A trip to Vietnam brought the occasion to remember that I had Walden Bello's "Ho Chi Minh: Down With Colonialism" (2007) on the shelf. The book is a collection of speeches and writings of Ho Chi Minh, with an introduction by Walden Bello. The Vietnamese revolutionary leader died in 1969, having fought the French, Japanese and Americans from Vietnamese soil. The book was – unexpectedly – so familiar to the Ethiopian thought and writing of the era, although that should not have been as both were Marxist-Leninist inspired struggles. Nonetheless, that the same slogans and language were used in East Africa and East Asia are a compelling case for the power of ideas. Some notes:
"Only by carrying out land reform, giving land to the tillers, liberating the productive forces in the countryside from the yoke of the feudal landlord class can we do away with the poverty and backwardness and strongly mobilize the huge forces of the peasants in order to develop production and push the war of resistance forward to complete victory." (p. xxiii)
"The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, made at the time of the French Revolution, in 1791, also states all men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights. Those are undeniable truths. Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, have violated our fatherland and oppressed our fellow citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice. Politically, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty. They have enforced inhuman laws..." (p. 51)
"The enemy wants to win a quick victory. If the war drags on, he will suffer increasing losses and will be defeated. That is why we used the strategy of a protracted war of resistance in order to develop our forces and gather more experience. We use guerrilla tactics to wear down the enemy forces until a general offensive wipes them out. The enemy is like fire and we like water. Water will certainly get the better of fire. Moreover, in the long war of resistance, each citizen is a combatant, each village, a fortress. The 20 million Vietnamese are bound to cut to pieces the few scores of thousands of reactionary colonialists." (p. 60)
"… our war of resistance is a long and hard, but surely victorious, one. It is long because it will last till the enemy is defeated, till he 'quits'. The eighty-year-long oppression by the French imperialists is like a chronic disease that cannot be cured in one day or one year. Don't be hasty, don't ask for an immediate victory: this is subjectiveness. A long resistance implies hardships, but will end in victory." (p. 123)
"The barbarous US imperialists have unleashed a war of aggression in an attempt to conquer our country, but they are sustaining heavy defeats. They have rushed an expeditionary force of nearly 300,000 men into the South of our country. They have fostered a puppet administration and puppet troops as instruments of their aggressive policy. They have resorted to extremely savage means of warfare - toxic chemicals, napalm bombs, etc. - and applied a 'burn all, kill all and destroy all' policy. By committing such crimes, they hope to subdue our southern compatriots… However Viet Nam has not flinched in the least." (p. 197)
"It is common knowledge that each time they are about to step up their criminal war, the US aggressors will resort to their 'peace talks' humbug in an attempt to fool world opinion and lay the blame on Viet Nam for an unwillingness to engage in 'peace negotiations'." (p. 198)