas. Meanwhile, a growing number of South African medical students have been trained in Cuba’s preventive approach.
When all is said and done, Castro will be remembered as a titan of the 20th century, and his statesmanship will remain an incontrovertible part of history.
Le Pere is a visiting professor at the University of Pretoria