Amílcar Cabral, left, leader of independence fight in Guinea-Bissau, and Víctor Dreke, who led Cuba’s internationalist military mission, in 1967 meeting in Conakry, Guinea. (Photo: courtesy of Victor Dreke)
In commemoration of the Fidel Castro centenary and legacy on August 13, 2026, we present remarks given by Djibo Sobukwe at The Symposium on Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution on January 21, 2017, sponsored by the Saturday Free School of Philosophy and Black Liberation at The Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Good afternoon and a warm thank you to the organizing committee and Dr. Monteiro for organizing and inviting me to present at this symposium.
On December 22, 1975, Fidel Castro spoke to more than a million Cuban people in Havana’s plaza of the Revolution. It was the closing day of the first congress of the communist party of Cuba. He spoke about the importance of the congress and reemphasized Cuba’s unwavering support for not only Angola but all of Africa.
It was during this speech that Fidel declared that Cuba is not only a Latin American nation but also a Latin African nation. He said… “ African blood flows freely through our veins. Many of our ancestors came as slaves from Africa to this land. As slaves they struggled quite a great deal. They fought as members of the liberating army of Cuba. We are brothers and sisters of the people of Africa and we are ready to fight on their behalf.”
So this statement by Fidel is important to give background to some of the thinking in in addition to Cuba’s standing policy of revolutionary internationalism. The tremendous Pan-African contribution by Cuba not only to the African national liberation movements fighting colonialism, but also to the quality of African life in general up to the present is extraordinary.
This makes Fidel Castro not only a revolutionary internationalist but a revolutionary Pan-Africanist as well. This designation is consistent with our position that ideology trumps biology any day.
Cuba’s contributions to Africa and her people have been extraordinary and unparalleled, no nation has been more generous. I am just presenting some of the highlights here.
The Cuban people under the leadership of Fidel Castro came into power in January 1, 1959. The great revolutionary Ché Guevara, also a leader in the in the Cuban revolution and a close confidant of Fidel Castro, was the first high level Cuban leader to visit Africa, he visited Egypt and met Egypt’s president, the great Gamal Abdel Nasser in June 1959 who had liberated Egypt from a neocolonial repressive feudal King. Ché went to Egypt to establish diplomatic relations, while there he met several leaders of African liberation movements including the leaders of the Algerian liberation movement the FLN (National Liberation Front of Algeria) who had been fighting French colonialism. Raoul Castro made a follow up visit the following year in 1960. Relations were also established with Guinea and Ghana at that time.
In April 1961 Cuba was attacked by US imperialism which included Cuban counterrevolutionary exiles at the bay of pigs. It is important to note this because the heroic defense by the Cuban people of their Revolution and homeland was tested and required significant human resources and material. In spite of that only eight months after the Bay of Pigs attack, in January 1962 Cuba delivered its first material aid to Africa which was a shipment of weapons for the FLN who were fighting a brutal French Colonialism in which France killed a million Algerians. Cuba had already recognized the FLN as Algeria’s government in exile in 1961. The ship returned to Cuba with 76 wounded Algerians and 20 orphan children from refugee camps. Algeria gained its independence on July 3, 1962 and elected the great Pan-Africanist Ahmed Ben Bella prime minister. He visited Cuba in October 1962 and met Fidel Castro and the Algerians who were receiving health care, training and education. While in Cuba Ben Bella expressed the dire need for doctors in Algeria and requested Cuba’s assistance in this area. Cuba sent 50 doctors to Algeria that year in what became Cuba’s first of a long history of unparalleled medical assistance to Africa.
In the summer of 1963 Morocco under King Hassan II had expansionist ambitions and wanted to extend Morocco’s border by claiming part of Algeria to be part of Morocco. This resulted in a war between the two countries. Due to superior weaponry Morocco had the advantage and after about a month of fighting it was clear to Ben Bella that Algeria would need even more help (in addition to Egyptian forces already helping) so he called Fidel and requested military assistance, heavy weaponry and troops who knew how to operate them. In October 1963 the Cuban government sent a ship to Algeria that included an armed battalion. This was a huge sacrifice for Cuba because they had a sugar contract with Morocco which they knew would be cancelled if they provided this assistance. Cuba had also just experienced a major hurricane that killed 1400 people. In spite of this Cuba's solidarity with Algeria was unwavering. Although Cuba wanted to keep its military shipment somewhat covert by arriving and disembarking at night, this had not been possible and they arrived in broad daylight. Once the Cubans arrived and all the military hardware including tanks and artillery was off loaded and ready to go, they were informed by the Algerian commanders to hold off on any further advancement because there was possibility of negotiations that could possibly resolve the conflict peacefully. So Ben Bella and Hassan met in Bamako and Hassan agreed to a cease fire and move out of the disputed territory. It became clear that this would not have happened if the Moroccan forces had not gotten word that the Cubans had arrived.
On Ché’s next trip to Africa in 1964 and 1965 he again met with more representatives of the most radical anticolonial countries and liberation forces in Africa. A few key of those countries were Tanzania, Congo–Brazzaville, and Guinea-Conakry. Some of the liberation movements were MPLA of Angola, Simba’s (Zaire) and PAIGC (Guinea-Bissau). Congo Brazzaville supported the MPLA and Tanzania supported among others, the Simba’s who were Lumumbist fighters following the political line of Patrice Lumumba who had been murdered by Belgian and CIA backed forces in January 1961. Guinea Conakry under the leadership of Sékou Touré supported the PAIGC (The African Party for the independence of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde). Ché met with Laurent Kabila and the Leadership of the Simba’s, they requested, and Ché committed to send a small battalion of Cuban forces to help the Simba’s who were fighting the neocolonial regime in Zaire which included white Belgian and South African mercenaries under the leadership of the CIA backed Kassavubu and Mubutu government. The Simba leadership requested that the Cuban forces be comprised of black Cubans so they would blend in with the population and the Simba fighters.
Ché went back to Cuba to discuss it with Fidel, the Cuban leadership and to organize the column. Four months later Ché and the Cuban column of about 128 combatants and three doctors arrived in Tanzania where they were to cross over lake Tanganyika to the battle front in Zaire. However the Cubans overestimated the revolutionary potential in Zaire and in Congo–Brazzaville in 1965. The revolt of the Simbas was defeated by CIA mercenaries including white South Africans and Cuban American exiles who were bombing the Simba forces. After a difficult and frustrating 7 months Ché’s column withdrew in November 1965. At that point Ché with his column of 128 guerrillas and three doctors departed. After seven months 6 Cubans were killed in battle and three left due to illness. The key figures in this venture were; Ché, Dreke, Papi and Osmany Cienfuegos ( brother of Camilo Cienfuegos) who was head of the Africa operations. In May of 1965 the second black Cuban column of about 260 men went to Congo-Brazzaville to train the army and the MPLA fighters. MPLA being the leftist anti-colonial liberation movement of Angola. The Cuban column was under the leadership of Jorge Risquét, Manuel Agramonte and Rolando Kindelán. Besides training the training the MPLA and supporting the government, Cuban doctors played a huge role here, because the country was struck with polio and a lot of children were dying from the disease. With the government’s approval, the Cubans organized the first ever vaccination campaign there and vaccinated all children under 5 years of age in the three major cities thereby saving thousands of lives. Most Cubans left there in 1966 with only a small number remaining to train MPLA.
Another country that benefitted immensely from Cuba’s support was one of Africa’s smaller countries but a very important one and that was Guinea- Bissau. Guinea –Bissau had according to the Cubans, the strongest and most organized anti-colonial liberation guerilla movement under the leadership of that great son of Africa, Amilcar Cabral and the PAIGC (The African Party for Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde). The PAIGC began armed struggle in 1963 and after two years they controlled one third of the country and were challenging 20,000 Portuguese troops. The PAIGC was headquartered in Guinea-Conakry which was under the leadership of that great son of Africa, president Ahmed Sékou Touré. These two African leaders were not only very supportive of one another but were ideologically very similar as well. Ché had met Cabral in Conakry for the first time in January 1965. Cabral had requested weapons which Cuba delivered a couple of months later. A group of Cape Verdeans also went to Cuba for training to later join PAIGC guerillas. In January 1966, the seventh anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, Cabral made his first trip to Havana, leading a PAIGC delegation to the first tri-continental conference also known as OSPAAL., which stands for Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Cuba not only hosted this conference but provided an important leadership role in the organization from then on. This is an important political contribution Cuba has made as OSPAAL is the successor to the post Bandung non-aligned movement and provides an ongoing space for anti-imperialist ideological exchange, unity and development. It was on this occasion that Cabral presented his brilliant speech called The Weapon of Theory. While in Cuba, Cabral also detailed his request to Fidel for artillery, vehicles, technicians and doctors. Between 1966 and 1974 out of 50 Cubans who went to Guinea-Bissau 9 died in battle and one was captured that was Pedro Rodriguez Peralta who served 5 years in a Portuguese prison. Peralta was freed in 1974 when the Portuguese regime of Marcello Caetano was overthrown. In 1977 the Guinea-Bissau government under leadership of Luis Cabral awarded him the Amilcar Cabral medal of bravery.
At the ceremony Luis Cabral said:
"We know that we were able to fight and triumph because other countries and people helped us with weapons, with medicine, with supplies…But there is one nation that in addition to material, political and diplomatic support, even sent it’s children to fight by our side, to shed their blood in our land alongside that of the best children of our country.
This great people, this heroic people, we all know that is the heroic people of Cuba, the Cuba of Fidel Castro, the Cuba of the Sierra Maestra, the Cuba of Moncada… Cuba sent its best sons here to help us in the technical aspects of our war, to help us wage this great struggle… against Portuguese colonialism. One of the sons of Cuba who fought and shed his blood in our land is here with us; our brother and comrade Pedro Rodriguez Peralta who was wounded, and captured on November 18, 1969 and spent 5 years in Portugal in the prison of Caxias. On this day on which we honor our heroes and our martyrs… the government of the Republic of Guinea –Bissau has decided to give our comrade comandante Pedro Rodriguez Peralta the Amilcar Cabral medal of bravery."
Guinea-Bissau and the PAIGC had won the colonial war in 1973. In November the UN recognized Guinea –Bissau’s independence and the PAIGC as the new government. The victory of the PAIGC in Guinea –Bissau encouraged progressive forces in Portugal to overthrow the Caetano regime in 1974.
The last example is the famous example of the decisive Cuban support for MPLA in Angola in which they defeated the apartheid government forces of South Africa which set the preconditions for the liberation of Namibia and the end of apartheid. The war in Angola can be broken down into at least three stages or maybe four depending on one’s perspective. Angola is twice the size of France or Texas and in 1974 had a population of 6.4 million people. The first phase of the war was the war for independence from Portuguese colonialism from 1961 to 1975. Cuba had already trained some MPLA fighters in Congo-Brazzaville in 1965. MPLA is the leftist, Marxist oriented anti-colonial movement fighting for Angolan liberation. In the early 1960’s the MPLA began a guerilla war in East Angola against the Portuguese forces there. However there were also two other rebel movements; the FNLA – supported by the Mubutu regime in Zaire and UNITA – supported by the US and South Africa.
Unlike in Guinea –Bissau these rebels were not united and fought each other as much as they did the Portuguese. By 1970 Portuguese wars in Africa consumed up to 40% of the countries budget which combined with the victories of African liberation movements especially in Guinea Bissau that resulted in heavy losses and demoralization of the Portuguese military and facilitated the overthrow by coup d’etat in Portugal of the fascist dictatorship of Marcello Caetano in 1974.
The new government in Portugal was a liberal government and wanted to grant all of its colonies independence thereby hoping to maintain a neocolonial relationship that would be less costly and more beneficial. In the case of Angola they convened a meeting with all three liberation movements called the Alvor agreement in January 1975 which basically stated that the three liberation movements would form a coalition government on November 11, 1975 that included the Portuguese, each with three cabinet ministers and that until then the Portuguese would rule the country. The idea of a coalition government soon broke down and in October, about one month before the scheduled independence day, the MPLA controlled more of the country than any of the other two groups which were more strictly based on tribal loyalties.
South African troops supported by the FNLA entered Angola from the south escalating the crisis into a war involving troops from other countries. According to the book, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington,and Africa, 1959 - 1976, by professor Piero Gleijeses, this intervention marks the beginning of the second phase of the war just weeks before independence. Zairian forces supported by FNLA entered in the north. As a result, MPLA requested military assistance from Cuba. Castro complied and launched Operation Carlotta. Carlotta was the name of an enslaved African woman in Cuba who led a slave rebellion against the Spanish. In tribute, the Cuban solidarity action in Angola was named after Carlotta.
Fidel requested support for this operation from the Soviet Union in the form of transportation of Cuban troops to Angola, but the Soviets refused. It was not until months later that the Soviets would send weapons. Fidel rallied his troops to fight the racist fascist South African apartheid regime in strict solidarity and defense of Angola and their African brethren. Fidel would later in his speech to the Cuban people commemorating the fifteenth anniversary (in April 1976) of the heroic, glorious victory at the "Bay of Pigs” state:
"At Girón [Bay of Pigs], African blood was shed, that of the selfless descendants of a people who were slaves before they became workers, and who were exploited workers before they became masters of their homeland. And in Africa, together with the blood of the heroic fighters of Angola, Cuban blood, that of the sons of Martí, Maceo and Agramonte, that of the heirs to the internationalist tradition set by Máximo Gómez and Ché Guevara, also flowed. Those who once enslaved man and sent him to America perhaps never imagined that one of those peoples who received the slaves would one day send their fighters to struggle for freedom in Africa. The victory in Angola was the twin sister of the victory at Girón. For the yankee imperialist, Angola represents an African Girón. At one time we said that imperialism had suffered its great defeats in the month of April: Girón, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc. This time the defeat came in March. On the twenty-seventh of that month, when South African soldiers crossed the Namibian border, after a retreat of more than 700 kilometers, one of the most brilliant pages in the liberation of Black Africa was written.”
Fidel sent an armed battalion with artillery specialists to Angola. They fought FNLA and Zairian forces backed by the US in the battle of Quifangondo, just north of the capital Luanda, which was controlled by MPLA. This was the most significant battle before independence. The MPLA and the Cubans successfully defended the capital city Luanda by the independence date of November 11, 1975. In the weeks after independence the South African and UNITA forces who had been invading from the South and defeating MPLA forces of resistance continued their advance towards the prize of Luanda. In their haste however they ran into an ambush by Cuban forces and suffered heavy losses near a village called Ebo south of Luanda. It was this bloody defeat at Ebo that caused the South Africans to retreat temporarily in 1975. The South African forces temporarily retreated but would rebuild their forces in the coming years.
The third stage of the war was a full blown post-independence civil war from 1981 to 1988. The South Africans invaded and controlled the southern Angolan province of Cuando Cubango they launched their fiercest attacks in 1987 and 1988 this is where the famous and decisive battle of Cuito Cuanavale was fought in 1988 where Cuban and FAPLA (MPLA’s military) forces defeated the South Africans in a fierce artillery, antitank and anti-aircraft battle even though they were outnumbered.
This was Cuba’s most stunning and extensive military intervention and success in Africa because by defeating the fascist apartheid regime of South Africa which was backed by the USA it set in motion a domino effect of liberation in all of Southern Africa, including Namibia’s victory in it’s war of independence in 1990 and Nelson Mandela’s release from prison the same year. As Nelson Mandela said when he visited Cuba in 1991 expressing his gratitude, “The Cuban people hold a special place in the hearts of the people of Africa.”
The Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence, freedom and justice, un-paralleled for its principled and selfless character. From its earliest days the Cuban revolution has itself been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people. We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of a vicious, imperialist orchestrated campaign to destroy the impressive gains made in the Cuban Revolution.”
Although the apartheid government wasn’t defeated until Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994, the civil war in Angola didn’t completely stop until 2002 when Savimbi was killed.
A summary of the types of contributions Cuba has given to Africa over the years as outlined in the book Conflicting Missions:
• Military hardware; all sorts of weapons including artillery, tanks and vehicles.
• Military commanders, combatants, weapons specialists, mechanics and technicians.
• Military training in Africa and in Cuba (all expenses paid)
• Construction workers who built roads, housing, bridges etc.
• Medical brigades including doctors, nurses, physician assistants and medical supplies.
• Education: All expenses paid full scholarships to thousands of Africans who came and still continue to come to Cuba to become medical doctors, nurses, engineers, technicians and mechanics. Medical aid to Africa continues to this day. Cuba’s exemplary role in fighting Ebola in Africa is a good example.
• Dr. Piero Gleijeses documented in his book that in 2002 there were more than two thousand doctors in twentyone different African countries.
In closing, I want to read an excerpt from a speech delivered by our beloved brother and comrade Kwame Ture at the Symposium on Malcolm X and the Student Non-violent coordinating committee held in Havana, Cuba on May 19, 1990:
“On behalf of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) it is a great honor to be invited to this symposium. We wish to thank Casa de Las Americas and the Centro de Estudios Sobre America for hosting the delegation. We know one of the greatest crimes an individual can commit is that of being ungrateful. I could never be ungrateful to the people of Cuba nor Cuba’s incarnation- Fidel Castro. In 1967 US imperialism was seriously planning to assassinate me. It still is, - as I am more determined to destroy it today than in 1967. In 1967 I was at the level of my lowest organizational strength. It was Fidel Castro who before world revolutionaries at the Organization of Latin American states conference said, ‘if imperialism touches one grain of hair on his head, we shall not let the fact pass without retaliation’. It was he, who on his own behalf, asked them all to stay in contact with me when I returned to the states to offer me protection. This period as I pointed out was a critical period in my political life. I would make many errors, but of one thing I am certain, my ability to continue serving in the Revolution is greatly attributed to just one more act of an infinite number of Fidel Castro’s contributions to world humanity. I am sure I will never be ungrateful to the revolutionary people of Cuba as long as I live, as I shall remain eternally faithful to revolutionary principles.”
Thank you!
Sources:
• Cabral, Amílcar. Unity and struggle: speeches and writings. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979.
• Castro, F., (1976) “We Stand With The People of Africa” Vinceremos Brigade Pamphlet
• Castro, F., Taber, M., & Márques, G. G. (1984). Fidel Castro speeches: Cuba's internationalist foreign policy, 1975-80. New York: Pathfinder Press.
• Campbell, H. (2010) Cuito Cuanavale: A Tribute to Fidel Castro and the African Revolution http://www.horacecampbell.net/2010/10/cuito-cuanavale-tribute-to-fidel-castro.html
• Gleijeses, P. (2002). Conflicting missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Hawkins, A. (2005, May 16). Portugal 1974; How fascist dictatorship fell. Retrieved January 19, 2017, from http://www.themilitant.com/2005/6919/691950.html
• Mandela, N. (1991) Speech by Nelson Mandela at the Rally in Cuba on the 38th anniversary of the start of the Cuban Revolution on Friday, July 26, 1991 transcript from http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs3733.html
• Ture, K (1990) Malcolm X Shabazz and The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Speech delivered by Kwame Ture at Malcolm X Symposium Havana Cuba May 19, 1990
Djibo Sobukwe is originally from the Dutch Caribbean, a retired educator, and a member of the Black Alliance for Peace.
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