Havana, July 16, 2024 - The Fidel Castro Centre in Havana will open today the photo exhibition "Two men, two peoples, united in a hug: Fidel and Mandela", which testifies to the ties of brotherhood and solidarity between Cuba and South Africa.
The exhibition brings together pictures of South African leader Nelson Mandela's first visit to this Caribbean country on 25 July 1991, after his release from the apartheid regime's prisons, and of the activities that took place during his visit.
It also includes the visit of the historic revolutionary leader Fidel Castro to the African country in 1994 for the presidential inauguration of Mandela, whom the Cuban described as "one of the most extraordinary symbols of our time".
Inaugurating the exhibition in the Hall of the Five Palms, the South African ambassador to Havana, Yvonne Nkwenkwezi Phosa, highlighted the friendship between Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela, whose legacies, she said, live on in their peoples and are reflected in the bonds of brotherhood and cooperation that exist.
Phosa highlighted Cuba's role in the liberation of several African countries and acknowledged the revolution and Fidel Castro as a source of inspiration in the continent's struggle for freedom.
For his part, the director of the Fidel Castro Centre, René González Barrios, recalled that the Caribbean nation's historical bonds with Africa go back to the birth of Cuba as a nation and its struggles for independence. They were also expressed in Cuba's contribution to the liberation efforts of this continent since the 1960s. He affirmed that the graphic exhibition inaugurated reflects the sincere friendship of two men and two peoples united by common values.
The exhibition opens with an idea written by Fidel Castro on 4 September 1994 in the visitor's book of the maximum security prison on Robben Island, 12 kilometres from Cape Town, where Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years for his revolutionary ideas:
"With an impression I will never forget and with infinite admiration for the legendary heroes who, from this hell, built the foundations of freedom".
(Cuban Embassy in South Africa - Prensa Latina)