Making Amends With Thy Enemy: CAP Spring Break Relives the Past for Some

Making Amends With Thy Enemy: CAP Spring Break Relives Past War for Some

One was enlisted in the Cuban army, fighting on the front line for independence of the Angolan peoples. The other sat home and watched on television following his country's invasion of that African country. Their paths would later cross at the most unlikeliest of locations.

It is a war few people know about but when Gambling911.com's Cuban reporter Sparky Collins and South African born Who2BetOn founder Lawrence "The Prez" Prezman sat together for lunch at this past weekend's CAP Spring Break Bahamas memories were quickly conjured up. (pictured above: Sparky Collins holds Lawrence Prezman during a chance meeting at CAP)

"I fight your country," Collins told The Prez in his deep Cuban accent. "We were forced to stay under water overnight and breathe out of tubes waiting for you to come."

Sparky would have drowned by now waiting for the Prez, who never enlisted in the South African army. Instead he fled to Canada.

Sparky explained how his people (the men) had no choice but to fight in Angola for that country's independence. At the time Sparky was all man. The army received little food rations and operated under the harshest conditions known to man. The losses were staggering.

The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, commonly known by the acronymn, UNITA, derived from its Portuguese name União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola, is an Angolan political party and was originally an anti-colonial movement which became a rebel force after Angola's independence in 1975.

Until 2002 UNITA was largely a military force in the Angolan Civil War fighting Angola's (originally and until the 1980s) Marxist regime, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, known as the MPLA. The war was one of the most prominent Cold War conflicts, with UNITA being aided militarily by the United States, and the MPLA receiving similar support from the Soviet Union.

In 1976, the FNLA was defeated by Cuban troops, leaving the MPLA and UNITA (now backed by the United States and South Africa) to fight for power. Since 1979, Jose Eduardo dos Santos has been in control of the country's political leadership. Despite the introduction of a multi-party system in 1991, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) has remained in power. Fighting had continued through the mid-1980's. Sparky served during the final years.

James Early of BlackCommenator.com writes:

Most inspiring, Cubans died to liberate non-Cuban people of color. The battle fought in Cuito Cuanavale, an Angolan town, best exemplifies this. In 1988 Cuban and Angolan soldiers stopped apartheid South Africa’s war machine which had invaded Angola and was bent on capturing Cuito Cuanavale, and then all Angola. The purpose? To impose the murderous Jonas Savimbi as an apartheid-defending puppet president of Angola. Defeating apartheid South Africa at Cuito Cuanavale was highly significant. It marked the beginning of the end both in the liberation of Namibia and of South Africa, and in ending Angola’s nightmarish civil war.

Sparky does not hold any ill-feelings towards Lawrence. The lunch meeting was cordial and the two even exchanged hugs.

"I feel very safe around Sparky," admits Prezman. "I would not want to meet up with him in a dark alley."

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