Pretoria, 11 May 2024 - The Friends of Cuba Society (FOCUS) demanded today that the United States end the illegal economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on the Cuban people for more than 60 years.
In a statement celebrating 30 years of diplomatic relations between South Africa and Cuba, FOCUS demands that Washington comply with the resolutions that have been adopted for more than three decades in the United Nations General Assembly to "put an end to the immoral and unjust blockade".
It also demands that the US government remove Cuba from the unilateral list of so-called "state sponsors of terrorism", a measure that has been condemned by most peace-loving countries around the world.
These cruel policies, the statement emphasises, make it much more difficult for Cuba to conduct transactions using international banking systems and to acquire necessary goods on the global market, such as fuel, food, construction materials, hygiene products and inputs and parts to generate electricity.
In the text, FOCUS recalls how, today, post-apartheid South Africa is benefiting from a cohort of Cuban medical and other technical professionals as it seeks to overcome centuries and decades of colonial and apartheid legacies lacking of adequate health care for the poor. Cuba, it adds, continues to train medical professionals for a comprehensive state-led primary health care system in South Africa, plagued by the ravages of preventable diseases and limited resources.
This solidarity initiative, FOCUS stresses, continues today in the framework of the Nelson Mandela-Fidel Castro medical cooperation programme. Cuba, summarises FOCUS, demonstrated a unique and unwavering solidarity that is recorded in the history of the continent as a moral and fraternal commitment to the people of Africa, a loyal expression of friendship.
(Cuban Embassy in South Africa-Prensa Latina)