Can boxing Victor teach us a lesson?

So Theo Jackson and Willem Oosthuizen forced Victor Mlotshwa into a coffin to teach him a lesson. They meant no harm at all.
None at all they say in an affidavit accompanying their bail application. But, what lessons, if there are any, would Mr. Mlotshwa have woken to, had he spent time boxed in a coffin since August 17? Would he emerge from the rigour and gravity of his experience to find the world has become a different place in just a few weeks? They do say a week is a long time in politics after all. So let us see.

Mr Mlotshwa would rise to find Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro is no more. The man who forged the establishment of a communist state in Cuba through an armed struggle and divided opinions among Cubans through his political and economic reform of Cuba managed the same feat from beyond the grave. His death sparked a carnival like street party in Little Havana in Miami as American Cubans who chose to flee his rule took to the streets to dance in celebration of his death – not his achievements in providing Cubans with free healthcare and education.

African and South American leaders chose to celebrate his death and achievements in speeches made to mourners in Havana. Castro gave military assistance to liberation movements in Africa and South America and helped to inspire and mentor a new generation of communist-aligned leaders like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia.

As political analysts haggled over Castro’s legacy, the world came to understand the cold sober reality of Communist rule in Cuba. Carlos Ponce, the director of the Latin American and Caribbean division of the human-rights group Freedom House, says it is difficult to estimate the price Cubans paid over the years; but he does say: “I can tell you that 2 million Cubans live outside Cuba, I can tell you that in the last 10 years, there have been nearly 18,000 political detainees.”

The death of Castro has taught us that political freedoms in Cuba remain limited as the state brooks no opposition to its iron fist rule. The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation documented 8,616 politically motivated detentions in 2015.

The world has also come to learn that the Castro family is a big player in all facets of Cuban life: Raul is the president. Alejandro Castro, who is the son of the late Fidel Castro, is the head of intelligence. Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas, who is married to Deborah Castro, sister to Alejandro, is the chief executive of Gaesa, the investment arm of the military, which has controlling stakes in key sectors of the economy.

What lesson, if any, did the world learn from the death of Fidel Castro? We learnt that communism is well and truly a thing of the past now if events following the death of the late Cuban leader are anything to go by.  

Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Xi Jinping of China did not bother to attend the funeral in Havana. And the recent overtures made to the USA by President Raul Castro clearly demonstrate the economic limitations of a Communist model in 2016, especially when most Cuban workers earn a minimum wage of US$30 (around R450) per month. As Cuba laid to rest Mr. Castro, the godfather of Communism in the Americas, it also laid to rest the ghosts of the cold war.

Cuba was the last man standing from the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1962. And the USSR abandoned him after 1989. Castro soldiered on and found a new ally in the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Chavez sold electricity and oil to Cuba at subsidised prices, as Venezuela was flush with cash from revenue generated by high oil prices. But a fall in the price of oil forced Venezulea to cut its subsidies. Without economic assistance from the USSR or Venezuela the Marxist-Leninsit ideals propounded by the ruling Communist Party of Cuba failed to usher in the economic growth and diversity Cubans yearn for. Most Cubans might secretly hope for a new economic dispensation free from cold war era dogma and influences.

Vestiges of cold-era war communist rule still thrive in China and Russia though where press freedom and plurality in politics are a grave no-no. Russia is ranked 148 out 180 countries in the 2016 press freedom index published by Paris-based non-profit organisation Reporters Without Frontiers. China sits on number 176. And another communist state, North Korea, is sitting on number 179; just above Eritrea in last place.

The ‘one-state one party’ system adopted by Cuba in 1959, remains well-entrenched in the political structures of Eritrea, China and North Korea as well. Russia has a multiparty system in name; but in practice, running against the big man in the Kremlin is a perilous affair: Boris Nemtsov, a popular opposition leader, was assassinated on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge in central Moscow on February 27, 2015. In China, President Xi Jinping has launched an unprecedented fight against corruption, which has mostly targeted powerful senior members of the Communist Party who may harbour dreams of replacing Mr. Jinping.

If Mr Mlotshwa awoke this morning he would learn that Yayha Jammeh lost the presidential election in The Gambia to a former security guard after 22 years in power in a defeat that surprised Gambians – and the world too. Mr Jammeh, who wrestled power from President Sir Dawda Jawara in a coup in 1984, gained worldwide notoriety for claiming he could cure HIV/AIDS and asthma with natural herbs. He would also learn that Mr Jammeh preffered to be adressed by his full title: His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya Abdul-Azziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh.

But what lessons, if there are any, can we learn from the 22 years Mr Jammeh ruled the Gambia? First Power is intoxicating stuff in Africa. It has a powerful and dangerously delusional influence over leaders. The other lesson is: It takes a grand coalition of opposition to unseat a dodgy and well-entrenched political establishment like the former ruling party in The Gambia, the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction.

Lastly, what lesson, if there is any, can we learn from the experience Mr. Mlotshwa had in the coffin? Well: Hate – or discrimination can morph into violent cruelty rather expeditiously. And hate has the potential to destroy the hope for unity across races – or indeed a united South Africa.