Fidel Castro the people�s hero is no more!
Michael Dingake | Tuesday December 6, 2016 16:24
In a world population of over seven billion, the categories I mention above come close to six billion. Everywhere you look, the combined wealth of all the world countries is in the hands of a few: the Donald Trumps of USA, the Dangotes of Nigeria, the Ruperts, the Motsepes and the Oppenheimers of RSA, the Khamas and the Brinks of Botswana. These are men (no women among them), who rule the world through the filthy wealth they possess and the influence they wield through the media, the networks of intelligence spies and malope (sycophants) in general.
We are told there’s more democracy in the world today. Yes, we have democracy in theory, but not in practice. General elections are manipulated and rigged by those who have political power and money to campaign and bribe the poor to vote for them; moreover, most of the poor don’t vote, either because they don’t know the importance of the vote or are discouraged or have lost faith in politics and think politicians are all the same; the so-called middle class, intellectuals, professionals, and small business-people are lukewarm and selfish as they can survive whether there’s democracy or not. Democracy isn’t always democracy, government BY the people. Nor government to serve people’s interests, therefore not FOR the people!
Democracy today is democracy of a few by a few for a few: the capitalists, the one per cent. That’s why Marxists, more honest and incisive analysts, refer to it as the Dictatorship of the Capitalist Class and passionately advocate for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and its allies who form the majority of the population but their interests are unrepresented. Only when a party of the majority, the working people, is in power, can we talk of genuine democracy. Dictatorship is never a rule of one man. It is a rule by a class which has the state power (the army, the police and the prisons) and the means to influence public opinion through media propaganda and kindred institutions. People shouldn’t be shy to demand the dictatorship of the majority!
Castro was one of the rare intellectuals who appreciated the interests of the marginalised groups and abhorred the villainy and greed of the capitalist class who take the poverty and illiteracy of the poor to be divine-ordained. Capitalism is a system and ploy to make the rich, richer, the poor, poorer. Very few intellectuals care about the underclass. Fidel Castro did!
Successive American governments from JF Kennedy to Barack Obama reviled Fidel not because he was a dictator, but because he snatched Cuba from their puppet Batista who had turned Havana into a brothel and playground of American superrich, who treated Cubans as aliens in their own land and were happy to see them wallow in poverty, illiteracy and disease. After chasing Batista out of Cuba, Fidel started on the road to rehabilitate Cuba and the Cubans. He proceeded to tackle illiteracy with vigour, to the extent that Cuba today is one of the most literate countries in the world! Cuba’s medical personnel exports to developing countries is unparalleled. Its medical doctors risked their lives to save lives threatened by the dreaded Ebola recently!
When independence of Angola and prospects of Namibian independence were threatened by US and apartheid SA’s support of the high servant and surrogate of colonial Portuguese and western interests, Savimbi, it was Castro’s troops that rallied to the side of Angolan, Namibian and popular South African interests. At Cuito Cuanavalle, Cuban troops routed the apartheid troops, and dealt a mortal blow to Savimbi and Western interests! The Cuito Cuanavalle battle opened the highway to independent Namibia and a free RSA!
Cuban troops pulled out of Angola when UN unanimously resolved foreign interventionists had to retreat from Angola and Namibian independence be recognised. Fidel was proud his troops had achieved what they had set out to achieve in the Southern African liberation struggle; they were leaving Angola with nothing belonging to Angolans, but the dead bodies of their comrades who had died fighting to rid the world of blood-suckers! Had America and apartheid SA won, they would still be in Angola milking the economy; Namibia and RSA would be still in the future and SADC countries would still be the Frontline States!.
Federico Mayor Zaragoza, former Director General of UNESCO had a wide ranging interview with Fidel years before his retirement. One of the questions he asked was: “Looking at a world map, what changes would you like to make? “ Answer: “I would be thinking of a world worthy of the human species. Without a hyper-wealthy and wasteful nations on the one hand and countless countries mired in extreme poverty on the other…………..” Another question: “It’s your privilege to be a living myth. Will you continue to be a myth after you pass away?” Answer: “I am not a myth. The successive US administrations have turned me into what you call a myth and if I have been a living myth, it is also thanks to their failure in the countless attempts to cut my life short. But of course I will continue to be one after I am dead. Would it really be possible to dismiss the merit of having struggled for so many years against such a powerful empire?” RIP, Comrade!