WHEN the President, Dr. Hage Geingob, receives his Cuban Guest of Honour, President Miguel Diaz-Canel, at the Heroes’ Day Commemorations, Diaz-Canel will feel at home among appreciative friends and comrades from all walks of Namibian life.
Manni Goldbeck, one of Namibia’s foremost contemporary history researchers and writers, visited Cuba and brought back the demystifying perspective that was first published in the Informanté Newspaper and became well-sought after as the Padlangs-series.
Manni Goldbeck
“Hello Amigo!” I was stuck next to the road in Cuba without fuel surrounded by sugar cane fields and a dome of blue sky. The broken fuel gauge of the hire car had left my fuel consumption to guesswork. I tried to flag down passing cars and eventually waved some bank notes in the air in desperation. Two men soon stopped. “Hello friend,” they called, giving the customary greeting to foreigners, “how can we help?” There was much excitement when they realized I was Namibian. A conversation ensued with their broken English and my few words of Spanish until it petered out when our limited grasp of each other’s language could take us no further. Both men had been involved in Cuba’s 1975-1991 intervention in Angola.
It was immediately apparent that my wish to meet Cubans who had been involved in the Namibian struggle in Angola was going to be easily granted, after all 5% of the population, a staggering 430 000 people, had served either in the army or as doctors, teachers, engineers or part of other civilian programs. Even the manager of my hotel in Havana had been based there. My new-found friends, including Mr Rodolfo Puente Ferro – the first Cuban Ambassador to Angola, divulged a story that is not well-known and that has been swept into the corners and forgotten over the years. I learned about ‘Operation Tributo’, an operation to exhume more than 2000 Cuban bodies buried around Angola and return them to their homeland.
The tail end of 1989 had seen the world tottering and shifting on its foundations and a fresh breeze of change in the air. The wall that divided East and West Germany came thundering down to worldwide amazement and applause, crowds gathered at peace concerts to sing of freedom and there was talk of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. Negotiations were also underway for free and democratic elections in Namibia. The withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola was a prerequisite set by the South African government before their own long-awaited withdrawal (already proposed by the UN in 1978, Resolution 435), before launching Namibia on the road to independence. Cuba not only withdrew its people and its troops but gathered its dead from where they had been buried throughout the country, often in unknown mass graves, in a far-ranging exercise to return their remains to Cuba.
Twenty-five years had passed since then and Namibia had grown into its own. How had we forgotten those who had served, many in advisory positions and on humanitarian projects in Angola, supporting MPLA, and hence SWAPO freedom-fighters and the struggle for independence, in a strange country and a foreign war?
I stood at the memorial site in Havana for those fallen, after listening to my hotel manager relate the story of how he was one of the people who took part in locating and exhuming the dead, a task that filled him with more dread than the horrors of the war. Fifty long-stemmed flowers were given to me, for which I was required to pay and which I placed on the memorial plaques, surrounded by the sombre delegation who had escorted me to the grand cemetery. At the conclusion of Operation Tributo (the unofficial name for the operation), when the remains had been interred in each of Cuba’s provinces, the Cuban government declared two days of national mourning on the 6th and 7th December 1989. Fidel Castro, president of the republic of Cuba, headed the national ceremony, addressing president of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos, families of the fallen, fighters and compatriots, remembering and paying tribute to the fallen ‘internationalists’ who died fighting against racism, apartheid and exploitation.
My interest in the history of Namibia led me to investigate why a tiny Caribbean country had sent 36 000 troops 6000 miles away into Angola to assist the MPLA against South African forces. I ascertained that it was partially based on a concept of ‘internationalism’, a powerful socialist ideology adopted and adapted by Che Guevara to stand with international allies to fight against global oppression, bolstered by Castro’s support for former president of Angola, António Agostinho Neto, and the liberation movement. It also led me to visit south-eastern Angola twice in the following three years where I saw the mine fields that still contain millions of live mines and visited the sites of the famous battles. It was on the road out of Cassinga that our party stood on the remains of Cuban tanks that had been destroyed by South African missiles when a Cuban garrison in nearby Tchamutete went in to aid SWAPO troops. We visited the graveyard of those Cubans killed in the confrontation, cleared during Operation Tribute, and stood piecing together fragments of history, piece by piece.
Time had moved on. The Cold War had long ended, as had Angola’s part in it, ‘Internationalism’ had also come to an end with Cuban involvement in Angola (people serving overseas were now called aid-workers), President dos Santos’s daughter had become one of the richest people in Africa through entrepreneurship and new opportunity, and the countries of Angola and Namibia had moved on, but somehow Cuba was still struggling to inch forward from its socialist past.
It was strange. When I searched the internet to see if there was a memorial ceremony in Cuba for the Angolan internationalists, I battled to find any information, yet could easily find details about a popular film festival. And, in Angola I could barely find a trace of the Cuban presence and those hundreds of thousands of people who had given their time and energy and some, their lives, in support of ideology and freedom. Besides a few remnants of destroyed tanks and the emptied graveyards, I could only find one other feature that had remained, the Spanish word for friend – ‘amigo’.
Children ran past me and shouted “Hello amigo,’ and locals greeted me with the same words. It seemed that lives had been influenced, men had died, political destinies had changed dramatically, yet all that remained was a word of friendship.
Decades have flown past and we find ourselves simultaneously at the anniversary of Operation Tributo, the 7th December, and celebrating the results of the Namibian elections, which continue to move us forward on the country’s successful path into the future. At this poignant time, I find it appropriate to remember, pay respects and give gratitude to all those who assisted us in reaching the point where we are today. “Gracias amigos.”
Reference: George, Edward. The Cuban Intervention in Angola, 1965-1991: From Che Guevara to Cuito Cuanavale, Routledge, New York, 2005.
Forgotten Friends is the first in a series by Padlangs Publications, gathering the stories of Namibia and recording them for future generations.
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