University of Los Andes (ULA) professor Franz J. T. Lee writes: For the first time in my life, I heard about the existence of the Liberator Simon Bolivar, in 1961, in Cape Town, while we were founding and extending the first modern guerrilla movement across Southern Africa. At first it was called the "Yu Chi Chan Club" (YCCC) and later it became the "National Liberation Front of South Africa (NLFSA).

The very original name indicated that we were studying yu chi chan (guerrilla warfare), not only of Mao ze-Dong, Clausewitz, but also of Che Guevara.

To introduce me into the clandestine movement, that had the historic objective of toppling fascism, racism and Apartheid in Southern Africa by all means necessary, I was asked by my comrades to give a lecture on the French Revolution. At the age of 23, having been born and bred in a fascist police state that learned all its terrorism from Nazi Germany, and which was essentially anti-communist, I knew absolutely nothing about Marxism, colonialism and independence wars in Latin America.

• If I remember well, I must have given the worst lecture that one could imagine.

However, of great political interest to me, was that I became acquainted with Francisco de Miranda, Simon Bolivar, Jose Marti, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Little did I know that 45 years later, I would find myself in the epicenter of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.

What immediately fascinated me about Simon Bolivar, whose works at least were not officially forbidden to read and study in Apartheid South Africa? In any case, till today, very few people speak Spanish in Southern Africa.

What really touched me was Bolivar's constant, consequent revolutionary spirit that swore across the ages never to come to rest until America would be free. Also, it fascinated me to see how precisely he had identified the historic "root of all evil, the "plague" of North America subjugating the conquered peoples.

At first my knowledge of the Bolivarian Revolution within the context of the French, Industrial and American Revolutions was still superficial, however, after having studying history, dialectics, class struggles and Marxism across the next decades, I realized that great gods, great ideas, great men and great races do not necessarily make "history."

• However, I noticed that liberators like Patrice Lumumba, Walter Rodney, Fidel Castro , Malcolm X or Hugo Chavez Frias surely express in microcosm the deepest aspirations of their downtrodden peoples on the road towards total human emancipation.

At the same time, it became obvious that dictators like Hitler, Bush and Pinochet express the capitalist interests of global imperialism and corporatism, and that they would sacrifice humanity in their megalomaniac ruling class greed and egoism.

Hence, in the Third Millennium, from Revolutionary Africa, Happy Birthday, Simon Bolivar!

We are living at a most dangerous time, where the North American "plague" has in mind to extinguish the very human species with all the stockpiled mortal weapons of mass destruction, It is using its Zionist paw, its Apartheid pawn, Israel, to terrorize its own domestic Jewish and Arab peoples, and externally, to annihilate the whole Arab world, in the name of "the right of self-defense" (Bush). In reality it concerns theft of oil resources.

Very few world leaders, among them, Fidel and Chavez, officially have protested against the current Israeli holocaust of thousands of innocent men, women and children, razing Lebanon to the very ground, and which already is aimed at the violent destruction of Syria and Iran.

This is what Bush meant by a matter "not of months, but weeks."

Jesus Christ and Simon Bolivar taught us the revolutionary essence of real, true, earthly liberation, how to get rid of plagues like the USA and Israel: I did not come to this world to bring peace! I am bringing the sword of Bolivar. Also, I am bringing fire from Chavez' Russian rifles, how I wish that it is already sparking off the North American prairie.

As birthday message across a religious America, across a corporate globe in agony, the emancipatory essence of liberation, of Simon Bolivar's heritage, of Bolivarian revolutionaries, against corruption is simply:

"Knoweth ye the truth, and the truth shall make thee free!"