Forget the Cuba excuses, Pandor

Back in the day – before the fall of the Soviet Union – Fidel’s Castro’s glorious socialist republic of Cuba was propped up by billions in aid from Moscow. That was understandable because Cuba was a Soviet client state and did much of its hard, Cold War campaigning for it in places around Africa, including Angola. When the Soviet Union collapsed, however, along with Cuba’s captive market for its major crop, sugar, the money dried up. And the communism experiment on the island was not self-sustaining.

Since then, Havana has lived a hand-to-mouth existence as its standard of living declined and it went forth with its begging bowl.

The parlous state of its erstwhile socialist ally is probably why the ANC is so keen to support it, much as the Soviets once did.

This week, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor was in a fit of high dudgeon in parliament, denying we were siphoning R350 million in taxpayer money (note: not ANC money) to our comrades in Havana. This was in response to claims by AfriForum that said the figure was confirmed in court documents during its case challenging the recently announced R50 million donation to Cuba.

The R350 million, Pandor revealed, related to an economic assistance package which was signed with Cuba in 2012, and which consisted of outright grants and soft loans. The current R50 million donation was “humanitarian aid”, she added.

That does not make us feel any better because, in total, R400 million has been offered to the Caribbean island.

Do we look like USAid, the Americans’ official foreign aid entity? Do we look like Unicef or any other aid agency?

Our children don’t have adequate schools, they use pit toilets. In places, kids go hungry every day. Our infrastructure is crumbling.

Charity should always begin at home.