“Soon I will be 90 years old,” he said. “Soon I will be like all the rest. Everybody’s turn comes.” Those are some of Fidel Castro’s last memorable words in public, during a meeting of the Cuban Communist Party congress on April 19.
The words perhaps symbolised his realisation that his watch was ultimately about to come to its end.
Then on November 25, he quietly bowed from the national and international stage, leaving his global audience heavily polarised over his legacy based on the national and foreign policies he and his comrades had formulated and heavily impacted the Cuban people and the world.
In 1990, upon being released from jail, a concerned Ken Alderman asked Nelson Mandela why he maintained close relations with Castro and others, such as Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Yasser Arafat of Palestine, who in the view of the Western imperialist, were considered “global pariahs”.
In his characteristic defiant response, Mandela reiterated the unwavering support that Cuba had given to the African National Congress struggle in the fight against the White minority rule in South Africa, as opposed to Western latecomers, who joined the struggle in the dying days of the Apartheid regime.
The commitment of Cuba to Africa’s cause continues to date. This was witnessed by Cuba’s generous support in the fight against Ebola in West Africa.
Across the world, and more specifically in Africa, the death of Castro should ignite the revolutionary zeal amongst Africa’s young population, who at over 70 per cent are the continent’s majority citizens.
The economic and political struggle for Independence in most countries across the continent has been betrayed by successive post-Independence regimes.
A fact that has left the majority of young people wallowing in the miasma of poverty and hopelessness, even as corruption by incumbents and a few other connected elites becomes a norm.
The clarion call of pan-Africanism has become a cry for elites to absolve themselves on the international stage, whenever they are called upon to account for human rights violations and atrocities against their fellow countrymen.
This is currently the case in regard to the ICC, where African leaders are loudly calling for withdrawal from the court, without necessarily advocating the cause for good governance and accountability in their own respective countries.
It’s on the basis of these shenanigans, reminiscent of Cuba under dictator Fulgencio Batista’s regime, that the youths across the continent should rise up and be innovative, and develop measures aimed at pushing for political and economic transformation.
The time is ripe and all the ingredients for a new 21st century socialist revolutionary movement against the poverty and hopelessness imposed by these leaders on the majority of most suffering youths across the continent.
It is all laid out!
What is lacking is a committed set of revolutionaries to trigger the action. And as Ernesto “Che” Guevara, one of Castro’s trusted and able comrades, once said at the height of the Cuban revolution, “There shall be no dull moments until victory!” Therefore it’s time for Africa’s young to awake from their slumber, and carry on with the revolution, even as we salute fallen comrades.
Rest in Power, Fidel Castro. You are gone, but you will never be forgotten. Hasta Siempre Comandate! We are all once again going to shake the world for a brighter now and the future!
Sekou Toure Otondi is a Ph.D., research student at the Department of Political Science & Public Administration, University of Nairobi.