Brothers in arms: For over 20 years, Cuba helped Africa’s freedom struggle

In July 1975, the Cape Verde islands and the Sao Tome and Principe archipelago also gained full independence from Portugal.

And mid that year, the Mozambique Liberation Front and its leader Samora Machel also gained independence.

But Mozambique, after independence, was often invaded by South African troops.

The last of the Portuguese colonies to win independence was East Timor, in 1999.

“We were able to help that country at a very difficult moment. It was so far away. And Cuba was, at the time, isolated from the rest of the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp,” Castro recollects.

The leader of the newly independent Republic of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, received Cuban political aid.

When he was assassinated by colonial powers in 1961, “we helped his followers. Four years later, in 1965, Cuban blood was spilt in the western area of Lake Tanganyika, where Che, with over 100 instructors, supported Congolese rebels in their fight against white mercenaries led by the West’s puppet Mobutu (Sese Seko)”

In his speech to the UN General Assembly on December 11, 1964, Che Guevara, denounced American and Belgian aggression in the Congo, saying: “Every free man in the world must be ready to avenge the crime committed (there).”

“I tried at the time to calm his impatience... while conditions were being created for a freedom struggle,” Castro reveals. Finally, Castro let Che go to Africa with a group of companeros.

On April 24, 1965, Che arrived with a large group of Cuban combatants at Kibamba, near Fizi, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.

The area was controlled by Laurent-Desire Kabila’s guerrillas.

Kabila had received his political and military training in China.

“But his guerrillas were in deep crisis then — disorganised and under attack by battle-hardened white South Africans, Rhodesians and Germans... commanded by Belgian and African officers,” Castro says in his memoirs.

In July 1965, Cuba sent 250 fighters to Congo Brazzaville “to defend the nationalist government of Massamba Debat and, from Brazzaville, to provide help to Che, who was on the eastern border of the other Congo.”

Cuba’s best known intervention in Africa was in Angola, where the United States played a major part.