Course on
Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 10
Jorge Risquet Valdés Saldaña
Liberation
Struggle
In political education, our method is to remove ourselves in
place and time. We go to the “classics” and to authors of the intermediate
period, and we study other places, in the past or in the present.
All of these provide us with examples. The examples provide
us with a theoretical and practical “sandpit” that gives us a “codification” or
in other words a basis upon which we may have a dialogue.
Dialogue is where political education happens. Anything that
can provide an occasion for political dialogue is good for education.
Our own history can be used, but what do we find? When
looking for history of our liberation struggle, and the history of the armed
struggle in particular, we find very little. The materials about the
culminating struggle in Angola
assembled below will have to suffice for now. They can also serve as a small
contribution towards recognising the Cuban and Soviet comrades who fought faithfully
and often fell for us, until victory came.
Vladimir Shubin has written and published two books
in English: “ANC: A View from Moscow”
and “The Hot 'Cold War’: The USSR in Southern Africa ”.
These books are presently available from bookshops in South Africa ,
or they can be ordered via the Internet.
The Soviet record of events does not correspond in every
respect with the Cuban record, and this contrast would force the readers or
students to make judgements of their own, as to what was really the critical
path that led to the final political result, which was victory in Angola,
Namibia and South Africa. Let us hope to find a suitable Soviet or Russian
article in electronic form before this course gets run again.
Fidel Castro has written a lot. Linked below, as our main
item, is the speech he made on 2 December 2005, on the occasion of the 30th
anniversary of the first Cuban expeditionary force to Angola, which became what
Chester Crocker called an “unprecedented
projection of power”.
Jorge Risquet Valdés Saldaña, fighter, negotiator,
and currently member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba,
has written (in Spanish) “El Segundo
frente del Che en el Congo” (ISBN 959-210-412-3, Casa Editorial Abril,
2006) – the history of the Patrice Lumumba Battalion, in which Risquet served.
The picture above is of the same Jorge Risquet, a great and brave hero, also
famous for his friendliness and joie-de-vivre.
Please download and read the text via the following
link:
Further
reading:
The Massacre of Cassinga [and
after] Piero Gleijeses (2243 words)
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