The death of Fidel Castro, the strongman of Cuba, has drawn mixed reactions all around the world. Depending on how we view history and how we watch it unfold, Castro will be characterised as liberator or dictator.

We live in the present and it is easy to forget all the dynamic changes that brought us to this point. Fidel joined with Che Guevara and toppled the dictator Fulgencio Batista’s brutal and corrupt reign of seven years.

Forgotten is that Cuba was the cache of the United States drug and illicit trade, where several millions of dirty money was building the country under Batista, while tens of thousands of persons were killed and thousands had become engaged in prostitution, drug abuse and crime at the feet of the casinos. Cuba became known as the Las Vegas of Latin America.

Forgotten also is that the Batista takeover and ensuing government were heavily supported by the US. Ideologically, the Cubans were not given to communism.

However, to fight Batista meant to fight his backer. Given the awesomeness of that task, Castro had to ally with the enemy of their enemy — the Soviet Union.

Batista had aligned his regime with the wealthy landowners of Cuba and facilitated major US corporations and the drug mafia, virtually making the citizens of Cuba slaves to this cartel. Therefore, the revolution for the vast majority of Cubans was viewed as liberation.

As a consequence, many of the middle-class and entrepreneurial persons would become disadvantaged by a communist regime, leading to many fleeing and others being imprisoned for their activism. Castro became the friend of the liberation movement all over the world, from South Africa to Latin America, the Caribbean and the US.

Back in the Sixties, it was fashionable as a social activist to be considered a leftist.

The Sixties took in many social and political changes, resulting in many new independent countries, and civil rights legislation in most Western jurisdictions.

The big question became: when should a liberator put down his sword and begin to give the people the actual freedom for which they fought? When should the language of revolution give way to the language of human idealism?

All around the world, the liberators of the 1960s became the dictators of the latter half of the 20th century. Included in that group would be the likes of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the deposed and executed former Libyan leader, who could not make the transformation.

So in eulogising the death of President Fidel Castro, what aspects of his life do we use to characterise him?

Perhaps we cannot separate his life, and it will be seen as in the eyes of the beholder.

What is left is a country that, although poorer, is far richer in human character and capital than if the Castro revolution had not intervened.

The big question is: where do they go from here? Will they once again become victims of imperialism, or will they flourish as a democracy of united people?

Cuba is in a test tube of history and future generations will be able to speak more clearly and objectively about the icon we all knew as Fidel Castro.