MELES ZENAWI AND DEMOCRACY ETHIOPIANA
Even with all his brilliance, Zenawi could not resolve the dilemma of the form of democracy that is suitable for Ethiopia, writes
Meles Zenawi was called ‘’the African politicoeconomic genius’’, by a harsh critic. Susan Rice, President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations, celebrated him as a ‘’most brilliant African leader’’. She hated Robert Mugabe on that score. Like Joaquin Chessano, before him, Zenawi left medical studies to go and fight against a more deadly disease plaguing Ethiopia, namely: the military dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariame. From 1991 till his death in 2012, he headed the ‘’revolutionary’’ government of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, a coalition of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation (OPDO) and Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (SEPDM). They all fought Mengistu.
Zenawi belonged to a generation that was deeply humiliated and infuriated by television pictures of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians gaunt, emaciated and dying from hunger following a long drought and the stupid pride of Emperor Haile Selassie and the aristocracy around him who refused to receive food sent by other African and non-African countries. In answer to a question about his dream for his government he listed the ‘’defeat of hunger through improved agriculture’’.
Emperor Haile Selassie’s grandeur rested on a people desperately poor, hungry and ruthlessly exploited by an indifferent, arrogant, visionless aristocracy and their bureaucracy. Zenawi, as a Tigray, was aware of access to education which their fellow ethnic kin in Eritrea enjoyed. This was reflected in his dream for Ethiopia, namely: he wished to ‘’expand the capacity of (our) youth in terms of technical skills’’; to ‘’expand tertiary education so that 70 per cent of students were encouraged to study engineering’’; to ‘’provide quality universal Primary education’’, and to ‘’ensure that all High School students who do not go to university have technical skills so that they can use their power to build the country’’. He would build roads and railways to carry that development forward.
Hunger had brought international shame to Ethiopia. Emperor Haile Selassie’s grand robes failed to hide mass human degradation and shame festering under them. In response, Meles Zenawi was driven by a passion and vision of achieving an ‘’Ethiopian renaissance’’ combined with an ‘’African continental renaissance’’. His intervention for ending the bloody civil war between South Sudan and Sudan won him African favour as a builder of peace. His invasion of Somalia in favour of ‘’moderate’’ politicians and against the Islamic Courts anchored his strategic alliance with the United States and NATO powers whose interests were on secure access to oil in the Persian Gulf region.
At his death, he had become the chief negotiator for the African
MELES ZENAWI WAS DRIVEN BY A PASSION AND VISION OF ACHIEVING AN ‘ETHIOPIAN RENAISSANCE’ COMBINED WITH AN ‘AFRICAN CONTINENTAL RENAISSANCE’
Union over the politics and economics of climate change; winning for Africa a commitment by industrialised and polluter countries to provide Africa with three billion American dollars annually for mitigating predicted horrendous environmental disasters befalling Africa. This is one legacy of President Barack Obama’s diplomacy which President Donald Trump and his racist supporters deeply detest.
Zenawi and coalition team won power and the road to their socialist politico-socio-economic version of democracy through the barrel of the gun. Having inherited from Mengistu Haile Mariame the termination of an ancient Amhara imperial structure, they faced an ever-present threat of a ‘’counter-revolution’’. With 27 per cent of a population of 100 million, the Tigray - with only six per cent - smelled vapours of a Rwandan-type genocide against them if the Amhara feudal class grabbed back power. The 34 per cent Oromia who for centuries tilled land as serfs to the Amhara ruling class, had fought against Mengistu, and hugged a glimpse of ‘’a promised land’’ for themselves too.
Zenawi assured an Indian journalist that the smug and arrogant view by some Egyptian rulers that the waters of the Nile was a monopoly of their country had come to an end ‘’forever’’. His office had planned the construction of a dam that would give Ethiopia a novel ‘’energy diplomatic outreach to Somalia, Kenya, Ugandan, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan and Sudan. Egypt would also share in the electricity feast.
Protecting power did not come easily while seeking to build a democratic polity with the arithmetic of numbers of votes of equal weight. In Britain the aristocracy had allowed only the rich to cast ballots. That protected them against being ruled by the ‘’great unwashed’’ masses. Zenawi expressed his coalition’s rejection of ‘ballot power’ by stating that the West could not impose their version of ‘’democracy’’ on Africa. Like the military-political ruling class in Algeria had said in 1992, their Islamist opponents were using this ritual of democracy to later kill democracy itself on coming to power.
Following the 2005 elections, supporters of opposition parties rejected and protested against Zenawi’s ‘democracy-throughthe-gun’. Over 193 protesters were killed, and seven police men were also killed. The political horizon of an Ethiopian renaissance justified - what Awol Allo described as – Zenawe’s use of ‘’torture, as freedoms, arbitrary killings, restrictions on freedom of the press and repression, denial of religious freedoms, and the politicised use of its notorious anti-terrorism legislation’’.
Meles Zenawi said that he was engaged in ‘’opening up possibilities for life’’ having won guerrilla war by ‘’ending life for a cause’’. For him ‘’development is about enhancing human capacity’’. He never solved the dilemma of the form of ‘’democracy’’ that is suitable as a tool for developing renascent Ethiopia, and Africa.