How Far We Slaves Have Come

by Nelson Mandela

  NELSON MANDELA & FIDEL CASTRO

  How Far We Slaves Have Come

  PREFACE BY MARY-ALICE WATERS

  KWELA BOOKS

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  Preface

  MARY-ALICE WATERS

  On 26 July 1991, Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress (ANC), and Fidel Castro, president of Cuba, spoke together for the first time on the same platform. On this historic occasion, they were addressing a rally of tens of thousands in Matanzas, Cuba, marking the thirty-eighth anniversary of the opening of the Cuban revolution.

  The pages that follow contain the complete text of the speeches by Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro at the Matanzas rally, as well as the resolution of Cuba’s Council of State awarding Mandela the José Marti medal, the highest honour conferred by the government of Cuba. Here Mandela and Castro explain why the two struggles of which they are central leaders – the battle to build a revolutionary democratic movement in South Africa capable of uprooting the apartheid system and the battle to strengthen the internationalism and communist direction of the Cuban revolution – have been closely intertwined for the past three decades. Through their words, we can better understand why the struggles being waged by the working people of South Africa and Cuba are today the most important examples for fighters everywhere who want to rid the earth of racism and exploitation and chart a road forward for all humanity.

  In November 1975 the Cuban government, in response to a request from the government of Angola, sent thousands of volunteer troops to that country to help defeat the invading armed forces of South Africa’s apartheid regime. Pretoria was determined to block the Angolan people from realising their hard-fought independence from Portugal, set for 11 November 1975. The apartheid rulers recognised that the crumbling of the Portuguese empire, the last bastion of European colonialism on the African continent, would provide impetus in South Africa itself to struggles to end white minority rule.

  The Cuban government named its internationalist mission in Angola ‘Operation Carlotta’, after the slave who led an 1843 rebellion in Cuba’s Matanzas Province – the site of the 26 July rally. When the Cuban volunteers arrived, South African troops had already pressed more than four hundred miles into Angolan territory and anti-government forces had reached the outskirts of the capital city of Luanda. By late March 1976, however, the last invading forces had been pushed back over Angola’s southern border into Namibia, at that time still a South African colony.

  This initial defeat of apartheid’s army gave new impetus to the struggle for a nonracial, democratic republic inside South Africa. In June 1976 young people took to the streets in Soweto and other Black townships across the country. In the years that followed, the surge of protests gave birth to a new network of popular committees and anti-apartheid organisations on both the local and national level. Super-exploited workers waged strikes and formed trade unions in defiance of government bans.

  The new rise of struggles reinforced the African National Congress, which had been banned in 1960 and many of whose leaders, including Mandela, were imprisoned for their anti-apartheid activities. The advancing struggle inside the country increased the pariah status and international isolation of the apartheid regime. In limited and uneven ways, imperialist governments in Europe, North America, Asia, and the Pacific acceded to mounting demands by anti-apartheid forces to impose economic, sports, cultural, and other sanctions against South Africa.

  Over the next twelve years the apartheid rulers repeatedly conducted military operations penetrating deep into Angolan territory. Together with the bipartisan government in Washington, Pretoria armed and financed the forces of UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), which carried out counter-revolutionary terrorist operations in southern Angola.

  In November 1987, however, in the face of a critical situation in which South African troops had encircled Cuito Cuanavale in southeast Angola, Cuba made the decision to send thousands of volunteer reinforcements and massive amounts of weaponry and supplies. By March 1988 the South African troops had been dealt a decisive military defeat at Cuito Cuanavale by the combined forces of the Cuban volunteers, the Angolan army, and fighters from SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organisation). The South African invaders were forced to withdraw from Angola; in subsequent negotiations the apartheid regime ceded independence to Namibia, which celebrated the end of racist colonial domination and the establishment of its own government in March 1990.

  By puncturing once and for all the myth of the white supremacists’ invincibility, the outcome at Cuito Cuanavale gave another impulse to the battle against apartheid inside South Africa. The self-assurance of South Africa’s capitalist rulers took heavy blows, and tactical divisions among them deepened. On 2 February 1990, the government of Prime Minister FW de Klerk announced the unbanning of the African National Congress and several other anti-apartheid organisations. Nine days later, on 11 February, Nelson Mandela triumphantly walked out of Victor Verster Prison near Cape Town, free for the first time in twenty-seven and a half years.

  In his speech to the Matanzas rally, Mandela paid tribute to the unparalleled contribution that Cuba’s internationalist volunteers made to the African peoples’ struggle for independence, freedom, and social justice. “The crushing defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale was a victory for the whole of Africa!” Mandela said. “The defeat of the apartheid army was an inspiration to the struggling people inside South Africa! Without the defeat of Cuito Cuanavale our organisations would not have been unbanned! The defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale has made it possible for me to be here today! . . . Cuito Cuanavale has been a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid!”

  Responding to Mandela’s tribute, Castro explained that revolutionary Cuba had staked everything – including the existence of the revolution itself – in committing such major military forces to the battle at Cuito Cuanavale. In doing so, said Castro – repeating a theme that has run through many of his speeches in recent years – the Cuban government and people once again showed in practice why internationalism is blood and bone of the revolution, and why any retreat from aiding those fighting for national liberation or socialism elsewhere in the world would be the death knell of the Cuban revolution itself.

  As Castro explained in a December 1988 speech to a rally of half a million people in Havana, including many men and women from the Cuban armed forces and Territorial Troop Militia: “Whoever is incapable of fighting for others will never be capable of fighting for himself. And the heroism shown by our forces, by our people in other lands, faraway lands, must also serve to let the imperialists know what awaits them if one day they force us to fight on this land here.”

  The internationalist course charted in Angola is central to the life-or-death questions confronting the Cuban revolution today that are addressed by Castro in the speech printed here. Washington has never forgiven the Cuban people for their declaration of independence from US neocolonialism proclaimed in 1959; it has never forgiven them for the social revolution they began three decades ago. Castro describes some of the lasting social gains and political conquests of that revolution, and he explains why the leadership of the Cuban revolution will continue along the historic line of march charted almost 150 years ago by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels – toward a world where human beings live
and work together as brothers and sisters, instead of being forced to prey on each other like wolves.

  From the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, internationalist missions such as those carried out by hundreds of thousands of Cubans in Angola – as well as in Grenada, Nicaragua, and elsewhere – were the main social and political force helping to mobilise and politically inspire working people in Cuba. Internationalist commitment stood counterposed to the political disorientation fostered by the policies, institutions, and priorities that had begun to be systematically implemented in Cuba in the early 1970s, largely copied from the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. When the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba in 1986 launched what is known as the rectification process, aimed at combating the social and political roots of this decade-long depoliticisation, a major impetus to this effort was the determination to bring the political spirit and confidence generated by the internationalist missions in Angola into the daily battle to advance the revolution at home.

  In the final portion of the Matanzas speech, Castro takes up the arguments of those who say that socialism was the loser in the Cold War and that capitalism has emerged the victor. He explains the realities of intensifying interimperialist competition today and catalogues the economic and social devastation capitalism is wreaking on the peoples of Latin America. Capitalism, he notes, is something the Cuban people know well, inside and out, from their own painful history. This historical experience underlies Cuba’s refusal to return to the slave barracks of capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination. Cuban revolutionists, Castro emphasises, are more convinced than ever that the future for humanity is not backward to “private enterprise and the free market”, but forward to a world freed of the poverty, racism, and exploitation generated by capitalism.

  In closing his remarks to the Matanzas rally, Nelson Mandela told the thousands gathered there what it meant to him to be awarded the José Marti medal by Cuba’s Council of State. “It is a source of strength and hope”, he said, because “this award is given for the recognition that the people of South Africa stand on their feet and are fighting for their freedom”.

  This, above all, is the thread that runs through these speeches: the determination of the peoples of South Africa and Cuba to fight for a new and better world. “No matter what the odds, no matter under what difficulties”, Mandela said at Matanzas, you have to struggle. “There can be no surrender! It is a case of freedom or death!”

  12 September 1991

  Key dates

  1 January 1959 – The Cuban revolution triumphs over the US-backed dictatorship.

  21 March 1960 – South African police open fire on a crowd of Black protesters at Sharpeville, killing sixty-nine. The apartheid regime subsequently proclaims a state of emergency and bans the ANC and other anti-apartheid organisations.

  5 August 1962 – Mandela is captured by South African police. He is convicted and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for incitement to strike and leaving the country without a passport.

  11 June 1964 – Mandela, already serving a prison term, and seven ANC leaders are found guilty of sabotage in the Rivonia trial and are sentenced to life imprisonment.

  1965 – Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto Che Guevara aids liberation forces in the Congo.

  5 November 1975 – Cuba decides to send troops to Angola to combat a South African invasion endangering Angola’s upcoming independence. By late March 1976 the South African forces are driven back across Angola’s border with Namibia.

  16 June 1976 – Police open fire on protesting South African schoolchildren in Soweto, sparking the first sustained nationwide protests since 1960.

  November 1987 – South African troops encircle Angolan forces at Cuito Cuanavale, creating a critical situation for the Angolan government. Cuba decides to send thousands of reinforcements and sufficient military equipment to prevent a South African victory.

  January-March 1988 – Cuban troops, together with Angolan and SWAPO troops, repulse five South African assaults and break the siege of Cuito Cuanavale. Immediately afterward, Cuban, Angolan, and SWAPO forces begin to drive the South African troops back towards Angola’s southern border.

  13 July 1988 – Representatives of the United States, South Africa, Angola, and Cuba sign a fourteen-point statement setting a framework for South African withdrawal from Angola and Namibia’s independence from South African colonial rule. A final agreement is signed 22 December.

  2 February 1990 – The South African government announces the unbanning of the ANC and other organisations.

  11 February 1990 – Mandela is released from prison after twenty-seven and a half years.

  21 March 1990 – Namibia celebrates its independence from South African rule.

  25 May 1991 – The last Cuban troops leave Angola under an agreement between the Cuban and Angolan governments.

  25-27 July 1991 – Mandela visits Cuba.

  NELSON MANDELA

  We will ensure that the poor and rightless will rule the land of their birth

  First Secretary of the Communist Party, President of the Council of State and of the government of Cuba, President of the Socialist Republic of Cuba, Commander in Chief, Comrade Fidel Castro;

  Cuban internationalists, who have done so much to free our continent;

  Cuban people; comrades and friends:

  It is a great pleasure and honour to be present here today, especially on so important a day in the revolutionary history of the Cuban people. Today Cuba commemorates the thirty-eighth anniversary of the storming of the Moncada. Without Moncada, the Granma expedition, the struggle in the Sierra Maestra, and the extraordinary victory of 1 January 1959, would never have occurred.1

  Today this is revolutionary Cuba, internationalist Cuba, the country that has done so much for the peoples of Africa.

  We have long wanted to visit your country and express the many feelings that we have about the Cuban revolution, about the role of Cuba in Africa, southern Africa, and the world.2

  The Cuban people hold a special place in the hearts of the people of Africa. The Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence, freedom, and justice, unparallelled for its principled and selfless character.

  From its earliest days the Cuban revolution has itself been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people.

  We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of a vicious imperialist-orchestrated campaign to destroy the impressive gains made in the Cuban revolution.

  We too want to control our own destiny. We are determined that the people of South Africa will make their future and that they will continue to exercise their full democratic rights after liberation from apartheid. We do not want popular participation to cease at the moment when apartheid goes. We want to have the moment of liberation open the way to ever-deepening democracy.

  We admire the achievements of the Cuban revolution in the sphere of social welfare. We note the transformation from a country of imposed backwardness to universal literacy. We acknowledge your advances in the fields of health, education, and science.

  There are many things we learn from your experience. In particular we are moved by your affirmation of the historical connection to the continent and people of Africa.

  Your consistent commitment to the systematic eradication of racism is unparallelled.

  But the most important lesson that you have for us is that no matter what the odds, no matter under what difficulties you have had to struggle, there can be no surrender! It is a case of freedom or death!

  I know that your country is experiencing many difficulties now, but we have confidence that the resilient people of Cuba will overcome these as they have helped other countries overcome theirs.

  We know that the revolutionary spirit of today was started long ago and that its spirit was kin
dled by many early fighters for Cuban freedom, and indeed for freedom of all suffering under imperialist domination.

  We too are also inspired by the life and example of José Marti, who is not only a Cuban and Latin American hero but justly honoured by all who struggle to be free.3

  We also honour the great Che Guevara, whose revolutionary exploits, including on our own continent, were too powerful for any prison censors to hide from us. The life of Che is an inspiration to all human beings who cherish freedom. We will always honour his memory.4

  We come here with great humility. We come here with great emotion. We come here with a sense of a great debt that is owed to the people of Cuba. What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations with Africa?

  How many countries of the world benefit from Cuban health workers or educationists? How many of these are in Africa?

  Where is the country that has sought Cuban help and has had it refused?

  How many countries under threat from imperialism or struggling for national liberation have been able to count on Cuban support?

  It was in prison when I first heard of the massive assistance that the Cuban internationalist forces provided to the people of Angola, on such a scale that one hesitated to believe, when the Angolans came under combined attack of South African, CIA-financed FNLA, mercenary, UNITA, and Zairean troops in 1975.5

  We in Africa are used to being victims of countries wanting to carve up our territory or subvert our sovereignty. It is unparallelled in African history to have another people rise to the defence of one of us.

  We know also that this was a popular action in Cuba. We are aware that those who fought and died in Angola were only a small proportion of those who volunteered. For the Cuban people internationalism is not merely a word but something that we have seen practised to the benefit of large sections of humankind.