The 17 April protests showed that solidarity with Cuba and Palestine is widening into something more serious: a recognition that Africa faces a historic choice between anti-imperialist internationalism and a deepening colonial order backed by Western power.
Some protests are little more than rituals. They register outrage, mark a date and disappear into the churn of the next crisis. The 17 April mobilisation was not that. What happened outside the US consulate in Sandton and in parallel actions in Durban, Cape Town and eThekwini, was more than a gesture of support for Cuba or Palestine. It was a public argument about the world we are living in and the choice confronting Africa in a moment of widening imperial war.
The demonstrations were called for 17 April, the 65th anniversary of revolutionary Cuba’s defeat of the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion. It is a lesson President Donald Trump needs to be reminded of, given his threats about dealing with Cuba once he has finished with Iran. Six decades of the US blockade have intensified under Trump, including the closure of oil supplies Cuba needs to function.
Several hundred activists representing a wide range of organisations gathered in Johannesburg despite the rain. The breadth of the coalition mattered. The Cuba Solidarity Now mobilisation brought together political, trade union, faith-based and community formations, including the ANC, SACP, EFF, PAC, Friends of Cuba (Focus), Palestine solidarity organisations such as PSC and South African Jews for a Free Palestine, the Evangelical Alliance of South Africa (TEASA), Cosatu and affiliates including Nehawu and Sactwu. Durban and Cape Town rallies reflected a similarly broad front.
The visual language of the protests made the politics unmistakable: “Pasop Trump, remember Bay of Pigs”, “Down with US imperialism, break the blockade, stand by Cuba”, “Stop the genocide. Stop bombing Gaza, Iran, Lebanon”, “No SA coal for genocidal Israel”, “Free Maduro! Free Cilia!” and calls to free Palestinian political prisoners. Cuban, Palestinian, Venezuelan and Iranian flags flew outside the venues.
Too much commentary still treats each new war, siege or intervention as an exceptional case — the product of local irrationality or complexity. The protests rejected this. They insisted that what we are seeing is the expansion of a single logic: imperial in character, colonial in structure, even when it speaks the language of democracy, security and humanitarian concern. It is increasingly fascistic in its contempt for civilian life, sovereignty and law.
Gaza has become the clearest and most horrifying expression of this. What has happened there is not simply war in the ordinary sense. It is a systematic demonstration of what becomes possible once an entire people is stripped of moral standing: siege, starvation, bombardment, the destruction of hospitals, schools and homes, mass displacement and the re-coding of victims as threats.
Exterminatory violence is recast as self-defence. This is the grammar of a world in which the empire no longer feels compelled to hide its methods. Once that threshold is crossed in Palestine, the same logic appears elsewhere with growing confidence.
We have seen it in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and now Iran. The script is familiar. A state or movement that resists imperial alignment is marked as irrational, fanatical or terroristic.
Its government is presented as illegitimate. Economic punishment is framed as moral discipline. Military aggression is presented as rescue. Destabilisation becomes “democracy promotion”.
The same pattern is visible beyond West Asia. Cuba remains under a siege designed not only to punish a government but to suffocate an alternative political imagination.
On 18 April, Brazil, Mexico and Spain issued a joint declaration at a defence of democracy summit in Barcelona, expressing concern about the humanitarian crisis facing the Cuban people and calling for measures to alleviate it. South Africa was represented by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who defended the country’s ICJ genocide case against Israel but remained silent on Cuba — an omission Ronnie Kasrils has questioned.
That silence matters because Cuba is not peripheral to South Africa’s history. Cuba did not merely issue statements during southern Africa’s liberation struggles.
It committed lives, resources and military support in Angola and elsewhere, helping to weaken apartheid’s regional power and open the way to Namibian independence and South African democracy.
To stand aside while Cuba is strangled would not be realism. It would be moral failure and historical amnesia.
This is what gave Kasrils’s intervention its importance on 17 April. His speech located Cuba’s present crisis within a longer history of imperial aggression and resistance.
More importantly, he has called on South Africa to follow the lead of Brazil, Mexico and Spain. He has urged South Africa and Namibia to act together and extended that appeal to Angola, Mozambique, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the continent.
This call should not be treated as diplomatic ornament but as strategic direction. If South Africa’s liberation inheritance means anything, it cannot survive only in speeches or symbolic language.
It must be reflected in present choices, at a time when the world is again being shaped by siege, militarism and racial hierarchy.
South Africa should not applaud from the sidelines. It should align. Namibia should move with it. Angola and Mozambique should not hesitate. SADC should act with political memory and purpose.
The success of 17 April should not be measured only by turnout or slogans, though these mattered. It should be measured by whether it sharpens political consequence. The demonstrations expressed a growing internationalism: anti-imperialist, anti-genocide and rooted in the conviction that the suffering of one people is inseparable from the freedom of another.
The protests also insisted that solidarity must be practical. Alongside the political message was a clear appeal for food, medicine and solar energy equipment for Cuba. Supporters are being asked to fund emergency aid in liaison with the Cuban embassy. The effort is already under way and generating a strong response.
This matters politically as much as morally. It shows that solidarity is not only a slogan but organisation, sacrifice and material commitment. This moment demands more than sentiment. It demands alignment.
South Africa and Namibia should join the initiative led by Brazil, Mexico and Spain. Angola, Mozambique, SADC and Africa more broadly should do the same.
This would not be a departure from history but fidelity to it.
Anything less would mean recognising the danger and refusing the responsibility that comes with that clarity.
Nigel Branken is a South African pastor, social worker and activist and a member of the South African Communist Party.
The protests rejected this. They insisted that what we are seeing is the expansion of a single logic: imperial in character, colonial in structure, even when it speaks the language of democracy, security and humanitarian concern
