HAVANA — South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela ended a three-day visit here Saturday after an unhesitant embrace of Cuban President Fidel Castro's Communist revolution, which he called "a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people."

"We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of a vicious, imperialist-orchestrated campaign," Mandela told a rally at which he was Castro's honored guest. "We, too, want to control our own destiny.

"The most important lesson that you have for us is that no matter what the odds, no matter what difficulties you have had to struggle under, there can be no surrender," he added. "It is a case of freedom or death."

Mandela, president of the African National Congress, arrived in Cuba from Jamaica on a Latin American tour. He left to lobby Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela to maintain sanctions against South Africa's white minority government even though the United States has lifted them. He is also urging support for his call for a national unity government in Pretoria to supervise elections and constitutional reform.

But no persuasion was needed with Castro, who brands apartheid "a creation of Western capitalism and imperialism." Mandela's Havana stop was like a love fest between two revolutionaries who had long admired each other but never met.

"Cuba is our second home," Mandela's wife, Winnie, said while touring downtown Havana. "We feel we have always belonged here."

During his visit, Mandela thanked Castro's government for supplying arms to the ANC in the early 1960s and said the writings of Che Guevara, the guerrilla hero of the Cuban revolution, had inspired him during his 27-year imprisonment. He said the Cuban army's resistance of invading South African forces in Angola during the 1970s and '80s had strengthened the anti-apartheid cause and led indirectly to his freedom.

Castro's "consistent commitment to eradicate racism," Mandela said, was especially valued after the Bush Administration, "without consulting us, merely informed us that American sanctions (against Pretoria) were to be lifted." Easing sanctions is "completely unacceptable," he said, until the recent repeal of apartheid laws succeeds in dismantling South Africa's practice of racial separation.

Mandela wore a Cuban \o7 guayabera \f7 tropical shirt Friday night to a rally in the city of Matanzas marking the anniversary of a 1953 guerrilla assault that led to Castro's seizure of power six years later.