Across the developing world, former Cuban President Fidel Castro was viewed as a hero who stood up to the United States and assisted Marxist guerrillas and revolutionary governments around the world. In the 1970s, he sent Cuban troops to Angola to support a left-wing government over the initial objections of Russia. Cuba helped defeat South African insurgents in Angola and win Namibia’s independence from South Africa in 1990, adding pressure on the apartheid regime. After Nelson Mandela was freed from prison in 1990, he repeatedly thanked Castro. We feature excerpts of Castro speaking about Cuba’s role in Angola and South Africa, including a clip of his first meeting with anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, and speak with Bill Fletcher, a founder of the Black Radical Congress, and Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project and co-author of “Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana.”