There was a bit more at play in the Angolan war. A 3d movement, supported by the Chinese, led by holden roberto from the north. Three rebel groups, and then the mpla won out w Cuban and also soviet support. It is a terrible shame that that great victory over south African and American forces, led by kissinger, should have turned into the horrible, autocratic, completely undemocratic regime of today, where the wealth of the party rulers is obscene in the face of the poverty of the people. An immensely wealthy oil-rich country, where a fair distribution of the wealth might have left them the stars of Africa, like Botswana, and instead they are closer to equatorial guinea’s obscenely unjust distribution of wealth and power.
We, of the left, have to lament this story. the revolution, the sacrifices, the ideals, the sambizangas and dreams and struggle were supposed to be in the name of the people. If anything, at least we can say for all its authoritarianism and repressive politics cuba still held to ideals of serving the people.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday 26 November 2016 at 16:16
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Battle at Cuito Carnavale. Angola, and the defeat of apartheid South Africa by Cuban forces ..............
One of the greatest contributions of revolutionary Cuba to Africa was the intervention that prevented the apartheid South African regime from occupying Angola and environs. Horace Campbell and Ronnie Kasrils discuss this momentous defeat of apartheid South Africa and its US ally in Monthly Review. vol. 64. issue 11.
GE
MONTHLY REVIEW
Volume 64, Issue 11 (April)
April 2013 (Volume 64, Number 11)
The Military Defeat of the South Africans in Angola
by
In Angola in the spring of 1988 the armed forces of apartheid South Africa and the US-backed mercenaries of Jonas Savimbi were defeated by the combined force of the Cuban military, the Angolan army, and the military units of the liberation movements of South Africa and Namibia. This led directly to the independence of Namibia and then to the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa itself. Cuba’s heroic role is the outstanding example of principled anti-imperialist internationalism in the last decades of the twentieth century.… We celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of these events by reprinting the account by Horace Campbell that appeared in Monthly Review in April 1989, with some pride at having published so sharp an analysis of current events—events largely ignored by the mass media then and since. We then present a military-focused historical analysis by Monthly Review Press author Ronnie Kasrils, who had the extraordinary fate to have headed ANC military intelligence in the battle alongside the Cubans, and then to have served for five years as Deputy Minister of Defense in the post-apartheid South African government—in regular contact with officers who had commanded the opposing forces. —The Editors
Cuito Cuanavale, Angola
25th Anniversary of a Historic African Battle
by
Prohibited from meeting openly by South Africa’s apartheid government, the Seventh Congress of the South African Communist Party was held in Cuba in April 1989. When Jorge Risquet, one of Fidel Castro’s shrewdest and most trusted colleagues, addressed the gathered members, he was greeted with the resounding salutation “Viva Cuito Cuanavale!” For the South African delegates, many who had come from military duty in Angola itself where the African National Congress (ANC) had military training facilities courtesy of the government, there was no doubt whatsoever that an epic victory had been recently won at the remote town of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola. The loser was the apartheid military machine in that embattled country in March 1988, constituting a historic turning point in the struggle for the total liberation of the region from racist rule and aggression.… | more…
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