NEWS & ANALYSIS

On Miguel Diaz-Canel's visit to SA - SACP

Alex Mashilo writes that the Cuban First Deputy President says his country is ‘updating' its socialist model

Red Alert: Cuban First Deputy President concludes his visit to South Africa

Comrades-in-struggle for national liberation and socialism, Cuban First Deputy President of the Council of State and Ministers, H.E. Miguel Diaz-Canel and SACP General Secretary Dr Blade Nzimande met at Kempton Park next to Johannesburg, OR Tambo International Airport on Monday, 16 March 2015. They were leading their delegations of state representatives and SACP Central Committee and Politburo members respectively. This during the working visit of the Cuban First Deputy President to South Africa.

First and foremost on behalf of the Cuban people he expressed a message of sincere condolences and solidarity to the people of South Africa and the families of the Minister of Public Service and Administration, African National Congress (ANC) National Executive Committee (NEC) member, Comrade Collins Chabane, and his two protectors Sergeants Lesiba Sekele and Lawrence Lentsoane. The three comrades were killed in a car accident in the early hours of the morning of Sunday 15 March 2015 outside Limpopo Province's capital, Polokwane, South Africa.

Diaz-Canel thanked the SACP and the rest of the Cuban solidarity movement in South Africa for support in the Free Cuban Five Campaign. The remaining three of the Cuban Five who were "unjustly" incarcerated in the United States (U.S.) were released in December 2015. Nzimande appreciated the gratitude on behalf of the movement. He said the most important factor was however the unity and resilience of the Cuban people. "Without this the release would not have happened", said Nzimande.

The meeting further discussed the Cuban Five visit to South Africa. Details are and will continue be worked out in ongoing engagements.

The release of the Cuban Five and announcements December 2015 by the U.S. and Cuba to normalise bilateral relations did not mean that the U.S. has lifted its more than 54 years of unilateral economic embargo on Cuba. There has been a few, if non-essential adjustments, mainly made to further U.S. interests, while the core content of the economic embargo remains in force.

The U.S. has over the years used its economic and other forms of power to impose imperialist expansion of its embargo on companies belonging to, or based in, other countries, effectively preventing them from trading with Cuba. In this way the U.S. economic embargo is more than a single-state unilateral measure of international illegality.

There are still South African companies, for example who, fearing victimisation and exclusion from the U.S. financial system and capital, global production networks and supply chains involving U.S. companies, are not trading with Cuba. This is internationally widespread, and even deeper in the case of other countries.

The embargo has however failed for more than half a century to achieve its main objective of regime change in Cuba, and if maintained it will continue to fail. This was acknowledged by U.S. president Barack Obama in his speech December 2015 announcing the release of the remaining three of the Cuban Five. You cannot do one thing over and over again and for more than half a century and expect different results, he said.

Cuba has mastered the art of surviving despite the embargo and its negative economic impact. In addition, new changes in the world economy are more and more taking a direction that undermines the embargo. However, there is still a bigger struggle to pursue.

The resilience by the Cuban people is both an example and a just call to the world to take its cue from Cuba, engage in, and intensify, solidarity action to bring the embargo to an end. This goes beyond an act of solidarity with Cuba alone. It is the most important struggle for a people of the world to reclaim their rights to self-determination and national sovereignty which are stifled by the U.S. through its imperialist policy.  

"The SACP will remain a dependable ally in this struggle", the Party has pledged a long time ago.    

The meeting came at a historic time both with regard to the Cuban socialist revolution and the South African National Democratic Revolution and struggle for socialism.

The leaders exchanged information and briefings on situational contexts and latest developments both in Cuba and South Africa. The leaders further agreed to meet again.

South Africa: National Democratic Revolution and the struggle for socialism

In South Africa, the ANC-headed alliance including the SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) have developed a shared perspective to place the country's transformation on to a second, more radical phase of transition from colonial and apartheid oppression. This essentially involves the completion of the liberation process not only from national oppression but also from imperialism.

While there are ongoing engagements on practical measures and other policy aspects, there is a general agreement that South Africa must use its vast mineral resource endowments to build local industry and develop production locally to resolve the challenges of class inequality, unemployment and poverty, as well as to transform the structure of the country's economy and its external relationships from those of exploitation by imperialism - this is referred to as ‘relative de-linking'.

The need to fully secure national self-determination and sovereignty and protect these rights from external interference and manipulation is as important for South Africa as it is for Cuba. This is one of the critical tasks facing the second, more radical phase of the South African revolution.

At the heart of this transition is the complete achievement of the goals of the Freedom Charter. The Charter was adopted in 1955 by the Congress of the People under conditions of oppression. It entails the vision for a future South Africa, this to the SACP as a minimum platform which complete achievement the Party believes will lay the indispensable basis for an advance to socialism.

Remarkable progress in implementing the Freedom Charter has been made since South Africa's April 1994 Democratic Breakthrough, but more work still needs to be done to navigate forward.

Cuba: The socialist revolution

Cuba is engaging in a new policy ‘updating' its socialist model. It is also engaging in negotiations to redefine its bilateral relations with the U.S. Karl Marx's theory developed in the ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme' and emphasised by Vladimir Lenin in ‘What is to be done?'; "...enter into agreements to satisfy the practical aims of the movement, but do not allow any bargaining over principles, do not make theoretical ‘concessions'", can clearly be recognised by well-trained ears in listening skills.

That's Cuba's approach.

Cuba's sovereignty and national self-determination are non-negotiable. Its destination is reserved to the Cuban people to determine. This right will neither be privatised nor outsourced in any particular manner. Foreign interference and machination will not be allowed any quarter to undermine that supreme right. The Cuban people's sovereign development path for a socialist society is irreversible, and cannot be renounced. There will be no departure from the construction of socialism in Cuba.

The main means of social production will remain in the hands of the state - that is the Cuban people organised as the state. This will not change, and will continue to serve the collective needs of the Cuban people, including quality education and healthcare for all, which are provided for free, among others.

Cuba will also continue to train medical professionals in solidarity with other people of the world, such as South Africa.

Space for socialised co-operative ownership has been developed in Cuba. This will be deepened. Adjustments have been identified and in some areas also adopted to give play to private players. This will be developed, but only in a manner that is fair to the Cuban people and doesn't undermine the Cuban revolution and the development of a socialist destination.

Previously, Umsebenzi Online published articles highlighting that the U.S. is using Guantanamo Bay as a detention camp to commit some of the worst human rights atrocities on earth. The articles called for international solidarity to bring this to an end. Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. That was the essence of the message from numerous SACP statements to the U.S. in solidarity with the people of Cuba. The same message came from many of the writers.

In his first term electioneering, current United States President Barack Obama promised to shut down the detention camp. This didn't happen. He is now in his second and last term of office and now Republicans - the opposition controls the United States' law making body, Congress.   In the ongoing negotiations with the Obama administration, Cuba wants the U.S. to hand over Guantanamo Bay back to Cuba. 

Another crucial item in the negotiations, which Obama promised in his first term electioneering but didn't deliver, and which Cuba wants implemented, is that the U.S. must lift its economic embargo imposed more than half a century ago. In his speech announcing the release of the Cuban Five in December 2015, Obama admitted that the isolation of Cuba did not achieve the goal sought but produced contradictory results.

Obama conceded that the U.S. was itself now increasingly isolated in the Americas, especially in Latin America. That global region has been developing alternative development and economic institutions and increasingly working as one in response to the devastation created and left by colonialism and imperialist exploitation - at the forefront of which has been the U.S.

The United States' economic embargo on Cuba has been made part of the U.S. law, but Obama as president has executive prerogatives which can go a long way in curtailing the content of the embargo. For so long as the embargo remains in force the normalisation of bilateral relations between the two countries will be impossible.

For example Cuba cannot set up an embassy in the U.S. which will not work because of the financial aspects of the broader economic embargo. If the U.S. does not lift the entire embargo there will be no other alternative to Cuba but to continue at the United Nations General Assembly to move the motion for its removal.

Alex Mashilo is SACP Spokesperson and writes in his capacity as correspondent for Umsebenzi Online, where this article first appeared.

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