Presentation made to: Rotary Club of Wynyard
Venue: Top Hotel
Date: 5th December 1988
Time: 6: pm
Contact: Bob McConnel
Note from 2019:
I found these notes amongst my old documents and decided to share it with some of my friends that lived through these times, not to start a discussion on rights and wrongs, but just for their information. It may be amusing for them to realize how we saw things then.
This speech was prepared 32 years ago and it described events as I lived them and reflected my understanding of the situation at the time of the writing. The audience were Rotary Club members, at the time and in general, not well traveled and with limited knowledge of World history.
In the last years, lots of secret documents and developments in the world brought to light the real reasons for some of the events that we lived but never knew at the time. Today we have a different understanding of some of them.
Concerning the events around the transition to the independence and the civil war that followed, the fall of the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid in South Africa and the defection of some of the commanders of the Cuban forces in Angola, resulted in numerous books being written about the conflict. Some of the events that bamboozled us at the time, such as the end of the South African and Cuban involvement in the war in Angola are now clear.
With time, more and more facts will come to light as participants in the events die or decide to tell the truth.
We hope this makes entertaining reading.
Quando River - Rivungo 1965
Brisbane - Australia 2018