Fidel Castro []1926-2016]

The death on November 25th of former Cuban President Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz marked the departure of a foremost revolutionary thinker who was also Africa’s greatest friend and ally on the world stage. Fidel Castro was born on August 13, 1926 near Birán, in Cuba’s eastern Oriente Province. His death at the age of 90 […]

The death on November 25th of former Cuban President Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz marked the departure of a foremost revolutionary thinker who was also Africa’s greatest friend and ally on the world stage. Fidel Castro was born on August 13, 1926 near Birán, in Cuba’s eastern Oriente Province. His death at the age of 90 marked the end of a glorious revolutionary era, including ruling his country for 49 years.

In his condolence message, President Muhammadu Buhari said Castro, against all odds, stirred uncommon development in sports, education and health care in Cuba, even to the benefit of other nations. He said Castro’s place in history is assured given his sustained commitment and towering role in Africa’s fight for liberation from colonialism and neo-colonialism.

Castro was intellectually gifted from an early age.  After his graduation in 1945, he entered law school at the University of Havana and soon became immersed in progressive politics and revolutionary action. He was part of the small group of revolutionaries who launched an attack on a military barracks on 26 July 1953 with the aim of overthrowing Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The attack failed and Castro was captured, tried, convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Castro’s efforts finally paid off in 1959 when Batista fled the country and Castro, aged 32, took control of Cuba. He seized the assets of American multinational companies that had made Cuba a vassal state and a centre of prostitution and other vices. Transformation into a socialist state soon followed. The revolution pitched Cuba into a conflict with its giant neighbour the United States, which has festered for six decades now. Even though President Barrack Obama eased tensions between the two countries, President-elect Donald Trump is expected to resume America’s hostile stance against Cuba.

Two major events in the early 1960s thrust Castro onto the world stage. The first was the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. Cuban exiles in USA were recruited, trained and armed by the US Central Intelligence Agency, CIA. They launched an invasion of Cuba which Castro and his comrades rushed to the beach and repelled. The second event was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The Soviet Union had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba and US President John Kennedy demanded that they be removed. He placed a military blockade on Cuba and for a time it looked like the two super powers would resort to war. An agreement was however reached by which the USSR agreed to remove the missiles while the US pledged not to invade Cuba again.

By the 1970s, Fidel Castro had become a major leader of the Non Aligned Movement and one of the staunchest supporters of Africa’s struggle for freedom from colonialism, neo-colonialism and apartheid. He provided military support to left-wing forces in Angola, Ethiopia and Yemen. Castro rushed to Angola’s help in 1975 when civil war broke out following the country’s independence from Portugal. He brought in tanks, MIG-23 planes and men totalling over a million in the next decade. Together they stabilised MPLA’s rule in Angola, defeated pro-CIA groups and repelled invading troops from apartheid-ruled South Africa. The defeat and besieging of a South African brigade at Quito Cuanavalle by Cuban troops in 1989 directly led to the independence of Namibia and hastened the fall of apartheid in South Africa itself. It was a watershed event in African history for which Fidel Castro played the most prominent role.

Under Castro, Cuba built the Third World’s most enviable health care system, with a patient to doctor ratio of 155:1, better than even the USA’s 396:1. The latest benefit Africa got from it was during the Ebola crisis two years ago when Cuban doctors rushed to help in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Cuba under Castro also achieved 100% literacy and very high quality education as well as emancipation and equality for the country’s black citizens. The world will miss Fidel Castro. Rest in peace, Africa’s greatest friend.