Buenos dias, camarada
ANC politicians want to help their Cuban comrades. But charity begins at home.
South Africa cannot afford the ANC’s enduring obsession with Cuba. Based on a romanticised interpretation of the 1987/88 battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola, the ANC professes undying gratitude to Cuba for military support during that war.
Such gratitude comes at a price for South African taxpayers, who are destined to keep footing the bill for as long as the ANC remains in power.
Differing figures are being quoted for the latest financial arrangements between South Africa and Cuba.
The DA says the ANC government has lent “a staggering R147 million to Cuba since 2018”. More staggering is AfriForum’s claim that the grand total of the “donation” is R350 million.
According to AfriForum, this information is part of a court record which the organisation requested as part of a review application.
AfriForum was recently granted a temporary interdict preventing the department of international relations and cooperation from donating R50 million to Cuba.
The underlying application is to review the decision to grant/lend the money to Cuba.
Until now, many of us may have been inured to the ANC’s pre-occupation with things Cuban.
Not enough fuss was made when the SA National Defence Force imported R228 million worth of a Cuban-manufactured Covid drug Heberon Alfa R 2b (interferon).
Admittedly the consignment was reportedly returned to Cuba in January, but questions still remain.
The point here is that the multiple irregularities in the Heberon scandal would not have occurred if the ANC wasn’t enthralled by Cuba.
There’s also irrationality in the way we send medical students to be trained in Cuba and hire Cuban medics to work in South Africa, as if there is something special about Cuban medicine. South African taxpayers bear the costs.
In 2021 it emerged, in answers to questions in parliament, that our department of health was spending R83 million a year on a 119-strong Cuban medical contingent brought here help fight Covid.
This is crazy.
South Africa offers excellent taxpayer-funded training for doctors who can’t all find work here, yet there always seem to be taxpayer-funded openings for Cubans.
This is designed to make sure Cuba gets financial support from SA taxpayers, one way or another.
Going a step further, the DA wants the auditor-general to investigate whether the Cuba-loan agreement could be an ANC money-laundering scheme.
This would presumably involve “round-tripping”, where taxpayers’ money ends in ANC coffers, via Cuba.
South Africa is ranked the 43rd-wealthiest nation, while Cuba is ranked 166th. Yet the late Fidel Castro, whom the ANC lionizes, was listed by Forbes magazine as being worth $900 million, making him one of the world’s richest at the time.
A more modern Communist dictator, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, “may be the wealthiest man in the world with assets totalling up to $200 billion”, according to Fortune magazine.
Cuba is facing tough economic times, exacerbated by US sanctions, the Covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
ANC politicians want to help their Cuban comrades. But charity begins at home. SA too is in economic trouble, with record unemployment and soaring prices.
We don’t have the money to keep bailing out Cuba.