Africans and their Cuban cousins: A debt of gratitude, By Owei Lakemfa

To a number of us Nigerians, Plot 339, Diplomatic Drive, beside the United Nations Building, Abuja, is a familiar address. It is the Cuban Embassy in Nigeria. It was where we gathered on Friday, 18 October to mark 50 years of diplomatic relations between Nigeria and Cuba.

It is like no other embassy in Nigeria because there you have diplomats who do not just see all human beings as equals, but some have actually traced their origins to Nigeria. This is no fluke. Cuban children are actually taught that 90 per cent of them are of African origin.

I recall in 2016, when then Cuban Ambassador Carlos Trejo Sosa  received the Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Ogunwusi. He told him: “We are the same family. I am an African. Do not mind my colour. When you go into my gene, you will know that I am an African.”

His successor, Ambassador Clara Margarita Pulido Escandell, told me she was of Yoruba origin.

Years ago, when I first met the current Cuban Ambassador Miriam Morales Palmero, she was a staff in the embassy and had traced her origins back to Yorubaland in Western Nigeria. So her appointment in 2023 as ambassador to Nigeria was, to her, a mere return to her ancestral home where she is also known by her Yoruba name, Omilade, meaning: our wealth is here or back.

At last Friday’s celebration of official Nigeria-Cuba ties, she told us: “Nigeria is a place where I personally feel the spiritual connection with its people and the different cultures that make it a special country.”

On a general note, she looked back to 1974 when the Nigeria-Cuba diplomatic ties were knotted, and said: “Both countries demonstrated the continuity of the historical ties that began with the arrival of the first Africans, most of them from Nigeria, who were inhumanly brought as slaves to my country. We are united by genes making our relationship indestructible, sharing the same blood, an ancestral culture with the same rhythms, rites and the sound of drums. We are united by our patriotic, rebellious and resilient idiosyncrasy, by traditions and religious beliefs.”

The “continuity of the historical ties” between Africans and Cubans Ambassador Palmero referred to is the slave trade in which about 12.5 million Africans were taken across the Atlantic Ocean to slave in European plantations. Over 600,000 of them, mainly Yorubas from Western Nigeria, were taken to Cuba. In fact, one of the most daring and enduring slave revolts in history was that in Cuba led by a Yoruba woman, Carlota Lukumi (Olukumi), which began on 5 November, 1843. She had been taken a slave at ten.

Perhaps the greatest threat to the African people in the 20th Century was colonialism, and, their greatest need was independence. However, when independence came to Angola, a Portuguese colony, in 1974, the United States of America, USA; United Kingdom, UK; Apartheid South Africa and their allies decided that the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, MPLA, that decidedly fought colonialism would not be allowed to run the country. So, they invaded the new country using the Apartheid and Zairean, now Democratic Republic of Congo Armed Forces, Western mercenaries, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) led by the American Central Intelligence Agency asset, Holden Roberto, and the sectarian National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, UNITA, led by the renegade Jonas Savimbi. As this unholy military coalition raced through the country, it seemed a matter of time before Luanda would fall.

Since African countries, despite their support for the Angolan people, could not militarily intervene, President Agostinho Neto, on 3 November, 1974, sent an SOS to Cuba. The Cubans within two days responded. The 5 November, 1974 date the Cubans responded was the 131st anniversary of the Carlota Lukumi-led slave revolt in Cuba. So the historically-conscious Cubans named their intervention in Angola “Operation Carlota”.

What the Angolans expected from Cuba were some military supplies. President Neto in his 26 January, 1975 letter of appeal to the Cuban leadership listed these urgent needs as:

“1. The establishment, organisation, and maintenance of a military school for cadres. We urgently need to create a company of security personnel, and we need to prepare the members of our military staff.

“2. We need to rent a ship to transport the war materials that we have in Dar-es-Salaam to Angola. The delivery in Angola, if this were a Cuban ship, could take place outside of the territorial waters.

“3. Weapons and means of transportation for the Brigada de Intervención that we are planning to organise, as well as light weapons for some infantry battalions.

“4. Transmitters and receivers to solve the problem of communication among widely dispersed military units.

“5. Uniforms and military  equipment for 10,000 men.““6. Two pilots and one flight mechanic.”

Rather, what Cuba under President Fidel Castro did was to send a total 50,000 Cuban youths over the 11,032-kilometre distance between the countries, to fight the invaders.

In his 11 January,1976 speech at the end of the First Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, Fidel said of the Cuban intervention: “The imperialists seek to prevent us from aiding our Angolan brothers. But we must tell the Yankees to bear in mind that we are a Latin-American nation and a Latin-African nation as well.

“African blood flows freely through our veins. Many of our ancestors came as slaves from Africa to this land. As slaves they struggled quite a great deal. They fought as members of the Liberating Army of Cuba. We’re brothers and sisters of the people of Africa and we are ready to fight on their behalf!”

Cuba decisively crushed the invaders and pursued the fleeing Apartheid military back into Namibia. The Apartheid leadership sued for peace and on 22 December, 1988, signed a peace agreement with Angola and Cuba.

In 1991, Nelson Mandela travelled to Cuba to thank Fidel Castro and the Cuban people for fighting Apartheid and colonialism in Africa. He said: “The decisive defeat of the aggressive apartheid forces (in Angola) destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the White oppressor.”

The Cuban intervention which directly led to the independence of Namibia and South Africa, tragically came at a huge cost. Over 5,000 Cuban youths sacrificed their lives on the African soil with another 5,000 missing or injured; no greater sacrifice can a people make for another.

For such monumental loss of lives, Cuba neither asked us for silver nor gold, minerals or land. All Cuba is asking us Africans, to quote Ambassador Palmero, is our “vote in favour of the elimination of the economic, commercial and financial blockade unjustly imposed by the United States against our country.”

Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist and author.