Watching Barack Obama making his historic speech in Havana, capital of an unapologetically communist Cuba, this week, Cold Warriors, with ideological battles still fresh in their memories, must have stroked their grizzled beards and pinched themselves. Is this for real? "I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas," Obama said, almost as if to leave no room for doubt.South Africa can claim some credit for the thaw in relations between the two countries. It was at Nelson Mandela's memorial service in Soweto that Obama, walking into Cuban leader Raúl Castro, had no alternative but to shake his hand. The incident caused a minor kerfuffle in the US.US policy towards Cuba, especially its swingeing economic embargo, has appeared to be nothing short of needless vindictiveness.story_article_left1The Berlin Wall fell almost three decades ago, leading to a flood of refugees fleeing the communist nirvana. Russian oligarchs, their pockets bulging with ill-gotten gains, are buying up acres of prime real estate in the West. Beijing - not London, not New York, not even Frankfurt - is becoming the centre of capitalism. When Xi Jinping speaks, world markets sizzle or sulk. It's a remarkable turnaround, a rich irony, in more ways than one.But for Cuba, nothing seems to have changed. For all its sympathy and solidarity with other developing nations, Cuba has remained something of an anachronism. Time, it seems, has stood still.What accounts for Cuba's hold on the American psyche?The US has made peace with Vietnam, where 58000 of its young men and women perished in another fruitless campaign against the communist mirage. When Richard Nixon went to China in 1972, his meeting with Mao Zedong was portrayed as a foreign policy masterstroke. But the communist party still sits astride Chinese society.Successive US presidents did of course parley with the Soviet Union, Cuba's benefactor since the revolution, until finally its constipation induced an implosion.But even with the demise of its protector, Cuba has somehow managed to survive.The answer to the US's pique, it seems, is that Cuba, or Fidel Castro to be precise, is the one that got away. Whereas the US has over the years been able to knock off governments in Latin America almost at will, it has singularly failed to topple Castro in a region it regards as its back yard.story_article_right2Castro outlasted 10 US presidents. Dwight Eisenhower was president when, in 1959, Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista, a US puppet, and nationalised key sectors of the economy, including American-owned companies.When John Kennedy took office in January 1961 he was presented with a CIA plot, approved by Eisenhower, to topple the Castro regime using a ragtag band of Cuban exiles. The Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 was an unmitigated disaster and a stain on Kennedy's nascent presidency.Justifying the embargo on Cuba, Kennedy said it was designed to "reduce the threat posed by its alignment with the communist powers".Obama said this week that the subsequent confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis was probably "as close as we ever have come to the horror of nuclear war".And so this communist island, only 145km from Florida, became a plaything and a scarecrow in right-wing circles, with the large Cuban exile community exerting disproportionate influence on US policy towards their motherland.When Obama announced the thaw in relations between the two countries, Marco Rubio, a US senator and son of Cuban exiles, accused him of having fallen for the regime's honeyed words without anything to show in return. Rubio was one of two Cuban-Americans vying for the Republican presidential nomination.story_article_left3But the embargo has also been something of a godsend for the Castros.There's nothing better to silence internal dissent than a perceived external threat. Everything could be blamed on the despicable Americans.And so by guile, scapegoating and naked repression, the Castros have hung on to power for almost six decades. That's akin to Hendrik Verwoerd still being in power in South Africa, with his policies firmly in place.Obama's visit also shone a spotlight on the other unspoken reality in Cuba, the race question. Cuba has often argued that it had found a cure for racism, but in fact its practices are a shade reminiscent of apartheid. For instance, although two-thirds of the population is black, more than 70% of senior positions in the public service are still occupied by whites.Because nobody is allowed to talk about it, or any other issue, the problem is regarded as nonexistent. For instance, this week Raúl Castro, like a typical troglodyte, denied that there were any political prisoners in Cuba.Obama's visit not only brings to a close a period in which Cuba became hostage to American capriciousness: it will also unleash a process of change on the island itself that will be hard to reverse...