Fidel Castro is dead! The headline provoked emotion and debate all over the world. Newspapers published black-and-white pictures of a young Castro riding triumphantly into Havana in a jeep, alongside Che Guevara.

Television stations from across the globe ran footage of his fiery speeches. Professors of politics and history from the most prestigious universities in the world debated his legacy and place in history. Cubans in their millions burnt candles in remembrance of the man who was so central to their sense of nationhood and identity.

The world gasped, and went into a reflective mood, aware of and nostalgic about the golden age of idealism that will always occupy a central place in our consciousness, a period that served to expand our sense of the possible.

What was is it that made the period after the Second World War – the two or three decades following the war – produce such iconic figures : Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, JFK, Muhammad Ali, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Pele, Jimi Hendricks, and so on? Or to ask the question differently: What was it that made these personalities so dominating, so electrifying, so defining of an era, so revolutionary in their thinking?

Muhammad Ali once said, “A man who has no imagination has no wings, he cannot fly.”

What was characteristic of all the individuals above was their ability to imagine the possible beyond the limitations placed on them by culture, power and religion. And they were willing to sacrifice comfort, livelihood and even their lives to achieve what they were convinced was possible.

Thus, for instance, Nelson Mandela imagined a more just society in South Africa and held on to that ideal through 27 years in jail. JFK could dare, with mindboggling confidence, Americans to dream the impossible: To land a man on the moon and bring him safely back to earth. Fidel Castro dared dream the impossible: A more equal society independent of American imperialism. And he was willing to risk all to achieve his dream.

Frantz Fanon had famously written, “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it…” The individuals above, through the sheer force of their imagination, discovered their mission and did everything in their power to fulfil it.

So what was Fidel Castro’s mission and did he fulfil it?

Even the bitterest of Castro’s critics will agree that the pre-revolutionary Cuba ruled by Fulgencio Batista, an American-supported dictator, was just another poor Third World country, a playground for wealthy Americans and a Cuban elite that supported the dictatorship.

Blacks were ignored, women, as in many places in the world, were largely seen as belonging to the kitchen and bedroom, and the majority poor merely as labour to support the opulent lifestyles of wealthy Cubans and foreigners. Fidel Castro, from a relatively well-off family, educated and driven, could have chosen a less riskier and materially more beneficial route, but that would have meant, as Fanon puts it, betraying his mission.

The Cuba he created afforded opportunity never dreamed of by the hitherto downtrodden. Blacks and women became equal citizens. The poor now took centrestage in efforts to transform the country.

Education and medical care became free. Despite an American economic embargo, Cuba developed a highly rated medical care system, with its doctors often serving in places such as Africa.

Cuba also built a formidable army to defend threats to its Independence, exemplified most dramatically by the failed attempt to invade the country by CIA-supported Cuban exiles.

Nelson Mandela credited the Cuban defeat of the apartheid forces at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola as the beginning of the end of the South African occupation of Namibia and the apartheid system in South Africa.

Of course, Castro also created a system that became increasingly intolerant of dissenting views. Like many idealists, he became inflexible. Many Cubans were imprisoned and others fled into exile.

He had fought to free the Cuban people from poverty and American imperialism, but while he was successful on both fronts, he had also created a system that restricted freedom of expression and freedom of association. He had brought equity at the price of freedom.

Castro was part of a generation of idealistic people. Sometimes in their idealism, they forgot to always keep in mind that the ultimate goal of any revolution is the expansion of freedom.

Castro, revolutionary, idealist, internationalist, the man who inspired others all over the world in whatever field to question the limitations placed on them, leaves a mixed legacy. It is conflicted, contradictory and multilayered, and yet will always remain inspirational.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political and social commentator. E-mail: [email protected]