A Note on Ryszard Kapuscinski, Angola and Cuba

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

A Note on Ryszard Kapuscinski, Angola and Cuba

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Simon McGuinness


"Fisk: Our need for beauty in the midst of war" (May 12, 2007)
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070507/062365.html

This article names Ryszard Kapuscinski, and advises me, alas, that he is
now dead. I had wondered what had happened to him.

I well remember reading his riveting account of the withdrawal of the
Portuguese colonialists from Angola and the arrival of the Cubans in
defence of the first independent government of that country. Called
"Another Day of Life" it gives a day by day account of the effect of the
Cuban internationalists of a civil war manipulated from outside by
racists and imperialists. Kapuscinski, having outstayed the last flight
back to Europe, was left behind as the only foreign correspondent to
report on the Cuban arrival and the backbone they brought and grafted
onto to the MPLA government which had shown a faltering conviction in
the cause of maintaining Angolan independence. Kapuscinski describes
how suddenly things in Managua started to work, like the phones, then
the water, then the electricity.

Eventually the Cubans, 300,000 of them in all, defeated the white racist
army of South Africa and their Unita puppets at Cuito Carnavale, and
marched all the way to the South African border, eventually liberating
black Africa from Apartheid and securing the independence of Namibia.
Having changed the course of history, the Cubans took nothing home with
them but the bones of their fallen - the only victorious foreign army in
history to leave Africa empty handed.

Kapuscinski was the only foreign correspondent of the state-run Polish
news agency and had a knack of predicting revolutions and placing
himself at the epicentre of the action. As an introduction to the
legacy of the Cuban Revolution in Africa (and the third world generally)
this is a book that lives in my memory, 20 years after I first read it.
Highly recommended.

"Another Day of Life" is available in a Penguin Modern Classics imprint
at:
http://www.amazon.com/Another-Life-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/014118678X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-1839156-4812000?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179098270&sr=8-1

Simon McGuinness,
Dublin.

*
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
Search Archives: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/htdig/search.html
List Archives: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
Subscribe: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
================================================================

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD)

iD8DBQFGR+kCiz2i76ou9wQRAlr8AJ96VVPFA3cDN9E04cfM1E2e0wkH6QCeJcEn
LCbqh/vRg4+fmY7J/bXcYQM=
=xW+b
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

.