ETHIOPIA AND TROUBLES OF ARITHMETIC Okello Oculi
The arithmetic of ethnic nationalism will remain an inconvenience, writes
The arithmetic of ethnic nationalities continues to dance across Ethiopia. The Oromia are estimated to be a little over 34 per cent of the total but suffered over 90 per cent of “pressures’’ under feudal greed and brutalities of Amhara barons who often extracted up to 75 per cent of their food harvests.
The Amhara are currently estimated to be 27% of the total population but since the military coup of 1974 which deposed their emperor – Haile Selassie – lost over 90 per cent of their control of governance. In an infamous Saturday night, a rumour that the Americans were planning a counter-coup, the “Derg’’ rushed to the detention centre and slaughtered cabinet ministers; district governors; top civil servants and feudal title holders.
The Tigray have only six per cent of the share of the population, but due to the Western education they received from Italian occupation over Eritrea, they constituted over 70 per cent of Haile Selassie’s imperial bureaucracy while their relatives who took up armed struggle to be independent from Ethiopian feudal dictatorship received the full blast of bombs, burning of villages, slaughter of those suspected to be disloyal, and hangings by the neck like legs of pork as intimidation for the population. A confluence of their separate armed struggles gave them over 95 per cent of ownership of “revolutionary armed struggle’’ and subsequent victory over Mengistu’s regime.
The combination of “others’’ (at over 26 %) and Somalis (at 6 %), shared with Oromia exclusion from power and its feudal economic harvests. In the landscape that the Tigray-led revolution sought to anchor its power after Mengistu fled, this group and Oromia were potential allies. The old empire was fractured by giving Oromia an unbelievable regional autonomy; and being free from control by Addis Ababa. Their language got the thrilling decoration of becoming “official’’, and used for street signs. The architecture is designated as “federal’’; yet the revolution is directed by a central command. This paradox can be fatal.
As a means of winning popular support but cutting legs of the imperial aristocracy, Mengistu Haile Mariame abolished their ownership of land and sent university students to go to districts and convey messages of redemption to victims of fiefdom. To the shock of the revolutionary students, the villagers were reluctant to grab their new freedom, fearful that the whole thing was a hoax and may be reversed – with the land lords returning with terrible revenge.
The new revolutionaries face a legacy of feudal governance that never believed in developing the people; who measured their glory by the poverty, wretchedness and permanent hunger of their subjects. This history is also a blessing in disguise. It opens a window to winning legitimacy by offering health clinics, vaccinations; small loans to farmers, and letting farmers keep their harvests for feeding their families and selling some for cash. The catch was in agents of the defeated feudal classes continuing to spread fear of reprisals among the beneficiaries of the revolution.
In the operation of cooperatives which farmers were urged to form, agents of former rulers committed fraud; demoralised members; and discredit the new government. As children of former ruling classes, some members of the ruling coalition do carry inside attitudes and prejudices of contempt for poor peasants and former “slaves’’. Tendencies to shout of commands; be brash and impatient, and exhibit the conviction that poor farmers suffer from “idiocy’’ and congenital superstition do show.
All these factors led to practices of putting Tigray officials as supervisors down to the lowest level of administration. For Oromia hurting from Amhara domination, their new freedom had teeth stained with Tigray coffee. Officials who grabbed land and sold them to Kuwaiti and Saudi millionaires – in the name of promoting modern agriculture and development – brewed in them angry ethnic-nationalism.
The more the drive for legitimacy yields concrete products which previous oppressor could not envisage providing, the more frenzy goes into opposition measures. Meles Zenawe built 23 new universities to overtake the single one built by and named after Emperor Haile Selassie. By way of revolutionary example, he never built a palace to replace the simple brick house his mother lived in before he came to power. His government launched the construction of tarmac roads to link Addis Ababa, the capital, to all regions of the country. His government launch of the construction of the “Renaissance Dam’’ to supply power locally as well as for sale to Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan, was received with such strong public trust that appeals for every citizen to buy a “share’’ towards its funding, was not regarded as a plot to defraud the public. His sudden death from poison may well have been the price he paid for so much success in developing a society long tortured by feudal greed and brutalities.
Writing about industrial revolutions in his native Germany and host country Britain, Karl Marx described in great detail the horrendous working condition of women and children inside factories. Japanese textile barons used the police to brutalise a worker who protested against exhaustion. In post-Mengistu Ethiopia, the resolve to build an economically developed society and prevent reversals by former feudalists had, by February 2018, seen 3,500 opposition activists being released from prisons. The arithmetic of ethnic nationalism will remain an inconvenience.
IN POST-MENGISTU ETHIOPIA, THE RESOLVE TO BUILD AN ECONOMICALLY DEVELOPED SOCIETY AND PREVENT REVERSALS BY FORMER FEUDALISTS HAD, BY FEBRUARY 2018, SEEN 3,500 OPPOSITION ACTIVISTS BEING RELEASED FROM PRISONS