It was twenty years ago today, | That Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play | They've been going in and out of style | But they're guaranteed to raise a smile.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, a heroic struggle in which, between October 1987 and June 1988, in some of the fiercest fighting in Africa since the Second World War, the South African Defence Force (SADF) were humiliatingly defeated by liberation forces in Angola.
Cuban assistance to Angolan resistance to the SADF invasion was vital. Defeat at Cuito Cuanavale spelled the doom of apartheid and the victory of the South African liberation movement.
Former Cuban president Fidel Castro famously observed that “the history of Africa will be written as before and after Cuito Cuanavale”. In South Africa’s Freedom Park, outside Pretoria, 2070 names of Cubans who fell in Angola are inscribed alongside those of South Africans who died during the anti-apartheid struggle.
Barry Healy | Cuito Cuanavale: How Cuba fought for Africa’s freedom
Twenty years after the battles of Cuito Cuanavale the region of Southern Africa has not recovered from this period of massive social, economic, political and military dislocations. Yet the foreign policy of the South African state is to promote the same capitalist companies that profited from destabilization. South African corporations now dominate Southern region, except in Angola.
Horace Campbell | Cuito Cuanavale
I must say, it's grand to find a good old, unapologetically socialist publication on the Web. It's better finding two. And yes, countering the narratives of those who insist on painting their war 'glorious', 'righteous', and 'just', it's equally heartening to find the rout of the SADF from Cuito Canavale, Angola, and the subregion remembered by such publications some twenty years down history's rough-hewn, oft-forgotten, and frequently ill-charted trail.
Hey, let's go even further...
For Africa to develop, it needs a new type of democracy — one that will empower private sector producers, not just the political elites. First, the peasants must become the real owners of their primary asset, land. This is the only way towards the environmental improvement, as opposed to the current trend of rampant deforestation and desertification. To do this, freehold must be introduced and the so-called communal land tenure system, that in reality is state land ownership, must be abolished.
Moeletsi Mbeki | Realizing the Potential For Profitable Investment in Africa
More of the same? Nah... Thabo's brother has his head screwed on just right.
So may I introduce to you | The act you've known for all these years, | Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
And while we're hanging about 1988, let's remember he said it. While South Africans and the world were generally lost inside insular or parochial self-interest — and a hell of a long time before Al Gore decided it was a good gig, a lone but respected voice was crying for the wilderness...
"The observed warming during the past 30 years, which is the period when we have accurate measurements of atmospheric composition, is shown by the heavy black line in this graph. The warming is almost 0.4 degrees Centigrade by 1987 relative to climatology, which is defined as the 30 year mean, 1950 to 1980 and, in fact, the warming is more than 0.4 degrees Centigrade in 1988. The probability of a chance warming of that magnitude is about 1 percent. So, with 99 percent confidence we can state that the warming during this time period is a real warming trend."
[...]
"My last viewgraph shows global maps of temperature anomalies for a particular month, July, for several different years between 1986 and 2029, as computed with our global climate model for the intermediate trace gas scenario B. As shown by the graphs on the left where yellow and red colors represent areas that are warmer than climatology and blue areas represent areas that are colder than climatology, at the present time in the 1980s the greenhouse warming is smaller than the natural variability of the local temperature. so, in any given month, there is almost as much area that is cooler than normal as there is area warmer than normal. A few decades in the future, as shown on the right, it is warm almost everywhere."
James E. Hansen | The Greenhouse Effect: Impacts on Current Global Temperature and Regional Heat Waves
Twenty years later...
"James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.
"Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech (pdf) to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the "perfect storm" of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable."
[...]
"His sharpest words are reserved for the special interests he blames for public confusion about the nature of the global warming threat. "The problem is not political will, it's the alligator shoes - the lobbyists. It's the fact that money talks in Washington, and that democracy is not working the way it's intended to work."
Guardian | Put oil firm chiefs on trial, says leading climate change scientist
We're Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, | We hope you will enjoy the show,
Earlier today...
"My presentation today is exactly 20 years after my 23 June 1988 testimony to Congress, which alerted the public that global warming was underway. There are striking similarities between then and now, but one big difference.
"Again a wide gap has developed between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known by policymakers and the public. Now, as then, frank assessment of scientific data yields conclusions that are shocking to the body politic. Now, as then, I can assert that these conclusions have a certainty exceeding 99 percent.
"The difference is that now we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb. The next President and Congress must define a course next year in which the United States exerts leadership commensurate with our responsibility for the present dangerous situation."
[...]
"The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper I have written with several of the world’s leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.
"These conclusions are based on paleoclimate data showing how the Earth responded to past levels of greenhouse gases and on observations showing how the world is responding to today’s carbon dioxide amount. The consequences of continued increase of greenhouse gases extend far beyond extermination of species and future sea level rise."
James E. Hansen | Global Warming Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near
We're Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, | Sit back and let the evening go.
The Beatles | Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
See also:
• Guardian | Climate change: 'We had better get something done next year, or else'
• James Hansen | Twenty years later: tipping points near on global warming
• James Hansen et al | Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?
