By: Ambassador Phatse Justice Piitso
We take the opportunity to convey our gratitude and revolutionary greetings to you. Equally we wish you good health and indeed many many glorious days to come.
When we wrote to you the first open letter, we declared that the prison walls will not separate your struggle from our struggle, and that your freedom is our freedom. This is so because you are one of us.
We have committed ourselves to be the real pathfinders of this long journey of the struggle for the emancipation of humanity. We have committed ourselves to walk side by side to each other along its pathways, confident that humanity shall attain its historic mission of a better world of freedom and dignity.
I recall the robust debates we had during your visit to Havana about the history of the struggle of the people of Latin America against imperialism and colonialism. I recall your great enthusiasm about the leadership role of the outstanding revolutionaries of the region such as Toussaint Louverture, Simon Bolivar, Jose de San Martin and Apostle Jose Marti.
I must confess of how impressed I was with your scholarly narration, about the history of the Cuban revolution, and how young leaders of the 26th of July Movement, under the command of Fidel Castro, carried with magnificent bravery and courage, the Moncada Military attacks. How they directed the revolution from the Sierra Maestra mountains, which eventually led to the defeat of the US backed military dictator, Fulgencio Batista.
I know that your biggest wish is to visit the revolutionary mountains of Sierra Maestra, where the titanic of all the revolutions began, the Cuban revolution. The Ancient Greek philosophers say great things happen when men and mountains meet, for nature itself, I mean mountains, rivers, the flora and the fauna, are our greatest teachers.
We are confident that one day you will go out of those prison walls, for the truth be told, you do not belong there, you belong to the trenches of our revolution, the masses of our people. That will be the day on which we must consider undertaking the journey of our dreams, to the top of the revolutionary mountains of Sierra Maestra.
We talk to you today on the occasion of a historic moment of the celebrations of the massive elections victory by the Movement toward Socialism in Bolivia. The unity of our revolution in Bolivia has defeated the counter revolutionary forces backed by the US empire.
We stand together with all the progressive forces of the world to congratulate the newly elected President of the republic of Bolivia, comrade Luis Arce. We congratulate the peace loving people of this great nation.
From all over the corners of the world, in the Far East, Middle East, Europe, Africa, North America and Latin America, the melody of the musical drums of the Saya dance, is reverberating through the mountain ranges of Mururata village, the home for many of the descendants of the African slaves in Bolivia. The heroic people of Mururata are known for their love of music, and indeed, as they celebrate this watershed victory, the musical rhythm become one of the most powerful of their pleasures.
When you ask them who the composers of their music are, they point to sea, where they come from, they refer to the long journey their forefathers had to traverse, from the jungle forests of the African continent, but today, Mururata has become their true home, where each and every house had its own violin, viola or cello. They have embraced their historical heritage, and therefore the great musical ambassadors of the African continent in the Americas.
The triumphant mood signifies the importance of the Movement toward Socialism for their own being and existence. It was the tenacity of this revolutionary movement, which afforded this typical African community, the opportunity to elect their own representatives to participate at all the different layers of the legislative chambers.
Therefore the victory of the Movement toward socialism, is a groundbreaking achievement, not only to the people of Mururata or Cochabamba, but to the whole of the great heroic nation of Bolivia. Undoubtedly it is one of the epochal achievements in the history of the struggle for the liberation of human society.
I am sure you remember that fateful day, when the former President of Bolivia comrade Evo Morales, had to wither the storms, the day during which the oligarchy declared him a fugitive in the land of his birth. A few days later, we wrote to him an open letter titled’, thou they always walk in the valley of death, the brave never die, their courage blossoms thousands and millions of the living men’.
It was a letter of solidarity, a letter of comradeship and compatriotship, a letter of sisterhood and brotherhood. Today the unity of the struggle of the people of his country has walked him through the swamps of the valley of death and he has not died, he is alive.
The people of Bolivia under the leadership of their vanguard, the Movement toward Socialism, have fulfilled one of the greatest and revolutionary tasks, which history has inexorably placed in their hands, of making sure that this illustrious son of the soil, returns back to his mother land, in millions and millions.
The people of Bolivia have honored the promise by the iconic father of our liberation struggle, Tupac Katari, who when condemned to death by the colonial masters, without fear, declared that he would not die but instant would return in millions and millions. The honor of our revolutionary struggle has placed in their hands the solemn task of bringing dignity to humanity.
They understood the basis of our revolutionary theory, that from time to time, a revolution itself may face insurmountable obstacles, but enormous as the challenges may be at a particular historic epoch, the obstacles themselves may create objective realities, for the progressive forces to take over power, and therefore create a solid foundation for the advancement of our revolutionary struggle.
Throughout the history of our struggle, the working class revolutions have inspired millions and millions of people throughout the world, both in the most advanced capitalist world and the former colonies and semi-colonies. But what we must remember is that the bourgeoisie has always betrayed those revolutions.
Even during the height of the Renaissance period, when the Vatican saw its monopoly of ideas threatened by the new age of science and knowledge, introduced the infamous Roman Inquisition, which become a tool of oppression to thwart the freedom of speech and scientific knowledge. The foundation of this power was to elevate the Pope as the gatekeeper of the Kingdom of God against the wave of enlightenment of the renaissance period.
During the 18th century in Jamaica, a slave laborer of African descent was found with a medicinal plant by his masters in one of the plantations. Because the colonial masters could not believe that a slave could discover a plant that could be of medicinal use, he was as a result hacked to death as a punishment.
After his death, the slave masters became curious about the plant, and later after thorough research, discovered that the plant was not poisonous. They used the plant to produce the medicine called Apocynum erectum, which even today, is
used as a cure against ringworms, freckles and cold swellings.
With the new innovation of this huge medicinal discovery, the name of the slave from the African soil was never mentioned, the new medicine became the domain of European science and technological knowledge. A humble life of an innocent slave worker came to its fatal end as a result of a mere fantasy, that science and medicine were gracious gifts from the European empires to the colonial world.
History is full of such examples where the bourgeoisie betrayed the working class. You will remember the painful way the former President of Chile Cde Salvador Allende was removed from power by the oligarchy against the will of the people.
He thought by signing the peace pact with the army, was the best effort to respect and protect the constitution of his country, and also that it would influence the local bourgeoisie, to submit itself to the will of the overwhelming majority of the people. However, instead of supporting the peaceful efforts of nation building and formation, the US sponsored a bloody coup led by General Pinochet, whose reign of terror killed millions of innocent people over the years of his dictatorship.
We have witnessed this phenomenon of the US empire imposing dictatorships in the whole of the Latin American region over centuries. During the Cold War, at the wake of popular struggles in the colonies and semi colonies, we have seen the empire imposing military regimes to countries such as Argentina, Peru, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Granada, Dominican Republic and Gautamela.
A democratically elected President of the Republic of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was forced to wake from his bed at gun point by the military, masked whilst wearing his pajamas into a plane and forced to into exile in Costa Rica. He was punished for the obvious reasons of trying to change the constitution of the country, in order to bring more reforms, which while he gave land to the working class and the poor.
The US imperialism has been at the centre stage of employing the same counter revolutionary maneuvers, to replace democratically elected governments on the African continent, with military dictatorships. A demagogic dictator such as Idi Amin of Uganda, who called himself ‘ His excellency President, Dr, Lord of the beasts of the earth and conqueror of the fishes of the sea’, was allowed to predate over his own people, resulting in many people killed by his military junta.
An outstanding revolutionary, and one of the best communists produced by the African soil, Pierre Mulele, a close confidant of the assassinated first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, was lured to come back home from exile by the dictator Mabutu Sese Seko. Upon arrival to his native land, he was tortured by the army, his eyes were pulled from their sockets, his genitals ripped off, and his limbs amputated one by one and his body dumped into the Congo River.
The American and the British bourgeoisie has betrayed the people of the Republic of Zimbabwe by not honoring the Lancaster Agreement. Instead of honoring the commitment by the British government to facilitate the transfer of land from the colonial white settler farmers to the majority of the people of the country, they are now instigating regime change, by imposing illegal and unilateral economic sanctions against the people.
Even in our own country, the white monopoly capital (WMC) establishment, is advocating a false narrative, that the sun-set clauses, are a permanent feature of our democratic constitution. This shows how determined they are to undermine the struggle of our people to be part of the ownership of the commanding heights of our economy.
They want the status quo to remain with fortunes of our productive relations in the hands of the white minority, whilst the majority of our people, the African in particular and the black people in general, are kept at the margins of the periphery, and subjugated to the historical injustices of imperialism and Apartheid colonialism. The remnants of the racist white apartheid regime are hellbent to betray the aspirations of our people twenty five years into our democracy.
The essence here is that the bourgeoisie will never hand over power to the working class willingly without a fight. In the context of our own objective realities, the strategic maneuver of the enemy, has been to destroy our liberation movement the ANC from within, in order to undermine its historic mission of leading our struggle for the total liberation of the people of our country.
The US led imperialism is intensifying its stranglehold to dominate the world socio-political and economic arena. The empire has embarked on a new offensive to perpetuate its global strategy to impose its hegemony over the nations of the world.
The victory of the Movement toward Socialism is a great lesson to the bullying tactics of the American empire, that of undermining the democratic will of the people, and imposing its own blue eye boys and girls. It is obvious that the coup against President Evo Morale was an ideological weapon to undermine the ongoing revolutionary programme to build socialism in Bolivia.
Our acts of solidarity and internationalism must continue to embrace the people of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Saharawi Republic, Palestine, and all other democracies in the world. It is time to appreciate that an injury to one is an injury to all.
The bourgeoisie will continue to betray the working class and the poor, and ours is to organise and elevate their political consciousness. It is not an easy task, but is a task we should all strive to achieve.
Jallalla Bolivia, Jallalla democracy
We thank you.
*Ambassador Phatse Justice Piitso is the Chief of staff in the office of the Secretary
General of the African National Congress. Writing this article in his personal capacity.
