Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has reportedly paid a “special tribute” to Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, who died last week on Friday at the age of 90.
According to the state-owned Herald newspaper, Mugabe described Castro’s death not only as a “loss” to the people of Cuba, but a great “loss” throughout developing African countries.
Mugabe said that Castro was among the few allies of the oppressed people of South America, as well as those who were fighting colonial rule on the African continent.
The nonagenarian has also said that Castro was not only a man of words, but also was a man of action.
“We shall remember you as our own in the same way as Cubans will do so and that is the spirit that brings me and my delegation here, just to be with you, to share a tear with you and assure you that our hearts are with you also. But also our hearts are full of courage, and his life that he has bequeathed us, a lot of revolutionary goodness,” Mugabe was quoted as saying.
Mugabe said this soon after his arrival in Havana for memorial ceremonies.
Education and free health care
Meanwhile, according to New Zimbabwe, Mugabe said that despite economic sanctions that had been imposed on the Caribbean nation by the US government, under President Castro, Cuba helped African countries by training its doctors.
He said that many of those doctors that were trained in Cuba were now assisting their respective countries whose majority were from “the third world”.
Mugabe said that the example that had been set by the late Castro was “one that revolutionaries, anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist of the world should follow”.
Castro, whose 1959 revolution toppled a dictatorship with the promise of bringing justice and equality to the Caribbean island, was a towering figure of the 20th century.
While some saw him as a socialist hero who brought education and free health care, others labelled him a “tyrant” who caused economic hardship and sparked an exodus of Cubans seeking a better life.
Castro, came to power as a cigar-chomping 32-year-old in combat fatigues, survived more than 600 assassination attempts, according to aides, as well as the failed 1961 US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
He reportedly handed power to his younger brother Raul in 2006 after undergoing emergency intestinal surgery. His cause of death on Friday has not been disclosed.
