THE STATE VISIT BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE USA BARRACK OBAMA TO THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA WAS NEVER ABOUT REGIME CHANGE

Throughout the centuries of our struggles for liberation, humanity has often being occasioned by momentous events in the making of history. There have been few rare moments of history, which have over the years, inspired generations of mankind to be great servants belonging to the future. 

The last few days saw our mother earth heralding two magnificent events of great historic importance. The events which have far reaching significance within the arena of the international diplomatic relations.

I have elected to count on these great feats of humanity to contribute to the overall debate about the building of a new world social order. The restoration of the diplomatic relationship between the USA and Cuba is an immense achievement of all humanity. 

Last week the President of the USA Barrack Obama undertook a historic state visit to the socialist Republic of Cuba. This was the first ever state visit by a USA President in the history of the diplomatic relations between the two nation states of the Western Hemisphere. 

The first President of the USA to grace the shores of the homeland was President Calvin Coolidge, who attended a Pan American conference in the city of Havana in 1928. Therefore the state visit by Barrack Obama to the Cuban archipelago, was the first since the conquer of the Americas by the philanthropist Christopher Columbus

Thanks to the Madiba Magic, it was during the memorial service of our late President Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela, that the warm hands of embrace between President Obama and Raul Castro, opened a new chapter in the history of diplomatic relations between the two countries. This was a historic event that signaled the importance of diplomacy within the community of nations.

This week our mother earth is commemorating the darkest chapter of one of the most iniquitous, bestial and prolonged forms of genocide recorded in the history of humanity. The world is marking the international day for the remembrance of the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. 

The aftermath of the genocide was as a consequence of the decisions taken by the Great Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Holland, Italy and the United States during the Berlin conference of 1885. The ignominious conference subjugated the African continent as a colonial territory of the world superpowers. 

The memories of this historic tragedy, bring back the fateful episodes of the capture and enslavement of millions of men and women from our continent into the shores of the Americas. They were forcefully uprooted from their own land and family, chained, transported aboard slave ships, thrown like beasts into dirty bunkhouses made to produce sugar, coffee, cotton and slave children for the all mighty slave- owing masters. 

These are some of the monstrous acts that have through the successive centuries of our struggles imposed themselves on the destiny of mankind. This barbaric period witnessed millions of the African people perished in the crossings of the Atlantic Ocean and the extermination of ten of millions of the indigenous population of the Americas. 

Throughout the American hemisphere the struggles of the heroic slave people defeated adversity. Their rebelliousness and determination for freedom and equality defeated the mighty sword of the imperialist empire. 

In Brazil and Jamaica, the heroic slave people built their independent maroon communities in the mountain ranges free from oppression and exploitation by the slave masters. The struggle for the freedoms and emancipation of the slave people led to the declaration of the first independent slave republic of Haiti in 1804. 

Historical necessity invites humanity to appreciate these epic events which continue to decorate the theatre of our struggle for liberation. These are events which by their nature constitute a solid foundation upon which humanity will design the architect of its future. 

We have a duty to appreciate the immense achievements of the struggles of our people to emancipate themselves from the barbarism of imperialism and colonialism. These gallant achievements are a testimony that imperialism and colonialism are symptoms of backwardness in any stage of the development of human society. 

I am confident, that President Barrack Obama, himself a descended of the African continent, was proud to walk over the footprints of Jose Antonio Aponte, the first free slave to lead a rebellion against Spanish colonialism in Cuba. The exemplary heroic leadership of this great son of the African soil, led to his execution by Spanish military tribunal on the 9th of April 1812 in the city of Havana. 

Through the beautiful streets of the old Havana, less did he know that he is walking over the footprints of one of the most outstanding heroic slave internationalist General Maximo Gomez. A Haitian slave of an African origin, General Gomez taught the Cuban mambis how to use machete as a weapon during the wars of resistance against Spanish colonialism. 

President Obama, will be the first USA President, on an official state visit, to walk over the footprints of one of the heroines of the slave people in the history of humanity, Carlota. This titanic leader of the struggles of our people, was a slave woman of an Angolan origin, working in the sugar plantations in the Matanzas province in Cuba. 

Carlota was the first slave woman to lead a heroic insurrection against the Spanish slave masters in 1843. Her body was torn into pieces by horses that were charged to run into different directions.  

In memory of this heroine of our struggle, the Cuban Revolution named her first major military operation in Africa, to be operation Carlota. It was this operation that saw the defeat of British and Portuguese colonialism in the Southern tip of Africa. 

Far from falsehood, it is time that the world superpowers come to the fore to apologies to the people of the world. They must take responsibility to the gruesome acts of crimes of genocide committed against humanity. 

In the history of humanity, the Cuban Revolution is the first to have extended this humane gesture, to pay back the debt to the people of the African continent. After the triumph of the revolution in 1959, thousands of brave men and women volunteered to fight side by side with the people of our continent against colonial oppression and exploitation. 

The victory of the people of Cuba against the US puppet dictator, Batista, was the end but the beginning of new heightened tensions between the two neighbouring states. The USA never came to terms that it has to respect the sovereignty of the will of the people. 

Throughout the years, the successive governments of the United States, make several futile attempts to impose its will against the wishes and the aspirations of the majority of the people of the Island. The imperialist superpower never came to terms that the overwhelming majority of the people of Cuba have embraced the socialist character of their revolution.

Neo liberal ideology was in contradiction with the theoretical thrust that there is democracy in a democratic republic. It misunderstood the notion that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a complete expression of democracy by the will of the majority. 

In the dictatorship of the majority there is freedom and equality amongst the people. There is no artificial segmentation of man according to colour, gender, slaves and slaves owners, and the relations to the means of production.

Less do they understand that bourgeois democratic republic is bound by the narrow dictates of capitalist exploitation. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is about the will of the minority, freedom by the slave owners over the majority of the slave population. 

When I saw Barrack Obama walking through the streets of the old Havana, I became confident that he might be different from the rest. I saw a noble man with all the audacity to use all his powers to effect a meaningful change in the affairs of the world. 

I wished he could become true to the people of Cuba. The dialogue for the restoration of the diplomatic relations between the two sister countries must not be about regime change. 

It must be a diplomatic encounter of mutual respect based on the fundamental principle of territorial independence and sovereignty. The people of Cuba has embraced socialism as the highest form of their democracy. 

Its achievements to the humanitarian sphere are colossal. Cuba is the most peaceful country in the world. Over the years it has made qualitative advances in the field of education, health and agriculture for the benefit of its people. 

I impress myself on the President of the USA, to invoke all powers invested in him to end the economic blockade and return the Guantanamo bay to its rightful people, the people of Cuba. The greatest gift is to return to the Cuban nation  the glory of her motherland. 

I wish the imperial power, the USA, ceases to interfere in the affairs of the progressive governments and movements of the Latin America. The people of Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Equator, Nicaragua, and all in the region have the right to determine their own destiny.   

Our responsibility is to build on a new world social order anchored on the fundamental values of human solidarity and internationalism. Our determination is to steer this common cause of our struggles into the future. 

Cde Justice Piitso if former Provincial Secretary of the SACP in Limpopo, former Ambassador to Cuba, and writes in personal capacity