Mengistu Haile Mariam

“Mugabe fought and liberated his country from colonists. But I am here as a guest of the Zimbabwe people. I am not a personal guest of Mugabe. And veterans of the liberation struggle are well aware of this fact.”

“Ethiopia did not have the same problem [of corruption]. African leaders looked at us with envy.”

“We thought that the proletariat would eventually run the world. But it is the Americans who have assumed that position... The American people have changed.”

“We did not even know his name.”

“If I had resigned on my own accord, to whom would I have transferred the reigns of power?”

“We fought them when they sought to dismember the nation. Is this why I should seek exoneration?”

“I'm a military man, I did what I did only because my country had to be saved from tribalism and feudalism. If I failed, it was only because I was betrayed. The so-called genocide was nothing more than just a war in defence of the revolution and a system from which all have benefited.”

“When [Nelson Mandela] was in prison I admired him for his moral strength...Of his period in power I can see few results. Apartheid no longer exists, at least to all appearances, but no one understands what the new government in South Africa is doing.”

“[Haile Selassie] died a natural death, as far as I know. I can't deny that there were many of my men who would have been glad to kill him with their bare hands to avenge the fathers and brothers they had lost due to him. The doctor looking after him told me nothing about any deterioration in his health, so there was no way I could personally ascertain what happened.”

“[Haile Selassie] was 80 years old and a very weak man. We tried our best to save him but we could not keep him.”

“In this country, some aristocratic families automatically categorize persons with dark skin, thick lips, and kinky hair as "Barias" [Amharic for slave]... let it be clear to everybody that I shall soon make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!”

“One of the fundamental preconditions of successful socialist construction is to ensure the people's readiness to defend themselves from the ravages of probable regional or global wars on the basis of the balance of forces generating from the basic contradictions of our epoch.”

“All I can say is that living for 17 years without rest from fighting, dealing with problem after problem, war after war, and crisis after crisis, every day and every hour was very difficult.”

“When we planned our country's economic development, we had the strategic objective of our Revolution in mind. It was not planned for economic development [to be] solely an end in itself. There are some who have forgotten that the sole basis of our revolutionary struggle was the ideology and politics which we follow...”

“what is important to me as it is for the Ethiopian people, is the unity of the country, the sovereignty of the country and I'm not ready to compromise on that.”