Cuba in Africa: A Forgotten History
Victor M. Rodriguez, Professor,
California State University, Long Beach (Author: Latino Politics in the United States: Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender
in the Mexican American and Puerto Rican Experience. Kendall-Hunt, 2012.)
Piero Gleijeses Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington,
Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991. 736 pp. (The University of North Carolina Press, 2013)
During the
funeral of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, members of the United States press
were surprised when President Obama was photographed shaking the hand of Cuba’s
President Raul Castro. The handshake which was purely formal and ceremonial did
not have any meaning beyond what the protocol for such occasions demands. In
2000 President Bill Clinton shook the hand of President Fidel Castro which also
led to all sorts of idle speculation about the meaning of that gesture.
Unfortunately, there is a blind spot in the U.S. media and a terrible lack of
understanding of the context of the historical relationship between the United
States and Cuba.
Recently,
the premier Cuba-American historian Louis Perez, from the University of Carolina, Chapel Hill penned an
essay entitled “Cuba as An Obsessive Compulsive Disorder” in order to explain why
after 55 years very little rapprochement has been achieved between the United
States empire and a small nation like Cuba. During eleven presidential
administrations, both Democrat and Republicans have maintained tense relations
with a small neighbor which is 90 miles from Key West, Florida. Perez says “New York Times foreign affairs editor
Thomas Friedman was correct to suggest in 1999 that the U.S. position on Cuba
was “not really a policy. It’s an attitude–a blind hunger for
revenge against Mr. Castro.” But in addition to the social psychological
reasons for the attitude and the never ending efforts to punish a country for
its brash leadership, it is a policy that is rooted in the political lobbying
of the Cuban exile community in the backdrop of a nation that is uninformed
about its conflictive, long standing historical relationship with Cuba. Cuba is
like the child whose parents have placed high hopes in but who then turned away
from its parents and chose a different path in life that has scandalized the
parents.
One of those historical stages where the self-image of
the United States as the embodiment of what is moral and just was challenged,
unbeknownst to the United States public, was the war in South Africa in the
1970s. This war was the platform for the rise of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela into
the global stage and which propelled the independence of Namibia and secured
Angola’s sovereignty. Given our mythology that the United States is always on
the side of truth and justice, the “shining city on the hill,” this counter
narrative does not fit the self-image of the U.S. so it is ignored, and worst
erased.
It may be for this reason that sometimes the
best critical reflections about the culture and history of the United States
have been provided by foreigners. Democracy
in America by Alexis de Tocqueville and Society
in America by Harriet Martineau are probably two of the best social
analysis of the society being developed during the first decades of the 19th
century. One French and the other British provided insights into that
contradictory democratic society that was developing and whose basic features
continue, albeit in different form even today. Piero Gleijeses’ book, Visions of Freedom provides a mirror
that allows Americans, Cubans (and Russians) to see another reflection of their
true self in the context of their foreign policy tussle in Africa. Gleijeses, who with his previous book Conflicting
Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 has written probably the most
comprehensive, well researched work on the role of Cubans in the liberation
wars in South Africa. He also provides an in depth look at the twists and turns
of Cuban-US-Russian foreign policy in the context of Africa’s anti-colonial and
later anti-imperialist struggle. In this book, we not only learn about the U.S.
and the Soviet Union through their foreign policy we also learn something about
Cuba, its leadership and values.
The nuances that Gleijeses provides of this period are
informed by his unique access to Cuban archives, for the first time (although
not all the information was available), to Russian archives and U.S.
declassified information. He also was able to interview or include interviews
from other sources of many of the principal actors involved in the war in South
Africa. He describes with details the politics and negotiations that resulted
in the creation of Namibia as a sovereign nation, the establishment of Angola
and the weakening of the apartheid forces in South Africa. This process led to
the consequent victory of the African National Council and the election of
Nelson Mandela as the first black African president of the Republic of South
Africa in 1994. Gleijeses had access to 15,400 documents from the Cuban
archives (the only foreign scholar given access to these archives) and notes of
conversations that Fidel Castro had with political leaders like Mikhail
Gorbachev, and Angolan Presidents Agostinho Neto and José Eduardo dos Santos.
He also interviewed 150 participants in this history. In addition, he used
documents he was able to access from South African archives, Yugoslavia, the former
German Democratic Republic (GDR), the former Soviet Union, Poland, Britain,
France, Italy, Zambia, Angola and Canada. This is probably the most extensive
investigation of this period and its revelations challenge many myths about the
official role of the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba.
In U.S. popular culture, the surprise and shock that the
presence of President Raul Castro (who was the Chief of the Cuban Revolutionary
Army during the war) had in the U.S. media was an outcome of how hidden this
history was from most Americans, including many historians. The U.S. intelligence community, however,
knew very well what was going on but was also mindful of public opinion in the
ways that it shared public information and managed its policy in the midst of
the wars in Africa. One of the most important myths that is shattered by this
work is the pervasive and long-held idea that the U.S. media has perpetuated is
that Cuba was a complete subordinate of Russian foreign policy. In fact, Cuba’s
independent role in Africa began early in the 1960s without the support
(sometimes against the advice) of the Soviet Union. Raul Castro is quoted by
Gleijeses “…if they (URSS) gave us advice they would be intervening in our
internal affairs.” This sense of independence was reinforced during the 1962
missile crisis when the Soviet Union negotiated behind the back of Cuba and
agreed to withdraw the nuclear missiles from Cuba. These missiles had been
requested by both Fidel and Raul and were not an imposition of the USSR. This
determination to build an independent foreign policy was clear when Angola was
preparing itself to build a sovereign nation after the collapse of the
Portuguese fascist dictatorship and its African empire in the 1970s.
Angola
had been fighting the Portuguese since 1961, it was the richest Portuguese
colony and had the enclave of Cabinda with large oil resources. It had a
population of six million, 320,000 were white. When the left wing Movement of
the Armed Forces (MFA) in Portugal overthrew dictators Marcelo Caetano in the
Carnation Revolution the Portuguese African Empire began to collapse. When the
Portuguese troops abandoned Angola in 1975 a civil war ensued between three
liberation movements that had been fighting against the Portuguese colonial
forces. The Forces for National Liberation of Angola (FNLA) led by Robert
Holden financed in part by the U.S.; the National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (UNITA) led by Jonas Savimbi and financed both by South
Africa and the U.S.; and the leftist Popular Movement for the Liberation of
Angola (MPLA), led by Agostinho Neto, financed by the Soviet Union and later
supported by Cuba. Each grouping represented different ethnic groups within
Angola but the MPLA was the broader organization because it focused on Marxism
and classes not ethnicity, and also included whites in its ranks. Its cadres
also included a good number of college educated members.
South
Africa began to provide material support and troops to both UNITA and FNLA against
the MPLA because the MPLA had a clear strategy that supported the dismantling
of apartheid. Also, the MPLA was providing training and other logistical
support to Nelson Mandela’s ANC and Sam Nujoma’s SWAPO in Namibia. Both the
FNLA and UNITA had reached coexistence agreements with South Africa so they did
not represent a threat to South Africa’s system of apartheid. The United
Nations had reached an agreement that instructed South Africa to conduct
elections in Namibia which was a protectorate of South Africa. The former
German colony (South West Africa) had been annexed by South Africa after
defeating the German forces occupying the territory. The League of Nations in
1915 granted the South African Union a mandate over the territory. But, the
agreement with the United Nations, which entailed elections for a free Namibia
was ignored by South Africa. In the meantime, the forces of the South West
Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) under Sam Nujoma fought to liberate
Namibia. Angola and Cuba also supported SWAPO with training and some resources.
Because of the Cold War, Secretary Henry Kissinger foreign
policy under President Ronald Reagan was focused at placing obstacles to the
MPLA. Although they did not constitute any challenge to U.S. economic or political
interests in Angola or South Africa. In the archives Gleijeses found a document
where the General Consul of the United States in Luanda, Angola, termed the
FNLA, as a corrupt organization. They also described Jonas Savimbi of UNITA as
a charismatic leader but one whose thirst for power led him to sacrifice his
own people in order to achieve his objectives. The British ambassador in Luanda
described Savimbi as: “a monster whose lust for power had brought appalling
misery to his people.”
The Soviet Union and Angola
In
1975, the first Cuban military instructors arrived in Angola. The Soviets just
offered tepid support to the Angolans because the USSR was involved in arms
reduction negotiations with the U.S. (SALT II) and they also distrusted Agostinho
Neto the MPLA leader. Neto, contrasted with the other Angolan leaders was an
intellectual, a poet and very independent. He also was very authoritarian. In
September 1975, Washington was worried because the MPLA was winning the civil
war. Their strong position was not due to the Cuban support (which still had
few troops in Angola) or to the strength of its forces. In fact, the FNLA and
UNITA, had better equipment thanks to South Africa and the United States. But,
according to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station director in Luanda
the MPLA was more “effective, better educated, and better trained and more
motivated…” than the others.
The United States was
concerned with the effectiveness of the MPLA and urged Pretoria to intervene in
the Civil War on behalf of the FNLA and UNITA.
On October 13 1975, the South African Defense Forces (SADF) invaded
Angola from their bases in Namibia. On their way to the Angolan capital Luanda
the MPLA forces were unable to detain the better equipped and powerful
SADF. In addition to the military and
economic support of the United States, South Africa had a very close
relationship with the state of Israel who provided military equipment (some
evidence indicates they may have provided nuclear technology) and logistical
and political support from Israel congressional supporters in the U.S. Neto,
concerned with military developments requested help from Cuba besides military
instructors. Contrary to myths perpetuated by the U.S. media the SADF
intervened first prompting and expanding the Cuban military support. On
November 4, 1975 Fidel Castro sent Cuban troops to Angola.
The
transportation of Cuban troops to Angola was an epic since they could not count
with Soviet naval transports for the long haul across the Atlantic Ocean.
Although the Cuban troops were inferior in numbers (36,000) or equipment to the
SADF they were able to stop the South African offensive. According to the
official South African war historian, Professor F.J. du Toit Spies “the Cuban
soldiers rarely surrender, they struggle happily until they die.” The U.S. concerned with the developments in
the civil war began to distance themselves from South African actions and
condemned the invasion they themselves had provoked. Pretoria, finding itself
isolated internationally, its defense minister criticized the U.S. for having
urged them to invade and then abandoning them to face on their own the
international public opinion. On March 26, pushed by the Cuban troops and being
isolated internationally the SADF retreated back into Namibia. In Angola this led to the election of
Agostinho Neto as the first president of Angola now a sovereign nation.
The
Second Stage of the Cuban War of Liberation, 1976-1988
Although the SADF retreated from Angola, the forces
of Jonas Savimbi continued their guerrilla attacks on the Armed Forces for the
Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) of Agostinho Neto. The bulk of the Cuban troops
had returned to Cuba and only military instructors and medical brigades were
left to aid Angola. While Cuban military advisers trained the FAPLA they
avoided becoming involved in the Civil War. While there were exceptions to this
rule the Cubans resisted the MPLA’s pressure to have its forces engage with the
Savimbi forces, they felt they should not intervene in internal struggles. They
were, however more ready to engage the South African forces whenever they
attempted against the integrity of Angola.
The US
was embarrassed by the defeat of the South African Defense Forces, this led to
the spokespersons of the Department of Defense to use the Cold War myth that
Cuba was a puppet of the Soviet Union’s foreign policy. By arguing the
subaltern role of Cuba the defeat was not a product of a small country against
a super power but the outcome of another superpower’s role. But, like the
Central Intelligence Agency revealed in 1981 the Cuban operation was a
unilateral effort and one that was accomplished very fast. Later, Henry
Kissinger had to acknowledge that the internationalist support for Angola by Cuba
was not forced by the Soviets, nor was it as a way of paying the Soviets for
their financial and material support.
What motivated the Cubans, and particularly Fidel Castro was the
self-defense of Cuba and a sense of revolutionary mission which led to the need
to support anti-imperialist wars of liberation.
Cuba, did not receive any economic benefits from this mission, it
received prestige and the appreciation of the African countries they supported.
In the
documentation accessed by Gleijeses it was clear that the Cubans were not a
mercenary army as the US spokespersons and the Cuban exiles in Miami were
alleging. In fact, Cuba offered on many occasion to retire its troops from
Angola whenever the Angolans so desired. On one occasion Fidel Castro said that
a merchant ship with a three months’ supply of food for the Cuban troops. However, because they shared their resources
with the Angolans the food had been depleted after a month. From 1976 through
1978 most of the Cuban combat troops had been removed, only military advisors
and medical personnel remained.
This
final stage of the war took place from 1987 until 1988. The Cuban forces again
defeated the SADF who had again invaded Angola in support of the UNITA forces.
This final defeat of South Africa and UNITA was preceded by large strategic
differences between the Cubans and the Soviets. In 1985, the FAPLA led a large
offensive against Cuito Cuanavale all the way into a small village called
Mavinga in the eastern part of Angola close to the border with Namibia. The
SADF had its principal military bases in northern Angola where they could
support the forces of Jonas Savimbi who had his headquarters in Jamba in the
same region. The Angolan offensive was hoping to reach Jamba which was the
central headquarters of UNITA, a tactical move that was promoted by the soviet
military advisors. It was a very tempting proposition for the Angolans to be
able to mortally defeat the UNITA forces. The Cubans did not agree with this
strategy but the Angolans took the soviet Coronel General Konstantin Kurochkin
very seriously because he had ha a leading role in the war in Afghanistan. The
Cuban general, Polo Cintra Frias, chief of the Cuban armed forces was in
complete disagreement with that tactic. The SADF had a superior air power and
the region was close to the South African air force bases in northern Namibia.
The FAPLA also did not have any robust antiaircraft batteries or an air force.
Konstantin was steeped in WWII military tactics but was not a guerrilla war strategist.
He wanted to fight a conventional war without the resources to face the SADF.
Konstantin in fact complained to Fidel Castro about Polo Cintra Frias, but
Fidel Castro trusted his general and he remained as the chief of the Cuban
armed forces in Angola. Things became
complicated by Agostinho Neto’s death in 1979 and the rise of the new leader of
Angola Eduardo Dos Santos, he was more reckless and began to engage in
negotiations with Washington and Pretoria behind Cuba’s backs.
The
FAPLA followed the advice of the soviets and tried to reach Jamba, as the
Cubans predicted were thoroughly defeated. The FAPLA retreated to Cuito
Cuanavale, the soviets did not allow its air force to provide air support to
the Angolans but did send helicopters to retrieve their military advisors.
Close to 2,000 of the 6,000 FAPLA troops were killed. The reason for their
defeat were not the UNITA troops but the SADF air force. In a visit of Soviet
Foreign Minister Shevardnadze to Havana Fidel Castro explained to him that it
was precisely the South African air force who had defeated the Angolans, not
UNITA. Fidel Castro requested MIGs 25 and 29s from the Soviet Union to change
the correlation of power in the area. But, Fidel Castro did not wait for the
arrival of the Soviet aircraft.
On
November 1987, Fidel Castro decided to launch the XXXI Anniversary Offensive in
order to change the course of the war in Angola. The Cubans had built an
airport in Menongue which was close to the battleground. Although they had not
received the weapons and airplanes they had requested Fidel Castro took a risk
of sending the most modern equipment they had in Cuba to Angola. Anti-Aircraft
batteries, combat airplanes, and the best pilots which eventually gave air
supremacy to the Cubans and allowed the provisioning of the trapped Angolan
troops in Cuito Cuanavale. From
December, SADF documents indicated, that the Cubans were control of the air
space in the region. The South Africans had been hoping for a victory in Cuito
Cuanavale and its elusiveness impacted the morale of the South African troops.
Another demoralizing fact was, according to Coronel Fred Rindle, the military
attaché of the South African embassy in Washington D.C., the loss of the “white
boys” was becoming politically unsustainable.
The moral
of the Cuban and Angolan troops was very high, in a London Times interview, and
internationalist Cuban combatant Ernesto Garcia is quoted by journalist Jan
Raath saying” “I was counting the days for my return to Santiago de Cuba with
my wife and two children” but he added “we will be here as long as it is
necessary because this is a just cause.” While there was no final and
conclusive battle in Cuito Cuanavale de South African defeat had a powerful
symbolic value. First, the air supremacy obtained by the Cuban air force and
the defensive victory of Cubans and Angolans maintaining the SADF outside of
their area of control. The symbolic significance of this victory was described
by Nelson Mandela “the myth of the invincibility of white oppressor was
shattered….(And) the African masses were inspired in their struggle in South
Africa…Cuito Cuanavale was a turning point in the liberation struggle in our
continent…and my people…from the plague of Apartheid.” The CIA earlier had reported:
“Cuba’s successful use of air power and the apparent weakness of Pretoria’s air
defenses . . . illustrate the dilemma Pretoria faces in confronting the Cuban
challenge. South African forces can inflict serious damage on selected
Cuban-Angolan units, but Cuba retains advantages, particularly in air defenses
and the number of aircraft and troops.” “Among South African whites, the SADF’s
aura of invincibility was tarnished.” Business Day warned. Although the South Africans wanted to time
the SADF withdrawal with Cuban withdrawal Washington Times said that “the South
Africans decided to withdraw from Angola after recognizing that the Cuban
buildup had changed the power balance in the southern part of the country,
leaving South African troops vulnerable.”
The SADF
military chiefs had to admit their defeat, “In South Africa Defense Minister
Malan shared with his generals ‘“his grave misgivings . . . about the erroneous
impressions prevalent . . . among large sectors of South Africa’s population,
who thought that, for example, ‘The SADF got a bloody nose at Cuito Cuanavale,’
‘The SADF no longer has air superiority and therefore cannot win the war,’ and
‘The SADF is no longer the strongest armed force in Africa.’”
The Cubans
also had 40,000 troops in the west part of Angola ready for action if the SADF
attacked. Although Ronald Reagan south to re-write the history of the conflict
when he said at the University of Virginia that the “retreat of 50,000 Cuban
troops from Angola was the result of United States intervention and was the
second defeat of Cuba since the Grenada invasion in 1983.” On May 25 1991 de
last remaining Cuban forces arrived in Havana where they received a hero’s
welcome. The legacy of the Cuban effort was the victory of SWAPO with 57.3% against
38.65 by the Turnhalle Alliance in the Namibian elections, the effort also
assured the independence of Angola when the UNITA forces were defeated (34.10
%) in the electoral process in Angola and when the U.S. withdrew its support
for UNITA. Jonas Savimbi died of natural causes in 2002.
Finally,
just like the Central Intelligence Agency’s board of national estimates had
said in 1963, “Castro is first of all a revolutionary” and Henry Kissinger
added “Castro had sent the troops because he probably was the most genuine
revolutionary in power.” He added “is not that there are no contradictions in
politics …but in matters of basic importance like the right and duty of
supporting nationalist revolutionary movements and friendly governments in the
third world, Castro does not negotiate for political or economic advantages.”
Very few
know the history of the magnitude of the Cuban effort in Africa, but in the
Freedom Mural in South Africa, the only name of foreign combatants are those of
the internationalist Cubans who shed their blood for Africa.
Some references for interested readers:
Louis Perez. “Cuba as An Obsessive Compulsive Disorder” http://www.socsci.uci.edu/uc-cuba/webdocs/Cuba_as_an_obsessive_compulsive_disorder.pdf
Visions of Freedom: New Documents from the Closed
Cuban Archives
Documentaries about the Period:
“Cuba: An African Odyssey” (2007) Jihan El Tahri Producer/Director
Tancrede Ramonet Producer
“Cuba South Africa: After the Battle” Estela Bravo .(1991)
No comments:
Post a Comment