Unlike in South Africa where Armed Forces Day this year came and went with almost no commemoration, Cuba, some 17 000 plus kilometres away, saw a ‘successful’ Armed Forces Day being observed.
The South African Ambassador to the Caribbean Island nation Yvonne Phosa was at the forefront of an Armed Forces Day event to commemorate the loss of the SS Mendi in the English Channel on 21 February 1917.
Held on 28 February, the event was attended by South African defence personnel stationed in Cuba, representatives from the Cuban Revolutionary Forces, members of the Communist Party of Cuba, and defence attaches. A number of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) students are studying in Cuba.
In addition to delivering the keynote address at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana, Phosa officiated at an Armed Forces Day programme.
Colonel Phillip Makopo, a South African student attending the Strategic Defence and Security Programme in Cuba, reported that Armed Forces Day honours women and men who have lost their lives in the course of their patriotic duty in the country or on international missions.
The troopship SS Mendi was ferrying South Africans, the majority from the SA Native Labour Corps, to France when it was hit by the cargo steamship Darro south of the Isle of Wight on 21 February 1917. 616 black South African troops died in the naval tragedy.
The SANDF did not commemorate Armed Forces Day this year in South Africa due to budget cuts and the loss of 14 soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo in late January during fighting against M23 rebels.
