1 January 2019
The Cuban Revolution, which triumphed in 1959 after almost two centuries of struggle for independence, national self-determination and freedom, is indeed a heroic liberation process for Cuba and in addition a source of revolutionary courage in the struggle to end oppression by the class forces behind system of economic exploitation and its higher manifestation of imperialism. As a result, the Cuban Revolution has attracted the wrath of imperialism and its dominant regime of the United States (US). While it has faced many challenges, both internal and external, the most dangerous challenges have mainly emanated from the US. Successive US governments have pushed their imperial policy of regime change to overthrow the democratic and socialist revolution of the Cuban people since the very beginning.
The Cuban Revolution has heroically endured thousands of acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks organised by the US. Cuba thwarted hundreds of assassination plots against the leaders of the Cuban Revolution. For almost 60 years, Cubans have endured the consequences of the illegal and criminal economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by the US. The blockade violates International Law. It runs contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter and contravenes the sovereign states’ right to peace, development and security. The blockade has subjected the Cuban population to shortages and needless suffering. It has restricted and hindered the development of Cuba with adverse impact on the Cuban economy, as this has cost Cuba hundreds of billions of dollars.
However, the blockade has not succeeded in undermining the Cuban people’s patriotic resoluteness to defend Cuba’s democratic national sovereignty, right to self-determination and independence. The SACP salutes the Cuban people for their resilience, determination and resolve to pursue and defend a development path of their sovereign choice, socialism. The Cuban people have set an example of loyalty to the Cuban Revolution. Other revolutionaries across the world have important lessons to draw from the Cuban Revolution and emulate in keeping with the character of their respective historical conditions. We therefore agree with Cuba’s President, Cde Miguel Diaz-Canel’s recent pronouncement, that indeed the character of the Cuban Revolution is indestructible. The SACP will continue its solidarity with the people of Cuba.
The Cuban people have struggled for 60 years from that small Caribbean island, just a 145 km away from the most formidable imperialist power ever known by humankind. In so doing, the Cuban people have written an unprecedented chapter in the history of class and national liberation struggles. Never has the world witnessed such an unequal fight.
In 1962, Cuba confronted with honour, and without a single concession, the risk of being attacked with dozens of nuclear weapons. It defeated the dirty war that spread throughout the entire country, at a cost in human lives even greater than that of the war of liberation.
The Cuban Revolution and education
One of the main achievements of the Cuban Revolution was the abolition of illiteracy in the first 3 years of its triumph. The 1961 literacy campaign was an inspired approach to improving educational levels among the relatively large proportion of the population that was illiterate in 1959. This was done efficiently, at relatively low cost, with strongly motivated volunteers. The campaign quickly improved literacy rates immensely.
Now Cuba’s elementary school students rank first worldwide in the knowledge of their mother language and mathematics. The country also ranks first worldwide with the highest number of teachers per capita and the lowest number of students per classroom. All children with physical or mental challenges are enrolled in special schools where education is delivered accordingly to their special needs. Computer education and the use of audiovisual methods now extend to all of the country’s children, adolescents and youth, in both the cities and the countryside. Today, the average level of education for Cuban citizens is the 11th grade.
The Cuban Revolution and healthcare
Cuba succeeded in reorganising its medical system so as to provide universal access to healthcare. The Cuban Revolution has managed to obtain excellent results relative to the resources that it was able to devote to the health sector. As a result, Cuba’s health indicators improved quickly and remain among the very best in Latin America, and the whole world.
Cuba’s mortality rate is below 5 for every 1,000 live births; that is at the same level with many European countries. Cuba’s life expectancy is 78 years for females; and 77 for men. This is comparably ahead of many countries. Infectious and contagious diseases like polio, malaria, neonatal tetanus, diphtheria, measles, rubella, mumps, whooping cough and dengue have been eradicated; others like tetanus, meningococcal meningitis, hepatitis B, leprosy, haemophilia meningitis and tuberculosis are fully controlled.
The Cuban Revolution and economic adaptation in the face of enormous challenges
With the loss of Soviet Union subsidies and the near 40% decline in income per capita from 1989 to 1994, Cuba reorganised its economy. With no support from the international financial institutions, of which it was not a member, thanks to the blockade imposed by the US, Cuba survived, at a cost borne almost directly, immediately and totally by its citizens. In the face of huge declines in the purchasing power of their incomes, Cubans continued to work tirelessly and with dedication in medicine, the universities, the schools, the public service, or other employment.
The dedicated work of countless citizens over the difficult years of the Special Period, 1990-2010, is essentially what has brought about some recovery since the depths of the depression in 1993. Despite the enormous challenges and against all odds, Cuba withstood the pressures and even advanced considerably in the social field.
Cuba also faced at the time, a significant challenge to continue with its socio-economic and political project of socialist construction. Endurance and resilience, inherited from its African roots, allowed it to stand and continue developing relations with the African continent.
The economic crisis of 2008 has affected all economies around the world and Cuba was no exception. Despite the seriousness of the crisis and the ongoing illegal United States blockade of Cuba, the socialist revolution protected workers better than their counterparts in the capitalist economies. The government announced a number of important measures to deal with the current situation and deepen the construction of socialism on a more efficient basis.
The economic measures currently undertaken by Cuba have been deliberately misrepresented in Western and other mass media as signalling the failure of and even abandonment of socialism by Communist Party leaders and the Cuban government. Nothing could be further from the truth. The SACP is inspired by the resoluteness of the Cuban people to push socialist construction irreversibly.
The Cuban Revolution and international solidarity with Africa
During the more critical years of the “Special Period” in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s into the early 1990s, Cuba not only continued but enlarged its co-operation and solidarity with the African continent.
The relations between Cuba and Africa in the 1960s, 70s and 80s were seen by many political scientists and politicians almost exclusively as military. This view widely ignored the fact that Cuba’s civil co-operation with Africa has been the more systematic, diversified and extended co-operation and international solidarity.
The historic defeat of apartheid forces in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola in the mid-1980s paved the way to the dislodging of colonial regimes in the rest of Southern Africa, and built a firm foundation for the dislodging of the apartheid regime itself in 1994.
Beyond the victory over colonial regimes, more than 1,200 Cubans have for instance been working in South Africa in the last 20 years in the fields of health, construction, water affairs, sport, education and other specialties. Basically, Cubans have been deployed to rural areas, as a demonstration of the commitment to be present where their help is most needed.
The priority given in Cuba to the scientific sector has allowed the possibility to transfer Cuban technology to South Africa. Both countries established a co-operation to produce a pentavalent vaccine for children in Cape Town. Cuba also continues the interaction in areas that were considered by developed countries as their exclusive assets: biotechnology, nanotechnology and other sciences where both Cuba and South Africa are benefiting from.
However co-operation and solidarity between Cuba and Africa is not unidirectional. Cuba has been receiving in these decades, historic solidarity from South Africa. Since 1995 when the Friends of Cuba Society, FOCUS, was created, it showed remarkable activism to promote solidarity with Cuba, on all fronts, particularly in the international campaign to free the five Cubans who were unjustly detained in United States prisons. We have also been consistent in mobilising for an end to the United States blockade of Cuba. This needs to be deepened until this criminal blockade is defeated.
In the more than 50 years since the triumph of the Cuba Revolution, Cuba has developed an active international policy of solidarity with different countries especially from Africa. Cubans cultivated brotherhood, sisterhood, comradeship and solidarity among individuals and peoples both in the country and abroad.
Over 2,000 heroic Cuban internationalist combatants gave their lives fulfilling the sacred duty of supporting the liberation struggles for the independence of other sister nations.
More than half a million Cubans have carried out internationalist missions as combatants, as teachers, as technicians or as doctors and health care workers.
Tens of thousands of Cuban healthcare professionals have provided their services and saved millions of lives over the course of more than 50 years. Through preventive and therapeutic methods, they save hundreds of thousands of lives every year, and maintain or restore the health of millions of people, without charging a penny for their services. However, there is not one single Cuban property in any of those countries. No other country in our era has exhibited such sincere and selfless solidarity.
South Africa now has among the highest number of beneficiaries of education from the Cuban Revolution. We currently have more than 3,000 students studying in Cuba. Most of these students come from poor families and most would not have been able to study medicine at our own universities in South Africa.
Conclusion
There is no way we could be able to pay back the sacrifices that the Cuban people have made in liberating many of our people in Africa. We have to continue to work and mobilise all South Africans to condemn and campaign against the illegal economic and financial blockade imposed on Cuba by the United States. We should deepen the economic ties between our countries to the mutual benefit of our people based on the shared principles of our internationalism and human solidarity.
Indeed the Cuban Revolution belongs not only to the Cuban people but brings hope to all of progressive humanity that stands to gain from the defeat of capitalist barbarism. We count ourselves as part of those progressive forces!
Patria o Muerte Venceremos!
