Jonathan Freedland and Ferial Haffajee
There was a telling moment in 1994. World leaders trooped into the grounds of the Union Buildings to watch Nelson Mandela’s inauguration. Polite applause greeted each one.
When Fidel Castro arrived, the newly elected young members of Parliament went ballistic. Applause turned to wild clapping and then to a toyi-toyi as the old man in army fatigues marched by.
Castro is likely to elicit the same response when he speaks in Parliament on September 4. The ideology he symbolises may have changed, but his largesse to the African National Congress remains in sharp focus. Castro bankrolled the education of hundreds of young exiles, he helped fund the ANC and his troops whipped the South African Defence Force at Cuito Carnavale in the war against Unita.
The new South Africa has returned the favour: diplomatic relations were established in 1995, trade between the two countries has increased and during his state visit, Castro will receive the South Africa’s highest honour. In an uncertain world, Castro is a rare fixed point, constant as a star.
On the day in January 1959 when the 32-year-old revolutionary stormed into Havana, the trains were coal-fired, television was in black and white and footballers wore long shorts. Nikita Khrushchev was in the Kremlin, Dwight Eisenhower in the White House and Bill Clinton was just 12 years old.
So little from those days remains, yet Castro is still with us: the beard, the olive-green fatigues, the cigar, all signature images of the latter half of the 20th century. He has seen nine United States presidents come and eight go. He has watched his Soviet patron swagger, become bloated and collapse.
Castro is not the retiring kind – he enjoys power too much. It’s hard to imagine any other job in Cuba that would allow Castro his extraordinary lifestyle. He can summon Cabinet ministers and military aides in the middle of the night – still his most productive hours. He can shoot hoops with bodyguards on his own basketball court and shoot the breeze with visiting dignitaries in one of his many homes. He can turn up, uninvited, for dinner at the residence of a Western ambassador and tune in via satellite TV to the latest baseball results from the US.
Power enables Castro to play the Bollinger Bolshevik, the Cohiba communist. True, he gave up cigars in 1985, setting an example during a national anti-smoking drive and earning a medal from the World Health Organisation. He scuba dives less than he used to, forcing the sacrifice of another passion: underwater fishing. But otherwise Castro has long indulged in the comfortable life of the guerrillero made good.
Still adored at home despite the privations and the anarchic Cuban economy, Castro’s flirtations with the free market are not unlike South Africa’s own. Privatisation is all the rage and joint ventures between Cuban companies and multinationals mean you can ring the changes on Havana’s streets. Billboards advertise consumer goods and the Benetton store is filled with communist yuppies.
They are a minority of Castro’s citizens: the rest battle it out on the burgeoning black market where they augment meagre state rations. Cuba now suffers an economic apartheid, where those with access to dollars – roughly one-third – are doing well, while those stuck with pesos are suffering. Yet there are no beggars in Havana or any other Cuban cities, schooling is still free and although there are medical shortages, the infant mortality rate is lower than in most countries in the world.
It’s also true that foreign investors are beginning to pull out of Cuba, scared off by the US’s new Helms-Burton law which threatens legal action against companies with assets on the island deemed to have been stolen from UScitizens. But, perversely, Helms-Burton helps Castro, enabling him to blame economic hardship on el bloqueo, the 35-year US embargo.
Castro’s taste for foie gras, Chivas Regal and Camembert did not come with high office. The son of a Spanish-born landowner, Castro was raised to appreciate the finer things. He smoked cigars at 15 and when he received an unexpected donation during his exile in Mexico, he spent it not on arms, but on caviar. Castro was always a classier act than the bloodless Jaruzelskis and Honeckers.
He is truly a Renaissance man: an expert marksman able to quote Roman law in Latin; a baseball player of professional calibre blessed with a photographic memory; a gourmet cook with an unrivalled knowledge of US and Latin-American history. As head of state, Castro can don a perfectly tailored suit to strut at a summit of world leaders or charm the socks off a visiting US TV news-anchor.
Castro insists he is not addicted to control. In a rare interview, with Cigar Aficionado magazine, he said he would love to step down: “But in the hard times that we are living now, I would be shrugging off my responsibilities to my country. It would be like deserting the front line in the heat of the battle.”
Castro remains the object of public devotion. “In some countries, it is an actor. In others, it is Madonna or someone,” says Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, a rising star in the Castro government. “Here, it is Fidel.”
Unlike other communist dictators, Castro is not a puppet of some alien ideology or foreign empire. He is a national icon, more a symbol of Cuba than of communism (he did not declare himself a socialist until two years after the revolution). Castro’s survival of the comic-book efforts of the CIA’s Operation Mongoose destabilisation campaign – including the infamous exploding-cigar assassination attempt – has made him the embodiment of national resistance to the American giant, huffing and puffing 150km away.
Vital Statistics:
Born: 1927 in Mayari, Cuba to farming stock
Defining characteristics: Fatigues, gun holster, attitude
Favourite people: Raul Castro, his brother; friend and comrade Che Guevara; mistress Celia Sanchez
Least favourite people: Bill Clinton and Cuban exiles in Miami
Likely to say: “The socialist revolution will triumph” or “Cuba is the most democratic country on earth”
Least likely to say: “I am personally worth about $1,4-billion”E