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.
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: The Massacre of Cassinga [and after] Piero Gleijeses.
