76-13-A5

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Cuba and Africa

Transcript The United State Senators from South Dakota, George McGovern and James Abourezk, should be congratulated on their ability to hide their disappointment while the University of South Dakota basketball team was losing two games in a row to a Cuban All-Star team. As a matter of fact, they managed to look practically ecstatic. The game was evidently the result of a meeting between Senator McGovern and Fidel Castro, in which the Senator found the Cuban dictator to be a charming, friendly, well informed fellow. It sort of reminds you of how we discovered that Joseph Stalin was good-old-Uncle Joe, shortly before he stole, among other things, our nuclear secrets. Then the other day, one of our leading metropolitan papers editorialized about how wrong it has been for the United States to be unfriendly to this island neighbor 90 miles off the Florida coast. And how right it is that we should be restoring trade relations. Oh sure, Castro has some 15,000 troops stirring up trouble in Africa and he did visit Africa himself, but the fact that his visit coincided with that of Soviet President Podgorny -- well it's a small world. The month was March, and Fidel Castro boarded a Russian supersonic plane and flew off, first to Algeria and then on a tour of Libya, South Yemen, Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania and, of course, Angola. It was also March when military forces armed with Russian-made weapons, and trained in their use by Cuban soldiers, advanced across the border into Zaire. The invasion was into the Shaba province which is literally a treasure house of copper, uranium and cobalt. On March 22, Soviet President Podgorny, with a staff of 120, arrived in Tanzania also by way of a Russian supersonic transport. He spent several days in mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. He then flew to Zambia and Mozambique. It is unrealistic for us to fail to recognize the Soviet Union has opened a new stage in its campaign to achieve strategic dominance over Africa with all its mineral riches. Mozambique, a home base for the terrorists who slaughter innocent villagers in Rhodesia, has declared itself dedicated to the goal of becoming a Marxist-Leninist state. Angola's conquerors, the M.P.L.A., are following suit, bolstered by Castro's thousands of mercenaries. President Podgorny stood on the bank of the Zambesi River looking toward Rhodesia and proclaimed that, -- QUOTE -- "Together with the Republic of Zambia and other progressive African states, the Soviet Union stands on the same side as the peoples of Rhodesia , South West Africa and South Africa." -- UNQUOTE. Of course, in those latter three countries, he didn't explain that the people he stands with -- the revolutionaries and terrorists -- are not the majority. In Lusaka he met for several hours with the leaders of the groups carrying on terrorist, guerilla attacks and pledged that the Soviet Union, -- QUOTE -- "will permanently support the first struggle of the fighters of Southern Africa." -- UNQUOTE. Castro got back in time for the basketball games, and now we're talking about sending a baseball team to Cuba. That's only part of our response to this Soviet-Cuban assault on Africa. We've removed all obstacles to American travel to Cuba and we are negotiating, or at least discussing, re-opening of trade and political relations with the Cuban government. And, oh yes! We've ordered a halt to buying chrome from Rhodesia. It looks like we're going to lose more than a basketball game before the foolishness ends. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 76-13-A5 Production Date 05/04/1977 Book/Page RihoH-183 Audio Youtube? No
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