10. Cuba and Africa¶
Core Argument¶
In this chapter, the author examines Cuba’s military and humanitarian intervention in Africa, arguing that while Fidel Castro’s commitment to anti-imperialist struggle was genuine and historically significant, the political framework within which Cuba operated was constrained by Stalinist theory, ultimately limiting the revolutionary potential of the movements it supported. The core narrative traces Cuba’s involvement from the 1961 shipment of arms to the Algerian National Liberation Front through to the decisive Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988, where Cuban and Angolan forces inflicted a military defeat on the South African apartheid army. The author claims this victory was a turning point in southern Africa, inspiring the Soweto uprising and hastening apartheid’s fall. Evidence is drawn from detailed operational accounts, including Operation Carlota, in which Cuban troops were flown to Angola in antiquated aircraft to defend Luanda from an FNLA attack backed by the CIA and British and American mercenaries. The chapter also notes that by 1975 Cuba had provided over 30,000 doctors to more than forty countries.
The historical context is the collapse of the Portuguese empire and the ensuing power struggle in Angola between the MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA. The author highlights the role of China, which supported the CIA-backed FNLA in order to oppose “Russian imperialism,” and the intervention of South Africa, which aimed to install a client regime. The US, still suffering from the Vietnam syndrome after Watergate, provided covert funding but avoided direct military commitment. The Kremlin, initially reluctant, eventually supplied extensive logistical and material support once the political benefits became clear.
The chapter’s polemical thrust is directed against the MPLA leadership, which adopted “Marxism-Leninism of the Russian Stalinist variety” and the theory of stages, refusing to move toward socialism. The author argues that while the MPLA was forced by circumstance to nationalise Portuguese farms and industries, it deliberately preserved capitalist property relations, notably in the oil industry, which remained under imperialist ownership via Gulf Oil. By 1987, the MPLA had joined the IMF and World Bank, and the country became a corrupt family business, with the president’s daughter amassing a fortune of US$3 billion. The author criticises the Cuban leadership for failing to offer political criticism of the MPLA’s policies, instead restricting advice to within the constraints of Stalinist stage theory, which the author argues compounded the isolation of the Cuban Revolution and negatively impacted later revolutions in Nicaragua and Venezuela.