A birthday at Beitbridge

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A full range of ideological positions was on offer as Africa said adiós to Cuba’s Fidel Castro when he stood down last week after 49 years in power. There was low-key press coverage and no official comment in Congo-Kinshasa where Castro’s ally, Che Guevara, launched one of their earliest revolutionary projects. Castro had declared a national day of mourning after the 2001 assassination of Laurent Kabila, who had briefly and chaotically fought alongside Guevara in Congo in the 1960s. Neither was Ethiopia, a fraternal socialist state, moved to bid a fond farewell to Fidel. Alongside the Soviet Union, Cuba had intermittently supported Menghistu Haile Mariam’s Dergue regime, which was eventually toppled in 1991 by forces loyal to Meles Zenawi. The most fulsome tributes came from the General Secretary of the revived South Africa Communist Party Blade Nzimande and the ANC’s Jesse Duarte, who praised Castro’s support for Angolan forces at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988. In Angola, the MPLA’s Foreign Affairs Secretary, Paulo Teixeira Jorge, described Castro’s refusal to accept re-election as head of the Cuban State as ‘noble and dignified’. It seems that Castro has handed the baton for political endurance to Africa: Gabon’s Omar Bongo Ondimba, in power since 1967, is now Africa’s longest serving leader, followed by Libya’s Moammar el Gadaffi, who seized power in 1969.