Archive for May, 2012
Ethiopia: How Meles Rules The Country
By Richard Dowden, 21 May 2012
Meles Zenawi is the cleverest and most engaging president in Africa – at least when he talks to visiting outsiders. When he speaks to his fellow Ethiopians, he is severe and dogmatic.
But he entertains western visitors with humour and irony, deploying a diffident, self-deprecating style which cleverly conceals an absolute determination to control his country and its destiny, free of outside interference.
He was one of four African presidents to be invited to the Camp David G8 meeting last weekend. The aid donors love Meles. He is well-informed, highly numerate and focused. And he delivers. Ethiopia will get closer to the Millennium Development Goals than most African countries. The Ethiopian state has existed for centuries and it has a bureaucracy to run it. So the aid flows like a river, nearly $4 billion a year. And Meles is the United States’ policeman in the region with troops in Somalia and Sudan. He also enjoys a simmering enmity with his former ally, now the bad boy of the region, President Isias Afwerke of Eritrea. “It’s Mubarak syndrome,” a worried US diplomat told me. “We only talked to Mubarak about Egypt’s role in the region, never about what was happening inside Egypt. It’s the same with Ethiopia.”
In the 2005 election when the opposition won the capital, Addis Ababa, and claimed to have won nationally, the government arrested its leaders and tried them for treason. Some were imprisoned, others fled into exile. Now with 99.6% of the vote, the ruling Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has created a virtual one party state. In an interview last week Meles told me he did not know of a single village in the whole country that voted for the opposition.
This is subtle totalitarianism, dubbed ‘Authoritarian Developmentalism’ by some. If you do what the government says, you get assistance – land, water, services. If you don’t, you get nothing. The basic principles of political freedom enshrined in the constitution are frequently undermined by subtle edicts from government departments. Press freedom is clearly spelt out and recently a minor ruling stated that printers must take responsibility for everything they publish and can refuse to print anything the government might consider illegal. Hardly a devastating blow to press freedom you might think until you discover that the only presses in Ethiopia capable of printing newspapers are government-owned.
Meles’ remarkable achievement since he took power in 1991 has been to attract foreign companies to Ethiopia through a policy of low taxes and a free hand. Growth has been between 8 and 11 percent over the past eight years thanks to the private sector (both western and eastern.) The economy has doubled over the last five years. Meles is rushing to develop the country as fast as he can. Using the Chinese model he has attracted foreign investors to develop agriculture and manufacturing. As he told me: “The criticism we had in the past was that we were crazy Marxists. Now we are accused of selling the family spoons to foreigners. It’s a balance.”
Meles has leased more than 4 million hectares of land to foreign or domestic companies to grow food or flowers. And to provide them with water and power he has built dams which he says are environmentally much better than power stations since they are built in gorges with little water loss through evaporation. But it is not a completely free market solution. There are government monopolies in banking and telecoms. Nor will the government give people title deeds. All land is state owned. Meles has made it clear he will keep it that way.
“Have we created a perfect democratic system? No it’s a work in progress. Are we running as fast as our legs will carry us? Yes. And it’s not just Addis but also the most remote areas. Unlike previous governments we have really created a stable country in a very turbulent neighbourhood. Our writ runs in every village. That never happened in the history of Ethiopia. The state was distant, irrelevant.”
He fiercely defends his policies, in the face of Western NGO criticism, that this development is environmentally unsound and indigenous people have been removed forcibly from their land. He insists that in every case they were consulted, dismissing a report by the Oakland Institute in the US which said people had been forcibly removed as “bullshit”. When I suggest that pastoralists should be allowed to continue their nomadic way of life, he says I am a romantic westerner. But he adds that it is their right to continue their way of life.
It is the same with the politics. Having taken power by force in 1991 and coming from a minority, Meles created a safety valve by writing into the constitution the right of every “nation” in Ethiopia to declare independence. Whenever there are local political problem he re-asserts that right to leave but it is unlikely the clause will ever be put to the test through a referendum.
The current trouble spot is the southern region of Gambela where land has been given to agricultural businesses. Meles is defensive about reports of recent forced removals. “We are making sure that the Gambela people are settled and have land and that young people can go to farms not as guards but as farmers,” he said, assuring me that the people who have been moved were consulted. Only when all those in the region who want to work have jobs will other workers be recruited from other parts of Ethiopia.
Is the Meles plan for rapid, state directed capitalism working? At the recent World Economic Forum meeting in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa earlier this month, criticism came, not from western NGOs , but from China, Ethiopia’s closest ally. Gao Xiqing of the China Investment Forum, warned Meles: “Do not necessarily do what we did”. Policies of “sheer economic growth” should be avoided, he said. “We now suffer pollution and an unequal distribution of wealth and opportunities… You have a clean sheet of paper here. Try to write something beautiful.”
Has any Chinese official ever publically criticised an African leader in such terms before?
And some foreign investors are not happy either. They have driven Ethiopia’s growth but now the government and Ethiopian firms are desperate for a greater slice of the profits. Flower and horticultural companies have been suddenly ordered by the government to only use Ethiopian companies for packing their produce, transporting it to Addis Ababa airport from where only the state-owned Ethiopian Airlines must be hired to fly it to Europe. As the distraught owner of one of the biggest flower farms told me last week: “Ethiopia does not have such companies yet”. But if they refuse, their licences will be withdrawn. It appears that having lured foreign businesses into Ethiopia, the government is now tying them down and taking their profits.
Meles is caught in a bind, under pressure on several fronts with problems that economic growth may not solve. Inflation is coming down but has been running at almost 50 percent. Everyone I spoke with in Ethiopia said that the cost of living was the highest they had ever known. There is real hardship among the poor as the staple grain in Ethiopia, teff, has quadrupled in price recently. The universities are pouring out graduates but there are few jobs. One recent graduate I spoke with said she was one of about 10 out of more than 100 in her class who had a job. The government’s hope is that it can grow the economy even faster. It is promising mining as the next bonanza and Meles hinted last week that oil has been discovered.
But this is the scenario he may soon be facing: a mass of urban poor hurt by the price rise of the staple food and large numbers of educated but unemployed urban youth. Sounds familiar? The Arab Spring was watched closely by Ethiopians. Watch this space.
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Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal African Society and author of Africa; altered states, ordinary miracles.
Some notes on the historical trajectory of Eritrean Nationalism
*Mesfin Araya
NYC, May 15, 2012
Eritrea– which was once an Italian colony, a British protectorate, and briefly an autonomous region before it was reduced to a mere province of Ethiopia– became in 1993 an independent nation-state, redefining post-colonial African map, hopefully not setting a dangerous precedence. The history of over thirty years of bloody armed struggle had inflicted unbearable human suffering with both Eritrean and Ethiopian blood mingled, flooding the Eritrean mountains, hills, rivers, and streams. (1)
The Eritrean nationalist struggle began with full hopes and ended full of disappointments. The costly struggle merely produced at the end a distorted, bastardized, nation-state. To date, in post-independence Eritrea, not even a semblance of a constitution exists. A personality cult is at its frightening height of power.
Indeed, despite the tragedy that mercilessly descended upon the population–during the brutal war unleashed by the Ethiopian dictator, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam – the history of the Eritrean nationalist struggle is–to employ Shakespearian expression– “A Tale Told by an idiot full of sound and furry Signifying nothing.”(2)
When, how, and why did that happen? Indeed, Eritrea’s chance for a peaceful democratic change appears slim, unless that burning question is publicly raised and debated by the Eritreans themselves.
This article tries to address that question. It will focus on the historical role of the Eritrean petty-bourgeois class – the very class that was in the forefront conducting the armed nationalist struggle for independence.
Although in reality it is complex, as overlapping abounds, I classify the Eritrean petty-bourgeois class into three strata to achieve and maintain analytical clarity. These strata constitute of the political, intellectual, and private business. In what follows I take up each strata to describe and explain its peculiar historical role in ultimately producing the bastardized nation-state.
The Political Strata
This stratum organized and led the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), also known by its Arabic acronym as Shaebia.
In order to comprehend its historical role and conceptualize what I refer to as its ‘original sin’, we need to capture the when, how and, why of the process the leadership followed in its organizational formation. To that effect, a critical reading of the pamphlet, Nihnan Elamanan(3), Our struggle and its goal – apparently written by the current President of Eritrea, Issais Afeworki– is in order.
At the outset, a visceral anti-Muslim sentiment of the author is visible in the writing. That behavior need not surprise us, as the author comes from the Kebessa, the Christian highlands. He was merely expressing his long standing ancestral culture that despises and treats Muslims as second class citizens What is surprising, however, is how the author goes around to justify his and his clique highlanders split from the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), also known by its Arabic acronym as Jebha – an older Muslim dominated political organization which had been struggling for Eritrean independence since 1961.
According to the author of Nihnan Elamanan, the split was caused by the concern of the Christian blood frequently shed by the ELF Muslim leadership. But what remains suspicious is whether President Afeworki led the split over the concern regarding the killing of Christians, or over some thing else? We need to interrogate his own answer in the context of the period.
Under the Jebha leadership, there was little or no space for the Christian leadership. Afeworki knew that bitter reality very well. A split was the only alternative left if the Christian elements were to assume leadership; and the Kebessa region would offer a fertile ground for mobilization. As those familiar with the history of EPLF may recall, the Kebessa indeed provided EPLF a fertile ground for effective mobilization, especially so after the Ethiopian government of war policy increasingly began to alienate the population(4); but what was hidden behind the author’s explanation was his own pursuit of power. Indeed, it never took the public long before it discovered Afewerki’s hidden power ambition.
Not long after the split from Jebha, Afewerke and his highlanders clique began to shed blood in the process of their own organizational formation. In that respect, the first and historically momentous event was the summary execution of the”Menka” leaders in the early 1970’s(5). That execution was arbitrary, as there was not even a semblance of a court trial.
The ‘Menka’ leaders advocated for democratic changes and labeled Afeworki’s leadership as authoritarian and its ideology as a petty-bourgeois narrow nationalism(6). The ‘Menka’ leaders were principled and courageous enough to face the shooting squad in graceful dignity, rather than compromise their principles. Subsequent to their execution, the blood of thousand dissidents within EPLF continued to be shed. Torture and imprisonment became a common practice. The decision to eliminate the ‘Menka’ leaders – it is widely rumored– was singularly that of Afeworki. If indeed that was the case, it is a sad story that the clique around him—who later in 2000 were themselves sent to jail—never appeared to consider the law of the unintended consequences.
All the negative elements that were to transpire in broad day light in post-independence Eritrea were implicit in that arbitrary execution of the ‘Menka’ leaders. That Eritrean martyrs, over sixty thousands, would sacrifice their lives for freedom that never saw the light of day was long implicit in that eventful day – the execution of the ‘Menkka’ leaders. That rule by personality cult would become the norm in post-independence Eritrea was no less embedded in the execution of the ‘Menka’ leaders. That life in post- independence Eritrea would be unbearable enough to produce a ceaseless Eritrean youth refugees(7)- incidentally, the leaders of tomorrow’s Eritrea – was also contained in that momentous historical event. Indeed, Stefano Poscia had to characterize the event as a Dark chapter in the history of EPLF(8).
But the death of the ‘Menka’ leaders was not in vain. Today, the demands of ‘Menka’ leaders have found their echoes among the new Eritrean generation, whose spirit and language appear to be democracy and freedom. Indeed, the original sin of EPLF leadership is likely to haunt it.
The Intellectual stratum
The members here were the willing ideological rationalizers of EPLF leadership. Predominantly, they came from the Eritrean Christian highlands. They were Kebessa intellectuals. These intellectuals appeared the most cowardly and oportunist elements that the homeland of Bahta Hagos, Zerai Deress, and Idris Awate has ever produced.
In what follows I will try to reconstruct their collective historical role in derailing any historical possibilities that might have paved the way for democratic change in the history of the Eritrean struggle for independence. I will confine my description and explanation to three historical significant events.
From day one, these intellectual elements had advanced a blank check to EPLF leadership, particularly to Afeworki.
In the early 1970s when the ‘Menka’ leaders were summarily executed, these Kebessa intellectuals never raised their collective voice – I know of no intellectual who publicly raised her/his voice at all. Albert Einstein says that those who have the privilege to know have a duty to act. But like the sycophant clique around Afeworki, the Kebessa intellectual elements also never seemed to ponder over the law of the unintended consequences. They never appeared to understand that their utter silence might help deliver a Frankenstein Monster that would one day rise to pursue them to death. The Ethiopian wisdom, ‘Neg Bene’, never crossed their minds. The Kebessa intellectuals’ historical crime did not stop here.
When EPLF leadership militarily evicted the ELF from its own homeland in 1981, these intellectuals publicly turned their back; not even a single voice was raised.
They failed to understand the lasting devastating implications of their utter silence. The existence of two competing political organizations has – all things being equal – a potential tendency to open the democratic process. Were these Kebessa intellectual elements ever aware that their behavior might contribute to derail that potential possibility? Certainly, at the end of the a day a single highly organized and politically intensely engaged EPLF was aided to emerge as the sole power in the entire territory of Eritrea in 1991.
During the Referendum in the early 1990s the Kebessa intellectuals again buried their heads in the sand.
By all standards, the Referendum Proposal by the EPLF leadership was narrow and undemocratic, especially compared to what had been presented by the same leadership in the early 1980s during the peace negotiation with the Ethiopian military government at the Carter Center(9).
We all recall that the social and political environment of the referendum was highly toxic. There was no freedom of the Press, as the media was under the full control of EPLF; Jebha was not allowed to participate as an opposition political party in its own homeland. EPLF had its own agenda regarding when, how, and why the referendum would be carried out.
What is amazing was that to decide the fate of 4/5 million people is a serious business, yet the Kebessa intellectuals never rose up to their historical duty: To challenge the toxic social and political environment and demand the freedom of the Press, a public debate to expand the referendum choice, to assess the cost/ benefit of any choice; in short, to have an informed voters on historically momentous issue that was going to define the fate of Eriteans(10).
Indeed, the Carte blanche support that these intellectuals elements extended to EPLF leadership may be mind boggling, but not inexplicable.
In the his book signing forum in New York, two or three years, ago, Bereket Habte Selassie did admit regarding the blind support that the Kebessa intellectuals extended to EPLF leadership. However, he added that they were clouded by the larger desire to attain independence. I totally reject his answer: The motive for the blind support appears to lie somewhere else, which Bereket seems to hide, or may be, did not reflect upon.
I submit the explanation lies in the regional sentiment of the Kebessa intellectuals. Deep in their hearts, they were longing for an Eritrean independence under the Christian control.
As the readers may know the modern history of Eritrea, it was the Muslims who were at the center in the struggle for Eritrean independence. The demand for independence was the sole property of the Eritrean Muslims, and for legitmate historical reasons, which could not be pursued here. The Kebessa elements had at best a marginal presence, until the early 1970s and after. In other words, the rise of EPLF leadership dominated by Kebessa elements was entirely a new phenomenon in the modern political history of Eritrea.
The Kebessa intellectuals saw in this new phenomenon a rare historical opportunity for their own ascendancy in the area of privilege and social status- Not only would the rise to power of a Christian leadership open access to privilege, it would most of all rescue the long-standing fear of Kebessa people regarding an independent Eritrea under a Muslim leadership(11). How else could the invariable blind support of these Kebessa intellectual elements be explained?
It is said that it is better late than never. Some of these intellectuals are today demanding for democratic change; and Anti-Issais Afewerki movement has indeed become fashionable.
But these intellectuals need to be reminded: Afeworki did not come down from Mars; it was rather the Eritrean soil that produced him. Every Eritrean, especially the Kebessa intellectuals are historically answerable.
The Kebessa intelectuals need self redemption; they need to confess publicly regarding their historical role in inflecting pain and sorrow on their own people, before they ever utter the term democracy that was totally alien to them– incidentally, a term that was dear to the hearts of “Menka” leaders.
The Private business Stratum
Here I have merely brief comments to make, as there is little information. This stratum was well known for its material and moral support to EPLF. We know now that its fate has turned out to be a comedy.
The inherent logic of any business activity is defined by two principles: Avoidance of authoritarian political environment and a tireless desire to seek a larger and wider market. Yet, the Eritrean private business stratum suddenly found itself under the authoritarian regime and under narrower Eritrean market.
Some of us may recall that under the reign of Haile Selassie, successful Eritrean business class was highly visible all over Ethiopia. The members were found in import/export, hotel, mechanic etc business activities. By contrast, under independent Eritrea, there are no longer rich private business stratum, as business activities are monopolized by Shaebia. The days of Kidane Adgois, etc, successful Eritrean business individuals under the reign of the emperor , have become the Golden Age never to return. Cry me a river! What else could one really say?
Conclusion
Paul Sartre- as an existentialist- says that the individual is the sum total of her/his own decisions. What an apt description of the historical role of the Eritrean petty bourgeois class! Its dreams were indeed narrow and petty. Dreaming the big and the beautiful has been alien to it.
The current crises in Eritrea, manufactured by no other than this class itself, have come to overwhelm the leadership. Isolated from its regional neighbors, the international community, and the US imperialism apparently poised to topple it behind the Musharif of the Horn of Africa– Meles Zenawe– the Eritrean regime may collapse any time.
The great question is: Which way Eritrea??? In my opinion, the salvation of Eritrea lies in the Eritrean Youth. This author appeals to them to rise up and make a difference! My generation is fast disappearing. Tomorrow’s Eritrea belongs to them not to my generation. They need to act now!
As the Ethiopian youth also finds itself in a similar horrible condition, the Eritrean youth should not hesitate to forge a lasting bonds in the struggle for eternal freedom.
I wish them the Best!!
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Notes
1. Berecket Habte Selassie. Conflict and Intervention in the Horn of Africa { NY: Monthly Review Press, 1980}; Ray Patman. Eritrea : Even the stones are burning {Trenton : The Red Sea Press , 1990 }
2. Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine eds. Macbeth { New York: Washington Square 1973 } p.179
3. “Nihnan Ilaman” in Liberation vol. 2, # 3{ 1073”, p.5-23.
4. See Habte Selassie.
5. John Markakis. National and Class Conflict in the Horn of Africa { London: Zed Press, 1090}.
6. Ibid.
7. Yebio Woldemariam. “The Saga of the Eritrean Refugees” in Asmarino.com {January 2012}
8. Stefano Poscia. Eritrea: Colonia Tradita {Roma: Edizione Associata, 1990]
9. The Proposal had three choices; Independence, Federation, or Union.
10. Meles Zenawe is no less a culprit in this affair. The permission for the referundum that Zenawe allowed through the UN was never meant to be the property of the Eritrean people; they never owned it. It was rather the personal commodity of Shaebia leadership.
11. Even today, one only needs to shout in public “The Muslims are coming! The Muslims are coming!” to scare off the Kebessa people.
*The author, Ph.D, is a Professor of Africana Studies at York College, The City University of New York{ CUNY.}
‘No Mob without a reason’? Rumour in the short stories of Hama Tuma
Title: The Case of the Criminal Walk and Other Stories
Author: Hama Tuma
Book review by Tom Seymour
Perhaps it was inevitable, seeing as I had read a good deal Hama Tuma’s satire before I read any of his fiction, that I 
would read his short stories for his politics, and for the keen sense of justice that marks his satirical essays. There is much of this to be found in his fiction. First, in his sardonic depictions of petty bureaucrats, government thugs and political bullies, whose cool treatment of suffering is a recurring feature of the stories. Second, in his own third-person narrative voice which, for all the irony and dark humour of the stories, is still prone to talking in a direct and sincere tone: ‘The rich and heartless tried to keep within the sanitized confines of their four wheel drives with tinted windows, their walled comfortable villas, some with the coveted swimming pools, and the plush drinking bars of the ultra-modern high class hotels like the Arab-built Sheraton which contrasted grotesquely with the slums besieging it and all posh villas’. A great deal of the interest in these stories comes from the tension between these two modes: one wry and sideways, defeating people with their own words; the other plangent and ethical, invoking transcendent ideas of right and wrong from a place outside the narrative.
The most overt appearance of ‘rumour’ as a theme in these stories, is surely in ‘The Rumours Bar’. In this bar, ‘tall tales get told as tongues wax lyrical after a good helping of the potent Dagim araqie and the house speciality, a cocktail drink called Damtew/ Bulldozer made up of some whisky, vodka, and God knows what else’. Instantly we are in the territory of Tuma the laconic-observer. Whatever goes on in this bar, whatever we hear in the rest of the story, will be ever-so-slightly undercut by this description. People here are comfortable, and a bit pissed. The main story that is told that night in the Rumour Bar, however, is told in the voice of Tuma the activist: ‘This Zewdu also joined the underground movement, took part in very many heroic actions and when he was captured he did not break under torture but committed suicide and took the secrets to the grave’. And so Tuma’s two voices are joined in a wonderful antagonism: one focusing on the atmosphere of confidence and intrigue, the other narrating a tragic and important story that sits on top of this dramatic atmosphere. Each voice hardly acknowledges the other.
The story called ‘The Mob’ is very relevant here. In this story, a crowd of people spill through a city ‘like a vigorous flood with destruction as its mission’. In the snatched shouts that we overhear as the mob spates towards its quarry, we come to realise that there is no single reason for people to be chasing this man. Someone asks if he is a thief, someone if he is a rapist, and no one answers. The mob is a good likeness of a powerful rumour – new people see the great passing crowd, and rather than demanding to know the truth of what is going on, they join in. The crowd gets bigger. If people do ask what the man has done wrong, it is an afterthought: ‘”What did he do?” one asked, as he fell into step [my emphasis] and joined the others’. Eventually the mob, this great physical rumour of a thing, reaches such a size that a drunk soldier barges in, and the tragedy is consummated.
‘The Mob’, like the Zewdu story in ‘The Rumour Bar’, gives us the impression that Tuma is rather fearful of rumour. In both cases a violence of character, a historic discontent or dissatisfaction, finds its release in a brutal act, by accepting a hint (a suggestion, a rumour) as truth. The running man; the disembodied voice. ‘Rumour’ in these stories represents an opportunity for characters to follow their violent impulses, and forget about enquiring into the truth of their situation.
However, I feel like this is not a complete account of Tuma’s outlook on ‘rumour’.
In the story that gives the collection it’s title, a prisoner is berated in court for the manner of his walk. Readers with a background in the western canon will no doubt be put in mind of Pinter by the baroque, inquisitorial speeches Tuma gives to his lawyer: ‘Was he strolling arrogantly? Walking briskly? Were his lips curled in disgust as he walked? Were his eyes narrow with contempt like a chauvinist? Was he pounding on the pavement or moving surreptitiously like a spy?…’. The judge, delighted by this taxonomy of walks offered him by the prosecutor, rejoins: ‘Let us try to pin-point the criminal walk’. ‘I would say’ concludes the policeman, ‘That the prisoner was walking the dangerous criminal walk. Between a stealth and a manouevre. I would even say the arrogant walk of a Kilil-hopper’. This is not the language of rumour but of science. In an ornate, satirical court-room scene, Tuma cunjours up a bizarre pseudo-scientific classification of walks, by which the fate of his arraigned jay-walker will be decided.
I would like to suggest that Tuma sees ‘rumour’, though potentially dangerous, as one of the best weapons with which Ethiopians have been able to challenge the violence and absurdities of successive governments. Tuma’s petty officials and government thugs aspire to being proprietors of the historical record. ‘He alleged’ says the Prosecutor in The Case of the Criminal Walk ‘that the government runs concentration camps, when it is on record that the government has said it holds not even one political prisoner’. Official records and approved historical accounts are, in Tuma’s eyes, far too corrupted and abused to be appropriate repositories for historical memory. He trusts rumour better: history that is not kept on obscure records but validated at each iteration by the conviction and principles of the teller, the historian. ‘Memory serves to cherish the past, the sacrifices, the sufferings endured by those who had left their footprints in history and in this way a people stood united against forgetfulness, keeping watch over its heritage’.
