The profundity of the power of thought on a pen and paper is all what it takes. We need to teach the young generation the wisdom from the ancient proverb which says” the great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people”.
This form of contribution is part of rekindling revolutionary consciousness and morality to achieve the important task of organisational building and discipline. Ideas represent the highest values of any society.
I was devastated by the sad news of the passing on of Comrade Camilo Guevara March, the eldest son of our revered revolutionary leader, the iconic leader of the world working class movement, Commander Che Guevara. Our sincere condolences to his family, friends and relatives, to his wife Comrade Rosa Aliso and children, his mother Aleida and his three siblings, Aleida, Celia and Ernesto. The Communist party of Cuba, United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the people of the two great nations and the whole world. We have not just lost a leader, but a sincere friend and Comrade, whose heart was always at the right place.
I will always cherish the sombre moments I had with him and his sister Aleida during my tenure as the Ambassador of our country to the Republic of Cuba. We must come to accept that Camilo is gone from our sight, but not from our hearts.
When a leader of his calibre departs from our mother earth, the dark day seem like it will never end, but just to come to be yet another day, for he has given us so much to remember.
Who are we to resist the streams of tears of grief from our faces, who are we to cry, than to say farewell to the former President of the MPLA and the Republic of Angola, Jose do Santos. A selfless revolutionary, who turned the fortunes of his country, into a fulcrum of the Southern African liberation struggles, against colonialism and imperialism. Our condolences to his family, friends and relatives, to the leadership and membership of the MPLA and heroic people of Angola. He was indeed a colossal dedicated to the struggle for the liberation of our people.
We also mourn the passing on of the last serving President of the former Soviet Socialist Republics, Mikhail Gorbachev. Our sincere condolences to his family, friends and relatives, to the people of the Republic of Russia.
The important question to grapple with as we remember the architect of the perestroika, the ambitious plan which heralded the demise of the first socialist state in the history of the world, is whether it was in the best interest of the working class or the bourgeoisie. This is the debate we must robustly engage in order to find solutions to the problems imposed by the dominant world of capitalism.
The task of all revolutionaries is first and foremost the understanding of the material conditions they find themselves.
Our monarch Queen Elizabeth II, whom many regarded as a spiritual grandmother, has also departed the land of the living. We shall remember her grandeur jewel crown, the symbol of the British constitutional monarchy. The passing on of Queen Elizabeth II has invoked into the minds of the millions of the people of the world, the horrendous memories of the history of the Trans-Saharan and the Trans-Atlantic slave trades, and the unprecedented forms of oppression and exploitation of the inhuman system.
Many in the former colonies and the diaspora, still associate the British monarchy, with the unspeakable atrocities committed against the slave people. Together with the Spanish, Portuguese, Belgium monarchies , they became the powerhouse of the savage act, which the international community, should declare a crime against humanity.
These memories led to many of our leaders across the spectre of our society, declaring that they would not mourn the death of our mother Queen. But leaders must understand that our struggle is that of a human face and therefore we cannot celebrate the death of any fellow human being.
This is a rare virtue we learn from philanthropic revolutionaries such as Commander Che Guevara, who during his lifetime, demonstrated that a revolution is a dose of love. Comrade Che unequivocally summoned himself to this revolutionary call, at the height of a vicious battle, against the powerful army of the US backed dictator, Felgencio Batista.
As a Commander of a revolutionary army and a medical doctor, carrying a gun in a raging battlefield, he saw it as his duty, to safe the lives of both his wounded fellow combatants and enemy forces. He understood that a life is a precious gift. After having given them attention and medical care, healing their wounds and pains, he would give the enemy forces the choice of either joining back the forces of the regime or their families at home. On the contrary, many volunteered to be part of his regiment and therefore the epic moment of the triumph of the Cuban revolution.
What I mean is that Queen Elizabeth II was not an Angel, but a mere human being, who was just part of a complex system, which has been there for centuries.
We do not fight individuals but the system. The growing dominance of the European monarchy, in the world political and socio economic arena, is a testimony of the complex nature of the history of the civilisation of human society. The most advanced societies of the European metropolis, are still associating themselves with the feudal order of things. The ruling class has become the epitome of the monarchy, having entrenched its hegemony for the control and ownership of the world economy.
The most advanced industrial capitalism is surviving on the foetus of feudalism. For over centuries of the history of the slave trade, the monarchy has been an engine room, establishing companies, which its core business, was to sell fellow human beings as commodities in an open market.
They became the main source of funding in order to facilitate the movement of slaves from the African continent to Europe and the Americas. The first formidable trade was the Trans-Saharan slave trade which sourced slaves from most parts of North Africa into Europe. The second was the Trans-Atlantic slave trade which sourced slaves from the rest of the African continent into the Latin America.
It became the divine right of the monarchy and merchants to exploit the slave people as their royal servants and garden boys, and later as a free workforce which built Europe into a massive economic power. The slave people became the source of the massive agricultural and industrial economy of the colonial empire.
They also benefitted from the sale of the slave through taxation and revenue collection. The merchants had to pay the monarchy tax based on the number of the captured slaves and the value of their production in the colonies.
Some of the ruthless methods was to brand hot iron tools into the flesh of the captured slaves, as a form of a proof of receipt that the merchants had bought them or to which monarchy their ownership belonged. Women and children were raped during the long journey through the Atlantic ocean.
I am convinced that new monarch of the British empire, King Charles III, has an obligation to bring closure, to this horrific history of the involvement of the monarchy in the enslavement of the people of the African continent. He must take responsibility for the sake of generations to come.
This is a tormenting common history the people of our continent and those in the diaspora share, shaped by the experiences and struggles of the slave trade and colonial conquest. I must concur that the slave trade was one of the greatest horrors in the annals of the history of the world. The African people have encountered many defeats, but they were never defeated. We have nothing to loose but to confront the challenges posed by the world of capitalism.
Thanks.
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Ambassador Phatse Justice Piitso is a member of the ANC writing this open letter in his personal capacity.