22 August 2016
The SACP, ANC, COSATU and SANCO together with our counterparts Friends of Cuba Society (FOCUS) held an event to celebrate 90th birthday of Commander Fidel at the University of Johannesburg in Soweto on Sunday 21 August 2016.
As part of the celebration, a documentary “Fidel the Untold Story’ was screened, giving an account of the life of Fidel, a communist, a revolutionary, who led the Moncada Barrack attacks to overthrow the US backed Batista dictatorship. Fidel outlived 9 US Presidents each of whom contributed to spurious attempts at his life on over 600 such assassination missions. He put all the resources of Cuba towards the maximum satisfaction of the people and their well-being. Fidel and the Cuban revolution socialist program promoted massive literacy, jobs, education and health for all. The revolution carried out sweeping nationalisation of industries and Cuba enacted the socialist agrarian reform laws in a move that lurched Cuba perilously towards a confrontation with imperialism.
For its part, Southern Africa was compensated by the internationalism of Cuba under Fidel with the defeat of the apartheid regime in Angola, which emboldened the liberation project in the entire region.
Fidel Castro 90th anniversary birthday celebration, initially planned as a formal event targeting 400 mainly international guests, was finally attended by more than 1500 people, with local guests overflown into the grand stand.
The SACP is satisfied that the first post local government elections event that attracted such huge numbers of communist and alliance cadres, is a significant sign of its qualitative growth.
The SACP is not all too concerned by some outrageously pessimistic accounts of the event. We knew too well that an anti-Cuban sentiment is always attractively targeting Cuba and SACP events with denunciatory offensives both in South Africa and elsewhere.
It was in this case not unexpected, that at the slightest opportunity, the purveyors of bourgeois ideology would seek to rubbish the Cuban event and seek to generate unnecessary controversy.
Whilst this event was highly successful, the moral of it is that, just like Fidel, revolutionaries cannot underestimate the disdain on the part of anti-Cuban doomsayers and their hatred of everything about Cuba.
The SACP will continue to identify with Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolution and with its moral lessons for our own revolution and humanity.
Our birthday gift to Commandate Fidel Castro is our unswerving commitment to ensuring that the US blockade must go.
The SACP thanks all its members including members of the alliance who attended.
Happy Birthday Commandate Fidel Castro
Issued by the SACP Gauteng province
Contact:
Jacob Mamabolo - SACP Gauteng Provincial Secretary
Mobile: 082 884 1868
Lucian Segami - SACP Gauteng Provincial Spokesperson
Mobile: +2779 5220 098
Office: +2711 339 3621/2
Website: www.sacp.org.za
Twitter: GPSACP