Saturday 10 July 1999

Cde Chairperson, Cde Marcos – the Cuban ambassador to South Africa – members of FOCUS, the SACP is deeply honoured by the invitation to address your AGM. We wish to use this occasion to re-affirm our unwavering solidarity with the struggle of the Cuban people for national self-determination and against the continuation of the illegal blockade by the United States.

We would also like to use this occasion to, once more, call upon the United States to lift this blockade and allow the people of Cuba the space to develop their own country and people. We also call upon all progressive forces in the world to intensify pressure on the United States government to lift this criminal blockade.

The SACP would also like to express its continued support for the work that is being done by FOCUS in this regard. Despite our own resource limitations, we are committed to working together with FOCUS to ensure that the struggle of the Cuban people continues to be part of the struggle of the South African people.

There are many reasons why the struggle of the Cuban people should also be our struggle as well:

• The struggle of the Cuban people is a hope for humanity and in particular for the ordinary working people and the poor. It is a struggle for ordinary working people to take their own lives and future into their own hands. The Cuban struggle continues to re-affirm one major lesson of the 20th Century that unless ordinary people struggle to determine and shape their own destiny, there can be no improvement in their own conditions. It is a struggle that resonates with our very own struggle for a better life for all

• The struggle of the Cuban people stands as a challenge to the decadence of capitalism, in that the current global crisis and the deepening global poverty are proof of the correctness of the path pursued by the Cuban revolution. The Cuban revolution is proof that societies based on greed and the pursuit of private profit are no solution to the problems facing humanity today
  
  
• The struggle of the Cuban people is a shining example of a determined people, who want to focus their energies of improving the lives of ordinary people, despite enormous obstacles. It is indeed a struggle for hope against despair
  
  
• The struggle of the Cuban people is also a historic example of unselfish internationalism. Apart from the support that the Cuban people have given to many revolutions in the world, they continue today to support our very own efforts at social transformation. Today millions of our people have been, and continue to be, treated by Cuban doctors in the deepest of South Africa’ s rural areas. I have also personally experienced this Cuban treatment. When I was in Cuba about three years ago, I lost one of my tooth fillings – a persistent feature of capitalist dentistry! In fact my fillings never last for more than 18 months. But my Cuban tooth filling is still intact after three years. So myself I am a living example of Cuban socialist dentistry!

As the SACP we would like to once more thank the Cuban doctors for the work they are doing amongst the poor of our people. I will never forget the words of Commandant Fidel Castro when he addressed our Parliament last year. He said the Cuban people have sent soldiers and brigades to a number of countries in the African continent to support legitimate struggles of ordinary people. Cuba has done this without any payment or bringing back any gold or diamonds. All that the Cuban internationalists have brought back to Cuba, Cde Fidel said, are the dead bodies of their comrades. These words will stay with me forever, as they forcefully demonstrate this selfless internationalist duty of the Cuban revolution.

Perhaps most important, the Cuban revolution is a hope for the new millenium. Despite the fact that this millenium, in particular this century, has brought about wars, poverty and destruction, the only hope has been the heroic struggles of the peoples of the third world for national liberation, the socialist revolutions of the Eastern European countries, and of course the Cuban revolution. We have a lot of lessons to learn from this revolution as we confront imperialism at the beginning of the new millenium. Perhaps also the Cuban revolution is teaching us one example that we should never give up, as the very strengths of imperialism are also its weaknesses! For four decades imperialism has failed to break the determination and hope of the Cuban people, despite the difficulties they have been subjected to. In fact imperialism has failed to break the revolutionary and fighting spirit of the Cuban people. The spirit of Jose Marti continues to live amongst this heroic people! Long live the memory of Jose Marti long live!

There are many other lessons that we need to learn from the Cuban revolution. Of particular importance as well is that the Cuban revolution teaches us and help to expose the arrogance of imperialism. The Cuban blockade is one expression of this imperialist arrogance.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, the arrogance of imperialism is increasing rather than lessening. This should be telling us one thing, that the end of the Cold War does not mean the end of imperialist plunder and arrogance. This should be an important lesson for our very own struggles towards and African renewal. We only have to look at the destructive and inhuman bombings of Yugoslavia for more than 2 months every single day! The continued blockade of Cuba. Yet the very same United States is washing its hands off the continued Unita banditry in Angola.

Again, the US has not only turned a blind eye but is supportive of the Turkish regime that has embarked on genocide against the Kurdish people.

With regard to the sentencing of Ocalan, the SACP would like to use this occasion to call upon the Turkish regime not to hang Ocalan. The SACP would regard the hanging of Ocalan as an international criminal act that would have to be treated as such by the world community! Instead we call upon the Turkish government to open a dialogue with the Kurdish people for the purposes of a peaceful resolution to this matter.

Lastly, but not the least, the Cuban revolution tells us one other important thing – perhaps the most fundamental - that the struggle of the peoples of the Third World is but one struggle and one revolution. It is a struggle against imperialist plunder, the struggle against the debt gripping poor countries, and the struggle for genuine national liberation founded on the full economic emancipation of the peoples of the Third World. It is a single revolution that is of course is taking place in different national terrains.

In Cuba it is the total blockade by the US – which indeed is the most vicious form of imperialist aggression against a developing country. But such imperialist blockades takes many different forms in other countries. In South Africa we are faced with intense pressure and blackmail by the US government on the question of supply of cheap drugs to our people. This is tantamount to blockading access to decent and basic health to millions of our poor people. The increasing casualisation and retrenchment of labour – which the SACP will support workers to fight against - is a blockade of workers from accessing their only means of livelihood! The arrogant sales of gold by the British government and the IMF, is a blockade against the economic well being of gold producing developing countries!

The Cuban struggle is the struggle of the peoples of the developing countries. The Cuban struggle is the struggle of the South African people.

The Cuban struggle is a struggle of the working people and the poor of the world. The Cuban struggle is our struggle! It is a lesson for instance to the African people that it is time that we mobilise the continent to take direct responsibility for the resolution of its own problems. It is for this reason that the SACP fully welcomes the agreement to a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as an example that African people and their leaders, are indeed capable of resolving their own problems.

We wish Commandant Fidel and the Cuban people all the success during this special period, and we are confident that they will overcome these difficulties. But the Cuban revolution is in danger if we do not mobilise for international solidarity with the Cuban people. That is why your work as FOCUS is of such importance.

With these words I wish you a successful AGM

Blade Nzimande
General Secretary, SACP