LAGOS (Reuters) — U.S. President Barack Obama’s choice of Ghana for his first official trip to Africa next week has triggered a bout of self-questioning in Nigeria and Kenya, where many see his itinerary as a deliberate snub.
The first black U.S. president is keen to hold Ghana up as a democratic model for Africa, where polls are too often marred by vote-rigging and violence, denting the pride of states which consider themselves equally important and worthy of a visit.
“Part of the reason is because Ghana has now undergone a couple of successful elections in which power was transferred peacefully,” Obama told the AllAfrica news website, when asked why he had chosen to visit Ghana (allafrica.com).
“Countries that are governed well, that are stable, where leadership recognizes that they are accountable to the people and that institutions are stronger than any one person, have a track record of producing results for the people. And we want to highlight that,” he said.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and a major supplier of oil to the United States, was already sensitive to the growing clout of its regional rival, particularly since Ghana is itself due to become an oil producer by the end of next year.
Endemic corruption, shambolic infrastructure and weak regulation in the so-called “Giant of Africa” — or “Sleeping Giant” as some weary Nigerians call it — have already pushed some international companies to relocate.
In contrast to Ghana, which in January held a closely contested election that brought former opposition leader John Atta Mills peacefully to power, Nigeria has an appalling record on organizing transparent polls.
The April 2007 vote which brought President Umaru Yar’Adua to power was so marred by ballot-stuffing and intimidation that local and foreign observers said it was not credible.
Critics of Yar’Adua — who have dubbed him “Baba Go-Slow” for lack of progress on everything from the fight against corruption to providing reliable power supply — say Obama’s snub should make his administration sit up and think.
“If Obama decides to grace Nigeria with his presence, I will stone him,” Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer Wole Soyinka was quoted by Nigerian newspapers as saying.
“The message he is sending by going to Ghana is so obvious, is so brilliant, that he must not render it flawed by coming to Nigeria any time soon,” he said.
BACKSLIDING
In Kenya, those trying to put a positive spin on the planned itinerary said it would have been seen as favoritism for Obama, whose father was born in Kenya, to visit his ancestral homeland.
But it is seen as a deliberate snub by others, especially critics of President Mwai Kibaki’s coalition government, formed after deadly post-election violence in 2008. They see it as a sign of U.S. disapproval of nepotism in Kenya’s political elite.
“We have seen progress over the last several years in some cases, though we’re also seeing some backsliding,” Obama said in the AllAfrica interview, broadcast on YouTube.
“In my father’s own country of Kenya, I’m concerned about how the political parties do not seem to be moving into a permanent reconciliation,” he said.
The coalition government, formed after mediation by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, has failed to make much progress on political reforms. Kenya still ranks as the most corrupt country in east Africa, according to watchdog Transparency International.
Renowned cartoonist Gado, of the Daily Nation newspaper, depicted Air Force One jetting over Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga with a note spiraling down from the plane:
“Get your act together -B. Obama,” it said.
Odinga, who comes from the Luo ethnic group like Obama’s father, said it was wrong to read too much into the president’s itinerary, pointing out that he was also not visiting influential nations such as South Africa and Nigeria.
“Ghana is symbolic. It was the first African country to gain independence from Britain in 1957. Ghana is very advanced in its transition to democratic form of governance. So it’s perfectly logical,” he told Reuters.
Not all see it the same way.
“It’s like him visiting (the Welsh capital) Cardiff but not London,” said one disgruntled Nigerian resident.
Tucson, Arizona — Ethiopian. That’s my new restaurant request to all you potential restaurateurs out there. Don’t worry, I’m not holding my breath.
Six years ago, former BW staffer Cynthia Sewell, who’s now a reporter for the Idaho Statesman, handed me a list of things to do while I was in Tucson, Ariz., for a weekend. On the list was a recommendation for an Ethiopian restaurant. I never made it on that trip, but for six years, I’ve managed to remember that there’s a fabulous Ethiopian restaurant somewhere in Tucson.
Last week, BW Publisher Sally Freeman, Art Director Leila Ramella-Rader, News Editor Nathaniel Hoffman and I were in Tucson for our trade association’s annual convention, and from deep within the recesses of my memory, I pulled out Sewell’s Ethiopian suggestion. I didn’t remember the name, but a quick search–thanks to the wonders of Google and iPhone–led us to Zemam’s Ethiopian Cuisine.
I’ll be honest. From the outside, Zemam’s ain’t much of a looker. Housed in one of those stucco boxes that passes for a building throughout the southwest, Zemam’s doesn’t have much curb appeal. But, as most foodies know, some of the best restaurants are those that aren’t going to win any architectural awards.
We each ordered a three-dish combo, all of which came served on one giant metal platter with 12 modest piles of food and sheets of spongy injera not only between the platter and the food, but also on the side. Silverware is not part of the Ethiopian table setting, and the family style meal is not for those afraid of finger food or their tablemates’ germs. If you can get over your American predisposition to flatware and antibacterial hand sanitizer, you’ll be glad you did.
Without an Ethiopian option in Boise, why am I telling you about it? Because believe it or not, there’s an Idaho connection. Owner Amanuel Gebremariam lived in Moscow before moving to the Sonoran Desert, but more importantly, the teff Gebremariam uses to make Zemam’s injera is Idaho-grown by the Teff Company in Caldwell.
I called them first thing Monday morning to ask a couple of questions, but as of press time, I hadn’t heard back. According to the company’s Web site, the Teff Company “has been supplying the Ethiopian and Eritrean communities for nearly 20 years with American-grown Maskal Teff.”
Hell, you just never know what’s growing in Idaho and for that matter, just where in the world you’ll find yourself eating a little closer to home than you expected.
Family Wine and Dine of the Week
Rather than get all dolled up for an expensive night of wining and dining, keep it low key with the kids this holiday weekend.
Zoo Boise hosts its second Zoofari event of the summer with dinner for the family in addition to zoo wandering, storytelling and animal feedings. Cost includes admission to the zoo as well as a hot dog, chips, a drink and an ice cream treat.
BOSTON — Incense perfumes Habesha Restaurant as we’re seated near the large, dark wood bar that anchors the dimly lighted dining room. The musk scented smoke is so strong that it’s dizzying, but soon another more intoxicating aroma takes over.
A large shared platter of Ethiopian stews, spiced meats, and slow-cooked vegetables is set before a group of Ethiopians sitting near us. We greedily inhale the cloud of exotic spices that wafts over as they tear squares of thin injera bread, use it to gracefully pinch bites of food, and pop the mini bundles into their mouths, all while chattering in a pretty, sing-song language that must be Amharic.
With the help of two partners, Abeba Golum opened this Ethiopian restaurant in Malden in December. A native of Addis Ababa, she is a lifelong hobby cook and prefers to create from scratch. Really. She churns her own butter to “keep it Ethiopian style.” And her bread – oh, the bread.
Every bite of a traditional Ethiopian meal is eaten not with a fork but with injera bread, a spongy, crepe-thin sourdough bread. So the better the bread, the better the meal, and Golum’s injera is superb.
While some Ethiopian restaurants here make do with wheat flour, Golum uses traditional teff, a slightly nutty-tasting grain. She does add a touch of self-rising flour, but the key is that she ferments the dough long enough to develop a pleasing tanginess (a step some restaurants skip). The result is just the right sourness and earthy flavor to liven up every bite of the meal.
Injera is especially good wrapped around beef awaze tibs, chewy but flavor-rich bits of beef glistening in a savory sauce that is red with berbere spice blend (Ethiopia’s answer to curry). Doro wat ($10) is also a standout. This chicken stew is so complex you could spend a whole meal trying to guess the many spices that perfume this delicious, intense, brown sauce: nutmeg, cardamom, paprika, clove? And the kifto, steak tartar ($10) drizzled with the house’s fresh butter, is pure carnivorous joy.
Other standards like lamb tibs ($10) or chicken tibs ($8) and some of the vegetables are less interesting than versions elsewhere. But, again, the bread elevates them. Every meal should include the vegetarian combo ($12), a rainbow of mild to fiery sides, including addictive fried green beans.
The menu is brief: 11 entrees and a kid’s meal. In fact, the drink list, which includes Ethiopian pilsners, stouts, and many wines, is longer. But with injera this good, even one dish would be enough.
Thirty years – officially – after the first Ethiopian Jews set foot on Israeli soil, the first Israeli film about the Ethiopian community of the Holy Land is being released in theaters on Thursday.
Filmmaker Shmuel Beru, who made aliya from Ethiopia at the age of eight, hopes to show Israeli audiences the richness of his community with Zrubavel, his first full-length feature film.
Even after three decades, all that most Israelis know about this population of more than 110,000 is what they read in newspaper reports: problems of integration, juvenile delinquency, domestic violence – or, more rarely, one successful Ethiopian immigrant who becomes a doctor, a pilot or a famous singer or actor. But what do we really know about the Ethiopian Jews of Israel – their values, their traditions, their language, their music, their food, their dreams, their problems and how they deal with them, their feelings?
These are the questions that Beru, 33, who started as an actor, wanted to answer by getting behind the camera.
In Tel-Aviv’s Kerem Hateimanim neighborhood, a two-minute walk from Rehov Zrubavel, where he lives, Beru agreed to talk to The Jerusalem Post about this original project.
The idea came to him two years ago, he says. “I thought that in my community, there were a lot of stories to tell that others are not exposed to. So I decided to make a movie to relate them, thinking that if I don’t do it, nobody will do it for me.”
BERU PRESENTS a picture, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, of a group of residents in an entirely Ethiopian neighborhood. All the generations are represented, from the patriarch of the Zrubavel family – a colonel in Ethiopia, now a street sweeper in Israel – to his eight-year-old, Israeli-born grandson Yitzhak – alias “Spike Lee” – whose dream is to make movies.
Through the eyes of the latter, Beru – who arrived from Ethiopia via Sudan one year before Operation Moses in 1984 – tells the story of Yitzhak’s aunt, Almaz, the “most beautiful girl in the neighborhood.” A talented singer, Almaz wants to marry a distant cousin, despite her father’s injunction to respect the traditional rule of not marrying a relative within seven generations. Meanwhile, Almaz’s brother Gili, pushed by his father, tries despite racism to enter a selective school to become an IAF pilot, as Yitzhak’s parents fight over whether their son will enter a yeshiva or become a soccer player.
“My goal was to show that behind color and culture, there are human beings,” says Beru. “I wanted to create an opportunity to see us [Israeli Ethiopians] in a different way than people are used to, to go further than what the news released about us, to make people realize that we are not different from others.
“‘It doesn’t matter where you come from, you are just a person’ – this is the main point of my movie, and it is not only true for Ethiopians. Zrubavel tries to talk about integration in general, and its message can be applied to every other community.”
Although he had never directed before, Beru was undeterred.
“My theory is, if you want to do it, just do it. I need a script? So I wrote a script. I need actors? So I found actors. I need money? Okay, I don’t have money. I need to raise it. I presented my project to a few producers. I got only negative answers. So I invest my own money to direct a pilot. And I win the support of the Israel Film Fund and the Gesher Foundation. And I started.”
DESPITE LIVING in Israel for 25 years, Beru says he still feels “different.”
“I still feel I am not judged just as a person, but regarding my origins, my color,” he explains. “People like to divide other people into groups. I don’t know why, maybe it’s easier for them to say, ‘You, you are from outside, you are a foreigner, you just came to visit.’ And this is what is exposed in the movie. This neighborhood [in the film] is like a ghetto, not connected to the other groups of society, to the rest of the world, and it affects its residents.”
One of the issues Beru addresses in the movie is the gap between the older and younger generations in the community.
“For the youth, it’s hard because they feel half-half – on the one hand, they want to be like Israelis, and on the other, they want to be like Ethiopians. And it is difficult for them to find a good balance, to mix. Especially when they have to face the reaction of their parents, themselves in a struggle to deal with a new culture and lifestyle very different from their old one,” he says.
Beru also shows “a typical Israeli family” trying to contribute to their country.
“The father is very Zionist. [He] wants his son, Gili, to defend his country, even though he already lost another son in the army. He wants him to be a pilot and to be recognized as a part of society,” he says.
Beru admits that the character of Yitzhak, the young filmmaker, could be a reflection of himself, although he hadn’t planned it that way.
“Yitzhak is just a naïve little boy who wants to do a movie, very simple, with his handmade camera,” he explains, adding, “In this business, everyone wants to be Spike Lee and wants to be a voice for their own community.”
Beru’s next film project is a personal account of his own experiences coming to Israel.
“It will talk about my life, about my journey from Ethiopia to Israel via Sudan. I already have a script,” he says. “Now I look for funds to start; it will be huge production.”
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi says he wants to step down after 18 years running sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous country. Meles says he is “bored” of questions about this, and will only repeat he needs the permission of his ruling party before he can leave.
So when might he go? And what will happen if he does? Here are some possible scenarios:
MELES GOES AT SEPTEMBER PARTY CONGRESS?
*Unlikely. The 54-year-old needs the permission of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) party’s annual September congress before he can move aside. But it is doubtful he will ask for its blessing this year, analysts say. And, even if he did, they probably would not accept it a year before Ethiopia has its next national election due in June 2010.
OPPOSITION WIN 2010 ELECTIONS, MELES LOSES POWER?
* This would be a shock. The 2005 elections — touted as Ethiopia’s first truly democratic poll — ended in violence when Meles claimed victory, the opposition shouted fraud and about 200 protestors were killed by police and soldiers. Meles said they were trying to march on state buildings and topple him.
* More than 100 opposition leaders, journalists and aid workers were jailed after the government blamed them for orchestrating the violence. Despite the prisoners’ release in a 2007 pardon deal, the opposition has remained weak ever since.
* They say that is because the government harasses them. Meles denies that and says the opposition criticises the government to ruin its image and provoke the rich world into cutting the aid on which the desperately poor country relies.
* A ruling party triumph would probably please Western powers and investors who are used to doing business with Meles and his ministers.
* If the opposition wins, the future will be uncertain for one of Africa’s biggest potential markets. With no obvious alternative prime minister, potential investors might play wait-and-see. Foreign powers and international lenders like the IMF and the World Bank would jostle for policy influence.
MELES WINS IN 2010, OPPOSITION CRY FOUL?
* There are fears of a repeat of violence if Meles wins the next election and the opposition protest again. If the opposition parties go into the election as weak as they are now, they may find it difficult to convince Ethiopians and the world to support their claims.
* If the opposition was to strengthen before 2010 and credibly claim fraud, people would listen. After the violence of 2005, some countries withdrew aid. But — worried about hurting some of the world’s most vulnerable people — they quickly reinstated it. Ethiopia is the key U.S. ally in the volatile Horn of Africa region and sent troops into neighbouring Somalia in 2006 to oust an Islamist group who controlled the country.
* But despite Ethiopia’s close relations with the West, allegations of fraud or violence would be more difficult for the international community to take a second time and the country could see its aid slashed, plunging it deeper into poverty.
EPRDF WINS ELECTION, NO VIOLENCE, MELES RESIGNS?
* This is the most likely scenario. The weakened opposition will not be a serious threat at the next polls, most people believe. Meles will probably resign within two years and be replaced by a party loyalist who will continue his domestic, economic and foreign policies.
* Stepping down mid-term would raise interesting questions. The EPRDF is made up of four parties, each representing one of Ethiopia’s biggest ethnicities. The Tigryan ethnic group — of which Meles is a member — make up only 6 percent of the population but dominate the country’s political and military establishment. With Meles gone, the ethnic Amharas — who have traditionally made up the Ethiopian elite — will argue one of their party members should take over. The country’s most populous ethnic group, the Oromos, who have never held power, will offer a compromise candidate.
* Bearing this ethnic tension in mind, the most important task for whoever takes over will be maintaining party unity. If the ruling party broke up, Ethiopia’s future would become uncertain and investors and the international community may worry.
MELES SERVES ANOTHER 5-YEAR TERM, RUNS AGAIN?
* Some Ethiopians are claiming Meles saying he wants to resign is a ruse to make him appear more democratic than he is. If he vacates the top chair, he would be the first Ethiopian leader in modern history not to have been violently overthrown.
* But most analysts say the much-repeated intention is probably genuine. Meles is unlikely to serve another five years and even less likely to ever run again beyond that. If he were to continue indefinitely, opposition would grow and some may seek to overthrow the EPRDF.
A group of 32 mostly former and serving military officers are on trial in Addis Ababa accused of attempting to oust Meles.
* If he gives up power soon, analysts say he will leave a legacy of economic progress and improved relations with the West, marred by accusations of human rights abuses.
Oslo, Norway – The world’s greatest women’s distance runners Tirunesh Dibaba and Meseret Defar, the ‘Duelling D’s’ of Ethiopia will clash over 5000m at the ExxonMobil Bislett Games in Oslo, Norway, on Friday 3 July, the second leg of the six meeting ÅF Golden League.
These two great Ethiopians rivals have agreed to compete against each other in the stadium where both have tasted victory and broken the World record for 5000m.
Bislett Backdrop
15 June 2007: Meseret Defar demolishes the previous World record by nearly 8 seconds with a time of 14.16.63
6 June 2008: Tirunesh Dibaba destroys Defar’s World record by 5 seconds with a time of 14.11.15, a time which stands as the existing World standard.
In the meantime Defar has lowered her personal best to 14.12.88 (22 July 2008 Stockholm).
Defar holds the 5000m ‘head to head’ edge
Over 5000m these two athletes have raced 23 times (finals only) since their first meeting in the World Junior Championships of 2002 when Defar became champion ahead of Dibaba. Defar holds the edge over Dibaba finishing ahead on 12 occasions to her compatriots 11 successes.
In the 2004 Olympic 5000m final, Defar won the title with Dibaba in bronze, but these positions were reversed in Beijing last summer when Dibaba completed an historic Olympic distance running double by also taking the 10,000m title. Dibaba took the World 5000m title in 2003 and 2005 on the latter occasion with Defar in silver medal position, who in turn took the gold in Osaka.
Cheruiyot and Melkamu to challenge
This year’s Bislett 5000m could be the best women’s 5000m race ever assembled with a new World record again a possibility as Defar and Dibaba will not be racing alone.
A huge challenge will be offered by Kenyan Vivian Cheruiyot, the World silver medallist and the third fastest 5000m runner in history behind these two Ethiopians. Incidentally her national record of 14:22.51 was set when she finished second behind Defar in Oslo in 2007.
Meselech Melkamu of Ethiopia, who set the African record over 10,000m on 27 May this year in Utrecht, will also offer the highest calibre of opposition. Melkamu’s time of 29:53.80 now makes her the second quickest over 10,000m in history, and on this form her 5000m PB of 14:33.83 (2007) is certainly set for revision in Bislett.
Oslo, Norway – The world’s greatest women’s distance runners Tirunesh Dibaba and Meseret Defar, the ‘Duelling D’s’ of Ethiopia will clash over 5000m at the ExxonMobil Bislett Games in Oslo, Norway, on Friday 3 July, the second leg of the six meeting ÅF Golden League.