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Famous battle in Angola (1987-1988), largely hidden from people in the US by their media. Cuban and Angolan troops defeated South African and UNITA forces in a pitch battle, leading to South Africa's re-evaluation of their position and their rejoining peace talks they had abandonned two years earlier. They then withdrew from Namibia, which became free. The attempts by South African apologists to deny the victory never takes this policy reversal into account. As Thenjiwe Mtintso, South Africa’s ambassador to Cuba, put it in December 2005: “Today South Africa has many newly found friends. Yesterday these friends referred to our leaders and our combatants as terrorists and hounded us from their countries while supporting apartheid ... These very friends today want us to denounce and isolate Cuba. Our answer is very simple: it is the blood of Cuban martyrs—and not of these friends—that runs deep in the African soil and nurtures the tree of freedom in our country.” -- Cuito Cuanavale revisited, Mail & Guardian, South Africa, 7/11/07 Pedro Perez-Sarduy's poem Cumbite: "in memory of those who have struggled and fell for the Ngola of today" celebrates these events. Cuito Cuanavale was part of Cuba's Operation Black Carlota, named after the famous leader of a slave revolt in 1843, Carlota. |
¿Por qué ocultar la verdad sobre el Apartheid? 12/18/2013 Jiribilla: por
Fidel Castro, sobre Cuito Cuanavale - "El problema principal radicaba en el
hecho de que los racistas sudafricanos poseían, según nuestros cálculos, entre
10 y 12 armas nucleares. Habían realizado pruebas incluso en los mares o en las
áreas congeladas del Sur. El presidente Ronald Reagan lo había autorizado, y
entre los equipos entregados por Israel estaba el dispositivo necesario para
hacer estallar la carga nuclear. Nuestra respuesta fue organizar el personal en
grupos de combate de no más de 1 000 hombres, que debían marchar de noche en una
amplia extensión de terreno y dotados de carros de combate antiaéreos."
Cuito Cuanavale revisited 4/3/2008 Granma: BY PIERO GLEIJESES - "THIS year
marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, in
south-eastern Angola, which pitted the armed forces of apartheid South Africa
against the Cuban army and Angolan forces. General Magnus Malan writes in his
memoirs that this campaign marked a great victory for the South African Defence
Force (SADF). But Nelson Mandela could not disagree more: Cuito Cuanavale, he
asserted, "was the turning point for the liberation of our continent -- and of
my people -- from the scourge of apartheid". Debate over the significance of
Cuito Cuanavale has been intense, partly because the relevant South African
documents remain classified. I have, however, been able to study files from the
closed Cuban archives as well as many US documents. Despite the ideological
divide that separates Havana and Washington, their records tell a remarkably
similar story."
Cuito Cuanavale revisited 7/11/2007 Mail & Guardian: "The next day, June 27
1988, Cuban MIGs attacked SADF positions near the Calueque dam, 11km north of
the Namibian border. The CIA reported that “Cuba’s successful use of air power
and the apparent weakness of Pretoria’s air defences” highlighted the fact that
Havana had achieved air superiority in southern Angola and northern Namibia. A
few hours after the Cubans’ successful strike, the SADF destroyed a nearby
bridge over the Cunene river. They did so, the CIA surmised, “to deny Cuban and
Angolan ground forces easy passage to the Namibia border and to reduce the
number of positions they must defend.” [7] Never had the danger of a Cuban
advance into Namibia seemed more real. The last South African soldiers left
Angola on August 30, before the negotiators had even begun to discuss the
timetable of the Cuban withdrawal from Angola."
African Stalingrad, by Isaac Saney 9/1/2006 Latin American
Perspectives: "One of the most remarkable aspects of the Cuban Revolution
continues to be the various internationalist missions it has sent to other
countries. From the earliest years ofthe revolution, Cuba has sent thousands of
doctors, teachers, and other personnel on humanitarian assignments to various
countries (see, e.g., Erisman, 1991). In the mid-199Os, for example, Cuba had
three times as many doctors as the World Health Organization serving abroad and
providing free medical treatment (Castro, 1996: 30-31)….However, the most
dramatic manifestation of Cuba’s internationalism is little known in the West:
the island’s crucial role in securing the independence of Namibia and ending
racist rule in South Africa."
Surgimiento y desarrollo de los rastafari en la Cuba socialista 5/18/2005 La
Ventana: "Los rastafari son un fenómeno relativamente joven en Cuba. El
movimiento ingresó en la isla por vez primera hacia fines del decenio 1970-1979
y ha seguido haciéndolo a través de distintos agentes. La mayoría de los cubanos
que se identifican con el movimiento, de un modo u otro, supieron de su
existencia escuchando la música reggae. El reggae, que hasta el día de hoy ocupa
muy poco tiempo de transmisión en las estaciones de radio cubanas, fue llevado a
la isla por marineros y estudiantes, sobre todo caribeños y africanos, a fines
de ese decenio. Después, escuchar y grabar las transmisiones de estaciones
radiales de Jamaica y la Florida fue la vía principal para acceder al nuevo
ritmo. Puesto que hasta la década de 1980-1989 las grabadoras personales no
abundaban, las primeras grabaciones fueron hechas por un grupito de entusiastas
esforzados, y luego escuchadas en fiestas semanales de reggae organizadas en
casas particulares, mayormente en barrios urbanos. Fue así que el ritmo empezó a
circular, que se captó a nuevos entusiastas y se estableció un nuevo circuito
musical alternativo."
US link to
SA bio-warfare programme 11/3/2002 Mail & Guardian, South African: "A
California doctor who committed suicide after being accused in a murder plot
gave deadly germs to apartheid South Africa's secret chemical and biological
weapons programme, US television series "60 Minutes" reported on Sunday. Larry
Ford met with scientists from South Africa's Project Coast in the 1980s to
discuss chemical and biological warfare, Wouter Basson, who headed the project,
told the TV programme. He also passed a bag filled with cholera, typhoid,
botulism, anthrax and bubonic plague to a South African military doctor during a
meeting at the house of the South African trade attache in California, former
FBI informant Peter Fitzpatrick told "60 Minutes".
Ex-CIA official says Kissinger policies destabilized southern Africa 4/1/2002 AP
From Old Files, a New Story of U.S. Role in Angolan War 3/31/2002 NYT: "Historians
and former diplomats who have studied the documents say they show conclusively
that the United States intervened in Angola weeks before the arrival of any
Cubans, not afterward as Washington claimed. Moreover, though a connection
between Washington and South Africa, which was then ruled by a white government
under the apartheid policy, was strongly denied at the time, the documents
appear to demonstrate their broad collaboration."
Jonas Savimbi: America's "Freedom Fighter," Africa's Terrorist 2/27/2002 Black
World Today
/Enlaces
Cuito Cuanavale
A Tribute to Fidel Castro and the African Revolution
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/48547
Battle of Cuito Cuanavale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Battle of Cuito Cuanavale 1988
South African History Online (SAHO)
Cuba and the struggle for democracy in South Africa
www.sahistory.org.za/topic/cuba-and-struggle-democracy-south-africa
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jypGod-LiHA
"This is my first video , you can see South-African P.O.W. and South-African
tanks, vehicles and aircrafts destroyed or captured . This video is to all the
Angolan people and Cuban soldiers and the white racist South-Afican soldiers
that can see because this Battle was a Communist Victory... and so all the
Border War , in fact the invasion of Angola was stopped, Namibia became an
independent state, and the Apartheid in South-Africa ended."
African Stalingrad: The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, Latin American Perspectives, 9/06
Cuito Cuanavale revisited, Mail & Guardian, South Africa, 7/11/07
"The next day, June 27 1988, Cuban MIGs attacked SADF positions near the Calueque
dam, 11km north of the Namibian border. The CIA reported that “Cuba’s successful
use of air power and the apparent weakness of Pretoria’s air defences”
highlighted the fact that Havana had achieved air superiority in southern Angola
and northern Namibia. A few hours after the Cubans’ successful strike, the SADF
destroyed a nearby bridge over the Cunene river. They did so, the CIA surmised,
“to deny Cuban and Angolan ground forces easy passage to the Namibia border and
to reduce the number of positions they must defend.” [7] Never had the danger of
a Cuban advance into Namibia seemed more real. The last South African soldiers
left Angola on August 30, before the negotiators had even begun to discuss the
timetable of the Cuban withdrawal from Angola."
Replaying Cuito Cuanavale, History Today, 9/2012
"Any assessment of the outcome of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale should heed
Clausewitz’s dictum that ‘war is a continuation of politics by other means’. The
SADF subscribed to the formula that the war was 80 per cent political and 20 per
cent military. They recognised that victory could not be won on the battlefield
alone but necessitated an all-out offensive employing diplomacy, propaganda and
psychological warfare. The SADF and its proxies might have won many engagements,
though not the war, because Pretoria was compelled to accept a SWAPO government
in Namibia, which it had fought so long to avert. Although the SADF insisted
that it was never defeated, the political system of white power and privilege
that it had defended for so long was dismantled."
Battle of Cuito Cuanavale - 1987
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RefL01AipAU
"This video shows the truth about what happened in late 1987 in South-East
Angola. The video says it all, but the SADF/Unita forces seriously crushed the
Communist forces of Cuba/MPLA!"
THE BATTLE OF CUITO CUANAVALE - Cuba's Mythical Victory
www.rhodesia.nl/cuito.htm
A BATALHA DE CUITO CANAVALE de Juan Benemelis
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