Current Ethiopian political leaders can learn a lot from Atse HaileSelassie.

By Prof. HG Marcus

Much has been written about HaileSelassie’s style of political leadership. We have been told about his ability to balance various courtly factions, and about the “capacious bins of memory,” which the emperor used for reference. We have been regaled about his charisma, his charm, his modesty, and his invariable good intentions. In his guise as a novelist, Bereket HabteSelassie has given us an insider’s view of HaileSelassie’s effective use of anger. Such personal characteristics would not, however, impress those leftist oriented radi­cals who viewed the emperor’s exercise of power as stemming from the country’s political economy and its objective conditions. They disregarded any notion of the person making history, since, for them, the correct line has it the other way around.

Yet, HaileSelassie as emperor was a palpable presence for Ethiopians of all kinds. They believed that they had a personal relationship with him, even if they disliked his policies and government. In the countryside, many peasants identified the emperor as their personal monarch, just as they believed they had a relationship with God. Practically to the end of his rule in September 1974, the emperor retained the support of the countryperson and the urban dwellers. The Derg self-consciously had to undermine his reputation and tar­nish his charisma before he could be deposed. How was Haile Selassie able to hold the allegiance of his varied subjects; how did he establish so many connections to his people; why did so many of them regard their association with the monarch as private?

Many Ethiopians have a Haile Sellassie story to tell because the emperor was active and energetic. Never the captive of the gibbi or his people, he was always on the move in the capital or the countryside. He was therefore seen and was accessible to his subjects. In this sense, he touched the people and he listened directly to complaints against his officials and to denunciations of government policies. In a more formal sense, he acted as the country’s su­preme court in the zufan chilot, where he exercised his prerogative to provide justice in difficult cases. Even the humblest person had the right to petition the monarch and to seek redress for wrongs. Doubtless the emperor saw many of his representational activities within the stylized paternalism so characteristic of his reign. At the same time, one wonder if he had an astute sense of modem public relations. However one explains his behavior, HaileSelassie was a hands-on leader who preferred to be seen.

During his exile in Europe, 1936-41, he wanted to be seen and heard and took every opportunity to travel and to show himself as the unbowed emperor of an Ethiopia that continued the anti-fascist struggle. When Italy entered the war in 1941 on the side of the Axis, Prime Minister Churchill had HaileSelassie transported to Sudan to help prepare an Ethiopian army for a combined opera­tion against Italian East Africa. On arrival in Khartoum, he sent a message to the British people repeating his long-standing refrain that “Our people have never ceased to struggle… The country has NOT been defeated by Italy.” As for himself, “I have not abdicated my throne and… my old coronation name.” In a separate broadcast, the emperor advised Ethiopians to fight harder against the enemy and urged Eritreans to abandon their colonial masters: “Do not fight your Mother Ethiopia…! know the wishes of your hearts. It is the wish of the rest of the Ethiopian people as well. Your fate is tied to the rest of the Ethiopians.” While in the Sudan, 26 June 1940 until 21 January 1941, HaileSelassie surrounded himself with Ethiopians, great and small, and was seen daily by the men of Gideon Force, being trained by British, Jewish Palestinian and Ethiopian of­ficers under the command of the idiosyncratic General Orde Wingate.

Throughout the campaign against the Italians, he was always in evidence. On the difficult road from the lowlands border region to Gojam’s high plateau, the emperor joined in the hard work of his soldiers in constructing the road, cutting trees and leveling the ground. He was delighted finally to arrive in Beleya on 6 February 1941, where he was “welcomed… in a heartwarming manner with songs and cheering.” Only in Debre Markos, on Sunday, 6 April, did HaileSelassie know that Ethiopians regarded him as their once and future sovereign. The irascible Ras Hailu — to be sure in the uniform of an Italian general — was there to welcome him and to recognize his suzerainty, “along with many [other] collaborators”; and the emperor received the homage of a congeries of patriot leaders, among them Lij Yohannes, the son of the uncrowned emperor lyasu, deposed in 1916 and dead in mysterious circumstances in 1936. More important, he was “welcomed tumultuously by chanting men, ululat­ing women, and cheering patriots.” Ever the conciliator, the emperor advised his people “not to create anarchy and chaos by incriminating each other, using acrimonious labels such as shifta and banda.” HaileSelassie ordered a unity feast drawn from captured Italian stocks of food and drink. The next day the emperor received ever increasing numbers of fighters, who paraded in front of their sovereign, recounting their exploits.

En route to Addis Abeba, the emperor stopped at Debre Libanos, where fascist troops had destroyed and looted the monastery and killed the monks; and at nearby Fiche, where Dejazmach Aberra Kassa and his brothers had been ex­ecuted and buried. After these visible gestures to the political and religious order, HaileSelassie went on to Addis Abeba, which he entered 5 May 1941, exactly on the fifth anniversary of his flight into exile. As he came down from Entotto Mariam, where he had attended a service of thanksgiving, over 100,000 Ethiopians were on the streets to welcome their monarch. Order was main­tained by Ras Abebe Aregai’s armed patriots and Commonwealth soldiers. HaileSelassie delivered an eloquent speech at Menilek’s Grand Palace, then as now Ethiopia’s locus of power and, surrounded by his subjects, slowly made his way to the Genet Leul Palace, his residence. The next day, he presided over a huge parade marshaled by Ras Abebe, who introduced the sovereign to the main patriot leaders.

The emperor’s theme throughout his exile and his return was the survival of Ethiopia’s independence and his sovereignty. Throughout 1941 and 1942, he was determined to avoid any suggestion of British suzerainty in Ethiopia. On 10 May 1941, he named a seven-person cabinet, which made him unpopu­lar with the so-called Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA). In June and July, the emperor continued to ignore the British military by assigning “his own men” to the provinces, placing “political expediency” before “administra­tive desiderata,” as the arch-colonialist General Sir Philip Mitchell put it. At least one high-ranking officer regarded HaileSelassie’s maneuvers as justifi­able: “[the] emperor never made peace with [the] Italians nor recognized [their] conquest. We found some of his forces still in the field from 1935. He and [the] patriots took [a] prominent and active part in [the] conquest.” Their rights to sovereignty, he found, were probably better than British claims to jurisdiction, since the Ethiopians had “never surrendered… independence,” whereas Lon­don had recognized Italian East Africa in 1938. Nevertheless, the OETA tried to retain authority over Tigray by dealing directly with Ras Seyoum and Dejazmach HaileSelassie Gugsa, the notorious traitor. The British sought to keep the emperor from traveling to Harer and the Ogaden. They it tried to evacuate all Italian personnel to Europe, even those necessary to ruin the modem infrastructure built by the fascists. The British also it took all war booty without any regard for the role of the Ethio­pian patriots in the war.

The emperor was furious, especially about the insult to the patriots and to the loss of materials necessary to rebuild the economy. Many years later, in the final chapter of volume II of his memoir, My Life and Ethiopia’s Progress, he railed that the British “broadcast over the radio their victories and the amount of booty they captured [but] did not mention the names of Our patriots.” He criticized the British command as racist: they “took all the [captured] military equipment… openly and boldly saying it should not be left for the service of blacks.” They acted as if they would retain Eritrea as a permanent colony, and, in the emperor’s view, British activities in the Ogaden and in southern Ethiopia “divided Our people and made the government hated.” Yet, he was content to call upon them for air power and advice when he needed to put down a rebel­lion in Tigray. Above all, HaileSelassie was a pragmatic politician who did what was necessary to retain power and authority.

During 1942, he promulgated important legislation which consolidated and subsequently characterized his regime. For the time, the laws were interventionist and progressive, giving substance to the emperor’s war-time promise to his people that: “We will improve and perfect the system of Our government. The administration of Our country will be replaced by a new and civilized one.” The new laws came thick and fast throughout 1942: courts were estab­lished, taxes set, enemy property was classified, officials named, export con­trols were implemented, the legal status of slavery abolished, new institutions set up, currency and specie regulated, licensing promulgated, the duties of ministers were defined, and provincial administrative regulations gazetted. The last piece of legislation revealed the activism and aims of the emperor. It made the provincial governor an employee of the central government, nominated by the emperor but responsible to the Minister of the Interior, who had sent his name forward. The governor was to reside in his own capital and send in monthly reports on the state of his administration. He could recom­mend subordinate officials to the emperor, who in turn would name them. The governor would make expenditures only with the authorization of the province’s director, an imperial appointee, who also controlled the principal secretary and his staff. The emperor had the power to make all judicial assignments and to select a provincial military commander. Thus, HaileSelassie effectively centralized provincial power, completing a process that had moved in fits and starts before the war. Never again would any Addis Abeba government be threat­ened by a provincial figure, however powerful.

Immediately at the beginning of 1943, through “An Order to Define the Powers and Duties of Our Ministers,” the emperor imposed the same kind of dominance over the central government. The decree established a council of ministers “under Our presidency… [to] advise Us on matters of State.” All min­isters had to “take an oath of allegiance tendered by Us,” and they were unable to dispose funds until approved “by Us and the Council of Ministers.” The council’s secretariat was placed under “the direction and supervision of Our minister of Pen,” the official closest to the crown, then the devoted WoldeGiorgis WoldeYohannes. The Minister of Pen was not only the dynasty’s official chroni­cler and guardian of all important state documents, but he also coordinated the government’s work through regulating the flow of proclamations, decrees, and official documents; counter-signing monetary and other orders; supervising information services, the government press, and the imperial court; and head­ing the imperial auditing service. The minister uniquely had the official au­thority to communicate directly “with all officials in Our service.” Thus the minister of pen was the emperor’s major-domo, working with full authority to keep the central government under the crown’s control.

Besides ensuring Ethiopia’s national status and his primacy within it, the emperor worked assiduously to ensure his subjects’ loyalty and to instill in them patriotism and nationalism. On a visit to Teferi Makonnen school in late 1943, he told the students that the country awaited their contribution to its future prosperity. Speaking at the Officers Club in Addis Abeba, Haile Sellassie admonished his cheering audience always to consider their motto, ‘For the Honour of the King and the love of the Nation.” In March 1944, he advised parliamentarians going on recess to tell their constituents that the constitution of 1931 had undermined feudalism and allowed them to participate in all lev­els of government. He asked the lawmakers to inform the populace that “We are thinking of their prosperity and well-being. Let them know We are doing everything possible to guide them on the right path.”

Often Haile Sellassie would himself inform the people of his thoughts and plans. In early March 1944, he set off for Jima, with lengthy stops en route. The people fought to see him, and members of his bodyguard had “to make a cordon to keep off excited throngs who threatened to climb all over his car.” In Jima, the emperor reported that the centralization of government would help to maintain the development which “the highly financed Italian administration had undertaken.” He saw importance in the fact that Addis Abeba controlled the province’s appointees; that its governor operated within clearly defined rules and regulations, “especially in matters of finance, which are now cen­trally administered.” Finally, Haile Sellassie crossed the bridge across the Gojeb river, becoming the first emperor in 300 years to set foot in Kefa. There he gave traditional petitioners, “who spoke quite openly before him,” the oppor­tunity to seek his intervention. Throughout his visit to Jima and Kefa, the emperor moved quickly: “it was obvious that quite a number of people had difficulty keeping up with him.”

HaileSelassie knew the importance of appearing to be everywhere, doing everything. In late March 1944, he witnessed many events at the Army Sports Week, distributing medals daily and providing short homilies about the good­ness of physical fitness. On 5 May 1944, the emperor opened the National Library and said, “As we celebrate the liberation of Our people [the 3rd anni­versary of his return to Addis Abeba], We lay the foundations for the liberation of their minds.” A few days later, he went to the Imperial Race Course, where he was not only the patron but also a winner. On 23 May, the monarch mo­tored to Debre Birhan to dedicate a water fountain. He pointed out that, whereas the materials were Ethiopian, the work was not. He strongly advised the people to send their children to school “to leam something to help the country.” Then the emperor left for a week in Gojam, but was back in Addis Abeba on 29 May, to witness the country’s soccer finals and to give the first prize to a British army team. He was a busy monarch who, at this time in his reign, engaged his people in every possible way. It was no fluke that shortly before his deposition in September 1974, only thirty years after the period with which this essay is concerned, he went to Addis Abeba’s merkato to be seen by and to talk to his people. Ethiopia’s subsequent rulers had neither the confidence of the people nor the security of their convictions to interact so freely with their countrymen. Given Ethiopia’s current social development, perhaps the country once again needs a hands-on leader.
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The late Professor Harold G. Marcus wrote this article for 12th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies.

By Shiomi Kadoya, Yomiuri Shimbun

JOHANNESBURG – Two aid workers, believed to be a Japanese woman and a Dutchman, working for the nongovernmental organization Medecins du Monde, were abducted Monday afternoon in the eastern region of Ethiopia, the group said Wednesday.

An armed gang is suspected to have kidnapped the two in the Ogaden region, which is close to the Somali border, while they were working. They are believed to have been taken to the central part of Somalia.

An administrator in Somalia’s central area sent security officials to a village there “to investigate an alleged sighting of a sport-utility vehicle with armed men and two white people, but the vehicle had left by the time they arrived,” according to an AP report.

The Paris-based aid group, which has been operating in the Ogaden region, has set up an emergency team.

The group said it is in close contact with the relevant authorities and is trying to help secure the pair’s release.

By Ewen MacAskill
The Guardian

A video has emerged showing Sarah Palin playing a central role in a church service in Alaska in which witchcraft is denounced.

Thomas Muthee, a Kenyan who is a regular preacher at Palin’s local Pentecostal church in Wasilla, made a passionate plea to defeat witchcraft and other supposed enemies of Palin during a sermon three years ago.

The role of the witchfinder in the life of the vice-presidential candidate running mate raises new questions about how much his team investigated her background before naming her as John McCain’s running mate.

The video below shows Palin standing in front of him at the service, head bowed, her hands held by two members of the congregation.

Muthee, in the sermon, calls on church members to try to gain footholds in centres of influence, such as politics and the media, and praises Palin for her bid to become governor of Alaska. He spoke about the hindrances she faced from her enemies. “In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, every form of witchcraft is what you rebuke. In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, father make away now,” Muthee said.

In a video that emerged last week Palin, in a speech to the church on June 8, thanked Muthee for his help in getting her elected governor. She said his invocation was “very, very powerful”.

The Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, faced weeks of damaging reports this year over links to controversial Chicago pastor Jeremiah Wright, who was accused of being unpatriotic. The links between Palin and Muthee have the potential to damage her.

The Christian Science Monitor reported that Muthee, while in Kenya, led a campaign to find the source of alleged witchcraft after a series of fatal car accidents in Kiambu. He blamed a local woman called Mama Jane, who is reported to have been forced to leave.

Muthee, in a promotional video, said: “We prayed, we fasted, the lord showed us a spirit of witchcraft over the place.”

McCain’s team has largely kept Palin away from the media. But she faces a debate with her opposite number, Joe Biden, next week.

In this video Ethiopian fashion model Gelila Bekele brings viewers into her kitchen for a look at different ways to care for your skin and hair using all natural ingredients from the pantry.

By SUSAN STEVENOT SULLIVAN
Special to The Georgia Bulletin

Like so many villagers from Kufansik, these young girls are beneficiaries of the developmental water project sponsored by CRS (Catholic Relief Services), USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) and the Ethiopian Catholic Church.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia—Groggy from 24 hours of travel, I step outside into cool twilight in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. My nostrils fill with the pungent scent of what I learn are hundreds of small eucalyptus-fed cooking fires; my eyes fill with a crowd of people jamming the pedestrian entrance to the airport parking lot, praying, greeting, disputing, waiting or picking a path through visitors and vehicles.

Much of the language is unfamiliar to me. There are dozens of cultural groups and 12 official languages in this ancient country, which counts the Bible’s Queen of Sheba among its rulers and the oldest evidence of human life among its treasures.

Once in the hotel van, I peer over the driver’s shoulder to glimpse dissolving silhouettes of tall buildings and a ring of distant purple mountains, but it is what the headlights reveal in our stop-and-go progress that rivets my attention.

With few streetlights, the headlights become spotlights on an urban stage, illuminating people standing, crouching and reclining along the dusty streets as darkness falls. For a moment the beams pick out two women, covered head to toe in pale fabric, sitting side by side, their arms locked around each other, their faces buried in each other’s necks in a way that speaks of desperation and grief.

The morning light, and days of travel within Ethiopia, further illuminate the rich diversity and stark contrasts of this historic African country, where skinny sheep and goats crop bits of grass along the streets of the capital while, nearby, machine-gun carrying federal police stand guard on the verdantly overgrown perimeter of the presidential palace.

A boy stands in front of one of the characteristic mud houses found in the village of Kufansik. (Photos By Susan Stevenot Sullivan/Archdiocese of Atlanta)

A week in Ethiopia with a Catholic Relief Services (CRS) advocacy delegation becomes a baptism in the complex framework of resources and challenges which can mean life or death for families and communities. Beyond the sacramental sign is the stark reality that, for many Ethiopians, life or death is about water.

In the highland areas outside Dire Dawa, the country’s second largest city, the villagers of Kufansik gather to share dance, song, food and individual testimony about new life made possible by participation in a multifaceted development project sponsored by CRS, the Hararghe Catholic Secretariat and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). A village elder holds high a bottle of murky, algae-garnished water in one hand and a bottle of safe, clear water in the other—evidence of the transformation.

The dramatic highland vistas are steep, so torrents from two annual rainy seasons cascade down the slopes, eroding the soil and causing deadly floods in more densely populated lowland areas miles away. Terracing the slopes with local stones slows the runoff, allowing the moisture to sink in and benefit crops and shrubs, which further slows the erosion and retains more moisture.

A well, drilled years ago for Kersa Woreda, was designed so that water could be pumped to a site above Kufansik and then flow by gravity to common spigots. According to Bekele Abaire, CRS program manager for water and sanitation in Ethiopia, over the years the “recharging” of ground water due to terracing and land management has tripled the volume of water coming through the wellhead. The increased capacity has meant other villages could be added to the project, which includes education in sanitation practices, such as family latrine pits destined to become planting sites for fast-growing trees. Today, more than 27,000 people depend on this system for life-giving water.

The villagers of Kufansik testify to the benefits of these development initiatives in terms of healthy children, thriving livestock, and more food security through their ability to adequately feed their families and increase their resilience to rainfall variations which previously meant disaster.

This is critical in a country where most people live in rural areas on what they can grow from inadequate plots of ground. Ethiopia has one of the shortest life expectancies in the world at 46 years. More than half of Ethiopia’s children are stunted by inadequate nutrition; 600 die each day of hunger and preventable disease. In rural areas, 80 percent of residents have no access to safe water. Famine is an historic and contemporary reality and illiteracy limits livelihood for more than 80 percent of women and 60 percent of men.

So the bright baskets of Kufansik, piled with the national flatbread “injera” and heaps of juicy fruit, washed down with cups of rich milk by visitors, are not only a form of generous hospitality, but further evidence of new life and hope. Such transformation is possible when short-term emergency assistance is paired with long-term development projects and partnerships that reach from villages in Africa, through networks such as CRS, to neighbors in the United States.

Six of the 75-member CRS Ethiopian program staff stand in a conference room at their headquarters in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia.

During 50 years of work by CRS in Ethiopia, the same development principles have been used in the sandy, arid regions south of Dire Dawa, home to pastoralists seeking graze for their goats and sheep. Camels, and sometimes people, loaded with firewood and other goods for market are a common sight in this rugged, rocky terrain. Overgrazing accelerates the erosion and desiccation of the soil. Terracing and fencing off watershed and crop areas with thorny acacia branches allows the soil moisture to rebuild.

As visitors approach the village of Legedini and its development projects, taller trees, thicker scrub and patches of grass clothe the hills with life-giving green. A deep pond comes into view, its banks alive with sleek sheep, goats, donkeys and even cattle, slaking their thirst under the eyes of youthful herders.

Interconnected projects, addressing everything from water and soil management to seed, health and homemaking, have transformed life for the people of Legedini.

Nuria Umere confidently gives a tour of her neatly organized, one-room, stone and earth home. A neighbor describes the seeds and techniques which resulted in extra food, which he sold to buy animals to fatten, which he then sold to buy new seed and put money in the bank for the future. Now, he says, he does not spend all day searching for wood for his wife to carry miles into town to sell for whatever she can get for it; now there is food, and his children go to school instead of hiking to carry water.

In Ethiopia, Catholics are less than 0.5 percent of the population, which is predominately Orthodox Christian and Muslim, yet the dioceses of the Ethiopian Catholic Church play an outsized role, partnering to save lives and increase food security and health. Bishops, such as Woldetensae Ghebreghiorgis of Harar, must navigate challenging political situations, interfaith and ecumenical considerations and all manner of logistical and resource challenges to support this prophetic work of love for God and neighbor. The program staff of CRS and the dioceses travel rough roads, reaching out time and again to forge and maintain relationships which make engineering and agricultural know-how yield potable water and consistent crops.

A woman from the village of Kufansik holds a bottle of murky water in her left hand, a sample of villagers’ only form of drinking water in the past. In her right hand she holds a bottle of the clean, safe drinking water available to them today. Kufansik is in the highlands outside of Dire Dawa, the country’s second largest city.

The future of such vital initiatives includes partnerships of concept as well as that of resources and national policy. Emergency aid, from such U.S. legislation as the Farm Bill and PEPFAR, must be paired with development aid; local survival and self-determination must be accompanied by national and international concern and respect; military initiatives must not muddy the waters of humanitarian assistance; religious differences must not obscure a common understanding of the value of human life and dignity. Government funds are vital, but so is support CRS receives from parishioners all over the United States.

There is hope and heartbreak in this beautiful and difficult country. Both are visible in the faces of the orphans, some of the 800 to 1,000 destitute and dying people finding refuge in the Missionaries of Charity’s compound in Addis Ababa, one of 17 MOC centers in this country. Despite horrifying ordeals, the children eagerly stretch their arms out to strangers, beaming.

Sister Benedicta, MOC superior in Ethiopia, gives visitors a holy card with a prayer in Amharic on one side and a traditional Ethiopian-style painting of the crucifixion on the other.

Under the outstretched arms of the crucified Christ can be seen, in English, “I thirst” and “I satiate.” In the streets of Addis Ababa the smoke from eucalyptus cooking fires rises like incense, a prayer for hope and help.

Susan Stevenot Sullivan, the director of Catholic Relief Services for the Archdiocese of Atlanta, visited Ethiopia with a CRS delegation in August. She is also diocesan director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, JustFaith, Justice for Immigrants and Parish Social Ministry for Catholic Charities.