Inside the EPLF: the origins of the people's party’ & its role in the liberation of Eritrea

At the third congress of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front in February 1994, delegates voted to transform the 95,000‐person organisation into a mass political movement, the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ). The congress gave the PFDJ a transitional mandate to draw the general population into the political process and to prepare the country for constitutional democracy over the next four years. Near the close of the three‐day conference, Isaias Afwerki, the country's acting president, surprised many of those present with an announcement that a clandestine marxist political party had guided the Front for almost 20 years and that it had been disbanded in 1989, shortly before the end of the independence war. Since then, however, there has been little public discussion of the historical role of the party or its legacy. Drawing on interviews with key participants, this paper explores the origins of what was known as the Eritrean People's Revolutionary Party and its impact on the liberation struggle during the nearly two decades of its clandestine existence. Questions I address include: How, why and by whom was the party formed? How did it function in relation to the Front as a whole? How did this change from the 1970s to the 1980s? And why was the decision taken to disband the party in 1989? Still to be examined is the party's legacy in the post‐liberation era and how its political culture and mode of operation shapes the contemporary political landscape.