Who Is “ERNESTO ‘CHE’ GUEVARA”?
By Shivute Kaapanda [Think Tank Africa]
With unending political and ideological battles in human spaces it’s appropriate to say the world is in polarity due to differences in various social, economic and political values and ideologies which humanity has embraced overtime and they will continue today and to the coming generations of Africans and the world.
And so the spirit of consciousness, freedom, energy, ideology and radicalism has been alive, still alive and will continue to be alive to enlighten and rebrand the African continent as a prospective powerful continent in the world.
Many revolutions in the world have taught us many lessons as human beings on how to maneuver around and within the reality of social, economic and political life.
Battles have been fought, won and lost worldwide, blood has been shed, generations were born and died, but ideas continue to live for centuries and millennia.
It is these battles which in whose reflections we live in today. For example Africans are speaking English, French and German languages today because they have lost battles to their former colonial masters therefore it’s always that the loser embraces the values and decisions of the one who is victorious unless the war is not over yet.
Africans are divided into 55 powerless segments called countries as a result of European adventurism, another battle fought. That is the reality of history which also determines the present and the future of the world.
Some among many world major figures in political, economic and social battles are Thomas Sankara, Amilcar Cabral, Mobutu Sese Seko, Muammar Ghaddafi, PLO Lumumba, Julius Sello Malema, Hugo Chavez, Confucius, Mao Ze Dong, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, Ernesto Che Guevara, Hendrik Witbooi and Julius Nyerere.
Considering all these battle figures I would love to invoke the spirit of fearlessness in the incoming spirit of African extraction to fight the social situation of the African people to the core so that social justice shall be served and pan-Africanism be the living testimony of many generations of African humans as generations continue to live and die.
In evoking the spirit of rebellious consciousness let’s discuss the household revolutionary name of the red star, a symbol of rebellion and socialism and the hope of the world proletarian masses; who is Ernesto Che Guevara, a staunch activist.
Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, Guerilla leader, a military theorist and he was one of the key figures of the Cuban revolution. It is due to Ernesto’s testicular fortitude, spirit of rebellion, determination and energy, his style and revolutionary attitude that his image and name has become a global cultural symbol of rebellion and has made the biggest trend in the global insignia of popular culture.
Born 14 June 1928, Che Guevara was radicalized by the poverty, hunger and diseases he witnessed and therefore his burgeoning desire was to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States.
Che Guevara was a prolific writer and a diarist and his best-selling memoir is called “The Motorcycle Diaries”. His experiences in studying Marxism-Leninism has made him to understand that the Third World’s underdevelopment and dependence was an intrinsic result of imperialism, neocolonialism and monopoly capitalism with the only remedy being proletarian internationalism and world revolution.
Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment continental revolutions across both Africa and South America, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and consequently executed.
Che Guevara therefore remains both a revered and reviled world figure in books, songs, memoirs, documentaries and films due to his testicular fortitude and desire to create consciousness driven by moral rather than material considerations. He remains an iconic inspiration in class struggles and an icon of various leftist movements in Africa and the world, and he remains the closest leftist ancestor God for many revolutionaries.
In celebrating his legacy we should name his name after places, streets, buildings and people in order to conserve and uplift the spirit of revolution.
May his spirit and endurance inspire all of us forever in this revolutionary life as we continue to fight the capitalist monster among all of us in this world?
– Shivute Kaapanda is a Namibian Eyanda-born leftist writer, Guevarian, Activist and the author of a book titled “The Conscious Republic”. He can be contacted iskaapanda@gmail.com
