Credit to Russia long overdue
I WAS listening to President Zuma’s speech on the arrival of the mortal remains of late comrades JB Marks and Moses Kotane and was happy to hear him credit the former Soviet Union and its satellite states (Bulgaria, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia).
This was long overdue. The incumbent South African president is not my favourite person, but I was pleased to hear him recognise the role the Soviets played in our liberation struggle.
We should not forget that the National Party government feared what they called communist expansion and encroachment in southern Africa and used all their military might to fight whoever was helped by the Soviets and their satellite states.
Their involvement in Angola and Namibia are examples. I will not forget late and former leaders of the Soviet Union such as Nikita Kruschev, Leonid Brezhnev, Andrei Gromyko, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev.
We would not be where we are without them. They provided us with the capacity (political, financial, education, military and moral support) that enabled the liberation movements to end apartheid minority rule.
China, Cuba and Libya (forget the politics of these countries) also need to be recognised.
Today we have new friends like England, the US and France, but these countries denied us support during our political struggle, labelling our liberation movements “terrorist organisations”.
I just wonder if comrades Marks and Kotane would have been happy with our current government under the ANC if they were still alive. BONGANI DUNYWA
Ntuzuma