Pretoria, December 1, 2023 - Cuban diplomatic staff and from other nations, together with Military Attachés accredited in South Africa, celebrated today the day of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba. The Cuban Military Attaché to South Africa, Josué Manuel Ortega Martínez, referred to the origins and events that shaped and constitute the values of this armed corps.
In the presence of senior officers of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), including its chief, General Rudzani Maphwanya, Ortega Martínez recalled how on 2 December 1956, 82 expeditionaries led by the historic leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro, began the last stage of national liberation on the island.
At that time, after the initial dispersion of the guerrillas, when only a small group was assembled and Fidel realised that they had seven rifles, he exclaimed: "Now we have won the war! This expression of faith in victory, the Cuban military attaché stressed, is what has always accompanied us.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) are the pride of our people because them, their soldiers, officers and reserves, as well as the combatants of the Ministry of the Interior, are the people in uniform, and are a model of discipline, humility, abnegation and loyalty to the revolution, the party and the homeland, added Ortega Martínez. But our combatants, he said, not only possess a deep sense of homeland, love for the land of their birth, they also possess a profound internationalist spirit, and are willing to lend their revolutionary services to other peoples.
Thus, he explained, the consistent practice of internationalism by the FAR goes from Algeria to Cuito Cuanavale, in Angola, where the decisive defeat of the South African apartheid army was a victory for the whole of Africa. More than 300,000 Cuban soldiers, Ortega Martínez stressed, fought alongside their African brothers in southern Africa.
Likewise, he concluded, the hundreds of thousands of Cuban professionals who for sixty years have rendered their services to brotherly peoples, and continue to do so in the current difficult conditions due to the economic, commercial and financial blockade by the United States, have been inspired by the same philosophy that guided us on that December 2, 67 years ago.
(Prensa Latina-Cuban Embassy in South Africa)