Lumumba, Guevara, Cuito Cuanavale, Not Forgotten

Joseph Mobutu (who later expanded his name considerably) was the principal leader of the coup against Congo liberation President Patrice Lumumba in September 1960. Mobutu was finally overthrown in 1997. On 16 January 2001, Mzee Laurent Kabila, who had led this liberation of the Democratic Republic of Congo from the stooge Mobutu, was murdered after being demonised for a long time in the bourgeois press, especially in South Africa. Ten days later his son Joseph Kabila, not yet 30, brought up in exile, not speaking many Congolese languages, was somehow “declared president” and immeduately recognised by the Imperialist powers. He was quickly flown to Washington to be photographed with George W Bush, who was inaugurated on January 20th of that year. Yesterday Joseph Kabila was declared the winner of an election in the DRC against another candidate, Bemba, whose credentials are equally unclear. What is the meaning of such an election? Are any class politics articulated in the process? This is the world of Frantz Fanon brought back to life. The new bourgeoisie takes nominal charge, but it is not a proper bourgeoisie, and is not even capable of fulfilling the historic role of a proper bourgeoisie. It fails to destroy feudalism and it fails to create a full proletariat. Yesterday the latest Umsebenzi Online came out (and is linked below). The principal article, as usual, is by SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande, and is a report of the latest meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in Portugal, in which the SACP played a part. The main business of the meeting was to project an anti-Imperialist front to save the world from the fate of countries such as the DRC, and worse, and to defeat the Imperialists once and for all. The other article in Umsebenzi Online is from Young Communist League member and sometime Communist University contributor and student Nyiko Floyd Shivambu. We are proud of Comrade Shivambu and look forward to having many more of his writings in the future. The SACP has issued a statement following its visit to Cuba, also linked below. The statement, as such statements always should, takes care to recall the supreme sacrifice that so many Cubans made for the sake of South Africa’s liberation, in their confrontation with the apartheid SADF and in the crucial victory at Cuito Cuanavale. We do not forget. Meanwhile, the efforts of the same George W Bush to undermine the Cuban revolution, although deadly enough, have taken on the appearance of farce. See the linked article from the London Guardian. This is actually a story about “sponsoring” and “funding” and “donors” that should be familiar to South Africans. The journalist Richard Gott has built his career in Europe by writing about Latin America from a white point of view. His is a good example of the kind of “progressive” writing that is really nothing of the sort. See his (linked) article on settler colonialism in South America. He thinks it has only just now been discovered, but of course it has a history that is just as bad as or worse than its sister-continent of Africa. What does Gott think was the reality of Che Guevara, a white Argentinian? Guevara travelled to Africa in 1965 Africa to assist Mzee Kabila to fight against the Imperialist stooge Mobutu. Does Gott think that Guevara did not know what he was, or what he was doing? The world of the oppressed, and of the partisans of the oppressed, is a small world. We are family. We don’t forget. Long Live the anti-Imperialist Front! Click on these links: Anti-Imperialist Front, Umsebenzi Online, Vol 5, No. 68, 15 Nov 2006 (4248 words) SACP statement on 8 November 2006 UN resolution on Cuba (630 words) Democracy funds for Game Boys, Richard Luscombe, Guardian (443 words) Latin America preparing to settle accounts, Richard Gott, Guardian (1211 words)