Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela will speak on the same platform in Copenhagen this weekend, but South Africa still seems to have mixed feelings about Cuba, writes Peter Vale
TEN months after the election, South Africa still seems unable to articulate a coherent and cohesive policy towards Cuba. Certainly foreign minister Alfred Nzo’s performance on the issue in parliament last week left the impression that he, for one, was uncertain of what the government of national unity was trying to achieve.
This is not surprising. If ever an international relationship was marked by paradox and puzzle, this is it. The background is instructive because it suggests how diverse experiences of events can influence different policy responses.
Following Cuba’s strategic intervention in the Angolan War of 1975, South Africa’s then minority government demonised the Caribbean island state along with the Soviet Union. The more they followed this strategy, the deeper popular passions appeared roused in favour of the Castro government.
As early as the Goniwe funeral, a powerful subterranean message –which, if memory serves, hailed Castro’s revolutionary support for the anti-apartheid cause — answered apartheid’s deepening paranoia. By the end of the 1980s –especially after the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, where they played a decisive role — the Cuban flag was defiantly flown at United Democratic Front gatherings in Cape town.
The power of this populist feeling was evident at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration. After the new president, Castro was most rapturously received by the crowd.
Translating conflicting political myths into clear lines of policy is not easy. In this particular case, the process has been complicated by the slow transformation of the responsible bureaucracy. When they have been called upon to change direction, policy- makers have had to relied on an institutional memory which, at worst, was faulty and, at best, one- dimensional. There has simply been no appreciation of the passion which Cuba raises on the street.
Can this change?
To succeed requires a recognition that sentiment, on the one hand, and sourness, on the other, are unreliable guides to sound international affairs. The development of a Cuba policy in keeping with the hopes of South Africa’s people and which protects their long- term interests requires the acceptance of three principles of international life.
First a recognition that human rights are central to peaceful international relations, any state which systematically violates these, threatens peace and security. There can be no compromise on this. Secondly, an acceptance that boycotts debilitate modern economies primarily because they hamper the prospects for political change. This is an inversion of the accepted South African logic which argued that boycotts were a strategy to effect political change. Thirdly, an appreciation of the fact that without social upliftment and economic growth, democracy is hollow; this latter chain of association is of course central to the reconstruction and development programme.
South Africa’s struggle for nationhood was essentially around human rights. The deeply-rooted international support which the anti-apartheid forces enjoyed rested primarily upon this concern. To turn a blind eye to the suggestions that there are abuses of human rights in Cuba is to betray all this.
If, as Nzo suggested last week, the government is concerned with the motives behind the various reports on human rights violations, its own experts must satisfy South Africans as to the true state of affairs.
South Africa’s experience of economic boycotts teaches a parallel lesson; this is the second point. Revisionist interpretations suggest that political change was decisively influenced by the engagement- disengagement strategy of, particularly, internationally-minded business.
Only by interfacing with the South African economy during the early and mid-1980s, when the call for boycotts were at their deepest, was Chase Manhattan Bank able to withdraw lines of credit. The result was the debt-standstill and an intensification of political pressure; this ended, as the world knows, in
The lessons for Cuba are instructive. The decades-long United States boycott has eroded margins for political manoeuvre: this is hardening political attitudes on the island. The outcome of this seems pre-determined: deepening economic hardship and slow political decay. This end-game may satisfy the predatory ambitions of Cuban exiles and right-wing Americans, but it will not meet South Africa’s democratic standards.
This introduces the third issue.
Disquiet around boycotts against Cuba is in no small way linked to the fact that pressure for political change directly threatens the gain of the Cuban revolution. In many ways, of course, the social net necessary for Cuba’s reconstruction and development is already in place.
Although scorned by many, Cuba’s social achievements are undeniable: education, health and social welfare have been delivered to its people. The economic boycott threatens these: if they are eroded, and they might if the end-game plays out, the reconstruction of the island’s economy will be near impossible; certainly, it will test any future political system.
Because the RDP is a central instrument of domestic policy, South Africa must promote the link between democracy, social delivery and economic growth in its foreign policy, too. It therefore behoves the government to go beyond simply opposing the economic boycott against Cuba, as Nzo suggested last week.
The US needs to be drawn into a discussion on Cuba which stresses the difficulties of reconstruction and development when an economy is near free-fall and without an effective social net. If this is not followed through, South Africa not only abandons Cuba, it weakens the case for the RDP.
South Africa and Cuba are bound by more than a quirk of decolonisation. The passions of ordinary people have drawn the two countries into a complex web of expectation. When Castro visits the country later this year South Africa’s people will, once again, rise to their feet.
When this happens, how will South Africa officials explain their policy?
Peter Vale, Professor of Southern African Studies at the University of the Western Cape, writes on South Africa’s international relations for the Weekly Mail &