Vol. 78/No. 7      February 24, 2014

The event, titled “The Truth about Nelson Mandela: A Revolutionary Fighter. Revolutionary Cuba’s Key Part in the Defeat of Apartheid,” was sponsored by the Ad-Hoc February 8th Nelson Mandela Memorial Committee. Some 250 people attended.

“Nelson Mandela was always very clear about the role of Cuba in the freedom and achievements of the independence of Africa,” Serrano said. “And when we talk about the independence of Africa, we are talking about the defeat of the apartheid regime.”

Following Serrano, a video was shown of Nelson Mandela speaking July 26, 1991, in Matanzas, Cuba, at a celebration of the anniversary of the 1953 opening of Cuba’s revolutionary war against the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. He shared the podium with Fidel Castro, then Cuba’s president, who presented Mandela with the José Martí award, Cuba’s highest honor.

After nearly 28 years Mandela triumphantly walked out of prison, Feb. 11, 1990. Two years earlier the South African army was defeated in Cuito Cuanavale, Angola, at the hands of the combined forces of Cuban volunteers, the Angolan army and volunteers from the South West Africa People’s Organisation. This defeat contributed directly to the release of Mandela, the subsequent independence of Namibia and the fall of the apartheid regime. Some 425,000 Cuban volunteers served in Angola between 1975 and 1991.

“The most important lesson that you have for us,” Mandela told the tens of thousands of Cubans at the rally, “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!”

The Cuban and South African ambassadors to the United Nations, Rodolfo Reyes and Kingsley Mamabolo, spoke. Mamabolo was African National Congress representative to Cuba in 1991 and present at the rally in Matanzas. Both were in Angola as part of the fight against the South African army.

“We relied on the Cubans in so many ways,” Mamabolo said, giving the example of an agent provocateur, who poisoned a whole camp of volunteers. “It was the Cubans who flew doctors in and prevented it from being a massacre.”

The victory at Cuito Cuanavale, Reyes said, “was not just a military and strategic victory against the South African army on the field. It was an ethical and moral victory that showed the apartheid regime could be defeated.”

“Cuba, a country born in the combined struggle for independence and for the abolition of slavery, and whose children have African blood in their veins,” has had the privilege of fighting alongside Africa, he said.

Mariela Castro Espín, director of Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education and a delegate to Cuba’s National Assembly, also spoke. She said it’s important to counter the “fashionable way” that Mandela has been presented in the media in the months since his death. “We need to explain to the new generation that Nelson Mandela was a great revolutionary who fought for the liberation of all the peoples.”

Other speakers were Gail Walker, co-director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, and civil rights attorney Michael Warren.
 
 
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