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SA vs Cuba: Compare and contrast

“FIDEL CASTRO IS DEAD!” (to quote a tweet from the illustrious PEOTUS, source of so many classy tweets). And so the reaction began, dividing neatly into sheep and goats.

Castro was either the devil incarnate, an oppressor who left a trail of blood across Cuba and the world; or he was a liberation hero and friend of liberation struggles whom Africans should mourn.

In Little Havana, Miami, the huge ex-pat Cuban community danced in the streets all night long, we are told.

I’m not exactly sure why – will the death of a 90-year-old who had handed over power to his brother years ago make more difference to the way Cuba is run than the slow dance between the USA and the island nation – Obama taking two steps forward, to be followed, we might guess, by Trump taking two or more back?

The Castro dynasty was characterised by bloody acts of violence, harsh repression of basic freedoms such as freedom of expression, tens of thousands of drowning deaths among the 1.5 million Cubans who fled the island, and homophobic horrors in the 1960s.

Castro and his comrades overthrew an awful regime, the Batista dictatorship (holding power by various means from 1933 to 1959) in a much more conventional revolution than our negotiated transition from apartheid to democracy.

The USA supported Batista’s regime because it had many interests at stake – USA companies owned most of the mines and oil companies in Cuba and 40% of the sugar plantations, and were coining it through imports sold into Cuba.

Havana was a playground for US tourists like Ernest Hemingway – and Batista was very much in the pocket of Mafia figures like Lucky Luciano, who ran several casinos there. It was, as journalist John Matisson characterised it, a “corrupt, violent and decadent dictatorship”.

"Fulgencio Batista murdered 20 000 Cubans in seven years ... and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police state — destroying every individual liberty. Yet our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror.

"Administration spokespersons publicly praised Batista — hailed him as a staunch ally and a good friend — at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people, and we failed to press for free elections." (John F Kennedy, 1960)

In the immediate wake of the revolution, the new (centrally planned) regime under Castro pushed to promote literacy and education and create a health system for all Cubans. And those goals, authorities such as the World Bank acknowledge, the island country achieved.

"Health and education are the revolution's pillars of legitimacy so the government has to make them work," a senior western diplomat in Havana told the Guardian in 2007. "If they don't, it loses all its moral authority.”

Compare and contrast. In South Africa, despite the mythology about the South African miracle, we had a fairly bloody transition (check out keywords like “third force”, “impis”, “Vlakplaas”, “death squads”…) but not an actual revolution. We stood in line to vote in an election which saw perhaps the highest voter turnout ever (85.53%) and cheered the inauguration of a democracy.

Yet now, 22 years on, that democracy, which may talk left but definitely leans towards the Washington consensus on matters of the economy, is facing massive problems with both education and public health, wasteful expenditure and corruption, all key indicators of how we’re doing as a nation. Meanwhile, the ‘commie’ island has, unusually, managed to do very well on many of these very key indicators:

If you live in Cuba, you have a life expectancy close on twenty years longer than South Africans. You’d probably be employed (unemployment rate below 3%), albeit at a very low income.

(Although GDP per capita is not that far apart – Cuba at about $6 100, South Africa at $7 500, compared to the European Union at about $35 000. Perhaps 15% of Cubans live in extreme poverty – which looks a lot like life in an RDP house, from what little I’ve seen.)

If you are a baby, you’re ten times less likely to die in your first year. You’re way less likely to be malnourished as a child (roughly one in four South African kids are stunted), and you have much more chance of being injured by a passing hurricane than by violent crime.

According to an article in Slate.com, Cuba has 2% of Latin America’s population, but 11% of its scientists. Even on the score of corruption, South Africa is ranked at 65 out of 168 countries (Transparency International), while Cuba is at 56.

How is this stunning contrast possible? I would, of course, hate to see South Africa emulate Cuba’s politics and repression of freedoms – Wits academic Devan Pillay notes that even Castro himself warned against that idea when he visited South Africa: “…Learn from their successes regarding education, health care, urban organic farming and internationalism.

But we must not be tempted by one party dictatorship, and a grossly underperforming and inefficient command economy, which arose partly out of fear of US penetration.”

By all means; but with our terrible track record in facing many similar challenges, Cuba’s successes are surely worth a long, hard look, with the aim of emulating them if possible.

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