Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Fidel Castro of Cuba. The two nations have a long record of solidarity and mutual cooperation.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
By Tafataona Mahoso
Courtesy of the Zimbabwe Herald
Because of their experience of resisting US aggression and fighting the 50-year blockade of their economy, Cubans understand that the worst form of destabilisation is to make it impossible for a government of the people to provide very basic services to those same people.
As Naomi Klein pointed out in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, nothing is more destabilising than the humiliation of a people by making it impossible for them to provide very simple and basic human needs: first aid remedies, simple remedies to primary diseases, salt, sugar, flour, light, candles, matches, bread and simple transport.
Through illegal sanctions and financial warfare, the Anglo-Saxon powers were able to drive out of Zimbabwe thousands of health professionals and medical doctors.
At the same time the sanctions also resulted in the destruction of basic infrastructure due to lack of repairs. The result was that diseases which had been wiped out or largely reduced to remote corners of the country since independence in 1980 began to re-enter the cities.
Among these were the cholera outbreaks of 2007 and 2008 right here inside Harare and other towns. The only group of doctors who remained put and even increased their numbers in response to the crisis were Cubans.
That is one reason why the Third Pan-African Conference in Solidarity with Cuba is so important for Zimbabwe.
Journalists often mislead our people by emphasising the need to preserve the "gains of independence" or "the benefits of the Second Chimurenga," when in fact there is no way of preserving those gains without defending the revolution which brought such gains and values. Revolutionaries can maintain their independence and the gains of revolution only by continuing to be revolutionary.
That is what Cubans have done.
The Cuban Revolution triumphed and it has sustained itself.
Zimbabweans also want the values, spirit and power of the First, Second and Third Chimurenga to endure and triumph over Anglo-Saxon imperialism and unipolarism. But that cannot be done without sustained revolutionary resistance against imperialism.
Yet, even though each nation faces imperialism from its own particular ground and its own circumstances, we all share in the common human condition and desire to be free.
It is up to us to unleash and direct that human factor in strategic and revolutionary ways or in reactionary and destructive ways.
According to the founder of the Cuban Revolution Cde Fidel Castro’s paper entitled "They will never have Cuba," how this human factor is recognised and organised can make a difference between a revolution which is sustainable and one which cannot endure.
Cde Castro wrote:
"From one year to the next, the standard of living [of the people] can be improved by raising knowledge, self-esteem and the dignity of people.
"It will be enough to reduce wastage and the economy will grow [in response to positive and disciplined human behaviour.] In spite of everything, we will keep on growing, as necessary and as possible."
Cde Castro was referring to the fact that the US blockade against that country began only five weeks after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959.
He was also referring to the fact that the former Socialist Bloc economies collapsed in the mid-1980s and were followed by the collapse of former Soviet Union itself.
These events, on top of the US blockade, cut Cuban trade by fifty per cent and reduced the size of the economy by more than 25 per cent.
But the Cuban Government reorganised and adjusted the economy, so that the economy recovered and began to grow again by 2003. In fact, the failure of the US to destroy the Cuban Revolution invited more barbaric measures against the people and their economy.
These include the following, among many others:
--Renewed terrorist attacks launched from Miami, USA, in the 1990s, when it became clear that the Cuban economy was beginning to recover and that the Cuban Government was working hard to fight the blockade by trying to improve relations with the United States.
--The arrest and imprisonment of the five Cuban patriots who were fighting the terrorist attacks by secretly infiltrating the terrorist cells in the USA and relaying information to the Cuban Government which in turn passed it on to the US Government.
--Drafting and passing new embargo legislation against Cuba which came to be known as the Torricelli Act of 1992.
--Codifying into one law all the US blockade legislation against Cuba in 1996 in the form of the Helms-Burton Act. This act is among the most evil pieces of sanctions law ever devised because it provides ways for forcing other countries, third parties, to enforce the US blockade against Cuba by setting up procedures for trying and penalising third party companies and individuals for trading with Cuba.
--The setting up of the misnamed Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba in May 2004.
From lack of space, let us explain the aspects of just one of the various measures which the US Government has in place to enforce its blockade against Cuba. The Helms-Burton Act of 1996 contains the following provisions:
In Title I, it provides for ways of coercing other countries, companies in other countries and international institutions and organisations to observe the US-imposed blockade against Cuba.
In Title II, it sets up the tough conditions under which the blockade may be lifted: Cuba would have to give up its political and moral culture, dismantle its socialist economy and allow the free rein of what Naomi Klein calls disaster capitalism and David Kurten calls corporate cannibalism.
Cuba would have to allow the US and its allies free access and funding to internal counter-revolutionaries and subversives. Cuba would have to compensate the descendants of those who were expropriated in 1959 revolution. Cuba would have to privatise its public assets.
Title III provides the procedures for putting on trial business people and other individuals who enter into business agreements with the Cuban state or Cuban companies or individuals who benefit Cuba by visiting that country.
Title IV prohibits such people and their familiar to visit the United States.
In addition, the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba is accompanied by a strategic plan for the annexation of Cuba by the US.
Now, we have said that Cde Fidel Castro wrote in June 2007 that the human factor has compensated for the small size and vulnerability of the Cuban nation and Cuban economy.
Among the first characteristics of that human factor is knowledge and the deployment of knowledge. The Cuban Revolution has excelled in education and training, including the education and training of medical specialists and doctors who are here in Zimbabwe and have been helping us to survive our particular version of the British, US and EU blockade which has also been internationalised through the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of the US.
Knowledge also means excelling in research and information. It is amazing how imperialism fosters ignorance and backwardness.
While our sponsored reactionaries have been saying that sanctions are targeted only at Cde President Mugabe and his so-called cronies, it does not require a genius to notice that the British, US and EU blockade against Zimbabwe is evident everywhere.
Just visit our bookstores and contrast what you see there with what was there in the late 1980s. There is nothing in the bookstores beyond the level of primary and secondary school textbooks.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, school text books constituted about one tenth of the stock in the bookstore. Now textbooks constitute almost 100 per cent.
The rest of the stock is made up of neoliberal propaganda published by the World Bank and its sponsored agencies and NGOs.
Likewise, the US blockade curtails Cuba’s access to information and communication technology from other countries.
In 1997, Cuba ordered 400 ATMS from France. But a US firm bought shares in the same French company which was supposed to deliver 400 ATMS to Cuba.
The contract was cancelled when only 90 of the 400 ATMS had been delivered.
The same restrictions apply to other sectors; security, medicine, energy, agriculture, environment.
The second characteristic of the human factor in revolution is revolutionary discipline.
The five Cuban patriots, who have been in prison in the US since 1998, were disciplined cadres.
Instead of fighting US-sponsored terror with terror, they decided to use peaceful research.
They infiltrated the US terror cells and gathered information which was used to save lives back home.
They also set a revolutionary example which demonstrated the hypocrisy of the US Government.
While it claims that the US is a victim of terrorism, the US Government knowingly allows its territory, its agents and its resources to be used to stage terrorist attacks on Cuba and other countries.
It is also obvious that through fierce self-discipline the five Cuban patriots have endured twelve years of imprisonment in total isolation in maximum security prisons where they are denied family visits.
Discipline has also made it possible for Cubans to sustain a poorly endowed economy and make it suffice for their own needs and the needs of their close allies.
When fifty percent of Cuba’s trade collapsed with the former socialist bloc and the economy declined by more than 25 per cent, Cubans had to endure stringent rationing in order to survive.
Now their economy has been growing again in the face of a tightening blockade.
If Zimbabweans could instil in their population half the self-discipline of the Cubans and the Cubans could have just half the ample natural resources which Zimbabwe enjoys, then the two countries would be able to defy all odds forever.
This is not just wishful thinking.
Through closer co-operation and exchange, there must be ways in which Zimbabwe can develop the necessary discipline required to stamp out corruption, to stamp out neoliberal backwardness and to embarrass imperialism’s sycophants among our well-schooled elites and youths.
Above all, we need the discipline to stamp out corruption and speculation in business relations.
Cuba has done so with fewer resources than Zimbabwe has.
Zimbabwe is well-endowed with diamonds, gold, platinum, asbestos coal, gas and fairly rich agricultural land. Cuba does not possess even a quarter of these natural resources. And yet it has successfully defended its revolution for 51 years, only 90 miles away from the US border.
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