Zimbabwe Editorial on the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution

Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Fidel Castro of Cuba. The two nations have a long record of solidarity and mutual cooperation.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Cuba’s revolution lives, whither ours?

By Mabasa Sasa
Courtesy of the Zimbabwe Herald

THE month of January on the Gregorian and Julian calendars is named after Janus, the pagan Roman god of the doorway — a two-faced deity who looked both to the front and to the back; the significance being that he saw out the previous year and ushered in the present.

Every First of January is a mix of contrasts: the known and the unknown, the experienced and the expected, the new and the old.

On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro and his comrades announced to the world that an old order had passed: the Fulgencio Batista regime, as pure an American puppet as Jonas Savimbi and others in our midst, had been deposed and Cuba’s Revolution had triumphed.

Today it is exactly 50 years to the day that Cde Castro announced that Havana and the rest of Cuba were finally free after centuries of Spanish and American slavery, colonialism and imperialism.

It has not been a rosy half century. If anything, it has been quite painful for the over 11 million people who reside on the Caribbean’s largest island, and in this there are many lessons for Zimbabwe (which is struggling to see through a revolution after just eight years!)

Soon after Batista’s corrupt puppet administration was kicked out, thousands of professionals left Cuba to seek "greener pastures", mainly in the United States.

In 1959, there were 6 000 doctors in Cuba and half of these had left by the end of 1960.

By October 1960, most of the administrative and technical personnel had left Cuba while Americans and some Cubans who worked for US companies were withdrawn.

However, factories had to be kept running, government departments could not be allowed to shut down, health services had to be extended to the population and schools had to carry on churning out graduates.

And to add to the serious human resources problems facing the young government of Cde Castro, the USA was extremely hostile to any policies that empowered indigenous peoples at the expense of Washington’s capitalism and global economic interests.

Put simply, the US felt the Cuban Revolution should be nipped in the bud.

Zimbabweans would be tempted to think that they are the first nation to be subjected to the horrendous economic and propaganda war that Washington is presently orchestrating and implementing with its Western allies.

But in all honesty, one can venture to say that what has happened to Cuba over the past 50 years is far worse and hence there is no reason why Zimbabwe should not weather this storm.

Furthermore, Zimbabwe has the benefit of hindsight.

At the time of the revolution, Cuba’s was a mainly agro-based economy that depended on sugar, tobacco, coffee and cattle ranching — and the profitability of these activities were "subject to the whims of the US economy".

Rural literacy stood at 43 percent, 60 percent of the population lived in thatched huts with earth floors, two-thirds had no running water and only one out of 14 families had electricity.

Prostitution and gambling abounded and corruption was widespread with one estimate stating that "graft accounted for about a quarter of state expenditure".

With the situation being what it was, it was hardly expected that Cde Castro could work a miracle that would turn around Cuba’s fortunes and thwart US attempts to kill the Revolution.

An added complication was the fact that the US thought it had a right to determine which policies Havana should follow.

This stemmed from the 1901 Platt Amendment that:

-Said Cuba could not transfer any land to anyone except the US;

-Allowed Washington to intervene in Cuba’s domestic affairs whenever they wanted;

-Prohibited Cuba from negotiating treaties with any country other than the US "which will impair . . . the Independence of Cuba" or "permit any foreign power or powers to obtain . . . lodgement in or control over any portion" of Cuba"; and

-Stipulated that Cuba had only a limited right to conduct its own foreign policy and debt policy.

The Isle of Pines (Isla de la Juventad) was deemed outside the boundaries of Cuba until the title to it was adjusted in a future treaty.

When Cuba refused to recognise the legitimacy of the Platt Amendment, full-blown sanctions were imposed and have been significantly tightened since the early 1960s up to the present day.

In essence, for over 40 years, Cuba has lived with sanctions but the country has not collapsed.

If anything, it has thrived and today very few countries can match Cuba’s health and education sectors, and this includes the US itself.

Unesco says the anti-illiteracy campaign in Cuba is a feat unequalled in the history of education and Cuban doctors and health personnel are deployed all over the world imparting their skills as part of a "duty to mankind".

The drive to empower women is highly commendable, the tourism sector is booming and industry is growing despite the tightening of sanctions.

Cuba also embarked on a comprehensive land reform exercise and, notably, one of the first farms to be nationalised was the one belonging to the Castro family.

By the end of 1959, according to the Cuban Embassy in Harare, "900 ranches, totalling over a million hectares, became state property, gaining the support from the land-starved rural masses.

"By the end of 1960, the state controlled most of Cuba’s productive farmland: four million hectares of sugar and ranch land and over two million acres of rice, tobacco and other properties."

Of course, the US opposed these agrarian reforms, but that has not stopped the Revolution.

US opposition to the Revolution did not stop with economic sanctions and media lies.

In April 1961, the US launched a mercenary invasion through Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs).

The invasion was summarily repelled in a matter of 72 hours.

Cuba’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe Cde Cosme Torres Espinosa says: "America launched an unprecedented destabilising campaign, which included economic, commercial and financial sanctions, terrorist acts from the Guantanamo Naval Base and directly from Miami, which have seen 10 US administrations implement tighter sanctions and restrictions and the fostering of disorganised illegal immigration."

"From 1959 on," the ambassador says, "counter-revolutionary groups created and run by the US CIA have carried out numerous terrorist activities which have cost our country valuable lives and vast amounts of resources."

According to the CIA itself, the spy agency has carried out 638 attempts to kill Cde Castro.

Aeroplanes have been bombed, hotels targeted in terror attacks and terrorists trained and encouraged to attack Cuba.

All because the US is opposed to Havana’s Revolution.

As recently as 2000, an attempt on Cde Castro’s life to be carried out during that year’s Ibero-American Summit was foiled.

"Between 1990 and 2001, Cuban authorities learned of 16 plots to assassinate the President of Cuba, eight plots to try to kill other leaders of the Revolution and 140 other terrorist plots hatched. These were foiled, discouraged or prevented by the work of the Cuban security and intelligence services."

The blockade remains the longest ever in history and Washington continues to be a state funding terrorism despite what it says in the Middle East.

"According to conservative estimates, the direct economic damage suffered by the Cuban people from the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba since its inception up to the end of 2007, is conservatively estimated at over US$93 billion.

"The objective significance of this scale of damage is apparent from the consideration that this sum equates to 1,6 times Cuba’s GDP, or around 12 times the country’s foreign debt at the end of 2006, or some 23,5 times the total invested by Cuba during that year.

"The figure quoted is restricted to the damage inflicted on the Cuban economy and people by Washington’s economic war; it does not include damage amounting to over US$54 billion caused by terrorist attacks and other hostilities against the Cuban nation by the US government and its mercenary agents over half a century."

Over 70 percent of the Cuban population has been born under the sanctions regime.

So why is it that the Revolution has managed to outlive 10 US presidents intent on destroying it?

On this First of January, as Zimbabwe joins the people of Cuba in celebrating the Revolution’s

50th anniversary, there should be a lot of soul searching.

The Zanu-PF Government should be asking itself if with the present corruption, lack of commitment, self-centredness and general lethargy, Zimbabwe’s Revolution — which culminated in the Land Reform Programme — can also survive 50 years of sanctions?

Cde Castro is no longer the head of state and his able brother Cde Raul Castro has taken over the reins of leadership.

In the same vein, are the people in Zanu-PF aware that Cde Mugabe cannot be around forever to lead the Revolution?

What are they doing to ensure continuity and a consolidation of the gains made thus far?

Are they interested in the success of the Revolution or in the kind of mercenary mentality that informed the "bhora musango" drive that resulted in the electoral disaster of March 29?

Do they ever ask themselves why they struggle to attract the votes of people born just before and after Independence?

Is it not cause for concern for them that land reforms are a hard sell in urban areas?

If ever Zimbabwe hopes to achieve even half of what Cuba is celebrating today, some serious work is required.