When will our Cuban debt be paid off? Plus five highlights from ‘Vrye Weekblad’

For how much longer will the ANC be beholden to Cuba for the solidarity shown during the struggle against apartheid? This question lies at the heart of the government's ongoing obsession to support Cuba by harnessing their expertise at a time when unemployment and a general economic collapse has forced the island state to its knees. 

The 24 engineers that Lindiwe Sisulu, Minister of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation has now announced are coming to help SA deal with the collapse of its municipal water and sewerage system is the latest in a long queue of specialists that have been imported to assist SA with its long list of crises. The water engineers will cost the state R65m.

South Africa started paying back its “solidarity debt” decades ago with the exchange programme that saw Cuban doctors being brought to work in the South African health system and South African medical students sent to Cuba for training.

But there have been a string of other Cuban imports since. Like the 150 technicians brought here to help service our military vehicles. Project Thusano has cost us R700m to date.

In 2011, 30 Cuban immigration specialists were imported to train 350 local cadets. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the then-minister of home affairs, spearheaded this exchange. The cost of this intervention has never been made public.

Last year, when Covid-19 was ravaging the Eastern Cape, 187 medical personnel from Cuba were deployed in the province. The R239m that this intervention was initially projected to cost spiralled to about R430m. 

And then there was the R230m spent on the Cuban manufactured Covid-19 drug, Heberon Interferon alfa-2b. The medication was not approved by our Medicines Control Council and was therefore, strictly speaking, smuggled into the country illegally. The consignment has been languishing in the fridges at the SA Military Health Services depot in Tshwane where, it is alleged, half of it has been spoiled due to being stored at the wrong temperature.

In this week's Vrye Weekblad we interrogate when we will have paid off our debt to Cuba, plus more news and analysis.

Must-read articles in this week’s Vrye Weekblad

>> Browse the full April 30 edition

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