The Struggle for Democracy in Africa
Translation and introduction by Ian Scott Horst. Buy a copy of his new book on Ethiopia, ‘Like Ho Chi Minh! Like Che Guevara!’ here.
The following article was published by the European office of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party in Rome in 1980. It appeared in the first and only issue of the Ethiopian Marxist Review, an English-language periodical the EPRP’s foreign section hoped would engage the world left. In 1980 that left was then largely (and unfortunately) singing the praises of Mengistu Haile Mariam, the military chief of state and leader of the Derg, the military organization that had governed Ethiopia since the revolutionary year of 1974. Sadly, the Review took several years to become a reality after it was first envisioned by the Party, and by 1980 the EPRP’s resistance to the military regime was in deep retreat, having suffered massive loss of life during the period of the so-called Red Terror. The EMR received