Sunday, April 18, 2010

President Mugabe, Julius Malema and the Resurgence of Radical Politics

President Mugabe, Julius Malema and the resurgence of radical politics

AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona Mahoso
Zimbabwe Sunday Mail

Africans in the Sadc region need to ask themselves what the consequences are for them of allowing white-dominated media, whether locally based or foreign, to define President Robert Mugabe, Julius Malema or Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and others as too radical.

They need to ask themselves why Malema, during his recent visit to Zimbabwe, decided to pay tribute to Cde Mugabe and Cde Fidel Castro of Cuba. What was the meaning of such a tribute?

On April 14 2010 there was a news item on in which a woman from the “Apartheid Museum” in South Africa regretted the fact that too many South African youths knew about Lady Gaga, Madonna, Opprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods but could not say who Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, Bambatha or Albert Luthuli were.

This story was broadcast in the same week when most of the media in South Africa were still engaged in an orgy of attacks on Julius Malema, on his visit to Zimbabwe and his recognition of Cde Fidel Castro of Cuba and Cde Robert Mugabe for their contributions to African liberation. So, here was pretending to be concerned about African youths who knew nothing about African liberation heroes while at the same time bashing Julius Malema, a leader of that same youth generation, not only for knowing the history of African liberation but also for interpreting it in a way which can lead to the further emancipation of the African people.

After all, the only way in which African youths in South Africa were going to care about who Albert Luthuli was would be in the context of the youth’s own concerns for their future, which is exactly what Malema was being bashed for in the very same white-dominated media.

Neither the host nor the guest from the “Apartheid Museum” realised that no youth would want to bother about something called the “Apartheid Museum”. What kind of a name is that? The African agenda and destiny is not apartheid! Why not call the same thing “the living museum of African liberation?”

It is therefore not surprising at all that African youths in South Africa are alienated from the history of African liberation. White-dominated media in that country have made it their key result area to alienate not just the youths but all of South Africa from the African experience of the struggle for liberation.

This is the exact meaning of the vicious and distorted attacks on Malema; this is the exact meaning of the editorial of The Sunday Times of South Africa for April 11 2010 which was fittingly entitled “South Africa has still to defy the history of our continent”. So, from these white racists and their African collaborators, the mission of so-called “democracy” in that country is to defy African history.

This is the exact meaning of he attacks on Mbada Diamonds and Chiadzwa which the last instalment for this column dealt with last week. Better give the diamonds to Australia-based Rhodesians than allow them to fall into the sovereign hands of natives!
So, as we celebrate 30 years of Zimbabwe’s independence we must ask ourselves what that “history of our continent” is which the South African Sunday Times wants South African “democracy” and “freedom” to defy and bury.

Why is it such an important agenda for the white-driven media to defy and bury that history? How do they intent to defy and bury that history? What would be the consequences of defying and burying that history? And why did Malema refer to Castro and Mugabe during his visit here? The first most important envoy of revolutionary Cuba to Africa was Ernesto Che Guevara, sent by Castro.

That is why it is important in the same month of April to remember Cuba, Che Guevara and the on-going struggle for the completion of Africa’s liberation against a declining, aggressive and frightened imperialism led by the United States and Europe.

Che Guevara arrived in Conakry, Guinea, on January 12 1965. He visited Congo Brazzaville the same month and arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on February 11 1965. By April 14 1965, he was in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, attempting to lead a column of Cuban guerrillas whose mission was to train not just the Congolese but other African volunteers from Southern African liberation movements as a solidarity initiative of the revolutionary government of Cuba.

The experience and situation of Cuba and Latin America in 1965 meant that Guevara was likely to project a telescopic view of the huge and complicated task of liberating Africa, a view which in fact collapsed many decades into one single project, a view which is easier to understand from hindsight, 45 years later, than it was understood at that time.

According to Professor Piero Gleijeses in Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, what Guevara proposed to his Southern African comrades reflected his appreciation of the strategic geopolitical importance of the Congo in Africa; but it could not have been accepted at that time by African guerilla leaders still cut off from one another by language, colonial history and colonial boundaries.

“Che urged . . . that guerillas (from Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Namibia) be trained where they would fight — in Africa — and he promised that Cuban instructors would train them and fight alongside them. This was the most effective way to teach . . . this was the Cuban way. But instead of scattering Cuban instructors in different countries . . . there should be a centralised training centre, and it should be in Zaire (DRC). Moreover, before the guerrillas returned to their homelands, they should help to free Zaire.”

The previous year, 1964 in November, the United States through its CIA had just permanently installed the murderers of Patrice Lumumba and rolled back the Lumumbist guerillas who were holding more than 40 percent of the territory of what is now DRC.

Guevara theorised that, by using the same huge Congolese territory to train all the guerilla armies from what is now Sadc, Cuba would have unleashed a self-sustaining African revolution which would overcome petty nationalism and neo-colonialism as well as fulfil Kwame Nkrumah’s vision of a united Pan-Africanist Africa. Gleijeses quotes Guevara:

“I explained why we considered the liberation of Zaire to be of fundamental importance: victory there would have repercussions throughout the continent, as would defeat . . . I tried to make them understand that the real issue was not the liberation of any given state but a common war against the common master, who was one and the same in Mozambique, in Malawi, in Rhodesia and in South Africa, in Zaire and in Angola.”

Che Guevara considered his Congo (DRC) mission to be a failure, but history has treated it as visionary, as a mission which set the precedents for other missions whether they have turned out to be military, technical, educational or medical missions.

The best way to evaluate Guevara’s pioneering mission is to look at his appreciation of the strategic value of Congo (DRC) in African liberation, which was also a recognition of the strategic role of Congo in the external imperialist domination of Africa:

-Throughout the years during which the Liberation Committee of the Organisation of African Unity (now African Union) supported the liberation movements of Southern Africa, Congo (Zaire) under the murderers of Lumumba was always weighing Africa down like an albatross.

This was because Mobutu used Zaire to launder money, weapons and material assistance from imperialist powers to their surrogates in the region: the Portuguese armies in Angola and Mozambique before 1975; the white racist settler forces in Namibia up to 1990; the Unita forces and Jonas Savimbi in Angola; the Renamo bandits in Mozambique up to 1992.

In other words, the Mobutu regime pretended to support the total liberation of Africa through the OAU while being used to facilitate the imperialists’ and the settlers’ neo-colonial projects throughout the region. The idea was that when the Africans finally succeeded in decolonising all of what is now the Sadc region, they would be stooge regimes which performed their neo-colonial duties for imperialism even better than the colonial settler regimes which they replaced. In other words, the precedents set in Congo (DRC) by Joseph Kasavubu, Joseph Mobutu and Moise Tshombe were repeated in Angola (Savimbi), Mozambique (Afonso Dhlakama) and Zimbabwe (Abel Muzorewa).

Africa’s failure to pursue Guevara's interpretation of the role of Congo (DRC) explains why Zaire under Mobutu refused to be a member of the Frontline States; while Nigeria and Cuba, which were much further away, became de facto members of the Frontline States.

In fact, Cuba played a key role not only in defeating the most important proxy of the imperialist powers, apartheid South Africa, at Cuito Cuanavale but also Cuba helped to negotiate the removal of both imperialist and apartheid forces after their military defeat in Angola at the hands of Angolan, Cuban and Namibian combatants.

Precisely because Congo was kept by imperialism out of the Frontline States during the final days of the armed struggle against apartheid, it became necessary in 1998 for the Frontline States of Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia to go back to Congo (DRC) and stop a genocidal invasion unleashed on Congolese people by the same imperialism through proxy states from the Great Lakes region. Only after Sadc had repelled imperialism convincingly did DRC join the former Frontline States now called Sadc.
So Guevara’s interpretation was correct!

And the economic emancipation of the region which is being pursued, especially in Zimbabwe and South Africa today, will not be satisfying until it embraces the DRC as one of the new Frontline States against external economic domination, manipulation and exploitation. Malema is fully aware that South Africa failed to participate in or to support the Sadc forces that stopped genocide in Congo in 1998. He wants a more radical South Africa.

Guevara’s guerilla initiative in Congo failed in the short term but it laid the knowledge basis for successful Cuban military assistance to the PAIGC guerillas in Guinea-Bissau; to Swapo guerillas in Namibia, who used Angola as their base; and to the MPLA-FAPLA guerillas of Angola who defeated white South African and US-CIA forces as well as Unita forces with Cuban help. This is where South African freedom was made possible.

It is therefore fitting to end here with former Cuban minister Jorge Risquet’s tribute to Che Guevara in “Prologue, Post-prologue and Continuation of the Book by Professor Gleijeses.”The chapter was written at the time of the settlement of the Angolan conflict and the independence of Namibia in which Cde Castro played a most critical role.

“From April 14 1965, when Che and his 13 comrades in the advance party of Column One set foot on Congolese soil after crossing Lake Tanganyika, until this definitive return of our troops from Africa, exactly a quarter of a century plus one year, one month and one day had elapsed.

During this period of 26 years, there was not a single day on which Cuban combatants ceased to take up their weapons in Africa. At times there were only a few dozen . . . In mid-1988, there were over 50 000 combatants. . .Therefore we cannot concur with Che that the episode in the Congo was a failure. It was the daring and heroic beginning of this epic feat achieved by 380 000 Cuban combatants and 70 000 civilian co-operants, 450 000 men and women from our small country. In all of them, the example of Che was always alive.”

Malema knows this.

That is one example of internationalism. In other words, Cuba did not only become a Frontline State. It joined Swapo of Namibia, the Angolan government and the other Frontline States in negotiating the final containment of the aggressive apartheid state against the wishes and machinations of the US, the UK and Europe who had supported and armed apartheid for 300 years.

In other words, both Cde Mugabe and Cde Fidel Castro were involved in pushing back and defeating apartheid, making possible what is referred to as Freedom Day or Democracy Day in South Africa. But that was not enough. The next phase is the reclamation of land and the economic empowerment of the people.

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