Cuba is under an oil blockade imposed by US President Donald Trump’s administration bent on “regime change”. This follows a US blockade enforced since 1959 against the former communist enclave. Given Cuba’s formidable contributions to Southern Africa’s liberation, it is tragic no-one is coming to Havana’s rescue in its moment of need.
Apartheid’s leaders had sought to reduce Southern Africa to a region of “broken back” states through devastating military attacks. In 1988 Cuban troops in Angola shattered the myth of apartheid military invincibility by forcing the South African army into retreat at the famous battle of Cuito Cuanavale, helping to hasten the withdrawal of foreign troops from Angola, the independence of Namibia, and the end of apartheid in South Africa.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 and subsequent halting of aid had caused Cuba’s GDP to fall 35% in three years, and this slide has continued. America’s kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January cut off Cuba’s main source of oil. Trump’s subsequent oil blockade of Cuba resulted in Mexico halting fuel exports, and only a Russian tanker has recently been allowed through the American blockade.
Though the Cuban government of Miguel Díaz-Canel has loosened restrictions on private ownership of businesses and allowed foreign investment, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, infrastructure and the island’s power grid have all collapsed, resulting in daily 18-hour rolling blackouts. This crisis has also triggered an exodus of more than 1-million Cubans. By 2025 infant mortality had doubled in seven years. The fall of the Cuban peso means an average monthly salary can only buy a dozen eggs. Tourism, which was traditionally the main source of revenue, has dried up.
As the government in Havana started printing money, hyperinflation predictably set in. Once world-class health facilities have crumbled. Further exacerbating matters, the shadowy military-industrial oligarchy Grupo de Administración Empresarial SA, which dominates the economy, has created much resentment. Cuba has 20,000 doctors working across the globe, from which the government earns valuable hard currency. Under US pressure these doctors have been expelled from Venezuela, with Washington pressuring 15 other countries to also throw out Cuban doctors. Italy and Qatar have resisted, while Jamaica, Guatemala and Honduras have caved in.
While there is no doubt Cuba needs economic reforms and a democratic transition ... a Trump-led regime change will likely mainly benefit American corporations and some of the military-dominated domestic firms centred around the Castro family.
After an inhumane 67-year American blockade of Cuba, former US president Barack Obama’s opening to the country in 2014-2016 sensibly promoted re-establishing diplomatic ties, attracting foreign investment, boosting tourism and loosening economic and political restrictions. He thus sought to advance gradualist popular reforms that could eventually result in a functioning rules-based democracy.
Trump and his opportunistic Cuban-American secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have, as in Venezuela, remained largely silent about restoring democracy to Cuba. As Trump noted in March: “I do believe I will be having the honour of taking Cuba.”
If protests erupt on the island as a result of political repression and economic hardships, an American military intervention is likely, especially if Havana violently clamps down on dissent. Any mass exodus of Cubans would head towards the US and Mexico.
The US president may also have his own self-serving interest in advocating “regime change” in Cuba. The Trump Organization registered a trademark in Havana in 2008 for hotels, casinos and golf courses, and dispatched its officials to identify possible locations in 2013.
While there is no doubt Cuba needs economic reforms and a democratic transition (more than 1,000 political prisoners remain in jail), a Trump-led regime change will likely mainly benefit American corporations and some of the military-dominated domestic firms centred around the Castro family.
Who will save Cuba, which shed so much blood for Southern Africa’s liberation, from Trump’s belligerence?
• Adebajo is professor and senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.
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