Fidel Castro: A man of many parts
Cuba’s Fidel Castro long stood as the quintessential communist ideologue — but in reality his politics were much more murky
In Africa, where Che Guevara T-shirts are ubiquitous among the youth, the reputation of Cuba’s leader, Fidel Castro, who died aged 90 last Friday, retains much political and cultural élan. In SA particularly, Castro’s legacy has been enhanced by a history of standing up against apartheid, battling PW Botha’s army in Angola, and defying the colonialist powers of Britain and the US across the continent. As true as that is, it is equally valid that plaudits he earned as the totem of committed communist ideology are off the mark. The reality is that Castro’s politics remained murky and troubled till the end. It remains true that Castro was a strident anti-imperialist — widely beloved for standing up to the US for more than five decades, even as he comfortably supported Russian imperialism in Africa and elsewhere. In Oriente province in 1941 a young Castro, the son of a labour broker with substantial landholdings, first came to the approving attention of the Santiago newspapers for beati...
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