By Liben Gebre Etyopiya (Donald Levine)

Commenting on the current political state of affairs, a knowledgeable journalist said to me in Addis: “People here have been attacking one another all year. But they never talk about things they are really mad about.” His comment rang a bell. Don’t we all know family members who quarrel about things that substitute for what they are really feeling hurt and angry about?

Time and again in October, Government and Opposition were on the verge of coming to an agreement that would have prevented the November violence and subsequent imprisonments. For a moment, if possible, let us set aside the question of who is to blame. Let us entertain the hypothesis that whatever the unprovoked harassment of CUD leaders by Government security personnel and whatever perceptions the Government had about insurrectionary ambitions of the opposition, there was something in the air that enabled the talks–for which the Prime Minister had at one point given assurance that everything was on the table–to break down. The parties had been talking about Parliamentary procedures, access to the Press, and the like. But what were the two sides really mad about?

Ever since the Derg was overthrown fifteen years ago, I have heard Ethiopians of different positions hurl insults at one another, accuse one another of the basest motives, and dig ever deeper the moats that distance them from one another. For fifteen years, I have wondered when the time would come that the underlying issues of their discontent might be addressed and resolved. Perhaps it took the killings and imprisonments of 2005 to force the issue, to get good Ethiopians of different persuasions to thinking in and about a new way.

That will take effort. To get beyond feeling aggrieved and injured, although grief and injury are abundant all around. To get beyond pouring blame on one another, although there are many things to blame. Perhaps the effort may involve realizing that what has been at stake all along has been two seemingly incompatible narratives about their country’s history.

Narrative One.
1. Modern Ethiopia is an empire created by a hegemonic Amhara elite under Emperor Menilek II who conquered and dominated all of the historically separate and independent ethnic groups in the area.

2. It was dominated by a ruling class that had to be overthrown and prevented from regaining power or control of the land of peasants in the conquered territories.

3. The Derg was a ruthless, centrist regime that survived by terrorizing Ethiopian citizens.

4. TPLF troops, supported by EPLF, were the only viable opposition force to rebel against the Derg. For some seventeen years, they struggled as guerilla fighters and, after enormous sacrifice and suffering, succeeded in defeating the Derg and forcing its much-hated leader to flee.

5. Although they fought during those years under the banner of the Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray, they abandoned communist ideology as the Cold War came to an end and formally embraced liberal democracy.

6. They felt badly treated, after all that sacrifice and suffering, when their victorious entrance into the capital was met with hostility by those who sat out the Derg years in relative comfort.

7. Once in power, they proceeded to create a novel system of ethnic federalism to ensure dignity for all of Ethiopia’s peoples, and to prevent a resurgence of private plutocracy through continued state ownership of land and many industries.

8. To ensure the success of their program, they had to spread a network of EPRDF cadres across the country.

Narrative Two.
1. Modern Ethiopia is the outgrowth of a two-thousand-year-old polity rooted in Aksum. It became unified and remained independent thanks to the leadership of Emperors Tewodros II, Yohannes IV, and Menilek II.

2. It came to fruition under Emperor Haile Selassie I, who advanced national centralization, instituted ministries and standing armies and, though mostly Shoan Amhara and surrounded by Shoan nobility, included Eritrean, Tigrean, Oromo, and others in the national elite he fostered.

3. The Derg was a ruthless communist regime that survived by terrorizing Ethiopian citizens.

4. TPLF troops, supported by EPLF, became the only viable opposition force to rebel against the Derg, although EDU and EPRP had been forces to contend with at one time. For some seventeen years, they struggled as guerilla fighters and, after enormous sacrifice and suffering, succeeded in defeating the Derg and forcing its much-hated leader to flee.

5. Although the TPLF leadership abandoned communist ideology as the Cold War came to an end and formally embraced liberal democracy, they never truly embraced the principles of liberal democracy.

6. Joy at the overthrow of the Derg was muted by apprehension about the revanchist tenor of TPLF anti-Amhara sentiments, their elevation of tribal ethnicity above Ethiopian nationhood, their Leninist political style, and their reluctance to de-collectivize land.

7. Once in power, EPRDF = TPLF excluded other ethnic groups from the center, imposed a system of ethnic federalism without broad national consensus, and continued state ownership of land and many industries. To defend these changes, they consistently harassed opposition parties, clamped down on a free press, and prevented an independent judiciary.

8. To ensure political control, they spread a network of EPRDF cadres across the country, who year after year abused the rights of civilians and did little to promote economic development.

These contrasting narratives bloomed fully in the months after May 1991. Beyond whatever strivings for power animated the leaders of the various parties in 2005, it was underlying antagonisms about these contrasting visions of the past and what they implied for Ethiopia’s future that fueled an underground current of fire. The differences they embodied have never been addressed quietly and resolved amicably.

This way of framing the matter was suggested to me by a lecture given in Berlin by a seasoned scholar who discussed the essence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He pointed out how chronic hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians flowed from contrasting narratives about their pasts. Jews live with a picture of their past that depicts them as perennial victims, deprived of their sacred land by ruthless Babylonian and Roman conquerors, abused by host societies for millennia thereafter, and subject to an effort at total annihilation so monstrous–ha-shoah, the Holocaust–that it gave rise to a new concept in human criminality, genocide. Palestinians live with a picture of their past that depicts them as resident in their land from time immemorial, proud caretakers of the holy places of Christianity and Islam, then confronted by a robust immigrant population that began with intrusive settlements and–through al nakbah, the Catastrophe–frightened many from their homes forever and eventually dominated them in their homeland territory. It would seem impossible for peoples with such incompatible stories ever to live together harmoniously–except, the lecturer pointed out, those narratives resembled the incompatible narratives that oriented France and Germany, now friendly neighbors, for a long time and impelled them into three horrible wars within one century.

To be sure, the centuries-old histories of Jews and Palestinians cannot really be said to have a counterpart in opposition between political parties who came into being les than two decades ago. And so, beyond the contrast of narratives, perhaps we must locate another factor. Perhaps it is what Dr. B. T. Constantinos, in a response to my Getz #2–“Ethiopians in Prison”
www.eineps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7)m, described suggestively by observing that

[[the Ethiopian political elite [has debated] problems of our democratisation… largely within a particular tradition of political thought, argument and struggle that has origins in the radical student movement; in ideas of “national liberation”, “class struggle”, “national democratic revolution” spawned by that movement; and in the Marxist-Leninist tradition of political thought, discourse and action that has been a decisive influence over the current political impasse. At a time when the tradition seems a spent force in much of the former second world, including post-Dergue Ethiopia, a toned-down and somewhat reconstructed version of it seems to have gained a new lease on life among Ethiopia’s political elite in the country and abroad.]]

Although Dr. Constantinos and I might disagree on details of that diagnosis, we probably agree on the hallmarks of that tradition: clever talk, arrogance, demonization of the other, presentation of preconditions in tight formulaic terms that are not amenable to alternative formulations and mediation (shimgilna), urbanite insurgency, and identification of one’s position with the good and the will of the “people.”

In this sense, then, the problem is not to move beyond Ethiopian traditions, but to restore the rich traditions of civility, forgiveness, neighborliness, and respect for one another that antedate the uncivility of the Marxist tradition. For this purpose, Ethiopians could scarcely do better, for example, than return to the political culture embodied in that remarkable Ethiopian tradition, the gumi gayo of the Boran and Guji peoples, which opens each parliamentary debate with a caution not to look for the worst in what others have said in order to undermine their position and win an argument, but to look for the best they have to offer so as to find a common ground:

Dubbi qarumman dubbatani miti. Warri qaro qarumman laf keyyaddha.
This is not the place for clever talk. Clever people should leave their cleverness behind.

For today’s political elite, that could mean listening to one another’s narratives and perhaps even learning something.