By Abebe Zegeye and Siegfried Pausewang
Ethiopia made a new start in 1991, but it is yet too early to give an objective assessment of the direction in which it is likely to move. The provisional government is facing a multitude of problems which have to be solved before the country can start on a new path towards development.
Ethiopian society is in a state ofrapid change and the experiences of the period of 1974 to 1992 will have important effects on the direction this takes. A critical look back over the last 19 years of Ethiopian history can help define the issues confronting society today and show how best to make use of the lessons learned.
If issues urgently demanding resolution in so many fields are to be confronted and new pitfalls are to be avoided, it is important to understand the ‘experiment’ of the revolutionary period and its consequences. Most important, following the dissolution of cooperatives and many state farms and the weakening of the authority of peasant associations, the question of land ownership and its redistribution has once again come to the fore. This is a question of tremendous importance for the majority of Ethiopians depending as they do on access to agricultural land for their livelihood; and it raises general issues of policy because it involves having to decide whether to give priority to ensuring efficient production or to feeding the poor. An emphasis on the latter would favour policies that put self-supply, subsistence production, food security and famine preparedness first. In a fast growing population, food security can hardly be achieved unless every family is able to feed itself and keep back whatever reserves are necessary for bad years. Unless population growth can be considerably reduced, there will be a periodic demand for land redistribution and if this demand is not met the number of landless and unemployed poor will inevitably increase. On the other hand, if land is redistributed, farm land will have to be subdivided until a point is reached where plots cease to become available.
Macro-economists may be tempted to seek a way out of the dilemma by placing the emphasis on trying to achieve efficient production on technically advanced modern farms. But, given the present population structure, this is a dangerous path to choose; modern machinery is expensive both to import and to run. It requires foreign currency, which can only be earned through selling to an international market, which in turn offers poor prices for rural products. A policy of increased production through imported technology may result in more being paid for the inputs than can be earned from the sale of the produce, as demonstrated by state farms in the past. Moreover, mechanization will inevitably increase the number of unemployed; thus more efficient food production may end up making those people it was supposed to feed unable to afford the food produced.
Since it is generally accepted that agriculture has a key role to play in stimulating economic growth in Ethiopia, these problems are of prime importance for any future development. Moreover, agricultural development must ensure that the policies that are implemented result in stabilizing the ecological balance and controlling erosion. It would be impossible to sustain agricultural development without curbing ecological deterioration.
The provisional government is also beset by other problems, foremost among which is the question of political reorganization. The issue of nationality has become so central to Ethiopian political life that without the formulation of a clear policy, no new administrative structure seems possible. In order to build up a new system of democracy, it is essential that the different levels of decentralization should be defined and agreed upon.
To be effective, a democracy also needs to control economic forces and interests, which is an inseparable part of making difficult political decisions. The government is under great pressure, both at home and abroad, to establish a market economy, yet at the same time it is conscious of the need to control the key economic factors. Whether a mixed economy is compatible with a balance between free market forces and sufficient political control is open to debate, and the precise content of the mix is no less contentious.
Another key issue, which is sensitive both internationally and internally, is respect for human rights and the protection of minorities, whether ethnic, social, religious or linguistic. There is also a need for new solutions to the problems of public health, education, child welfare, gender, unemployment and internal security – the list could go on almost indefinitely.
As if all of this were not enough, the new government has found itself under strong pressure from the World Bank and international donors to implemenl. a structural adjustment programme. While major economic restructuri:ng is imperative in Ethiopia, this external pressure has put strong restrictions on the possible range of economic decisions, limiting the choices open for government action. It has also limited the scope for implementing different internal policies.
The difficulties facing Ethiopia are grave and have no easy solution. The new government is in a most unenviable position. Given that it has empty treasuries, faces a host of conflicting demands from different social groups within, is being attacked by nationalist resistance groups and an urban elite violently opposing Eritrean independence and lives under the constant tlhreat of confrontations breaking out between the different religious groups, it must be sorely tempted to avoid making decisions wherever possible.
A new start can only have some hope of success and win legitimacy if it is able to provicle a new vision for the future. While the struggle over what new policies to implement remains unresolved, the government has yielded to pressure for structural adjustment and has agreed to devalue the birr. Juriging from the economic reforms so far implemented, the government has shown no sign of being able to deliver any new or credible visiorn of a better future.
For all these reasons it is important to look back at the Mengistu period to try to find an explanation for what went wrong and why. Through such analysis one may hope to arrive at a better understanding of which paths to pursue in future and which to avoid.
The aim of this volume is to attempt such a look ‘back into the future’. In different fields and from different angles our authors (seven of whom are Ethiopiurn) try to draw lessons from the Mengistu past that might have relevance for the future (some go even further back into
Ethiopian history).
On looking through the various contributions to this book, it is noticeable that they all converge on one broad theme, namely a firm preference for decentralized solutions. At first sight this could be taken as a fashionable scepticism concerning (or instinctive aversion from) the strong emphasis that has been prevalent in the recent past on central decisions and a central monopoly of power. On a second reading, however, deeper convergences appear in relief. Though the authors work in different fields, approach their subjects from different angles and employ different methods of analysis, they communicate a similar message: the Ethiopian government should encourage decentralization and place more trust in the practical knowledge of the peasants; it needs to value its local communities and local institutions.
The prospect of being able to rely on the knowledge and initiatives of local people to find solutions to the innumerable and complex problems facing their society is a thesis worthy of close attention. The slogan ‘think globally, act locally’ may have renewed relevance in present day Ethiopia: if a solution is to be found it is likely to come from diverse and decentralized efforts, from a multitude of local initiatives and from the mobilization of the will of the people to improve their collective situation.
For example, the most basic requirement of development is that it should create conditions that allow everybody access to sufficient food for a decent life. A worldwide right to food has been asked for many times, but it has proved to be quite unattainable on a global level. The world community has subsided into helplessness: no international agency could realistically assume the responsibility of feeding all the poor of the world. And even if it could, the massive distribution of food might itself create new problems by spoiling food markets and undermining the economic base of food producers, thus increasing the number of mouths to feed. The right to food is therefore nowhere codified in a way committing any agency to more than a general intention to work for economic conditions that may eventually provide food for all.
Local systems that have for a long time practised an individual right to food are not, however, unknown. They have usually operated within the narrow confines of societies that were much poorer than they are today in terms of the absolute availability of food and food reserves per person. They managed, however, to build up a social security system on the basis of a right to community membership, inseparably linked with an obligation to contribute to the provision of a minimum for all. Being poor, such societies could soon reach their limits; but so long as there was food the obligation to share and the right to receive existed.
A new way of thinking, which starts at the local level and uses the traditional knowledge of the people, has to begin by reactivating systems of mutual help and local co-responsibility. People who work on the land do have experience of keeping stocks for emergencies. Food security and disaster preparedness are traditional parts of rural life. A wealth of knowledge about wild foods that can be collected in times of drought thus allowing people to survive in extreme situations is preserved in many areas.
These traditions must be revitalized so that in times of hardship people can claim food security and access to work from their community and can feed themselves from the land during normal harvests, thus being encouraged to assume responsibility for organizing their own food security within their own community.
This common theme, which has emerged from the views of the different authors, signals a shift in our thinking on Ethiopian development: whereas in the past the responsibility for national development and economic growth was laid squarely at the feet of central government, it seems initiatives are now expected from below and the responsibility for finding appropriate solutions and administering them appears decentralized. Democracy as decentralization thus appears to be a common denominator, whether authors deal with the economy or famine, the environment or education. Development is no longer expected to come from investments from abroad, but from local and individual efforts. It is expected to start not with cooperation between a government and foreign donor nations, but with more influence, power, resources, rights, information and responsibility being given to the people, working through their own institutions.
If it is taken as a democratic principle that although people may have different cultures they are equal in their rights and responsibilities, then mechanisms will have to be found to reverse the rapidly growing differentiation that has been observed over the past 15 years. Differences have been allowed to grow within a state that has monopolized control over economic resources and political decisions. Differences have increased not only in political power, but also (at least as important) in economic influence, social position and the degree to which access is available to information, sources of knowledge and health care. If this trend is to be reversed, then political decisions must inevitably be brought closer to the people and as much responsibility and authority as possible delegated to small local units, to the neighbourhoods, the edir and equb, the debo and maarro, the kebele, the peasant associations and labour unions. Only decision making by people in the small and coherent groups with which they are familiar will allow the optimum mobilization oftheir initiative, expertise and human resources.
The principle that people are different but peers also requires a new orientation for development policies. It demands that more emphasis should be placed on attaining immediate results for the well-being of the majority, especially of those who are less privileged’ It places the well-being of the people at the focal point of development efforts. Even if the ultimate goal, the growth of welfare, is unchanged, the changed emphasis relegates the aims of modernization, economic growth and efficiency to a secondary position. Postponing the immediate consumption of benefits for the sake of future improvement may be a good investment principle for people who can afford it: it becomes meaningless for people who are too poor to save and who would starve before they could reap the benefits of investments paid through their sacrifice.
Local responsibility for administration and development would also go a long way towards defusing the tensions growing out of nationality conflicts in today’s Ethiopia. At a local level, peasants can pursue their particular interests and find specific solutions without violating or questioning their loyalty to their nationality group. Instead of fighting for central power, organizations of nationalities can concern themselves with locally applicable policies, trying to influence local decisions and staking out their position on issues specifically concerning local people. The central government for its part can be concerned with offering support to local demands, rather than controlling and checking the influence of their supposed rivals.
Integrating peasants, irrespective of their nationality, as equals into independent communities that would form integral parts of one nation state would abolish the need to organize nationalities as political parties or pressure groups. From very different starting positions in their respective contributions to this volume both Adhana and Melaku visualize the possibility of an alternative process. They both want to replace the competition between nationalities for political influence with a balanced coexistence in which people are recognized as different but equal entities, as co-responsible for collective development. Adhana detects in the EPRDF programme a chance of creating an Ethiopian nation state that would integrate both peasants and urban professionals of all nationalities as equals into one nation state. Melaku challenges the EPLF to allow equality for all national and political groups and interests in Eritrea. What these authors share is a trust in the collective decisions of independent individuals irrespective of their ethnic or social origins.
Bahru Zewede attempts to locate the historical point at which Emperor Hayla-Sellase might be considered to have changed from a progressive to a reactionary. In his study he analyses the place of educatlon and charts the mutual disillusionment between emperor and student.
In a somewhat different context Randi Balsvik found this same willingness to trust the ingenuity of ordinary people in the student policies of the late Hayla-sellase period. student opposition formed an important starting point for the revolution of 1914 and, by helping peasants organize their associations into local, independent and self-determining decision-making units, students played a significant role in the land reform and its implementation. Their ideals of equal rights were, however, later pushed aside in favour of an Eastern European style of central state authority, a shift of direction requiring explanation.
The common denominator of the historical chapters can thus be seen as a position supporting the equality of all nationalities, social groups and opinions. Their hope for Ethiopia’s future would lie not in chauvinist nationalism, but in independent people of different beliefs, nationalities and professions working together, proud of having equality as peers among equals. whether such a transformation of attitudes can be achieved remains to be seen.
In looking at Ethiopian underdevelopment Eshetu tackles the theme head on. From an economist’s viewpoint he asks why Ethiopian underdevelopment persists despite different theories having been implemented and various prescriptions experimented with over the course of the last 25 years. He refuses to offer an easy answer, but between the lines the reader is able to discern where he feels the openings to change may be located. Though he sees agriculture and industry as interwoven and interdependent, he believes that development should be concentrated predominantly in the rural areas, where it would benefit the majority of the poor.
In describing the new economic policies tried out in Ethiopia during Mengistu,s last year in power, Stefan Briine concurs with this view and asks what a .mixed economy’ would have looked like and what consequences it would have produced for the rural poor had it been given a longer period to work. Fantu Cheru picks up the thread where Stefan Briine leaves off, suggesting an alternative model of structural adjustment and transformation for the post-Mengistu period. In line with the ECA’s African Alternative Framework, his basic question is, adjustment for whom and by whom? Fantu Cheru offers the Ethiopian government a synopsis of an alternative adjustment policy that uses local resources and peasant knowledge for a new economic start. Jonathan Baker adds another dimension to this argument by insisting that, instead of feeding off the rural population, the small urban centres must be reoriented towards supporting rural development.
Taken as a whole the economic arguments present an alternative vision, a vision in which people are placed at the centre of economic development. From different contexts and in different ways each of the contributors envisages the granting of equal chances to all as a basic pillar of the economy. They expect future vitality and prosperity to stem from a decentralization of economic initiative, power, influence and control. Economic development means decentralized development for and by the small peasants, through the exploitation of their own local resources and initiative.
Two contributions deal with the specific problems of the rural environment. Abebe Zegeye analyses how peasants can find ways to regain control over factors of degradation affecting vegetation, erosion, forestry cover and fuelwood supplies, which even affect weather conditions. He argues that environmental security is absolutely fundamental if improvements in the well-being of peasants are to be achieved and that they themselves must be allowed to be in control of their environment. The experiences of Dessalegn Rahmato show that they have the capacity to expand their traditional preparedness systems for emergencies. He worked for years in drought and famine areas and is impressed by people’s ability to establish their own local famine prevention. He asks for a positive attitude and sympathetic support from society at large to make the task easier.
Famine usually occurs in the rural areas where the food is produced and not in the towns. Peasants cannot afford to eat the crops of their own fields and cannot keep back the necessary reserves before selling what they can do without. Urban groups have always found ways of acquiring food from villages after the harvest, even ii in years of harvest deficits, the villagers are left without any for themselves. Traders are quick to put peasants under pressure to sell, especially if a bad harvest indicates that prices might soon rise. Creditors demand repayment after the harvest and the peasants have little choice but to sell.
Taxes have to be paid and tax collectors know from experience that peasants might not be able to pay if they wait too long after the harvest. Until 1990 the AMC quotas were rigorously collected immediately after the harvest; in fact the peasants themselves would bring their grain to the AMC or cooperative stores because they were afraid that if they did not comply they would be regarded as candidates for resettlement.
Experience in other African countries also shows that urban interest groups almost invariably find ways of securing their supplies from rural areas, even if peasants are left without food reserves for their own use until the next harvest. It seems that the more the signs indicate that a shortage might occur, the more eager are urban traders to fill their stores so as to supply a rising market.
Early warning signals exist and are generally known to peasants. These signals are taken seriously and systematically recorded and used to plan for storage and for the taking of preventive measures. Such signals are locally specific and have to be analysed and utilized within a given locality.
It is a sad fact that local knowledge is appreciated neither by the bureaucracy nor in academic circles. Administrators believe that they are supposed to know what is best; scholars easily take it for granted that a report not written in a scholarly style and not properly documented is shallow and unworthy of serious attention. Occasionally people who have benefited from local practice try to get across the message that local knowledge could be utilized on a wider scale, but they seldom receive the attention they deserve.
Dessalegn Rahmato has documented how peasants in earlier times were accustomed to keeping reserves for emergency situations. These systems broke down when urban interests neglected peasant knowledge, arguing that peasants still had food and that additional burdens could easily be shouldered by them as there were so many to carry them. Such systems are difficult to re-establish once population growth and the fragmentation of plots reduce the productive capacity of each peasant, while burdens and demands from outside increase. However, peasants still have the capacity to organize mutual help systems to combat famines, knowing as they do how to interpret early warning signs and how to plan for storage and distribution.
If peasants are left to determine their own needs and allowed to keep the necessary resources, they may be able to prevent famine or at least mitigate its effects through appropriate action at the local level. It must be borne in mind that there are trade and transport facilities for moving food items from the villages to the urban markets in normal years and that these facilities can be utilized to reverse the flow as well, bringing food reserves into the rural areas in times of drought. If measures are taken in good time there is no reason for expensive international emergency food distribution in remote rural areas. Rather, international solidarity could provide the urban areas with food more cheaply and with the expenditure of much less logistic effort than would be required to deliver it to starving peasants. If international solidarity could guarantee that food would be provided in time, a local early warning system could then make available the marginal supplies to cover the deficit in local production before a state of famine could arise.
Issues of nationality have come to dominate the political arena and Siegfried Pausewang argues that no successor government can win legitimacy without solving the nationality question. The EpRDF tried to tackle it by means of a coalition government; but while the different ethnic resistance movements cooperated in the government coalition in Addis Ababa, the conflict was transferred to the local level, where it emerged as a struggle for local control during the 1992 elections. The rural population is, however, tired of the war and may well be able to restrain local politicians from carrying the conflict further, provided rural people are given more influence in local affairs and local politicians become accountable to their electorate.
Alexander Krylow, who has followed rebel resistance movements for many years, argues that there is no way round ethnic conflicts in present day Ethiopia. He sees great difficulties for any future democratic development and locates these as arising from the danger that any political organization will tend to mobilize the electorate along ethnic rather than political lines. He fears this may be aggravated by the traditional confrontational character of Ethiopian political life. Pausewang also acknowledges the danger, but hopes that peasants will find a way of avoiding the destructive consequences by organizing on different levels: their basic interests should be represented and fought for at a local, not a national, level. They can only win if they follow their interests at different levels: as oromo or Amhara, as Muslims or Christians, as members of their kebele, as sons of Wallaga, Gojjam or Menz, as Ethiopians or as Africans.
If a general conclusion may be detected in the political analysis, it lies in the hope of a renewal of Ethiopian politicar culture through revitalization of the rural communities. The only hope of overcoming the many problems Mengistu left behind for his successors lies in fostering the spirit of local cooperation, in finding practical solutions to perceived problems instead of viewing them in the light of ideological principles and in following the tradition of compromise and of individual rights imbedded in collective responsibility.
These problems are described in Dessalegn Rahmato’s analysis of the reasons for rural unrest and conflict after Mengistu’s fall. From his recent field experience, Dessalegn believes that the three main reasons for peasant frustration and discontent under Mengistu were their insecurity about land, their destabilization through resettlement and villagization, and their impoverishment. He sees peasant unrest as a consequence of ill-conceived policies imposed on them regardless of community participation and initiative.
If, instead of being directed against a particular ethnic or economic group, peasant violence were used as an outlet for long suppressed frustrations, then the conclusion may bd strengthened that the revival of rural culture and the support of peasant ingenuity in finding local compromises could go a long way toward offering hope for a renewal of Ethiopian society and political life. Learning from the peasants may indeed be the key to a new start. Tapping local cultures rather than suppressing their defensive resistance against infringements may be the best guiding principle of democratic development and economic progress.
Dawit Abate analyses the antecedents of transition government and the problems facing it. In order to achieve this he considers the relationships between the various liberation fronts and their influence on current politics.