MADRID, Spain.- The South African government lent Cuba 147,631,000 rands (about 9,270,000 dollars) in the last four years, according to the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Naledi Pandor.
Asked by the leader of the Democratic Alliance, John Steenhuisen, about the details of the loans, aid and goods and services that the South African government has spent in Cuba since President Cyril Ramaphosa was elected in February 2018, the minister specified that the total of R147,631,000 was due to an economic assistance agreement for agricultural development projects and infrastructure reconstruction.
According to information shared by the local newspaper IOLsthe loan was divided into two parts: The first part, of 63 million rands (nearly four million dollars), was made available in 2018. The second part, 84,631 billion rands (more than five million dollars ), was made available in 2021.
According to Pandor, the first loan has already been repaid in full. While the second, the Cuban government has been returning it since December 2021.
“The relationship between South Africa and Cuba goes back long before the democratic elections of 1994. Friendship and solidarity with Cuba must be seen in the context of the important contribution that Cuba made to the liberation of South Africa,” she said when asked about why the Government had chosen Cuba as the beneficiary of South African aid.
Regarding future assistance, the minister stated that “it is planned to provide humanitarian aid to Cuba from food and medicine suppliers, which will be purchased from South African companies and sent to Cuba.”
The regime benefits from other agreements with South Africa
Last March it transpired that South Africa had paid to the Cuban Government more than 359 million rand (equivalent to more than 24 million dollars) for training its military on the island and teaching them to speak Spanish.
According to the South African Minister of Defense and Military Veterans, Thandi Modise, since 2014 these people received training courses in Cuba for air force pilots, air traffic control, psychology, strategic defense and mechanical engineering and technical studies.
Also in March, the spokesman for the Department of Health in the South African province of Gauteng, Jack Bloom (of the Democratic Alliance), denounced that said entity had spent 30.3 million rands (almost two million dollars) on Cuban doctors in 2021 and that it still employed 14 doctors from the island who earned between 5,000 and 6,000 dollars a day. month.
This payment to Cuban doctors, as has been repeatedly denounced by human rights organizations and the doctors themselves, ends up, almost entirely, at the hands of the regime.
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