The historical environment, values, and cultural conditions including the way the political and power structure operate and function influence how members of an organisation are engaged in a project by building relationships and allies for realising fully coordinated and cooperative effective action. How the members bond is not merely a matter of the dynamics within an organisation. It also depends on the environment, historical situation; culture, belief systems and language games members deal with and respond to in their interactions with and from their surroundings. For example, when we look at the political history of Ethiopia over the last hundred years, one matter stands out over the rest. Every power seeker has always done two things that are hugely embarrassing: fought a potential rival by plotting and often lying and organising secretly against a rival together with seeking a foreign ally that would weaken the opponent. Look at who supported General Napier to defeat Twedros. Look at who supported Menelik to defeat Yohannes. Look at how Teferi defeated Lij Eyasu.Look at how every political group today in the country is backed by one or another foreign power overtly and covertly. As soon as one decides to ascend to power and started manoeuvring to do so, the urge to enlist foreign backers become irresistible and the cruel and dehumanising attacks against opponents spread like wild fire. This misdirection makes it impossible to solve problems within a national context with national dialogue. It is a recipe to recreate the country’s problems rather than seeking a national mobilisation and conversation to understand the priorities and create national consensus to address them with foresight, imagination, intelligence and vision. With an external factor playing so negatively how can quality relationship between people in the country with trust and empathy in order to undertake a mission together ever be carried out?
Thus, to be sure, in Ethiopia both the environment and culture- both historical and contemporary, and the way the political and power structure have been organised and functioned in reality through the ages have not engendered or encouraged the development of social capital. Of all the deficits the country suffers from, the one that is even more worrying than any material deprivation is the low or underdeveloped level of social capital throughout the ages. We still suffer and may even suffer more in the future from lack of social capital necessary to undertake effective coordinated cooperative actions. For social capital to be promoted the internal culture to address any problem however complex and intractable with dialogue, consultation and conversation however long it takes to talk must be a preferred strategy and route. More importantly, the desire to enlist external actors to subdue internal opponents must also be curbed if this comes at the expense of social capital building to solve the country’s major problems. Lack of social capital is at the heart of the collective failure of the country’s institutions, leadership, talents and ingenuities to solve the country’s problems. Only breakdown of natural capital is as severe as the lack of social capital. Both are very difficult to create or reproduce.
5. Significance of the absence of Social Capital
In Ethiopia, when the country suffers from the breakdown of natural capital, it is because of our lack of imagination, capability, resources and inability to stem deforestation, change our rain fed agriculture system into diversified agriculture, and our allowing the contraction of arable land due to soil erosion and desertification. Although the World Bank has reported that the size of Ethiopia’s economy is growing, the country still lacks financial capital to create the human capital to feed into building education for all, health for all and multimodal infrastructure (physical capital) and manufacturing to move people and goods and services with ease and speed. It may have financial capital to build individual capital, but that is not the same thing as making the country wealthy. The wealth of a country is broader. It includes the health, education, the state of nature repair of a country and the economy of a country. It is not thus just the economy that matters as the economy in fact is the instrument to bring about individual, ecological and social wellbeing development. It includes the social, natural and cultural aspects of a country’s wealth. Wealth is not to be reckoned simply as income in the pockets of individuals. If Ethiopia and indeed nearly all African countries had financial capital, they would not be in the loan-grant and aid system where they keep looking to the external world, i.e., to the donors to beg finance to support our economic growth and development.
Social capital is at the heart for capacitating collective citizen action. It requires trust, civic sense, engagement with social problems as citizens expressing their social consciousness and ability to network the self in a web of relationships and interactions with others to achieve pre-imagined and pre-planned activities, actions and projects. When social capital is low, a society suffers from all kinds of negative fall outs. Networks of interactions, relationships based on observing shared norms, rules, procedures, and institutions suffer. This in turn leads to limiting our abilities for mustering the required solidarity, sympathy, norms of reciprocity and courage to undertake collective action. Without the ability to sustain collective action, it will be hard to change Ethiopia’s millennial static society. In Ethiopia, the ability to take specifically triggered collective action and even spectacular action is in abundance, but the ability to sustain such collective actions by overcoming threats, dangers, challenges, complex and intricate problems with long-term solidarity to maintain coordinated, organised and cooperative action appears to be unimaginably inadequate…
One thought on “The challenge of shaping Ethiopia’s sustainable future”
Better equip ourselves with WEAPON CAPITAL than SOCIAL CAPITAL.
We have been for centuries practicing trust, religion, friendship, norms, rules, and procedures, which are the fundamental tenets of social capital in this long and very informative article, and yet we have failed to feed our people, to produce tangible results, and to govern ourselves effectively. Who is responsible for the mess, the present or the past generation, the kings or the princes, Mengistu Haile Mariam or Meles Zenawi?
It has always been the norm for the present generation to blame the old generation that is not here with us today. I’m, however, on the side of the old generation against the present lousy generation. In consent with the writers of the article, Ethiopia is an old country; no one knows how old it is, and no one knows when it will die if it is not already dead.
There is a saying in Ethiopia: “When a lion gets old, it becomes a playground for the flies.” The old lion here represents the old Ethiopia, and the flies represent us, the new generation. Ethiopia as old as it is today must be commended for passing not the unfinished, but the finished work of its glorious history, a history of expansion, growth, success and victory to the present ungrateful generation. Ethiopia has been undivided country geographically, historically, culturally, and politically until the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie. Ethiopia’s old age has not been the problem for many Ethiopians; it is the young Ethiopians, the immature young and selfish Ethiopian politicians who have become big burdens and severe headaches to this ailing old Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian old history should not be considered a problem, a burden to the new generation; rather it should be regarded as a pride and glory, so it is very important to “invoke the long gone past….” The Ethiopian old history does not impose tyranny on the Ethiopian people; it rather empowers the Ethiopian people to fight against tyranny, to live together peacefully, and to protect its territories, its seaports and never to split them. The Ethiopian past history has been a history of freedom from Mussolini, Ahmad Gragn, and from many other foreign intruders, like Egypt, Sudan, and Turkey. The Ethiopian history has been full of justice and fairness, a history that respects the rule of law and justice.
Ethiopia’s long existence should not be called “vegetative existence” as the article attests emphatically. I hate the word “vegetative” the writers of the article used here to explain the living condition of Ethiopia. On the contrary, Ethiopia throughout its glorious history has been very active, vibrant, resilient, and proud of its accomplishments in art, in building towns, cities, churches, and in expanding church schools and at the same time fighting foreign invaders. So Ethiopia, in its long existence, has never had the mark of idleness and laziness. Each single day, each single year in Ethiopia has been a day and a year of progress and accomplishments. To name some, look the pyramid at Axum, look the rock hewn Church of Lalibela in Wollo, magnificent art of work! So to me it is not fair to call the old 3000 years of Ethiopian civilization years of vegetative existence.
The past generation had lived by solving its own problems, and it is the responsibility of the present generation to solve its own problem without blaming the other generation. In fact, it is this selfish generation that divided the country in two: Ethiopia and Eretria, and it is going to divide it further unless it stops its selfishness and political ambition based on ethnic lines. We should not attribute the current situations, the current divisions among the various political parties to Ethiopia’s magnificent past history. If Ethiopia had not struggled hard to keep all its territories together, you and I would not be here today. We are blaming the past history of Ethiopia based on material things, neglecting the spiritual dynamics Ethiopia has made through its long history: combining Judaism and Christianity and accommodating other religions and passing them to us is, in it self, a big achievement.
Ethiopia has never passed a deficit of problems to the present generation as the article suggests; it is in fact the present generation that created the deficit – the giving away of Eretria, the war with Somalia and Ogaden, the leadership crisis with Kinjit, and the division of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church: one in exile and one at home. It is my and your generation who created such huge deficit, not the Ethiopian Lucie generation. Ethiopia has never left unsolved problems to the current generation; even though it has ethnically and religiously diverse society, this society has lived comfortably for thousands of years harmoniously with each other. It is this generation that created Mengistu Haile Mariam and Meles Zenawi.
The writers of the article are absolutely right that it is the politicians (add “selfish”) – the selfish politicians – that bring “more new problems…,” but they are wrong in saying “…than in solving old and transmitting problems from earlier generations.” As I said before, the old generation had never passed its problem to me and you; we should not blame our ancestors for the current problems we have selfishly created. Let our ancestors rest in peace!
What makes you think “…had Ethiopia had turned into a republic after World War II… then the problems to solve today would have been different”? In what way would it have been different? Do you mean all republic countries are capable of solving their own problems? For example, among many other republic countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran are republics. Have these countries been capable of solving their existing problems? I don’t think so. At this particular time, we cannot say this or that system of government would solve the Ethiopian existing problems. In my opinion it is our task to devise a new system of government that accommodates all ethnic groups – a government that does not exclude its political opponents from participating in politics with the governing party.
In 1974, the Emperor did not transfer his power to the military; the military took it by force, and that is why Ethiopia is facing today multitude of problems more than ever before. Had the transition of power been voluntarily and peacefully without humiliating the Emperor, we could have later avoided all the unnecessary bloodsheds by both Mengistu Haile Mariam and Meles Zenawi in the name of new revolution. Indeed, Ethiopia has never had such deep division in its entire history. So the pattern of problems can be traced to Mengistu and to Meles, not to the old generation because the old generation has nothing to do with our new problems.
The Ethiopian people at this time have no ways of measuring which politicians are capable of governing them democratically, ethically, and justly. I assume, at this time, the Ethiopian people are not yet ready to be governed by a democratically elected politician; I may be wrong. I think they need a thorough training about what a democratically elected government would offer them. Then they will have a yardstick to measure the diverse opinions of the politicians who run for the higher office.
Social capital cannot be achieved by only avoiding our dependence on our ethnicity; however, what are the substitutes for ethnicity in case people are willing to disregard their love affairs with their ethnicities? Are we ready to substitute ethnicity with something concrete that satisfies each group? For example, in the old days, some Ethiopians used to worship idols on the hills, on the mountains, and in the wooded areas. In order to prevent people from worshipping idols, the Church built beautiful churches on those hills, and on those mountains and in those wooded areas so that the people could worship God instead of idols. So how can we replace ethnicity by something good that unites the people rather than divides them?
Yes, Yohannes II helped General Napier to defeat Tewodros; yes, Menelik II let Yohannes be killed by the Sudan Muslims, and yes Teferi defeated Lij Iyasu because Iyasu was leaning to accepting Islam; however, internal conflicts of such kind are common every where in this world; it is not new. In those days people were not educated as most of us today. The question is how can we avoid such internal conflicts among us today? How can we run our organization free of foreign hands? It is an impossible task in this global age of ours. If avoiding foreign help is one of the requirements of social capital, then social capital is doom to fail because no government in this world is free of getting help from a foreign power.
We cannot avoid “fragmented opposition” if we believe in democracy; we should not oppress such opposing, fragmented political parties, and we should not limit the number of parties who want to work as independent political parties, but we can influence them to join our own political party. All political parties, in my opinion, must be institutionalized, and the party that wins the election will become the governing party.
Finally, after we have done every thing in our power to persuade Meles Zenawi to cooperate with us but failed to do so, then we must resort to arm struggle rather than to social capital and defeat our common enemy for the right cause – to liberate our people from tyranny.