The country that stood up

To be fair, Castro transformed Cuban society, lifting the basic quality of life for the country’s citizens, especially healthcare and life expectancy at birth, and educational attainment and literacy. Official data reveals that Cuba is now spending about 11 per cent on healthcare and 13 per cent of its GDP on education. Healthcare reform was adopted very early in Castro’s reign.

When he came to power, Cuba was reported to have one rural hospital with recorded infant mortality in the countryside about 100 per 1,000 live births. He went on to build a national health system that significantly improved the quality of preventive and primary care, its workforce, its ability to tackle diseases, and more recently, its biomedical research infrastructure and pharmaceutical exports that have won the country plaudits from international agencies.

Out of 185 countries Cuba is ranked about 36th with a life expectancy of about 79.4 years, which is not significantly lower than Hong Kong that is at the top of table with 84 years.

In a 2014 the World Bank reported on teaching and education in Latin America and the Caribbean, Cuba was a standout. Cuba’s literacy rate is close to 100 per cent, putting it right at the top of the world league with the developed economies. Primary education enrollment and attendance rates are at 100 per cent.

What about wealth and resource creation? Cuba is basically a less developed country with developed market problems that affect its trade, structure and demographics. It remains relatively poor with income per head at about $6,000.

Fidel proved a small country could stand up to its big neighbour and make a difference in spreading an ideology that offered hope to the poor. But we can also admit that his imagination was matched by his infamous ruthlessness. Just as one may argue that he improved life for the poor and illiterate, others can say that he ruined the lives of many other Cubans. Fidel’s major challenge appears to be his failure to develop a national economy, with a level of prosperity to income for financing his plans. Instead he learned to use other countries’ money to fund his revolution: first the Soviet Union, and much later Venezuela.

He misunderstood, or ignored for political reasons the sequence of events that capitalism was needed as a forerunner to generate the wealth to allow communism to distribute, using egalitarian principles.

We must put the US embargo against Cuba as syllogistic to the strategy used against Haiti and Toussaint L’Ouverture. It is ironic that Castro, when he came to power, first approached the US assuming they would have loved to see the back of Batista. It is when in his view the US government appeared unwilling to engage him at all that he turned to the Soviet Union. History reflects the tremendous financial support they provided to the Cuban Government which proved a major support.

The lesson we can gain from the legacy of Fidel is that if our leaders truly must win our trust and confidence in advocating a way forward, people once sold on an idea will, with patriotic fervor, secure the future of the country. Perhaps looking for opportunity and seizing initiative must also be learnt.