This week Zambia and other southern African countries marked the third anniversary of the death of one of the leading liberation heroes Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela who died on December 5, 2013 and was buried at his home village in the Eastern Cape on December 15, 2013.
No doubt fifth republican President Michael Chilufya Sata would have loved to personally attended the funeral that attracted world leaders like former US president George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but he instead sent Zambia’s founding father Dr Kenneth Kaunda to represent him.
Most people would agree that President Sata did that because he was acutely aware of the close working relationship Dr Kaunda and Mandela enjoyed in general and the role of the African National Congress (ANC) played in Zambia’s struggle for independence in particular.
President Sata’s move was also intended to honour the deep influence Mandela, as an individual wielded among Zambia’s founding nationalists like Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula, Simon Kapwepwe, Sikota Wina, Mainza Chona and many others who were prepared to go to jail or even to die (‘if need be’) in order to liberate their beloved country from colonial bondage and create a free democratic and non-racial society.
When Nkumbula formed his political party upon his return from studies abroad he called it the Northern Rhodesia African National Congress (NRANC) and recruited young Kenneth Kaunda as its secretary general. Similarly when Kaunda and his fellow ‘radical’ broke away from Nkumbula’s NRANC in 1958, they formed their own party they called it the Zambia African National Congress (ZANC).
ZANC was renamed the United National Independence Party (UNIP) – probably to ‘nip’ colonialism and imperialism in the bud – when various African welfare associations and splinter trade unions merged a few months before Kaunda was released from prison first in Kabompo, North-Western Province,  and second in Salisbury (Harare) in 1960. The ZANC leader was arrested for allegedly fomenting rebellion in Northern Rhodesia.
While Mandela inspired many liberation leaders in the southern African sub-continent and beyond, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, who recently died aged 90 after a long illness, also had a tremendous influence on inspired many, including journalists and students at various universities and colleges across the world.
Many African leaders, especially those who were deemed as radicals, or non-conformists, were branded ‘communists’ or ‘Marxists’ simply because they adopted Castro’s and Karl Marx’s socialist principles and the Cuban leader’s unmistakable dress code in particular.
In this regard former Mozambican President Samora Machel (who was killed when his Soviet Union-manufactured presidential jet crashed in suspicious circumstances on the Mozambique-South African border as he and his team, which included Zambia’s ambassador to Mozambique Cox Siukumba returned to Maputo from a meeting with President Kaunda and other Frontline heads of state at Kasaba Bay in 1986) was a typical example. Two South African ministers, who were the first to arrive at the crash site, identified the Mozambican leader, who had given refuge to thousands of ANC and Zimbabwean freedom fighters, by his trademark cap.
Former second republican President Frederick Titus Jacob (FTJ) Chiluba admired Castro so much that he named one of his sons after the Cuban revolutionary leader. It would not be too far-fetched to speculate that many others must have done so in recognition of inspiring role Castro played in global politics.
And looking back to the unscheduled meeting at the Ndola Central Hospital’s outpatient department (OPD) medical clinic in 1990, I still wonder whether he had Castro’s 26th July Movement’s inspired revolution in mind when he told me that ‘there will be a Second Revolution in Zambia’ – which, by the way, came to pass in 1991 when the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) toppled President Kaunda’s UNIP rule after nearly 27 years in power. Or was it a mere coincidence – something said at he spur of the moment?
BACKGROUND: Castro became Cuba’s political leader in 1959 and transformed his country into the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere. He became a symbol of communist revolution in Latin America. He held the title of premier until 1976 and then began a long tenure as president of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers, handing over provisional power in July 2006 because of health problems and formally relinquishing the presidency in February 2008.
Born on August 13, 1926, near Birán Castro was raised in southeastern Cuba. His father was Angel Castro y Argiz, an immigrant from Spain. The old man was a fairly prosperous sugarcane farmer in a locality that had long been dominated by estates of the US-owned United Fruit Company.
Angel Castro had two children by his first wife and five more children by his cook, Lina Ruz González, whom he later married. Fidel was one of the five children, and Raul, who later became his brother’s chief associate in Cuban affairs, was another.
Historical records indicate that Fidel Castro attended Roman Catholic boarding schools in Santiago de Cuba and then the Catholic high school Belén in Havana, the Cuban capital, where he proved an outstanding athlete. In 1945 he entered the School of Law of the University of Havana, where organized violent gangs sought to advance a mixture of romantic goals, political aims, and personal careers.
Castro’s main activity at the university was politics, and in 1947 he joined an abortive attempt by Dominican exiles and Cubans to invade the Dominican Republic and overthrow General Rafeal Trujillo. He then took part in urban riots that broke out in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, in April 1948.
After his graduation in 1950, Castro began to practice law and became a member of the reformist Cuban People’s Party (called Ortodoxos). He became their candidate for a seat in the House of Representatives from a Havana district in the elections scheduled for June 1952. In March of that year, however, the former Cuban president, Gen Fulgencio Batista overthrew the government of President. Carlos Prío Socarrás and cancelled the elections.
After legal means failed to dislodge Batista’s new dictatorship, Castro began to organise a rebel force for the task in 1953. On July 26, 1953, he led about 160 men in a suicidal attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba in hopes of sparking a popular uprising. Most of the men were killed, and Castro himself was arrested. After a trial in which he conducted an impassioned defence, he was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. He and his brother Raúl (the current president) were released in a political amnesty in 1955, and they went to Mexico to continue their campaign against the Batista regime. There Fidel Castro organised Cuban exiles into a revolutionary force called the 26th of July Movement.
On December 2, 1956, Castro and an armed expedition of 81 men landed on the eastern coast of Cuba, from the yacht Granma. All of them were killed or captured except Fidel and his brother Raúl and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, and nine others, who retreated into the Sierra Maestra to wage guerrilla warfare against the Batista forces. With the help of growing numbers of revolutionary volunteers throughout the Caribbean Island nation, Fidel Castro’s forces won a string of victories over the Batista regime’s demoralised and poorly led armed forces.
Castro’s propaganda efforts proved particularly effective, and as internal political support waned and military defeats multiplied, Batista fled the country on January 1, 1959.
With that Castro’s force of 800 guerrillas had defeated the Cuban government’s 30,000-man professional army – something which inspired many African nationalist leaders like Kaunda, Jomo Kenyatta and his ‘Mau-Mau’ movement in Kenya, Nelson Mandela; Dr Neto and Eduardo dos Santos and their MPLA  in Angola;, Patrice Lumumba (Belgian Congo/now DRC; Sam Nujoma and his SWAPO in South West Africa (Namibia); Kamuzu Banda and his Malawi Congress Party in Nyasaland;  Seretse Khama and his Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) and Joshua Nkomo and later Robert Mugabe of the ZAPU-ZANU-PF alliance who stepped up their campaigns to end colonialism in their respective countries.
As the undisputed revolutionary leader, Castro later became commander-in-chief of the armed forces in Cuba’s new provisional government, which had Manuel Urrutia, a moderate liberal, as its president. In February 1959 Castro became premier and thus head of the government. By the time Urrutia was forced to resign in July 1959, Castro had taken effective political power into his own hands.
Actually Castro came to power with the support of most Cuban city dwellers on the basis of his promises to restore the 1940 constitution, create an honest administration, reinstate full civil and political liberties, and undertake moderate reforms. But once established as Cuba’s leader he began to pursue more radical policies: Cuba’s private commerce and industry were nationalized; sweeping land reforms were instituted; and American businesses and agricultural estates were expropriated. The US was alienated by these policies and offended by Castro’s fiery new anti-American rhetoric. His trade agreement with the then Soviet Union in February 1960 further deepened American distrust.
In 1960 most economic ties between Cuba and the United States were severed, and Washington broke diplomatic relations with the island country in January 1961. In April of that year the US government secretly equipped thousands of Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro’s government; their landing at the Bay of Pigs, however, was crushed by Castro’s armed forces.
In the meantime Castro created a one-party government to exercise dictatorial control over all aspects of Cuba’s political, economic, and cultural life. All political dissent and opposition were ruthlessly suppressed. Many members of the Cuban upper and middle classes felt betrayed by these measures and chose to immigrate to the United States. At the same time, Castro vastly expanded the country’s social services, extending them to all classes of society on an equal basis. Educational and health services were made available to Cubans free of charge, and every citizen was guaranteed employment.
However, Cuba’s socialist economic policies failed to achieve significant growth or to reduce its dependence on the country’s chief export, cane sugar. Economic decision-making power was concentrated in a centralized bureaucracy headed by Castro, who proved to be an inept economic manager. With inefficient industries and a stagnant agriculture, Cuba became increasingly dependent on favourable Soviet trade policies to maintain its modest standard of living in the face of the United States’ continuing trade embargo, which ended only recently when outgoing African-American US president      Barak Obama moved to restored ties with its former ‘pariah’ neighbouring state.
Castro remained premier until 1976, when a new constitution created a National Assembly and Castro became president of that body’s State Council. He retained the posts of commander in chief of the armed forces and secretary-general of the Communist Party of Cuba – the only legal political party—and he continued to exercise unquestioned and total control over the government. Castro’s brother Raúl, minister of the armed forces, ranked second to him in all government and party posts.
In conclusion I would like to argue that from the above analysis, it is clear that Castro’s leadership and personality not only inspired many African revolutionaries like Mandela but also influenced some leaders like Dr Kaunda and Nyerere who adopted ‘socialist’ policies based on his model: Like Castro, they declared a one-party system of government in their respective countries and nationalized foreign-owned businesses. The rest is history, as the saying goes.
Extra reporting: Encyclopedia Brittanica
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