ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — Ethiopia will by 2010 see a four-fold increase in the number of orphaned children aged between nine and 19 who are heading families due to AIDS, poverty and conflict, a local NGO said on Friday.
Some 225,000 households will be run by children, up from 77,000 in 2005, Addis Ababa-based African Child Policy Forum (ACPF) said in a report.
“This is going to be an explosive problem,” said Assefa Bequele, the agency’s director.
“In some households, the oldest child is also the principal care-giver to a terminally-ill parent,” said the report.
Ethiopia is one of the world’s poorest countries. The government estimates that 1.5 million Ethiopians are infected with HIV, while the World Health Organization says nearly 2.8 million are infected.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (APA) – The African Union Commission will hold a ground-breaking ceremony on Monday for the construction of its new conference centre and headquarters that will cost over $100 million.
China, currently involved in development activities in many African countries, is building this new center as part of its goodwill relations with Africa.
Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China chairperson Wu Bangguo, AU Commission chairperson Jean Ping and his deputy Erastus Mwencha, Ethiopia Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin and Addis Ababa mayor Kuma Demeksa will be among those invited to the ceremony.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – An Ethiopian rebel leader blamed for blasts in Addis Ababa was lured into a farmer’s house in the rural west and then shot dead, [Woyanne] authorities said on Friday.
[Dictator] Meles Zenawi’s government, the biggest U.S ally and military power in the turbulent Horn of Africa, faces a cluster of insurgency movements in its outer regions.
“Legesse Wegi, military commander and central committee member of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), and some of his followers were killed on Wednesday in Kelem district of the western Wellega region,” police said in a statement.
It said Legesse, whose OLF has fought for autonomy for the southern Oromo region since 1993, was behind 12 “terrorist” attacks and fatal bombs in Addis Ababa in the last few years.
“He was lured into the home of a farmer to eat food and was then killed by the locals in cooperation with security forces while he was trying to escape,” police said.
“Some of his followers were also killed, while some others surrendered to security forces, appealing for mercy,” the statement added, without giving more details.
There was no immediate confirmation from the OLF.
Earlier this week, Ethiopian Woyanne authorities paraded on TV more than a dozen people they said were captured OLF leaders.
Ethiopia Woyanne says the OLF and other groups are supported by neighbour Eritrea. Asmara denies that, saying Meles’s oppressive policies have sparked resistance movements.
A string of explosions have gone off in Ethiopia’s highland capital Addis Ababa in recent years, some killing several people at a time, others just causing damage.
(Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Giles Elgood)
Senator Barack Obama’s election as the forty-fourth President of the United States is, of course, a historic milestone in America. But it is also a major moment in African history as well. The president-elect’s unique personal history means that he is the first son of Africa in the diaspora to be entrusted with the leadership of any major power, much less the chief magistry of what is still the world’s political, military, economic, and cultural superpower. As I traveled in Africa over the course of the past year, the excitement of many Africans at the mere prospect of an Obama presidency was palpable. The spontaneous celebrations that broke out as word of the Democratic candidate’s victory spread across many parts of the continent, including in Kenya, the president-elect’s father was born on the shores of Lake Victoria and raised in the nearby village of Nyang’oma Kogelo in Nyanza Province, attest to the incredible emotional investment which many Africans have made in the contest and the attention with which they have followed its vicissitudes. What remains to be determined, however, is what role Africa will actually play in the foreign policy of President Obama and what approaches he might adopt in with respect to the continent.
As an Africanist who has used this column space for more than two years to make the case for Africa’s strategic significance to the United States, I was always convinced that the continent would have an increasing prominence irrespective of who succeeded George W. Bush. And while I had the honor of serving as the Africa advisor on Senator John McCain’s foreign policy and national security team during the campaign, I believe that, for reasons of national interests and domestic politics as well as his own personal history, the incoming commander-in-chief can likewise be expected not only to continue but to enhance America’s already extensive engagement with Africa.
The first is, in the context of the ongoing global war on terrorism, the necessity of preventing of Africa’s poorly governed spaces being exploited to provide facilitating environments, recruits, and eventual targets for Islamist terrorists. As the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America noted, “Weak states … can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states. Poverty does not make poor people into terrorists and murderers. Yet poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders.” With the possible exception of the Greater Middle East, nowhere did this analysis truer than Africa where, as the document went on to acknowledge, regional conflicts arising from a variety of causes, including poor governance, external aggression, competing claims, internal revolt, and ethnic and religious tensions all “lead to the same ends: failed states, humanitarian disasters, and ungoverned areas that can become safe havens for terrorists.” The attacks by al-Qaeda on the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, and on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and, simultaneously, on an Israeli commercial airliner in 2002 only underscore the deadly reality of the terrorist threat in Africa, as have the “rebranding” and increased activism and violence of the Algerian Islamist terrorist organization Salafist Group for Call and Combat (usually known by its French acronym GSPC) as “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” (AQIM) and the ongoing activities of al-Qaeda-linked Islamists in the territory of the former Somali Democratic Republic as well as the challenge of Somali piracy, which events like the September 25 heist of a Ukrainian-owned, Belizean-registered freighter, the MV Faina, which was carrying thirty-three refurbished Russian-made T-72 tanks and other armaments, have served to highlight (see the updated report this week by the Voice of America‘s André de Nesnera).
The second is protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance and promoting the integration of African nations into the global economy. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President Bush called for the United States to “replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025” and to “make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.” In 2007, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, African countries accounted for more of America’s petroleum imports than the states of the Persian Gulf region: 969,722,000 barrels (19.8 percent) versus 791,928,000 barrels (16.1 percent). Moreover, most of the petroleum from the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa is light or “sweet” crude, which is preferred by U.S. refiners because it is largely free of sulfur. While production fluctuates, the significance of Africa for America’s energy security cannot be underestimated. And it goes without saying that U.S. planners have not been oblivious to the fact that other countries, including China, India, Japan, and Russia have been attracted by the African continent’s natural wealth and recently increased their own engagements there. Although we should avoid the path of confrontation – and, indeed, seek cooperation in areas where our interests complement, both our mutual benefit and that of Africans – we need to also be vigilant that there are no monopolies or preferential treatment. Africa must have an “open door” to the world.
The third, which arises out of both the calculus of national interest as well as the inherent moral strain in American foreign policy, is empowering Africans and other partners to cope with the myriad humanitarian challenges, both man-made and natural, which afflict the continent with seeming disproportion – not just the devastating toll which conflict, poverty, and disease, especially HIV/AIDS, exact on Africans, but the depredations of the continent’s remaining rogue regimes. The United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report 2007/2008 determined that all twenty-two of the countries found to have “low development” were African states. While the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism argued that terrorist organizations have little in common with the poor and destitute, it also acknowledged that terrorists can exploit these socio-economic conditions to their advantage. Under this heading the complex humanitarian emergencies of which Africa has perhaps more than its share. The ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing in the western Sudanese region of Darfur – whether or not one calls it a “genocide,” as both President Bush and the U.S. Congress did – has already taken a toll of at least 250,000 victims and more than two million displaced; a hybrid United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force (UNAMID) is both undermanned and lacking in basic resources. In the same country, the fragile peace that has existed between the regime in Khartoum and the government of South Sudan since the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) brokered with the help of the United States shows signs of unraveling as the deadlines for both the 2009 nationwide elections and the 2011 referendum on South Sudanese self-determination rapidly approach (see my July 15 update on Sudan). Somalia, with the exception of the self-declared “Republic of Somaliland” in the northwest, remains without an effective government for over a decade and a half as a growing Islamist and clan insurgency threatens not only the current interim authorities (and their Ethiopian backers), but the stability of the entire Horn of Africa as waves of hundreds of thousands of civilians flee the conflict and more than half of the remaining 6 million face what might be the greatest humanitarian catastrophe in the region since the 1984-1985 Ethiopian famine. And while the intensity of the conflict is lower, Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of Southern Africa, continues to present a major humanitarian challenge as well as an uncertain future with the refusal of the Robert Mugabe regime to implement the power-sharing agreement it signed with the Movement for Democratic Change and its continual use of violence against its political opponents.
These relatively fixed considerations of the national interest, I would argue, virtually guaranteed that either a McCain or an Obama administration would have built on the foundations laid by its Bush predecessor whose numerous initiatives – including the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the extensions and expansions of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), and the establishment of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which became fully operational as a unified combatant command last month – have cumulatively result in the United States being more engaged with Africa than at any other period in American history (see my survey of the incumbent administration’s Africa policy). Over the course of the campaign, I had the opportunity on a number of occasions to speak alongside and debate Dr. Witney W. Schneidman, the co-chair of Senator Obama’s Africa advisory group. At forum sponsored by the Constituency for Africa at the National Press Club in Washington last month, we both had the opportunity to present the Africa vision of our respective principals (see Dr. Schneidman’s “Africa: Obama’s Three Objectives for the Continent” as well as my “Africa: McCain’s Vision for Freedom, Peace, and Prosperity“). While some pundits on the right have already begun to express reservations about the priorities which might be embraced by the incoming administration, at least with respect to Africa policy, I have little to quarrel with the three fundamental objectives outlined by Dr. Schneidman on behalf Barack Obama: “to accelerate Africa’s integration into the global economy…to enhance the peace and security of African states…to strengthen relationships with those governments, institutions and civil society organizations committed to deepening democracy, accountability and reducing poverty in Africa.”
Dr. Schneidman, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa affairs in the Clinton administration, was also quite balanced in his assessment to President Bush’s accomplishments:
But let’s give credit where it is due. PEPFAR, with 1.7 million people in Africa on anti-retrovirals, has been an extremely important initiative, as has the Bush administration’s program to eradicate malaria and address neglected tropical diseases. It is often said that this administration’s legacy in Africa will revolve around these programs and the tripling in development assistance from $2 billion in 2000 to $6 billion today – and rightly so. Nevertheless, the picture is incomplete if we stop there. The reality is that the bulk of this increase is due to increased spending on HIV/AIDS, humanitarian assistance and debt relief. In fact, development assistance to the poorest countries in Africa has decreased by half in this time frame. Ironically, the percentage of development going to the best-governed countries has dropped even more, by two-thirds, in this period. The Millennium Challenge Account may change this latter trend, given the $3.7 billion in commitments to ten countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
As Gregory Simpkins, vice president for policy and program development at the Leon H. Sullivan Foundation and a former professional staff member of the Africa subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, pointed out in an allAfrica.com op-ed last month, there has been remarkable continuity in recent U.S. policy toward Africa, with succeeding administrations building on their predecessor’s legacies. I anticipate that that bipartisan tradition will continue, as my hitherto counterpart has acknowledged it needs to:
What all of us who are engaged in Africa have in common is a willingness to put partisanship aside when it comes to advocating for resources for Africa. There is no question that this bipartisan consensus, especially in Congress, needs to be nurtured, deepened and expanded. The consensus was first forged in 2000, when the Clinton administration advocated for the African Growth and Opportunity Act. It was enhanced during the Bush administration, which extended AGOA three times, created the Millennium Challenge Account and, of course, the $15 billion PEPFAR program. This bipartisan consensus was evident several months ago when the Bush administration asked Congress to double to $30 million the amount that the U.S would spend on AIDS relief. In a stirring act of American compassion, Congress funded the program at $48 billion with another $2 million being allocated for programs in the U.S.
I would suggest that that bipartisanship will be more needed in the coming months than ever. Achieving U.S. strategic interests in Africa and advancing the just causes like ending the genocide in Darfur, assuring the full implementation of the CPA between the Khartoum regime and the South Sudanese, and resolving the conflict in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo are not Democratic or Republican causes, but American priorities on which both presidential candidates largely converged, even if they differed on emphases (see the responses by both to a comprehensive questionnaire submitted by the Enough Action Fund, the Save Darfur Coalition, and the Genocide Intervention Network). However, given the recent financial panics and the overall climate of uncertainty with respect to the economy, mustering the political wherewithal to pursue these consensus goals – to say nothing of President-elect Obama’s ambitious Africa agenda, including the doubling of America’s foreign assistance budget to $50 billion per year – will require that Africa’s advocates on both sides of the political aisle work together. And, given the large areas where Democratic and Republican positions on Africa have overlapped, the incoming administration might find that Africa policy might be one are where it can most easily achieve an early success in the drive for “bipartisan unity on foreign policy” that the Obama-Biden campaign has promised to deliver.
Just one possible avenue for bipartisan cooperation is ensuring that the new Africa Command receives the resources it needs to adequately assume the responsibilities which have been entrusted to it, including fighting the global war on terror’s African front and managing the military relationships America must maintain with African countries in order to assist in the building up of their own security and other governance capabilities. Another is accelerating Africa’s integration into the global economy. As Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and DeBeers Chairman Nicky Oppenheimer argued in an International Herald Tribune op-ed two months ago, “Aid is good, business is better.” While advocating free trade is a sensitive issue with some elements in the Democratic coalition, the Obama administration should nonetheless not only seek to open up additional trade opportunities for African economies under a strengthened AGOA framework, but it should work to mobilize the private sector to invest in Africa, creating new opportunities not only for American business, but also for Africans to achieve their own dreams. After all, worldwide it is private enterprise, especially small-to-medium firms, which delivers the sustainable economic growth which so many Africans and their friends seek to jump-start. Republicans, whose 2008 national platform strongly advocated this position, should not hesitate to support President Obama in expanding trade with Africa. The new administration also needs to call for an intensified effort by African governments to eliminate unnecessary barriers, uncertainties, and other disincentives that continue to discourage both African and foreign private investors from doing business in Africa. The U.S.-Rwanda bilateral investment treaty, signed earlier this year by President Bush and President Paul Kagame, is one of only a handful of such accords that America has with a Sub-Saharan African nation (the others currently in force are those with Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, and Senegal) and ought to be a model which the incoming administration should try to replicate across the continent.
One additional task that the new administration might undertake is to develop a comprehensive national strategy for U.S. engagement in Africa. It’s a step that I advocated for during the campaign, not for political points, but because I am convinced it is genuinely required as a tool of statecraft. As needed and welcome as the acknowledgment of select American stakes in Africa and consequent new programming, institutional design, and personnel deployments – all undertakings which have gotten underway during the eight years of President Bush’s tenure – were, these steps by themselves do not equal what is really required: a high-level national dialogue aimed at building a policy consensus, captured perhaps in a document, which articulates American strategic interests in Africa (especially, obviously, those interests which coincide with the needs and wants of our partners on the continent), prioritizes them, defines the vehicles for achieving these objectives, and allocates the relevant responsibilities. During the campaign, Senator Obama and his running mate, Senator Joseph Biden, pledged to convene a bipartisan consultative group of leading members of Congress – including the chairs and ranking members of the Armed Services, Foreign Relations, Intelligence, and Appropriations Committees – to foster better executive-legislative relations and review foreign policy priorities. A similar consultative effort, perhaps modeled on a study body like the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, ought to be set in motion to consider America’s Africa strategy.
Alongside developing a more comprehensive strategic approach to Africa, the new administration needs to think about better coordination of the various governmental stakeholders. While AFRICOM and other institutions of U.S. government has made tremendous strides towards achieving greater cooperation between themselves on the continent, the reality is that National Security Council process which is supposed to coordinate the action of the interagency community does little than provide opportunities for dialogue and information sharing without the ability to actually prioritize and ensure the resources are forthcoming from individual departments to actually implement agreed-upon national policies.
Of course, America’s Africa policy needs to be a two-way street. Many Africans I have spoken with over the course of the last eighteen months or so were not only highly enthused by the Obama candidacy, but have very high – I would even say unreasonable – expectations of what he would do for the continent once he is ensconced in the Oval Office. The new president and his team will need to be very careful in their management of these expectations. A more realistic list of what African leaders would want from the next administration was ticked off by Jean Ping, the chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission, in a speech he gave in Washington last month:
Firstly, it is our hope that a new U.S. administration will remain engaged with Africa as it has been over the last few years. This engagement is illustrated by the establishment of a U.S. mission dedicated to the African Union Commission separate from the U.S. mission to Ethiopia. Thus far, the U.S. is the only country with such a mission in Addis Ababa and the granting of diplomatic status to the African Union mission in Washington is also unique. Consequently, it is our hope that strengthening Africa-U.S. Partnership, underpinned by carefully balanced strategic approach to U.S.-Africa relations will continue to be maintained.
Secondly, encouraging more regular high-level interactions and dialogue both on the continent and in the U.S. for first-hand knowledge of African needs and realities as well as U.S. expectations, will also be very helpful. This will ensure that the U.S. is able to act on Africa on the basis of facts and Africa’s real needs.
Thirdly, strengthening institutional working relations between both the executive and the legislative branches and the African Union Commission as well as working relations with the newly established African Union mission in Washington will be well appreciated.
Fourthly, it will be our hope that the U.S. will play a leadership role in ensuring that global commitments that are so crucial for Africa’s development are duly implemented through the G-8 and other global fora.
Fifthly, encouraging targeted support to the implementation of existing African Union initiatives and programs will be, we hope, a major focus of the new administration.
All five of these are modest enough requests and one would expect that President Obama would get bipartisan backing for Washington’s enhanced support of the AU and subregional bodies for especially for such African-led undertakings which truly strengthen legitimate and accountable governance on the continent, such as the African Peer Review Mechanism and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which promise so much, even if they have yet to be proven.
While there are strategic and political reasons which will drive it, there is no denying that the Africa policy of an Obama administration will be given added momentum by the incoming president’s personal story. What Senator McCain said in his extraordinarily moving election night concession speech about Barack Obama “inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president” and his recognition of “the special significance [the historic election] has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs” could be easily be extended to include Africans, both on the continent and in the diaspora. The excitement sweeping across Africa now presents the new U.S. chief executive with a rare opportunity to translate effusive sentiments of good will into a windfall of diplomatic capital which, if he husbands it prudently, can significantly advance America’s values and interests on the continent while helping to achieve Africans’ aspirations for peace, stability, and development.
WHENEVER ONE STARTS TO READ about Ethiopia, very soon he or she discovers Téwodros II, the infamous emperor of the Empire in the mid-nineteenth-century. Téwodros was a great, romantic visionary, and a mad figure of Ethiopian history who rose to power in the 1850s by overthrowing the principal feudal leadership in the north.
His objective, as his British admirer Consul Plowden reported at the time to the Home Office in London, was to integrate the country by placing “the soldiers of the different provinces under the command of his own trusty followers.” In this way Téwodros started “organizing a new nobility, a legion of honor dependent on himself, and chosen specially for their daring and fidelity.” And thus began the “arduous task of breaking the power of the great feudal chiefs — a task achieved in Europe only during the reign of many consecutive Kings.”
Among other achievements, Téwodros was responsible for important improvements in the country. He had built, for example, the first road in Ethiopia, from Debra Tabor to his mountain citadel Magdala. He attempted to establish a fleet of boats on Lake Tana. He started a foundry at Gafat and manufactured Ethiopia’s first cannon. He also attempted to stop the slave trade, reform the land tenure system, and introduce Ethiopian dress. He took steps to replace verbal messages with letters, wipe away concubines and promote marriage.
Yet much of what he achieved was rendered futile by the debacle at Magdala, and thereby hangs the tale, the source of much literary prose, and why Téwodros is so well remembered by the world.
All of them: Ethiopian scholars, African historians, romance novelists, adventure travel writers, tourists and travelers have been caught up in the history of this tortured man. Many have written about him, searching for some understanding of the man as well as wanting to tell his tale.
I first read about Téwodros in Alan Moorehead’s The Blue Nile (if you haven’t read The Blue Nile, put this article down and go read that book immediately — it is available in our library and can be borrowed at no cost) when I was teaching at the Commercial School in Addis Ababa in 1962. Between classes, sitting in the backroom of the Teacher’s Lounge, or across Smuts Street at a small café where I’d go for cappuccino early in the morning, I’d read chapter after chapter of Moorehead’s fascinating account of the Blue Nile and of the Empire under Téwodros.
Téwodros claimed that he was of royal blood and in the direct line of kings descending from Solomon and Alexander the Great, but none of that was true. He was the son of a small local chieftain, born in 1818 close to the source of the Blue Nile.
He reign was from 1855 to 1868, and during it he was constantly involved in war. He fought successfully against Tigre and conquered Shewa, taking the boy Menelik, who represented the Shewa dynasty there, to live at his court. He waged war against the Gallas. And all the while, he attempted to modernize the Empire.
While being portrayed as a model of politeness even towards the meanest peasants, he also was the victim of ungovernable rages. His humanity was such, it was recorded, that he would buy slaves from the Muslim traders in order to emancipate and Christianize them, yet at the same time he burned deserting soldiers alive and threw prisoners from precipices.
It was during this period that a number of Europeans found their way into Ethiopia: German and English missionaries, German artisans and zoologists, a French painter and a more than a few travel adventures.
But then in 1864, after the British Foreign Office did not — for two years — answer a letter he had written to Queen Victoria, Téwodros threw the Consul, Cameron, and the other British citizens into prison. The British government sent a man named Rassam to protest and he, plus sixty more Europeans, were seized and chained.
At the time, Téwodros was moving towards Magdala, a natural fortress overlooking Wallo Province. Here is where he met Sir Robert Napier, sent from India by the Queen to free her subjects and all the other imprisoned Europeans. Napier landed near Massawa and using an impressive assortment of transport animals including elephants, bullocks, and camels, advanced overland at a mile a day to Magdala. Of the 3,400 British and Indian troops who took part in the assault on Magdala, not one was lost. Téwodros, who had at first boasted to his chiefs -— “Oh! That we may meet those white donkeys. We shall show them what the sword and lance of Ethiopia can do.”— killed himself when he saw that defeat was certain. He was buried in the Magdala church, though suicide, as we know, is a rare and grave crime among Ethiopian Christians. (The story is told of Workneh Gebeyehu, one of the leaders of the failed 1960 coup d’ etat, when cornered by soldier shouted to his assailants, “Téwodros has taught me something.” Putting a pistol into his mouth, and he killed himself, and, therefore, ensured that he would be forever linked to the Emperor Téwodros.)
After reading about Téwodros in Moorehead’s book, I, too, thought he would make the subject of a great novel, but never did any research on the Emperor. A few years later, when I was on PC/Ethiopia staff as an Associate Director, and had the Dessie Road as part of my responsibility, I ran into a group of British students in Dessie. At the time they were “crashing” at John Hoover’s small house and setting off the next day to climb up to the old fortress at Magdala in honor of the 1867 Napier Expedition. I wanted to tag along but was due in Waldia the next day and never made it to Magdala.
For years, however, Téwodros’s story has stayed with me. Once, in Edinburgh, Scotland, where I had gone for the Shakespeare Festival, I spend an afternoon in the Edinburgh library reading Field Marshal Lord Napier of Magdala, a memoir by his son, published in 1927.
Back in London I wandered into the Maggs Bros. Ltd. Antiquarian Booksellers on Berkeley Square and bought for 48 pounds Reconnoitering in Abyssinia by Colonel H. St. Clair Wilkins that was published in 1870. It was the royal engineer’s account of the reconnoitering party that went to Ethiopia prior to the arrival of the expeditionary field force from India.
The opening goes:
“In August 1867, the British Government resolved upon the invasion of Abyssinia. It was decided to dispatch a military expedition to that remote county, for the purpose of releasing from the hands of the Christian King Theodorus, a British Consul and an Envoy and suite confined in irons in the fortress of Magdala without just cause, and contrary to the laws of nations; and to obtain full satisfaction for the dishonour thus cast upon the British nation.”
At the time in his Magdala fortress, Téwodros had thirty European artillery pieces, 3,000 soldiers armed with percussion guns and several thousand spear armed foot soldiers. While he was safe within a impregnable fortress, Téwodros decided to attack and the British soldiers (mostly Indians) of the 4th King’s Own had the very latest breech loading rifle – the Snider – which was being used for the first time in battle. The firepower and discipline of the British units completely overwhelmed the musket and spears of the Ethiopians. Over 500 Ethiopians were killed and thousands more were wounded in a battle that lasted an hour and a half.
A ripe source for novelists
From such historical documents, several novels have been written. Alan Scholefield’s The Hammer of God, published by William Morrow & Company in 1973; Ann Schlee’s The Guns of Darkness, Atheneum, 1974; and When The Emperor Dies by Mason McCann Smith, Random House, 1981.
There are other historical accounts, besides Alan Moorehead, but these are the only novels that I have been able to locate in The Guns of Darkness, Ann Schlee tells the story of Téwodros from the point-of-view of fourteen year old, Louisa Bell, daughter of John Bell and the Princess Worknesh Asfa Yilma. Schelee is a fine writer, mostly of young adult novels set in exotic countries. This novel focuses on the human side of the history, the small details of everyday life that surround the historical events. Schlee touches, for example, on the torture that the ordinary people, Ethiopians and Europeans, suffered under Téwodros. She had based her novel on the alleged fact that John Bell had four children by an Ethiopian woman. The fourth child was called Louisa and was on a list of the released prisoners as recorded by the Royal Geographical Society’s observer, C.R. Markham.
Californian Mason McCann Smith, too, blends fact and fiction in his novel, When The Emperor Dies, using characters, both real and imaginary. Of the two books, Smith has the more details of the march and attack on Magdala, and the most research. However, the novel is overwritten and is centered mostly on Napier and his men.
Alan Scholefield is a well known South African writer, author of Great Elephant, Wild Dog Running, The Young Masters, etc. In The Hammer of God, he has an arrogant Victorian sportsman in search of the rare ibex, his new, young wife, Catherine, an ex-Army officer guide, and a scheming secretary, all in the highlands together when they are captured by the Emperor. Scholefield creates several new characters and uses Téwodros and the events of Magdala as the historical backdrop. Being an experienced novelist, he moves the story at a faster, more telling pace. Nevertheless, both novels pale when compared to Alan Moorehead’s prose and narrative skill in The Blue Nile,* first published in 1962.
Moorehead’s incomparable The Blue Nile
Moorehead spends roughly 70 pages of his 330-page book on Emperor Téwodros, the British expedition, the battle on the Arogi plateau, and seizure of Magdala, and it is a fascinating tale.
“There has never been in modern times a colonial campaign quite like the British expedition to Ethiopia in 1868,” Moorehead writes. “It proceeds from first to last with the decorum and heavy inevitability of a Victorian state banquet, complete with ponderous speeches at the end. And yet it was a fearsome undertaking; for hundreds of years the country had never been invaded, and the savage nature of the terrain alone was enough to promise failure.”
Other histories
There are a few other useful histories about Téwodros. Walter Plowden’s Travels in Abyssinia, published in 1868; H.A. Stern’s The Captive Missionary in 1868; H. Rassam’s Narrative of the British Mission to Téwodros King of Abyssinia, 2 vols, published in 1869. In 1870, T.J. Holland and H.M. Hozier, wrote the official Record of the Expedition to Abyssinia, 2 vols, with maps and plans. There is also Correspondence Respecting Abyssinia 1846-68 that was presented to the House of Commons in 1869. This 700-page report gives much information not only about the imprisonment of the captives but about Téwodros and Ethiopia in general. H.M. Stanley published in 1874 Coomassie and Magdale; the Story of Two British Campaigns in Africa.
Some recent publications are S. Rubenson’s King of Kings: Téwodros of Ethiopia, published in Addis Ababa in 1966. The March to Magdala by Myatt, Frederick, published in 1970 by Leo Cooper. And in 1973 R.J. Pankhurst’s essay “The Library of Emperor Téwodros II at Magdala” appeared in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, XXXVI, 15-42. And more recently, Oxford Press published in 1979, The Abyssinian Difficulty: The Emperor Theodorus and the Magdala Campaign, 1867-68 by Sir Darrell Bates.
I am sure I have missed other accounts, but for anyone interested in this historical moment in Ethiopia, the books I’ve mentioned are a good start. And it is a great story.
(John Coyne is the editor of the www.PeaceCorpsWriters.org and editor of Living On The Edge: Fiction by Peace Corps Writers published by Curbstone Press in 2000. He has written or edited over twenty books.)
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — The 44th president of the United States is Barack Obama – and he has a lot of promises to live up to. At least, that’s the take here in Addis. While Ethiopia’s neighbors to the south are justifiably celebrating, cajoling and basking in the sweet victory of an American president with a Kenyan father, the mood in Ethiopia is much more business like.
My circle of Ethiopian friends, who cannot be expected to accurately reflect the sentiment of an entire city, much less a country, certainly approve of America’s young leader, but also realize politics is as much talk as it is action. That’s not to say you don’t hear murmurs, excited undertones, on the mini-buses and in the streets of the news of America’s election of Obama for president – you do. Additionally, more Obama t-shirt clad fans can be seen throughout the city. The most enjoyable part, as an American abroad, is that random people shout ‘Obama!’ in your direction, while smiling and giving you what I call an Ethiopian salute – a raise of the eyebrows and simultaneous grin. Assuming, as they do, they know for whom I cast my vote.
For all of this excitement, there’s been nothing outstanding. People mention the election, but the conversation quickly moves to the next topic – how’s your day going? What’s up with this rain during the dry season? When pressed, folks I have talked with mention the fact that Obama has a lot of work ahead of him.
Concern number one, they say, is the bad economy. A bad economy in the developed world in-directly cuts funding for a lot of programs and investment in the developing world, sooner or later. A close second concern: the two wars the US now finds itself in. People here have seen what war does to a nation – both within and without. Prosperity without peace, Habtamu says, is hard to come by. But, he quickly adds, there’s no easy solution; a big test for Obama.
What has most impressed me is the calm, realistic demeanor by which Ethiopians accept the election. They hope the benefits will be many fold for the US, Ethiopia and the world, but simultaneously realize the enormous task that lies ahead of our 44th president. We all may do well to gain a bit of this realistic, but quietly optimistic perspective.
This has been a historic week for the United States of America. The American people, much to the joy of the broader world, have voted for a change of direction in Washington and in politics. Let us now work together – calmly, realistically but always optimistically – to help President Obama put a little of that talk into action.
Magdala. Of the 3,400 British and Indian troops who took part in the assault on Magdala, not one was lost. Téwodros, who had at first boasted to his chiefs -— “Oh! That we may meet those white donkeys. We shall show them what the sword and lance of Ethiopia can do.”— killed himself when he saw that defeat was certain. He was buried in the Magdala church, though suicide, as we know, is a rare and grave crime among Ethiopian Christians. (The story is told of Workneh Gebeyehu, one of the leaders of the failed 1960 coup d’ etat, when cornered by soldier shouted to his assailants, “Téwodros has taught me something.” Putting a pistol into his mouth, and he killed himself, and, therefore, ensured that he would be forever linked to the Emperor Téwodros.)