By Messay Kebede
I announce the publication of my new book titled Radicalism and Cultural Dislocation in Ethiopia, 1960-1974.
Published by the University of Rochester Press, the book starts from the premise of a deceived expectation, from the distressing realization of a promise that seems to have vanished altogether.
Indeed, who can deny that a lot was going for Ethiopia? The country had an ancient and sophisticated civilization led by a landed ruling class that had greatly expanded its resources and foiled colonial incursions while showing a rising appetite for wealth. Yet what many observers had saluted as the Japan of Africa quickly went off the track of sustained modernization; worse yet, the country plunged in the turmoil of a radical revolution in the mid 70s that brought about economic regression and political instability. The setback resulted in massive periodical famines, civil wars, and ethnic conflicts whose apex was the secession of Eritrea.
The book focuses on the prime agent of the revolutionary upheaval that derailed the course of Ethiopia’s modernization, namely, the Ethiopian student movement. Most remarkable about the movement was that a great number of Ethiopian students and intellectuals had espoused the most dogmatic version of Marxism-Leninist ideology, with the consequence that they had become a highly polarizing force. And as John Henrik Clarke puts it, “When a people are not too sure about who they are loyal to and what their commitments are, they represent a danger within the cultural mainstream of their society.”
The book discusses the reasons why a majority of Ethiopian students and intellectuals adopted the ideology of Marxism-Leninism during the 60s and early 70s with a fanatic fervor. This radicalization of the educated elite is crucial to the understanding of Ethiopia’s uninterrupted political crises and economic setbacks since the Revolution of 1974. Students and intellectuals were the leading force in the uprising against the regime of Emperor Haile Selassie. The radicalization of the military junta, known as the Derg––which seized power and ruled the country for 17 years––was also the handiwork of students and intellectuals. Likewise, the ethnonationalist movements that brought down the Derg in 1992 are products of the Ethiopian student movement.
While acknowledging the frustrating impact of Haile Selassie’s economic and political failures, the book argues that the radical orientation of students and intellectuals has its roots in the encounter of an uprooting education entirely copied from the West with a cultural legacy prone to messianic escapades. Even as the imported education was undermining the legacy, the Marxist-Leninist ideology emerged both as the most consistent form of Westernization and the most alluring substitute for the messianic longing.
The book is original because it develops a multifarious approach to study the progressive radicalization of Ethiopian students. Notably, arguing that the socioeconomic shortcomings of the imperial regime are not enough to explain the radicalization, it highlights the role of cultural factors. Among the cultural factors, besides emphasizing the alienating impact of Western education that the imperial regime encouraged to the detriment of the traditional culture and the radicalizing elements specific to the traditional culture, the book adds the influence of “the culture of revolution” characteristic of the 60s and early 70s as a result of the global hegemony of Marxism-Leninism.
Another theoretical and methodological originality of the book is that the analysis of the uprooting impact of Western education perfectly articulates with the other radicalizing elements. The book shows that the contrast between Western and traditional societies, as conveyed by the Eurocentric reading of history and the subsequent method of taking the West as a normative reference, activates a revolutionary predisposition. It then elucidates how native and international factors join and strengthen the rupture opened by the educational system.
The major significance of the book is but obvious. In involving cultural factors, the book provides a detailed and concrete assessment of the impact of Western education on traditional cultures. As such, the study has a direct relevance to other African countries in that it puts the finger on the main obstacle holding back their modernization and economic development. Given that Ethiopia has not been colonized, the pernicious radicalization of its educated elite demonstrates that the effect of cultural colonization is more lasting and damaging than direct political colonization. It follows that the issue of African modernization is as much, if not more, about recapturing cultural autonomy as it is about applying the right socioeconomic changes.
(Prof. Messay Kebede, [email protected])
Press Statement
Robert Wood, Deputy Spokesman
The United States welcomes the exchange of Ambassadors between the Governments of Chad and Sudan on November 10. This is a crucial step towards bringing peace and stability to the region and resolving the conflict in Darfur. We commend the efforts on the part of the Government of Libya to facilitate this exchange. We encourage Chad and Sudan to continue to improve relations and cease support for rebels operating along the Chad/Sudan border. We strongly support the efforts of the Dakar Agreement Contact Group and look forward to the results of its next meeting scheduled for November 15 in N’Djamena.
We continue to encourage the Government of Sudan to support full deployment of the UN/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). The United States remains committed to reaching a resolution to the conflict in Darfur, ameliorating the humanitarian suffering in both Darfur and eastern Chad, and restoring stability in the region.
Released on November 13, 2008
GENEVA (AFP) — The United Nations anti-torture watchdog called Thursday on the Kenyan authorities to shed light on the violence that erupted between the end of 2007 and start of 2008 and to ensure those responsible faced justice.
The Geneva-based Committee Against Torture (CAT) said that complaints against police officers should be treated with the utmost seriousness to avoid promoting impunity.
This was particularly evident in respect of violence against women, according to experts quoted by the report.
According to Wang Xuexian, co-rapporteur for the Kenyan report, 405 people died from police violence in post-election unrest. Women and girls were the victims of widespread violence at the hands of the police, including gang rapes.
According to reports from human rights bodies, “in the court cases alleging torture raised directly with magistrates, no action was taken on 80 percent of those cases.”
Rapporteur Nora Sveaass said that 11 years after Kenya had ratified the UN convention against torture there was no definition of torture that conformed to that of the convention in Kenyan law.
That prevented criminal prosecution and risked favouring impunity. A further concern was the fact that psychological and mental suffering resulting from torture was not covered at all in Kenyan law, Sveaass said.
Kenyan Justice Minister Martha Karua said that the security forces had been obliged to act against armed criminal bands.
The post-election violence led to 1,500 deaths and the displacement of some 300,000 people. It followed the refusal by the Kenyan opposition to accept the reelection of President Mwai Kibaki, whom it accused of stealing the election.
The Kenyan government has set up two inquiries, one into the violence, the other into the election.
Jon Lee Anderson | The New Yorker
NINE hundred years ago, at a site on a high plateau north of the Limpopo River called Great Zimbabwe, Shona kings built stone palaces where they lived in splendid isolation from their subjects, with absolute authority over their means to sustain life—cattle herds, land, and the gold that came out of the earth.
In the nineteen-sixties, members of a liberation movement in what was then Rhodesia, among them Robert Mugabe, adopted Great Zimbabwe’s name to refer to the notional state they were fighting for.
Today, Mugabe can be said to be the owner of the riches that remain in the nation of Zimbabwe. After twenty-eight years, he remains in power––Zimbabwe’s only President since the end of whiteminority rule, in 1980. His nephew Leo, therefore, leads a cushioned life. He is an entrepreneur and has stakes in several companies, among them a mobile-phone network. He is a director of Zimbabwe Defense Industries, which purchases the weaponry for his uncle’s Army—most of it, these days, from China.
He also controls at least one large farm that had been seized from its white owners. In the nineties, Leo earned notoriety for his alleged role in securing kickbacks, on behalf of his uncle and other officials, in the construction of Harare International Airport. In 2005, he was arrested for the contraband export and sale of government-owned food, but the charges were withdrawn for lack of evidence. (Leo said the allegations in both cases were unfounded.) That year, he was a candidate for Parliament for the Zimbabwe African National UnionPatriotic Front, known as ZANU-P.F., the ruling party. He won in a landslide.
Earlier this year, Leo was added to a sanctions list first imposed by the United States in 2003 against Robert Mugabe and members of his government. The sanctions included a travel ban and the freezing of foreign assets, and also prohibit Americans from doing business with those on the list. Leo was also named on a sanctions list maintained by the European Union, for his arms-dealing activities. The new sanctions came in response to a wave of terror that Robert Mugabe had unleashed in the country’s Presidential campaign. More than a hundred and fifty opposition supporters were murdered, many were raped, and thousands of people were beaten or tortured, often after being herded into so-called reëducation camps.
Because of the violence, Mugabe’s rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, whose Movement for Democratic Change, or M.D.C., had won a slender majority in the country’s first round of voting in March, dropped out of the race and went into hiding. In the runoff vote on June 27th, Mugabe was unopposed and was quickly declared the winner.
Leo Mugabe works from an office building he owns in Harare, where I met him this summer. His brand-new silver Toyota Land Cruiser Amazon was parked outside. He is a slim, goateed man of fifty-one, and was dressed in a dark tailored suit. On the wall behind his desk hung a map of Zimbabwe made out of a patchwork of animal skins. His secretary, a young woman wearing a tight skirt and jacket, very high heels, and a great deal of jewelry, sat down with us. Her hair was arranged in red-dyed cornrows, and as Leo spoke she scribbled everything down on a notepad, expressing approval whenever he made a point, like a personal cheerleader. He was in a good mood, emanating confidence and optimism over Zimbabwe’s future.
“Have you seen anyone beaten up since you’ve been here?” he asked. “There was less violence here than in Nigeria! And we all know why Zimbabwe’s violence is being exaggerated—it’s about the fortune in the land. We have certain resources here, such as nickel, gold, and platinum. I think Zimbabweans now understand that they are suffering because of sanctions by the United States, Great Britain, and the Europeans.” Otherwise, Zimbabwe’s prospects were excellent—his uncle had been distributing computers to rural schools, for example. “In a few years, rural Zimbabwe will be computer-literate. We are a nation which is moving, and these children will understand what empowerment really means.”
That week, however, the inflation rate in Zimbabwe had officially reached eleven million per cent, the highest in the world; analysts later reckoned it to have been two hundred and thirty million per cent. Eighty per cent of Zimbabweans were out of work. Chronic malnutrition was prevalent, and starvation was spreading in the countryside. Close to two million Zimbabweans depended for survival on food handouts from international aid agencies. Twenty per cent of the population was infected with H.I.V./AIDS.
Zimbabwe’s life expectancy is forty-four years for men, forty-three for women. But Leo Mugabe scoffed at the idea that the situation was dire. “People are going about their business,” he said. “No one is starving—they are driving nice cars! As a Christian, though, I think it is a challenge by God, and the attention being drawn to Zimbabwe is maybe to highlight that we are the new people of Israel, and that we have our own Moses.” I understood “Moses” to be his uncle. His secretary greeted the analogy with an exclamation of delight.
Under Robert Mugabe’s leadership, in 2000 his most militant supporters—many of them veterans of the seventies civil war—began forcibly occupying the country’s five thousand white-owned commercial farms, with the help of armed gangs and, frequently, ZANU-P.F. officials. By almost all accounts, these actions precipitated the country’s economic decline. Leo disagreed. “We have no regrets—he has none, and I have none,” he said.
“We have taken the land,” Leo went on. “So what is the next move? The next move is the mines, the minerals. We know we are very rich—without the British or the Americans. Yes, they invested, but if we have to we will go and take over the mines, too.” Zimbabwe has the world’s second-largest platinum reserves and is relatively rich in other minerals. The country’s mining industry accounts for some forty per cent of its export income. In 2006, Robert Mugabe threatened to nationalize the mines by assigning Zimbabwe a controlling fifty-one-per-cent stake in them. Negotiations with the mine owners, which include South Africa’s Implats and Anglo Platinum, and the United Kingdom’s Rio Tinto, have dragged on ever since.
“Rio Tinto can stay there in London, but their mines and their equipment will stay here. Is that what they want? Because that’s where they are headed,” Leo said. “We can give the mines to the black Zimbabweans, the people who work them now,” he added. “We are not going to go back on the land issue, and the wealth that lies underneath the land will remain ours, too.”
Jon Lee Anderson works for The New Yorker, where this article was first published.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The people of Ethiopia will stand with the Eritrean army if the Woyanne regime starts another one. Meles Zenawi’s tribalists junta will find that out.
By France 24
Every morning these Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers inspect the road which connects the town of Badme to the rest of the country. They fear commandos sent by neighboring Eritrea may have hidden land-mines. The threat is real: a few weeks ago three civilians died as their car was blown-up by an anti-tank mine.
Since the withdrawal in July of the United Nation’s Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, the two countries’ armies find themselves in a dangerous face-off. The memory of the 1998-2000 war, which caused the death of about 80,000 150,000 people, is still on everyone’s mind.
Checkpoints, roadblocks, vehicles systematically searched: the Ethiopian Woyanne army is everywhere in Badme. And this despite a UN Boundary Commission’s ruling that Badme belongs to Eritrea. In Badme it is still the Ethiopian Woyanne flag adorning the top of official buildings.
For the local authorities there’s no question: this was and will always be Ethiopia. Tilahun Guebremedhin, President of the Badme district council says: “For all times, Badme has been Ethiopian. It has a massive significance for us Ethiopians Woyannes; it is the symbol of the integrity of our country.”
“I would rather die than to see a portion of my land going to the other side.” [What did you do when Woyanne gave land to Sudan?] The wounds left by the Eritrean occupation are still on everyone’s minds. Many lost a relative or a friend during the surprise attack led by the troops of Asmara in 1998. Many here are afraid of another war, yet they openly back up their army.
Mamite Guebresarkan, a farmer says: “Of course I’m worried. They conduct frequent infiltration missions here. But whatever happens we will remain here, it is our land, our country. Victorious or not we’ll live and die here.”
Negussa Guebreselassie, farmer and member of an Ethiopian a Woyanne militia, says: “We always expect the war to start again. During the war my wife was shot by Eritrean soldiers. She suffered a lot and it was very difficult to have her treated.”
By the time the UN local mission ended its operation here more than six months ago, it no longer had the means to keep up with its peacekeeping initiative: the Eritrean authorities were doing all they could to hinder its action. And despite what it had declared, Ethiopia Woyanne was refusing to acknowledge the new borders. Despite the fact that ten thousand residents before the war now only number 4,000, Badme has resigned itself to endure another war.
Letay Kidane, a shopkeeper [and Woyanne cadre], says: “It’s good if the border problem is solved through a peaceful dialogue. Otherwise, I myself will support and help our soldiers up to the frontline.”
People are psychologically gearing up for war. An entire division of the Ethiopian Woyanne Army has taken position in a nearby fortified hill… Only a few kilometers away, the Eritrean Army is waiting.
