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Fidel Castro, a true titan and the last revolutionary

Wednesday December 07 2016

I think it is now legitimate to announce the official dawning of a new era in the search for authentic political heroes.

The signal for this new effort is the passing of the last true political titan of the past century, the ultimate revolutionary icon that was Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, on whom the curtain came down last week.

Fidel, as he was fondly known to his people, defied the traditional pigeonholing that is routinely used, by friends and foes, to define political actors.

Many analysts have even failed to say for sure if he was indeed a communist or a Marxist, some even suggesting that Fidel was, if he could ever be categorised, a “fidelista,” though that would raise the question of whether Jesus Christ was a Christian.

The mythical quality accompanying this most extraordinary of men has to be put down to the unbelievable feats of a young man who dedicated his whole life to a cause, and who lived and breathed that cause to the very end, in the face of incredible odds.

Hundreds of books have been written on Fidel and the revolution he led in Cuba, but none of them comes close to Tad Szulc’s Fidel: A Critical Portrait, which offers ample insights into the man’s early years, including his activities as a law student at the University of Havana in the late 1940s while at the same time he was involved in the politics of the capital and the politics of the whole Latin American region.

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Szulc’s biography is considered less hagiographic than the rest since the author had US security associations.

The violent, gangland style of politics of Havana meant that Fidel, ever so willing to speak out against the corrupt government in town and its backers in the United States, was under constant attack, and was shot at several times; to protect himself he openly carried a gun to classes.

Still a student, he joined an expeditionary boat expedition to invade the Dominican republic with a view to overthrowing that country’s dictator, Rafael Trujillo. Only the intervention of the Americans aborted the invasion, and Fidel jumped into the water and swam to shore and back to Cuba, to continue his studies and revolutionary work.

After the failure of the Moncada Barracks attack in 1953, Fidel was sent to jail, and when he came out he continued with the unfinished business of ousting the American stooge, Fulgencio Batista, who had turned Cuba into a veritable brothel for American gangsters such as Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.

The Havana playground for America’s rich and dirty was described by JT English in his book, Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and then Lost it to the Revolution: “(Havana) seethed like a bitch with a low-grade fever.” It was a kind of prostitution that Fidel and his fellow Cubans, the inheritors of the freedom torch lit by Jose Marti, were not prepared to live with.

Travelling to Mexico after coming out of prison, he gathered together the Cuban exiles who plotted going back to their country and getting rid of Batista. They were joined by an Argentine who went on to imprint his name and image on the minds of the world’s youth. His name was Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

The voyage of the Granma, the boat that carried some 90 hopeless revolutionaries to the Cuban beach, the attack on them by Batista’s forces, the whittling of the force down to a mere dozen or so, and the reorganisation of the remnants and new adherents into a fighting army in the Sierra Maestro, is the stuff of legend. It is a story of bravado and abnegation written in a long gone era of romantic heroism.

A singular man, this Fidel was, who had such huge energy reserves that he seemed to have no bed time, but went round the clock on a series of short naps in between assignments; flew his chopper; did scuba diving and cooked seafood for his guests – he was a famed cook – and played baseball in between. And kept the Americans, only 90 miles from him, preoccupied with just what could be done with Fidel, in plot after failed plot to eliminate him.

A true titan has taken his last bow. It is upon the world to produce the next true leader who will lead us in the fight against world imperialism and domestic tyranny. RIP.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]

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