Course on
Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace, Part 10a
Massacre at Cassinga.
War no more.
Piero Gleijeses has written a lot. The second and last item
in this final part of the “Anti-Imperialism, War and Peace” course is an
article of his (download linked below) containing this memorable passage:
'While Castro’s troops
advanced toward Namibia, Cubans, Angolans, South Africans, and Americans were
sparring at the negotiating table. For the South Africans and Americans the
burning question was: Would the Cuban troops stop at the border? It was to
answer this question that President Ronald Reagan’s Assistant Secretary for
Africa, Chester Crocker, sought Risquet. "My question is the
following," he told him: "Does Cuba intend to halt the advance of its
troops at the border between Namibia and Angola?" Risquet replied, "I
have no answer to give you. I can’t give you a Meprobamato [a well-known Cuban
tranquillizer] – not to you or to the South Africans. ... I have not said
whether or not our troops will stop. ... Listen to me, I am not threatening. If
I told you that they will not stop, it would be a threat. If I told you that
they will stop, I would be giving you a Meprobamato, a Tylenol, and I want
neither to threaten you nor to reassure you ... What I have said is that the
only way to guarantee [that our troops stop at the border] would be to reach an
agreement [on the independence of Namibia]." [15] On August 25, Crocker
cabled Secretary of State George Shultz: "Reading the Cubans is yet
another art form. They are prepared for both war and peace ... We witness
considerable tactical finesse and genuinely creative moves at the table. This
occurs against the backdrop of Castro’s grandiose bluster and his army’s
unprecedented projection of power on the ground." [16]'
War is a terrible thing. War is never a choice for the
revolutionaries. We are not pacifists but we do not choose war and we do not
choose to be banned or clandestine. We are for peace and for full participation
in all democratic forums.
The Cassinga massacre is now more than thirty years in the
past. For some of us it was once an event in our present life, very shocking
for us because we had though that such horrors were in our own past at the
time. For others now living, the Cassinga massacre is now so much in the past
that it may be a struggle to see what a huge significance this terrible event
had in its time.
War no more
Perhaps this reflection , and by extension this entire
course, is a way of saying that it falls upon all of us, young and old, to strive
politically so that such things do not happen again, and will not require again
the militarisation of our struggle, here in Southern Africa.
This is the last in the series.
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: The Massacre of Cassinga [and after] Piero Gleijeses.
- To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
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