With peace, a census of Ethiopia is possible
The peace agreement between the government of Ethiopia and the Tigray forces, in South Africa this week, is a clear demonstration that Africa’s challenges can be solved by Africans.
AFTER A gruelling three years of restricted travel, I was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last week.
The effects of the war between the government forces and the Tigray guerrillas was pronounced by the silence of the streets and the closure of many a watering hole that had made Addis’s hospitality unique. The prime sport Concord was no more.
Despite all that, our host, Dr Beker Shale, the incoming chief statistician of Ethiopia, and Biratu Yigezu, Ethiopia’s chief statistician, took the multitudes of delegates out for dinner.
True to Ethiopian edutainment, we were taken down to the seductive body gyrations that characterise the descendants of Queen Sheba.
Shale’s surname jolted my memory. That of the funeral of my father more than three decades ago.
One of the orators to speak on that occasion was Ntate Thoahlane, a teacher and an ardent scholar of African history. As is tradition, the totem and lineage are elaborated upon during such memorable moments, not only to soothe the bereaved’s wounds of death but to entrench history and affirm traceability of origins. Our totem is Bafokeng and we swear by the rabbit.
In his oration, Thoahlane said the Bafokeng came from Ethiopia through the Great Lakes and settled in modernday Lesotho. Thoahlane referred to many Sesotho words that are used in Ethiopia and Lesotho. One that stuck in my head was lesabasaba. In Sesotho it means “an open space”.
At the time, I took note but had little faith in what was being said. I took it to be a journey of emotions.
In 2010, we held the African Symposium for Statistical Development in Cairo, Egypt. My ears could not help but capture, like a dog at the mention of a bone, the word nka and the actions that followed from my Ethiopian colleagues.
Memories of Thoahlane were presented to me in the most dramatic way two decades after his gracious oration at my father’s funeral. I said to my Ethiopian colleagues: “But you are speaking my language.”
Nka in Sesotho means “to take”. And they confirmed that it was so in Amharic, the Ethiopian language.
That made me go back to Thoahlane’s speech and ask what an open space was. The answer was sabsab. I
ate my doubting pie.
Yet more was to come last week and this was my first trip to Ethiopia after three years.
Yigezu exited his leadership position at the end of October and was replaced by Shale. The name “Shale” is our surname as a clan and for reasons that carry major history, the Lehohla branched as a surname.
The puzzle of names, dates and occasion could neither be more complex nor explained by notions of
statistical chance and coincidence.
That transition of statistical leadership in Addis reminded me of exactly five years ago, at the end of October 2017, when I handed over the leadership baton to my successor, Risenga Maluleke.
The occasion was the 28th International Population Conference.
I opened the conference as the statistician-general and Maluleke closed this as the new statistician-general under a handover ceremony.
Transitions of this magnitude, under the eye of a global audience, can be burdensome, yet the burden can be rewarding to the mission of institution building in Africa.
The Yigezu-shale transition served as a reminder that Africa has a responsibility towards building institutions, and those who hold such power should ensure that the baton is passed – and passed smoothly – as an exercise of commitment to the institutions in the first instance.
Times of transitions can be moments of great stress, tension and disruptions. We owe it to ourselves to ensure that change of guard safeguards institutions and ensures continuities in discontinuities.
The peace agreement agreed to between the government of Ethiopia and the Tigray forces, in South Africa this week, is a clear demonstration that Africa’s challenges can be solved by Africans.
The disruption in normality in Ethiopia led to the disruption and postponement of a census of the population in Ethiopia for many years.
With peace descending, a census of the population in Ethiopia under Shale is possible. The world is watching.