By Melaku Tegegne

This call or plea is made following the statement made by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia in which he dubbed the country’s entry into the third millennium as a Period of Renaissance. He made this statement in an interview that he gave on September 6, 2007, to Time Magazine. In that interview, he said, “It has always been fear — fear that this great nation, which was great 1,000 years ago but then embarked on a downward spiral for 1,000 years, and reached its nadir when millions of people were starving and dying, may be on the verge of total collapse. Now it’s not a fear of collapse, I believe we are beyond that. It’s the fear that the light which is beginning to flicker, the light of a renewal, an Ethiopian renaissance, that this light might be dimmed by some bloody mistake by someone, somewhere. This [renaissance] is still fragile, a few shoots [which] may need time to be more robust. At the moment, it is fear born out of hope that this new millennium will be as good as the first one and not as bad as the second one.”

Indeed, as he said, Ethiopia had its greatest famine in 1984 which was mainly brought about by the feudal system that the country had passed through for about 200 years or so. Ethiopia had also experienced a military dictatorship which lasted 17 years. In this particular period, the country was engulfed in unprecedented civil wars in Eritrea and Tigrai (1970s and 80s) and an expansionist war from Somalia (1977-1978). Hundreds of thousands of people, mainly young students and peasants and a number of scholars, perished. In my opinion, that was the darkest period in the history of the country.

When the Eritrean, Tigrean, and Oromo Liberation Fronts succeeded in ousting the brutal military regime, the people of Ethiopia and Eritrea were overjoyed. They had the conviction that a new era had dawned in the freedom, democracy, and economic progress of the two countries. Unfortunately, however, that euphoria and optimism has been dashed in a few years by the actions of the governments in planning and implementing policies that encourage separatism within Ethiopia.

Many scholars have criticized the current federal structure, which is based on ethnicity. For example, Professor Emeritus Mesfin Wolde Mariam, the well-known professor of geography at Addis Ababa University, and now a member of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party, once described the present federal structure as Bantustans (separate lands), likening it to apartheid in South Africa.

Another time, the same professor described it as a style of the Mussolini government which delineated the administration of Ethiopia along ethnic boundaries after their invasion in 1935.

There was also a cry by many scholars that Article 99 in the present Ethiopian Constitution, which grants freedom for all administrative regions based on ethnic lines, the right to independence if they wish. So this, in my opinion, gave fertile ground for some opposition parties who are currently in battle with government forces in Oromea and Ogaden regions. I strongly support freedom for any ethnic group, rather than coercion or subjugation as has been done by the past two Ethiopian governments. In short, a strong federation along non-ethnic lines should be the goal of the current government.

Background

Ethiopia is one of the ancient countries in the world; its history goes back to 4,500 BC. Its ancient kingdoms, the Sabean and Axumite Kingdoms have taken the longest span of time in the country’s checkered history, namely 1,000 years. Indeed, History attests to the fact that the Queen of Sheba had ruled over Yemen, and the Axumite emperors also did the same, and even extended their rule to Meroe town in present-day northern Sudan, making it their capital, and having a strong relationship with Egypt. Arising from this historical fact, Menelik II, the greatest emperor of Ethiopia, once declared that his forefathers had ruled a vast territory ranging from Yemen to Madagascar.

The state of Ethiopia came into being, as a modern nation state, in the past 110 years, especially after Emperor Menelik II took the helm of power and pioneered the country’s modernization programs around the turn of the century. The uneducated but foresighted Emperor had also made a valiant struggle against the encroachment of British, French, and Italian colonialism. Menelik and his lieutenants, who were leaders from the main ethnic groups (Amhara, Oromo, Gurage, etc.) and the general public, rallied around the Emperor’s march to Adowa and registered a shining victory against Italian colonialism. Adowa, surprisingly enough, is the birthplace of the current Prime Minister who has a strong dislike of the grand Ethiopian emperor, Menelik II. The Prime Minister is the chief denigrator of this founding father of the nation, in his drive to promote ethnic politics.

There is an old saying that those in power rewrite History.

In his 24 years of reign, the foresighted Emperor brought in all facets of modernization to the country with the sole objective of advancing the nation towards all-round progress. Just to site an example, the Ethio-Djibouti railway line which is the lifeline between Addis Ababa and Djibouti, was planned and partly implemented by the Emperor. Unfortunately, he died before it was completed. Because of lack of financial resources, however, the Emperor leased Djibouti to France for 99 years, and upon the termination of the contract, Djibouti became independent by a referendum of its population in 1976 during the period of the military regime.

Looked at in hindsight, the Eritrean and Tigrean liberation movements, which started their struggles in the early 1970s, were established at the right time to liberate their respective ethnic groups from the shackles of the military dictatorship led by Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam who fled Ethiopia in May 1991.

The original objective of the Tigrai liberation movement was to secede the historical part (the land of Sabean and Axumites) from the rest of Ethiopia. But the leaders of the liberation movement changed their goal of seceding, and instead decided to struggle with other movements to liberate Ethiopia from the oppressive military dictatorial regime.

It was a good decision and resulted in a success story, the formation of a federal government abolishing the unitary and centralized government of the old regimes. But the federation which had been expected for a long time by the entire population of Ethiopia was entirely different from the present ethnically-divided federation, which has brought about a number of practical problems.

Just to cite one example, the capital city, Addis Ababa, is still contested by the Oromos who consider it to be the capital city of their own administrative region. They consider the capital city to be their excusive domain. This situation arose from the fact that Addis Ababa was originally inhabited by the ancestors of the present-day Oromos. It is true that Addis Ababa was the land of the Oromos. But the argument now brought about against an exclusive right of the Oromos is that, as a result of settlement of millions of Ethiopians from every part of the country, the city is now multi-ethnic, not exclusively Oromo. This settlement has occurred over the past 100 years. This controversy arose as a result of the ethnically-based federation.

The federal structure based on ethnicity has also brought a number of problems concerning political participation, land ownership, business, and trade activities. A stranger, or a new settler, in the lands of any of the ethnic-based administrative regions doesn’t have equal rights with the indigenous population. This practically deprives the rights of citizens, Ethiopians, who have the constitutional right to live in any part of the country, own or possess property, and participate in the election of their administrative representatives, both at the regional and national levels.

The federation opens avenues for unnecessary competition, rivalry, deep hatred, and sometimes animosity among Ethiopians. When I was in Ethiopia in 1996, it was reported that some Amharas were displaced by the local people, their houses also burned down, and still others murdered by the same local people in the Southern part of the country. Many teachers from the same ethnic group lost their jobs just because they didn’t know the language of the locality where they were living. After being labeled as Neftegne (pioneers), many people from Amhara were killed at Arba Gugu, Arsi region, Asbot Monastery, eastern Ethiopia, by mob action, which seems to have had tacit approval from the government. It was this brutal action which led to the formation of the All Amhara Party led by the renowned veteran surgeon, Professor Asrat Woldeyes, who was incarcerated for a long time at the prison of the current regime. The Professor languished in prison for several years and finally was so debilitated that he died.

In short, the current ethnic-based federation is divisive, deprives human rights of the country, and retards the progress of the country.

Models of Federalism

1. The Difference-Blind State:

Pros:

The state allows people to develop and express their cultural practices and identities in private – in the home, church, or private associations – so long as they respect the rights of others to do the same, but the state neither promotes nor discourages cultural affiliations and practices. Ethno-cultural diversity is simply privatized, and the state is blind to the private cultural choice of individuals.

Cons:

There are two obvious limitations to this model. The first is that it requires considerable self-restraint on the part of the dominant groups who control the state, and hence which have the power to adopt state policies supporting their culture. Yet again, it would be naïve to suppose that dominant groups will not always be tempted to use their control over the state resources to promote their identities and practices.

Secondly, the state cannot avoid implicitly or explicitly supporting some cultures over others. Most obviously, the state must make decisions about the language or public administration, public health care, schools, public media, road signs, and so on.

Summary:

Many African countries have tried to avoid the danger of linguistic favouritism by simply adopting the colonial language as a state language. But this does not solve the problem of language policy at the local level.

In short, this model can’t serve best for Ethiopia.

2. Jacobean Republicanism

Pros:

The state promotes one particular language, culture, and identity and tries to turn this into a virtue rather than a vice. While the origin of the language will have been from one particular cultural group, the state declares it to be the national language and promotes it through all areas of the country. An example of this is modern-day Thailand. This is the French model of citizenship in which all citizens are expected to assimilate to a particular national language, republican political heritage, and secular culture. This was the model promoted by the Romans 2000 years ago.

Cons:

Many African countries have tried to pursue this sort of top-down nation-building strategy, particularly in Francophone Africa, where French has become the national language of several countries, relegating ethnic languages to a secondary position. However, in non-Francophone areas, including Ethiopia, this model was bitterly resisted by minority groups who feared losing their language.

Summary:

This centralized top-down nation-building strategy cannot be a model for Ethiopia as it has already been tried by the last Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. The Emperor tried to impose Amharic language on the other ethnic groups who bitterly resented this policy.

3. Civil Society

Pros:

This model aims at avoiding imposition from a centralized and authoritarian state, by promoting government by institutions of civil society such as churches, trade unions, newspapers, environmental groups, women’s groups, etc. In this way, nation-building will occur as a result of gradual evolution and consensus-building in civil society, not by state imposition.

Cons:

Each group has a tendency to be dominant and tries to impose its own will on the others, leading to strife.

Summary:

This an attractive model followed by some African countries, Mauritius being the best example. However, this model, like the other previous models, was contested by many scholars in the field as unworkable. It doesn’t work in reality because there are too many fractured groups who cannot reach a consensus.

4. Multi-nation or Multi-ethnic Federalism

Pros:

This model aims at achieving the formation of a multi-nation state that can be seen as a federation or partnership of various groups, each of which will retain its distinctiveness and its rights to autonomy or self-government.

Where groups are more or less territorially concentrated, it is likely to take the form of federalism. In a multi-nation federal system, the country is divided into several sub-units whose borders are drawn in such a way that each of the various groups will form a local majority in one or more of the sub-units. By defacto controlling a sub-unit, even if they are a minority in the country as a whole, each group is able to feel a sense of security, and can use the levers of sub-state power to protect and promote its identity and culture.

Cons:

This compartmentalization of the country into ethnically-divided administrative regions might help to develop the language, culture, land of each individual state in the country, but there is a rigidity because it does not allow for free movement from one part to another. Thus personal rights are not respected.

Summary:

This model has been successfully applied in Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, and Spain, but has been a failure in Africa, including Ethiopia, because, in each country where it has been attempted, one ethnic group has taken control to the detriment of the others.

5. Shared Ethnic Rule

Pros:

The state may be unitary and centralized, but there are guarantees that all ethnic groups will share power at the central level. This may be achieved through rules regarding the representation of ethnic groups in the legislature, in cabinet, and in the civil service. Electoral systems can play an important rule in encouraging or requiring power sharing in the central legislature.

This model may involve some form of veto rights so that all the major groups in the country must agree on a policy, particularly if it involves constitutional changes or it affects the basic interests of the groups. Like federalism, this model has been successfully adopted in some Western states, such as the Netherlands, Austria, and Belgium. And it, too, has been promoted in Africa, with only limited success. The most obvious attempt to implement it, in Ruanda and Burundi, failed completely but it remains a topic of debate in other African countries including Liberia and Angola.

Proponents argue that it may help to provide a sense of security among the members of the various groups and help them develop some sense of identification with and loyalty to the state. It also eliminates the fear of secession which is often raised in federal systems, since groups are not given control over territory.

Relevant Quotes

* “Concerned with relations between an ethnic groups and the state or between two or more ethnic groups, is essentially amoral. This process, often called ‘political tribalism’, describes the competitive confrontation of ‘ethnic contenders’ for the material resources of modernity through control of the state apparatus. Here success is defined as maximizing the power and resources available to one’s own group, whatever the consequences for other groups or for the functioning of the state as a whole.” – Ethnicity and the Politics of Democratic Nation-Building in Africa, by Bruce Berman, Dickson Eyoh, and Will Kymlicka.

* “The groundswell of popular opposition to all totalitarian rule in the late 1980s and early 1990s was, for many a welcome sign of the re-animation of the agency of Africans to design for themselves more promising futures – futures that would be based on liberal politics and market economies. [emphasis added] This euphoria did not last long as successive electoral cycles re-affirmed the renaissance of clientalism and patronage as the dominant practice of African politics.” – Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait, Reinhardt Benedix.

* “The development of ethnicity in African more than a century ago has been marked by dialectic of expansion and differentiation. Contemporary ethnicities are both much larger in social scale and population, and more shall be demarcated from other such groups, than the smaller and more fluid communities of the pre-colonial past. At the same time, African ethnic groups are univocal, and the concept of culture and custom as well as the boundaries of communities remain matters of frequent conflict and negotiation. The social forces shaping ethnic development and identity have been fundamentally material and ethnic politics has focused on defining the terms of access both to traditional assets of land and labour and the material resources of modernity in both the state and the market.” – Ethnicity and the Politics of Democratic Nation-Building in Africa, by Bruce Berman, Dickson Eyoh, and Will Kymlicka.

* “However constructed, transformed and instrumentalised politically, ethnicity is always or nearly always metaphoric kinship.” [emphasis added] – Ethnicity and the Politics of Democratic Nation-Building in Africa, by Bruce Berman, Dickson Eyoh, and Will Kymlicka.

The Proposal

Here follows what I have in mind regarding the existing ethnic federalism and the changes that should be made by the incumbent government. It is my conviction that, if a change is made to the current federal structure based on ethnicity, Ethiopia can smoothly sail the boat to catch up with the fast growing mid-level advanced countries or to usher in the 21st century.

I propose that the current 10 ethnically-based states be merged into 4 geographically-based states, namely Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western states. The country should adopt the Canadian model which is a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual structure.

Boundaries are drawn by natural features of the landscape, such as mountains and rivers. This will allow the government to save money on civil service overhead. It does not favour any ethnic group over any other, and it brings people together. It promotes intermarriage and interaction between the ethnic groups. People will have equal rights regarding political affiliations, finding jobs, languages, and culture.

Regarding languages, although Ethiopia has never been colonized and had a language imposed, nevertheless English has become the second most popular language for business and the first for interacting with the outside world. So developing on this fact and the necessity to engage the people of Ethiopia with science and technological progress being made in the 21st century, it is high time that the government should adopt a new language policy which can bring English to number one in the coming few years. The current national language, Amharic, would become an official second language, and Oromifa would be recognized as the third national language. Following the Canadian example, all government documents would be issued in all three languages, legal systems would recognize and utilize all three languages in the courts. The official languages would also be used equally in advertising and packaging materials, road signs, schools, hospitals, and so on. The government should encourage people to learn all three languages by persuasion not coercion.

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About the Author:

Melaku Tegegne is a former Ethiopian journalist and diplomat, now a peace and democracy activist and can be reached at [email protected]. The URL for the author’s blog is: http://issues-in-focus.blogspot.com/

SIDEBAR

This is a call made to the President, Prime Minister, and Members of the Parliament of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia by me alone, without the involvement of any individual, group, or party.

Based on the statement made by the Prime Minister about this being a Renaissance Period, I came to the conclusion that a complete overhaul of the government and federal structure of the country is a matter of necessity, not luxury. The idea of having such a plan is aimed purely at promoting the concept of a multi-ethnic nation and to bring Ethiopia into the 21st century.