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Vol. 82/No. 15 April 16, 2018
(special feature)
Cuba’s role in defeat of apartheid debated at UK meeting
South African forces ‘broke their teeth’ against Cuban and Angolan
forces in battle of Cuito Cuanavale
BY JONATHAN SILBERMAN
LONDON — Sharply conflicting assessments of the historic victory won by
Cuban and Angolan forces over the apartheid South African army at the
battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988 were presented at a daylong conference
here March 23. The event, titled “The 30th Anniversary of the Battle of
Cuito Cuanavale: Reflections on Southern Africa’s Turning Point,” was
hosted by Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Cuito Cuanavale was “a turning point in the struggle to free the
continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid!” explained
Nelson Mandela in 1991 in remarks cited by a number of conference
participants.
Mandela gave that speech to pay tribute to the people and leadership of
revolutionary Cuba for their solidarity. Some 425,000 Cubans volunteers
came to aid Angola in repelling successive invasions by the apartheid
regime. The decisive victory by the combined forces of Angola, Cuba and
Namibia forced South Africa to withdraw from the area, allowed the
people of Namibia to achieve independence from apartheid rule, and gave
a powerful boost to the mass revolutionary struggle that bought down
white-supremacist rule in South Africa just a few years later. The Cuban
volunteers’ contribution was “unparalleled for its principled and
selfless character,” Mandela said.
The speech is reprinted in Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s
Freedom and Our Own, which contains talks by Mandela, Fidel and Raúl
Castro, and other Cuban revolutionaries who fought in Angola. The
Pathfinder Press book is available from distributors listed in the
directory.
The victory in Angola also gave a boost to the confidence and fighting
capacities of working people in Cuba. It enabled them to see the effects
of imperialism and to fight against it. It strengthened the fight led by
Cuban President Fidel Castro to combat the growing weight of relatively
privileged administrative layers in the country. And it put the Cuban
Revolution in a stronger position to surmount the massive plunge of its
trade after the Stalinist regimes imploded in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early ’90s.
Conference panelists included Angolan Ambassador Miguel Gaspar Fernandes
Neto; Gen. Salviano de Jesus Sequeira “Kianda,” Angola’s minister of
national defense; Cuban Ambassador Teresita de Jesús Vicente Sotolongo;
Maj. Gen. Roland de Vries, who served in the apartheid regime’s South
African Defence Force; Chester Crocker, U.S. assistant secretary of
state for African affairs during much of South Africa’s intervention,
which Washington supported; Professor Piero Gleijeses from Johns Hopkins
University; Professor Vladimir Shubin from the Institute for African
Studies of the Russian Academy of Social Sciences; Baroness Northover,
the British prime minister’s trade envoy to Angola; and others.
Cuba’s internationalist solidarity, which was decisive in helping the
new Angolan government that had won independence from Portuguese
colonial rule defend its country, won the hatred not only of Pretoria
but of London and Washington. Cuba’s role was supported by Thomas
Sankara, leader of the revolution in Burkina Faso in West Africa, and
millions of working people in Africa and internationally.
Debate over Cuito Cuanavale
Gen. de Vries tried to dismiss the battle at Cuito Cuanavale, saying it
was a small episode in what he called South Africa’s “border war.” South
Africa never had any intention to take Cuito Cuanavale, he said. De
Vries, an on-the-ground commander with the rank of colonel in 1988,
said, “I don’t see myself as having been defeated anywhere.” The army
top brass was a major force in ending apartheid, he claimed. “We had
argued the government should release Mandela already in 1985.”
De Vries’ attempt to hide the truth was echoed by Crocker, who spoke in
a video recording. “Cuito Cuanavale is exaggerated in its significance,”
the former U.S. official said. “Fidel Castro very cleverly orchestrated
the Cuito Cuanavale ‘victory’ narrative to give cover to, and pave the
way for, what Castro really wanted — Cuban withdrawal from Africa.”
Col. Nelson Gonçalves, Angolan defense attaché at their embassy in
London, intervened from the floor to answer de Vries. He quoted from the
minutes of a South African cabinet meeting in which the government
bemoans its failure to take Cuito Cuanavale.
“Cuito Cuanavale was not an isolated action,” Cuban Ambassador Vicente
said. The Cubans had significantly escalated the number of its forces up
to some 50,000 soldiers in preparation for decisive confrontations: the
defensive battle of Cuito Cuanavale and an offensive in southwest Angola.
“In Cuito Cuanavale the South Africans really broke their teeth,”
Vicente said, quoting from a Dec. 5, 1988, speech by Cuban President
Fidel Castro. “And it all came about with a minimum of casualties for
the Angolan and Cuban forces,” Castro said.
“The Cuban-Angolan strategy wasn’t simply to stop the enemy at Cuito
Cuanavale, but to gather enough forces and equipment … to strike hard at
them on terrain that we, and not the enemy, had chosen,” Castro said.
“This change in the relationship of forces was what paved the way for
negotiations.”
Vicente explained how the threat to Cuito Cuanavale had arisen because
of a disastrous offensive launched by the People’s Armed Forces for the
Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) and their Soviet advisers against Mavinga,
a town in southeastern Angola, in mid-1987. This was a stronghold of the
National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), a
counterrevolutionary opponent of the People’s Movement for the
Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government and ally of the apartheid rulers
and Washington.
The Cuban leadership “expressed its concern” with the Soviet’s proposed
offensive, Vicente said. Mavinga presented a logistical nightmare to get
supplies to their troops, and it would inevitably provoke a South
African intervention. Cuba refused to participate.
The inevitable South African response — with troops and aircraft —
inflicted heavy casualties on the Angolan forces, who fought
courageously but were decimated, Vicente said. They retreated to Cuito
Cuanavale.
Cuba’s role decisive
“Cuito Cuanavale was going to fall if Cuba didn’t intervene,” Piero
Gleijeses said by video. Gleijeses is author of two books — Conflicting
Missions and Visions of Freedom — that describe the roles of Cuba, South
Africa, Washington and Moscow during this struggle for African freedom.
Cuba’s revolutionary leadership decided to commit armed forces in
support of Angola out of internationalist solidarity, and did so in the
face of Soviet opposition, Gleijeses said. Throughout the campaign,
Fidel Castro and the Cuban high command were at loggerheads with Moscow
and the Soviet military leaders over the politics of the war, its
international context and how to conduct it militarily.
The scope of Cuba’s commitment of troops, planes and armaments was
decisive — and on a scale that the Cuban leaders later said could have
exposed the revolution to attack.
In addition to the formal conference proceedings, the Cuban government
prepared an attractive photo display on the struggle.
Pathfinder Books was invited to have a stand. Copies of Gleijeses’ books
were among the £105-worth ($150) of literature participants got. Other
books sold included Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and
Our Own and Cuba and Angola: The War for Freedom by Harry Villegas.
Related articles:
Cuban women leaders speak in NY about revolution’s gains
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