http://themilitant.com/2015/7926/792605.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 26 July 27, 2015
(front page)
Cuban Five in Namibia: New
generations defend the revolution
Gerardo Hernández, left, one of the Cuban Five, with Peter Katjavivi,
speaker of Namibia’s National Assembly, at July 4 event in Windhoek
during recent tour of southern Africa.
BY EMMA JOHNSON
“The relationship between Cuba and Namibia is etched in blood and forged
in trenches during the struggle against imperialism and colonial
oppression,” President Hage Geingob said July 5 at a reception for the
Cuban Five in Namibia. It was held at the farm near Otavi of former
President Sam Nujoma — a founder of SWAPO, the country’s governing
party, and leader of the country’s liberation struggle.
This was the second country the Five visited in southern Africa to
strengthen the internationalist ties between Cuba and the peoples of the
region. The tour started in South Africa June 21 and ended in Angola
July 8. They were invited to Namibia by SWAPO, which led the struggle
against South African occupation that won independence in 1990.
The Cuban Five — Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero,
Fernando González and René González —spent up to 16 years in U.S.
prisons on frame-up charges. The final three returned to Cuba in
December as part of the agreement to move toward re-establishing
diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana, a victory for the
people of Cuba, their government and the international campaign
demanding their freedom.
Hernández, Fernando González and René González served as
internationalist combatants in Angola before taking assignments to go to
the U.S. to monitor counterrevolutionary groups that have carried out
violent attacks against the Cuban Revolution with Washington’s complicity.
In 1975 the Angolan government turned to revolutionary Cuba, requesting
help to beat back a military invasion by the South African apartheid
regime. Some 375,000 Cubans volunteered for combat in Angola over 16
years. They helped repel repeated incursions, culminating in the
victorious 1988 battle at Cuito Cuanavale, where the South African army
suffered a military defeat at the hands of the combined forces of the
Angolan army, Cuban internationalists and SWAPO combatants.
It was “one of the decisive turning points in Southern African history
and brought the white minority regime in South Africa to its knees,”
Nujoma said at the reception.
“You don’t see big media making reference to Cuito Cuanavale,” Hernández
said, addressing the reception. “For them that battle didn’t exist. The
media of the empire want to offer a completely different history of
Africa that erases the role of our compatriots, erases the role of Cuban
internationalists.”
Rulers fear revolutionary example
“They fear the example that we represented,” Hernández said. “That
example goes beyond Cuba and the Cuban Revolution.”
“The fact that we kept firm in our ideals,” he said, referring to the
failed attempt to break the spirit of the Five in prison, “went against
the script they want people to believe.”
The U.S. rulers want people to believe that the Cuban Revolution and the
fight for independence of Namibia are “just a moment in history,” he
said, and when the historic leaders of those movements are gone “the
revolution will cease to exist.”
“They are wrong,” Hernández said. “Both in Cuba and Namibia there are
new generations that feel inspired by the example of Fidel Castro,
Nelson Mandela, Sam Nujoma. A new generation that is willing to
sacrifice their lives to keep going forward.”
Nujoma described the barbaric attack on the Cassinga Refugee Camp in
1978, when more than 1,000 Namibians lost their lives. Cuban forces
repelled the South African troops and managed to take hundreds of people
to safety.
“The children who survived the massacre were taken to Cuba,” he said.
Two schools were established on the Isle of Youth there where thousands
of young Namibians were educated.
During their four days in Namibia the Five visited the Heroes’ Acre, a
monument dedicated to those who paid with their lives in the
centuries-long fight for independence. They took part in a solidarity
march with 1,000 supporters and a meeting of some 2,000 — Namibians,
Cubans and members of the diplomatic corps. Next February, Namibia will
host a continental solidarity event with Cuba, according to Prensa Latina.
“Our internationalist mission helped us in prison in the U.S., to rise
above our imprisonment,” René González said during their two-day visit
to Angola. “We fulfilled our mission here, but we also learned a lot
from the Angolans, from their dignity, generosity and affection. I also
think it made us grow.”
The Five were invited to Angola by the governing MPLA party, the Angolan
Parliament, solidarity organizations and the Angola League of Friendship
with the Peoples. Gen. Armando da Cruz Neto of the MPLA leadership
received them at the airport, where the Organization of Angolan Women
had organized a welcoming reception.
In addition to meeting government representatives and solidarity
organizations, they laid a wreath at the monument of Agostinho Neto,
Angola’s first president after liberation from Portugal’s colonial rule
in 1975. They also visited the Alto Las Cruces cemetery to pay tribute
to Raúl Diaz Argüelles, the first head of the Cuban military mission in
Angola, who died in 1975 in the southern province of Cuanza Sul after an
anti-tank mine explosion.
Related articles:
Greece: New book is tool to defend Cuban Revolution
‘Ukraine gov’t should restart Cuba-Chernobyl program
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home