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Remembering the sins of a revolutionary

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WITH time ‘handitambi newe’ gave way to ‘futi futi hamumwe tii nechingwa’ which evolved to ‘kusviba kunge tsubvu or mazino anenge mbezo dzevaroyi’.
These and many others are from my memories of divorce, separation at various mahumbwe stages during my Unyetu formative years.
Happy friendships ended abruptly and at point of termination there was always the sudden realisation that what was all along thought to be sugar was in fact hot pepper.
But that was mahumbwe then.
In adulthood, one expects a little bit more civility should parting become inevitable.
Sadly, divorces, marital or political, remain quite messy that one questions the basis on which the unions would have been founded on in the first place.
On July 14 1989, the world woke up to the news that a hero of the Cuban Revolution, General Ochoa, had been executed by firing squad for treason and drug dealing.
The arrest and execution shocked the progressive world.
Ordinary Cubans were devastated.
Cuban President Raul Castro, then Defence Minister and a close friend of Ochoa, was equally devastated.
I had first come across General Ochoa’s name in Socialist International inspired conversations at university a few years earlier.
It could have been at the Film of the Month Club or within the UZ ZANU PF branch, my memory fails me now.
General Ochoa’s name was mentioned alongside other internationalists like the iconic Che Guevara and General Petrov who had sacrificed beyond measure in fighting against Western imperialism in Africa.
In 1984, Fidel Castro decorated General Ochoa as a hero of the Cuban Revolution.
A year before General Ochoa’s tragic fall, South Africa and its allies had suffered a crushing defeat at Cuito Cuanavale during the invasion of Angola.
The invaders were defeated by the combined force of the Cuban military, the Angolan army and the military units of the liberation movements of South Africa and Namibia.
This defeat, which unmasked South Africa’s military vulnerability to the world, led directly to the independence of Namibia and then to the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa itself.
I had just landed in Bulawayo for my first full-time job and celebrated generously at Saints Club and shebeens like Khanyi’s in Queens Park East and at MaKhumalo’s in Kumalo.
I lectured those who cared to listen about the seeds for the victory sown earlier by Che Guevara and General Ochoa.
I hope Cuito Cuanavale is now ‘a must’ topic in the curriculum of military schools in the region.
So, understandably, like many progressives I was quite upset at the news of General Ochoa’s execution.
To me, he belonged to the class of revolutionary martyrs like Patrice Lumumba and Thomas Sankara.
I hated those behind what I felt was a heinous act.
It was weeks later that details started to emerge on General Ochoa’s fall.
In 1989, Cuban Defence Minister Raul Castro had chosen Ochoa to become the head of Cuba’s Western Army.
Since this branch of the military protects Cuba’s capital city, Havana, and its top leaders and installations, the position would have made him the third most powerful military figure on the island, after Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro and General Raul Castro.
In the subsequent security check, quite routine, shocking details began to emerge when some close associates accused the revolutionary hero of corruption which included, but was not limited to, the sale of diamonds and ivory from Angola and the misappropriation of weapons in Nicaragua.
General Raul Castro, Ochoa’s best friend, tried unsuccessfully to persuade Ochoa to come clean, reveal everything, so they could move forward.
When Ochoa refused to co-operate, on June 12, the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces announced his arrest and investigation for serious acts of corruption, dishonest use of economic resources and abetting drug trafficking.
Ochoa was put on trial and he did not deny the charges.
The Military Court found him guilty of all charges, including the capital offence of treason.
Prosecutors had presented evidence that at least one pilot involved in the transfer of drugs had been contracted by the CIA, and argued that if the US government, instead of the Cuban government, had discovered and revealed the involvement of high level Cuban military personnel in drug trafficking, that would have provided an excuse for invading Cuba or a good opportunity to blackmail Ochoa.
Slowly I came to understand the fatal misstep that the hero of my revolutionary youth had taken.
I felt betrayed by my revered internationalist.
I took solace from knowing that Ochoa had calmly accepted his punishment.
So, in a way, he remained my hero, a Cuban Revolution hero.
His later errors in life cannot erase the fact that he was a critical part of Fidel Castro’s July 26th Movement.
His role in the fall of Santa Clara and his valiant efforts against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic cannot be wished away.
Ochoa was there at the Bay of Pigs invasion; Ochoa fought for justice in Venezuela.
History will always be generous with him in DRC, Angola and Ethiopia.
He became a friend of Raul Castro for a good reason.
As the progressive world finally digested the magnitude of Ochoa’s fall, as the sense of betrayal sank in, we did not have to undo Ochoa’s great works starting with the fight against Batista.
Revolutionaries can also sin.
My memories of General Ochoa have been recently triggered by political banter currently playing out in our mass media.
The media political vitriol is slowly turning into an attack against our revolution and its heroes.
The current scenario is inadvertently feeding into a very consistent Rhodesian narrative on the liberation struggle.
Let us refrain from creating multiple versions that will end up burying the history of our Chimurenga.
Let us acknowledge the heroic past we share with some of our adversaries of today.

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