Castro deserves to be honoured for developing his people

I HAVE always felt a deep sense of envy about the 1960s.

It was the era of the Kennedy brothers taking the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, and Dr Martin Luther King and Malcolm X charging the walls of the US. But there was also the young Patrice Lumumba, a symbol of African unity and solidarity, Amilcar Cabral, leader of the west African liberation movement for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, and an intellectual, poet, theoretician, revolutionary, political organiser, nationalist and diplomat.

Other 1960s icons included Mehdi Ben Barka, leader of the Moroccan opposition, and the first Moroccan Muslim to get a degree in mathematics, Eduardo Mondlane, leader of Mozambique’s Frelimo, who laid down his life for the truth that humanity was made for dignity and self-determination. Thomas Sankara, who turned his back on the old formulas, and had the courage to invent the future, Oliver Tambo, who prowled the corridors of world power, selling a vision of South Africa in which black and white lived and worked together as equals in conditions of peace and prosperity, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, young, intelligent, sure of themselves and extraordinarily audacious also contributed immensely to the history of the new order.

The loss over the past 50 years of most of this group of leaders, who all knew each other, and had a common political project based on national dignity, crippled their countries.

Those who worked with John F Kennedy spoke of his admiration for Guevara. Both were young and charismatic and both were passionate in creating a new world order

The first thing that was clear from the 1960s was the way 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 the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. Secondly, all regions, from the US to Latin America, to Africa had a similar story. The young leaders of that time inherited countries that had been divided into two. There were white countries and black countries; one part rich and predominantly white and the other poor and predominantly black.

The world could not be guided by one set of thinking alone, Guevara, Castro, Kennedy, Tambo, Lumumba contributed in getting the world to leap forward. They could have done ever better had they thought of reaching out to one another.

President Jacob Zuma was correct when he said: “We must endeavour to take forward the ideals that Castro espoused – internationalism, freedom, equality, justice and a better and more just world”. Ironically, it was this internationalism and fight for justice that Robert Kennedy espoused when he said, “I think that 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 ensure social justice.”

And so when the DA decided to walk out of Parliament when it was time to honour Castro, their ignorance and political shallowness betrayed them.

It was a type of ignorance that could accept Mandela, but reject Castro, that could welcome Kennedy but reject Guevara, it was a shallowness that President Barack Obama rejected when he accepted his Nobel Prize, the idea that it is only one thinking that shaped our world.

Fidel Castro deserves his honour, here on Earth as a person who did all he could to develop his own people and forge relations with all those who would extend a hand of friendship.