No one can forget the vivid images of the 1985 Live Aid Concert. The huge event organized by Bob Geldof raised more than 100 million euros ($136 million) for Ethiopia’s starving population. Governments around the world and countless aid organizations initiated an enormous amount of humanitarian response to help the hungry in the Horn of Africa.
But now the statement of a former high-ranking rebel commander alleges that some of the aid money was used to purchase arms by a former rebel group, which was fighting against the communist military junta leader at the time, Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Given the upcoming elections in May, the allegations which implicate current Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, come at an extremely volatile time.
In the mid-1980s, the CIA reported that western aid money for Ethiopia’s starving population was more than likely being diverted for other purposes by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). At the time, the communist military regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam was fighting several rebel groups, including the TPLF which was led by Meles Zenawi, the current prime minister.
The statement of a Netherlands-based high-ranking TPLF commander living in exile confirms old rumors. Dr. Aregawi Berhe told Deutsche Welle that “the rebel movement, TPFL, had received the money under false pretences – through its development arm, the so-called ‘Aid Association of Tigray’ (MARET). But MARET belonged to the party. So after the aid from donors and aid charities was collected, it was made available through the budget of the party’s central committee – for logistics and financing of the resistance.”
Reactions to the allegations
Those implicated in the TPLF aid scandal include key members of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) – a coalition that has ruled Ethiopia since 1991. Their spokesman, Sekuture Getachew, categorically denies the allegations.
“We should not forget that at the time the TPLF had asked for help from donor countries and aid organizations and therefore saved hundreds of thousands of people in the Tigray Region from starvation.”
“The ruling EPRDF, to which TPLF belongs, has a lengthy and internationally recognized reputation for dealing with aid money and the appropriate implementation. That is generally known. Incidentally, we know that the people smearing us are those who were excluded from the party as a result of their scheming,” he said.
However, the statement of the former TPFL commander, Aregawi, is supported by a fellow rebel, Gebremedhin Araya, who described to the BBC how the rebels deceived western aid workers disguised as Muslim merchants and sold sacks of grain which were in part filled with sand: “I was given clothes to make me look like a Muslim merchant. This was a trick for the NGOs,” he said.
Sarah Wilson, spokeswoman for Christian Aid, one of the leading charities in the 1984/85 famine, distances the organization from the allegations: “We definitely assume that donations, which Christian Aid and others obtained, were spent on food and used for the benefit of the poor,” she told Deutsche Welle.
Ethiopia’s stability at stake
Former TPFL officers Aregawi and Gebremedhin, the two chief witnesses, have fallen out with Meles for some time and gone into exile. Their statements, true or not, three months prior to the elections also appear like a PR-coup against the administration.
Shimeles Kemal, a spokesman for the Ethiopian government, says that these revelations are not a coincidence. In May, Ethiopians will be going to the polls, and the ruling coalition and opposition are positioning themselves for the elections. The last ones, in 2005, ended in bloodshed, so the situation is very tense.
“It does not surprise me that allegations made of thin air should come up in the approach to the primaries. The attempt to take down the name of the party and all the Ethiopian people who gave their lives for peace and benefit of the Ethiopian people is a disgrace,” he said.
In August 2009, I found myself sitting on the damp earth of Dida Liben, a once-prosperous pastureland in southern Ethiopia where both wild and domestic animals thrived. Today, it’s mostly hard-packed dirt, pocked with patches of stubby grass and thorny bushes — except where I was perched with a small gathering of local elders.
Around us, the grass had grown tall and thick, the result of an Oxfam-supported conservation effort that had set aside 275 acres of pasture and fenced it off with a bramble enclosure to give the land time to recover. And it had, gloriously, prompting the elders to luxuriate in the feel of the grass all around them, as they had when they were children. Even some of the wildlife was coming back including antelopes, rabbits and boars.
But a tinge of fear colored their reminiscences. What if someone were to see how good all of this had become and decide to take it away? That was the first thing Kotola Buyale, wrapped up in a tight red shawl, wanted to talk about as we sank into the tall grasses to get out of the wind. What if?
Shopping abroad for places to plant
The elder’s words came back to me like an omen when I read a story in the New York Times about how rich countries with limited land suitable for farming are now shopping abroad for places to plant so they can feed their people. And guess where they’re looking? Ethiopia, where hunger regularly stalks almost eight million people. The story reported that the country’s ministry of agriculture has tagged more than seven million acres as virgin land and plans to lease half of it, very soon, to foreign investors for just 50 cents an acre per year. It’s part of a trend now sweeping the globe. In May 2009, the Economist reported that in the last three years foreigners had secured deals or engaged in talks on between 15 million and 20 million hectares of farm land in developing countries.
Surely Ethiopia, one of the poorest places in the world — it’s 171st on a United Nation’s index of 182 countries that measures national wellbeing — could benefit from some robust foreign investment. But it must be the kind that helps the government meet its responsibility to ensure people have enough to eat. Is 50 cents an acre that kind of a deal? And for people who must certainly be living on those millions of acres, will there be long-term benefits they can count on from these investments? The government, like any government in this situation, should insist on it.
The pressure is on
The pressure is on. And Ethiopians feel it, even as they scramble to find ways to feed themselves. It’s hard not to admire the drive and entrepreneurial spirit of a man like Huka Balambal, a herder in southern Ethiopia who knew he needed to find a different way to provide for his family when repeated droughts shriveled the pasture on which his livestock depended. First, he taught himself to farm. Then, he devised an entire irrigation system for his small plot near the Dawa River. Now, harvests of corn and onions have eased his situation considerably.
That kind of determination can help feed a nation — if the government ensures people have the resources and support they need.
Ethiopia’s opposition criticized media rules that give Meles Zenawi’s ruling party and its four main allies 16 times as much airtime as the largest opposition party ahead of May 23 elections.
“In general the media is controlled, used, monopolized by the ruling party,” Negasso Gidada, a former president of Ethiopia who is now a leader of the opposition Medrek alliance, said in a phone interview yesterday. “Our stand is that the time allocation is unfair.”
The Ethiopian Broadcast Authority earlier this year awarded Meles’ Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and four allied parties 199 hours and 15 minutes of time on state radio and 31 hours and 30 minutes on state television, according to figures from the EBA. Medrek, the country’s largest opposition grouping, was awarded 12 hours 15 minutes of radio time and 1 hour 45 minutes of television time.
“We have negotiated about this on our party council and they are not part of that council,” Hailemariam Desalegn, parliamentary whip for the EPRDF, said by phone today. “I don’t see unfairness in this issue.”
The Ethiopian government owns the only television broadcasters in the country, and the Horn of Africa nation’s radio waves are almost entirely controlled by government or ruling party-affiliated stations.
The allocation of airtime was based largely on the number of seats in parliament held by each party, according to Desta Tesfaw, director general of the broadcasting agency. A second, smaller award of airtime will be made in the coming weeks based on the number of candidates fielded by each party, he said.
‘Notable Opening’
Prior to the country’s last elections in 2005, “there was a notable opening of the state media to the political parties contesting the elections,” said a report from the European Union electoral observer mission that year.
Opposition parties won more than 170 seats in the country’s 547-member parliament in that vote, though many opposition members refused to take their seats to protest what they said was vote rigging by the ruling party in some areas.
In ensuing demonstrations, security forces loyal to Meles killed 193 people. Dozens of senior opposition figures were jailed on treason charges.
“Meles and his ruling party appear intent on preventing a repeat of the relatively open 2005 elections which produced a strong opposition showing,” Dennis Blair, the U.S. director of national intelligence, wrote in a report to the Senate on Feb. 2.
The stabbing of an opposition parliamentary candidate and the brutal beating of another in Tigrai by Meles Zenawi’s thugs last week, only days after the latter made a code loaded speech at the TPLF anniversary in Mekele, where he referred to his opponents as the mud, the riffraff, and the enemy, fall perfectly in line with the tactic and strategy set out for “winning” the May 2010 election. All indications, including the rush by government officials to explain how the victim died before even any preliminary police investigation, show that Meles Zenawi’s finger prints are all over the killing. Some ferenjis may be willfully fooled. We Ethiopians know the drill and we get it. That it happened in Tigrai, the ethnic homeland of Meles Zenawi, seems to have made the brutality more sensational but similar instances occur widely and in large numbers in other parts of the country. What this case may have loudly demonstrated is perhaps the fact that no ethnic elite in power can oppress other ethnic groups and leaves the people of its own ethnic homeland in freedom. I hope our brothers and sisters from Tigrai are getting the message loud and clear, that they are only one disagreement away from the TPLF from being stabbed to death – just one attempt away at making choices and decisions for and by themselves.
As he repeatedly keeps reminding us, Meles Zenawi has taken lessons from the debacles of the May 2005 national election and will not repeat the same mistake. He even boasted that his organization (TPLF) hasn’t made the same mistake more than once. The lessons he learnt and action plans derived from the lessons of the 2005 election are simple and least sophisticated. This time there is no taking a “calculated risk” as in 2005 by a slight opening of any door for democracy. The only game left in town now is how to hold something that can be referred to as an election and satisfy the donors, who insist that they need some kind of election to show for their tax payers that they are spending their money on and with an “elected” government. Meles doesn’t want this election if it is meant to be a democratic exercise. The Ethiopian people also do not want this kind of election and if asked will prefer to spend the millions of dollars spent on this sham exercise on buying food. Only these lords of our poverty want this election. And it has to be said clearly that it is these donors who insist on a useless exercise and get our people killed, dehumanized and turn their already miserable lives into hell.
Meles knows that he has the monopoly of violence in the country. He also knows the violence he so far perpetrated against the Ethiopian people did not make any dent on his relationship with his Western donors in whose honor we seem to be holding these disastrous periodic elections. Meles has stayed in power long enough to understand that his donors are full of hypocrisy, that none of them pursued their bluff to ask him to account for the crimes he committed in 2005. Deep down in his heart I think he despises them. He at least has seen them how they got all over poor Mughabe for killing a small fraction of the number of people he killed. Meles knows that as long as he gives them the illusion of a stable country, they don’t give a hoot for democracy or the rule of law. Armed with this knowledge, Meles has made a plan. It is a simple plan – move the election violence from the post election to the pre election period and spread it over time.
Any serious observers of Ethiopia can identify some six broad forms through which Meles Zenawi’s pre election violence is packaged and delivered to the Ethiopian people. Note that these tactics are applied separately or in any combination as the condition presents itself. Here are some of them:
1. The use of direct and blunt force: This involves direct application of force including killings and beating. This tactic is employed by spreading the violence over time and space so that the drip, drip, in blood does not make it look like a massacre. You can kill 100 people in a day at one location and not look good. If you do that over a period of 100 days in different places, you don’t look like you have even killed a fly. The reports of Human rights organizations on Ethiopia are replete with this kind of political crimes including torture and other degrading treatments. There are hundreds of people thrown in jail and forgotten. Torturing critics and suspects and forcing false confessions are rampant. We see them daily. Only our donors have closed their eyes.
2. Intimidation and harassment: Anybody suspected of supporting the opposition is harassed as anti people, anti development (as if anybody needs more poverty), pro terrorist, pro OLF, Pro Ginbot 7 etc. As I am writing this, I listened to a UDJ election candidate in Arba Gugu telling the voice of America that he was told by local officials that he cannot be an opposition candidate while drawing a salary from his government job and that some official vowed to cut his tongue and feed it to him if he doesn’t stop his candidacy. They have so far succeeded in intimidating independent journalists to self sensor or flee the country. Meles makes self fulfilling prophecies such as accusing the opposition of collaboration with terrorists, Shabia etc. This is an important method in TPLF’s tool box. It has been used in 2005 and had proven to work. Anyone remember the accusation of the CUD that it is like the Rwandan Interhamwe in 2005? When they took the CUD leaders to the kangaroo court, it was only time that they accuse them of genocide. Such methods are now being used both to intimidate and punish opponents. This time the opposition is accused of harboring ambitions of making this election like the elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe. You know, those bastards who demanded a coalition government and ruined the meaning of democracy!
3. Use the abject poverty in the country as a political tool to recruit supporters and coerce people into falling in line: Zenawi’s party has recruited millions of members by making membership a choice without alternative. If you want to rot in poverty and stay unemployed upon graduation you can refuse to fill out the membership forms. Discrimination in employment, promotion on the job based on membership to the party is being practiced in broad daylight. It has been declared that higher education is the exclusive preserve of EPRDF members. Many young people are agonizing over this predicament. Food aid, including food donated by our Western donors is openly used to coerce or lure hungry people into supporting Zenawi’s party.
4. Using the law and the courts to make it difficult for political opponents to operate and make free expressions of ideas difficult: This package includes the issuance of the draconian Anti Terrorism Law where even a kid who throws stones during a demonstration can be charged with, and sent to prison for 20 years. The Civil Society Law that virtually closed down all civic groups in the country, including those that do advocacy for women, children and the disabled. Meles understands that civil society is the pillar of democracy and he has to cut the pillars before embarking on an election. Zenawi has even written a proclamation regulating how international election observers should behave and work during the election. Ethiopians are eagerly waiting to see which groups would agree to monitor the election under this law. The recent accusation of many ethnic Amharas including an 80 year old man of staging a cup de tat and changing the charge into terrorism in the middle of the process is part of this package. In some situations the police and the courts are ordered to make the flimsiest of reasons to send opponents to prison. The most famous case under this tactic is the case of Birtukan Mideksa, the chairwoman of UDJ that Meles condemned to serve life for reasons that is boggling even the minds of some of his supporters. But Meles and his inner clique know what they are doing. They don’t want to deal with this courageous and intelligent young woman during and after the election that she was ready to challenge. Meles knows she is a love of the people. More importantly, she has that potent weapon of straddling two of the largest ethnic groups in Ethiopia. She has a mixed Oromo-Amhara ethnic heritage. This young articulate lady and expert in the law was very difficult to box in a political debate. Zenawi’s preferred to box her in the small room in Kaliti. He knows that the case against her cannot stand a minute in a country that has rudimentary practices of the rule of law. He faked an outrage out of nowhere and sent her to prison. Had he been serious about the violation the terms of the pardon, that he falsely accused her of, he would have thrown all of the released prisoners who said the same thing at one time or another including Hailu Shaul who told a BBC journalist during an interview that he signed the pardon letter under duress. Zenawi’s donors know very well why Bitrukan Mideksa, the icon of democracy and peaceful struggle in Ethiopia, is languishing in jail for over a year now. Meles knows that they cannot risk their relationship with him over the case of “one person”, as one anonymous Western diplomat in Addis Ababa is reported to have said recently. Birtukan remains a martyr for her people. The world is getting to know here more with each passing day. She has just begun rocking the consciousness of freedom loving people around the world. We, her brothers and sisters, will make sure that her name and cause is spreading across the globe like a wild fire. She will soon become an albatross on Meles’s neck and definitely the necks of the donors who, in the face of this gross injustice, are looking the other way. She is a victim of an election that is being carried out only to satisfy their need.
5. Keeping uninformed public by blocking information and news from the people. A perfect example is the jamming of the Voice of America and Drutche Welle Amharic services, all dissident radio stations from abroad including blocking Ethiopian democracy websites. When caught they don’t hesitate to make bold and shameless lies. Officials like Bereket Simon and Shimeles Kemal (it is amazing that his name rhymes with the word shameless) are unleashed to issue blunt denials (aynen ginbar yargew). These guys have amazing capacity to deny even if you catch them with their hands in the cookie jar. Consider this lie for example. “This is absolutely a sham,” Shimeles told CPJ, when asked about the Ethiopian government jamming radio stations. He added, “The Ethiopian government does not support the policy of restricting foreign broadcasting services in the country. Such practices are prohibited in our constitution”. Shameless Kemal also told CPJ that the allegations were part of a “smear campaign” by “opposition web sites in the Diaspora”. That he said all of these with a straight face is staggering. But isn’t it interesting that Meles spends millions of dollars on jamming radio programs broadcast by the US government while at the same time stretching his hand and receiving food aid and other assistances? Blatant lying has always been used by Meles and his cronies. Since we always cut them a lot of slack for lying, they normally think we have accepted it. We are dealing with a group of people who claim they have brought equality between Ethiopia’s ethnic groups when everybody in Ethiopia sees that 95% of the key commanding officers of the armed forces of the country are staffed by officers from Zenawi’s ethnic party, with the Oromo, the largest ethnic group in the country contributing Zero. Zenawi is the quintinsential Orwellian and his donors who insist on holding this sham election are willful participants against a crime being committed on 85 million people.
6. Control the Election infrastructure fully: This is the last line of defense. Meles has put the fox in charge of the henhouse. Under this group of tactics comes the staffing of all election personnel from the national election board down to the polling station by members of Meles Zenawi’s party and cadres. They have shamelessly declared that they are neutral while the opposition says they have proof that they are not.
The Endgame:
Meles Zenawi’s end game is making sure that the Ethiopian people are a broken and subdued people, incapable of putting up any resistance during and after the election and that the opposition is as broken and as weakened as possible. The goal is to make Election Day and the days that follow as tranquil as possible so that the congratulations from Barak Obama, the leaders of member nations of the European Union will be paraded in fanfare. If the post election time goes by without declaring emergency, killing and rounding up people and herding them in concentration camps, it will be lauded as a great improvement over the previous election by the donors. In the best traditions of Africa’s dictators, Meles Zenawi will be assured of staying at the helm of power for a quarter of a century and, who knows, even beyond.
But then again this assumes that the Ethiopian people may stay broken and suppressed and do not want their rights and dignity back. But what if they say “give me liberty or give me death” as many indicators seem to suggest? What if more and more Ethiopians begin sharing the views of an Ethiopian in Kenya who recently told a journalist, Lauren Gelfand, of World Politics Review “the West thinks stability in Ethiopia is more important than democracy, destabilizing is the only way to change”. Let’s hope the enablers of the misery of the Ethiopian people wake up before this view gets off the ground. Ethiopians are waiting with a thinning out patience. Careful eyes can already see that they are sitting on the fence.
Africa is becoming increasingly popular as a tourist destination. Figures by the UN World Tourism Organization show the continent will show an average growth rate of over five percent per year by 2020.
But Burghard Rauschelbach, head of the tourism and development program at the German Association for Technical Cooperation GTZ, said that such figures do not accurately reflect the realities of tourism in every African country.
“Tourism activity for sub-Saharan Africa increased, but it’s a matter of the destination and country,” Rauschelbach told Deutsche Welle.
Gambia, Senegal, the Seychelles and Swaziland saw a decrease in visitors, for example. Tourism increased in South Africa, which captures about one-third of the 30 million visitors to sub-Saharan Africa.
Rauschelbach said South Africa’s popularity was due its “variety for different target groups.” The country offered safaris, adventure, cultural and beach holidays, as well as ecotourism.
Countries do not always benefit
It is not a coincidence that sub-Saharan Africa’s most developed country also happens to be the leading tourist destination. The industry adds billions of dollars to the South African economy and contributes a large part of the GDP for most countries. Tourism generates 25 percent of the export value for Kenya, 13 percent for the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, and as much as 60 percent in a country like Gambia.
But even though tourism may boost economies, it has not always been beneficial to overall development. In large numbers, tourists can overwhelm local culture and traditions. Locals may not benefit much when the working conditions are bad, Rauschelbach said. More diversity in the products and services that are offered was needed in order for tourism to contribute to development.
TourismWatch, an NGO affiliated to the Protestant Church’s Development Service EED, studies the effects of tourism on development. Its head Heinz Fuchs said that tour operators should incorporate in their concepts corporate social responsibility (CSR), in which companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations. This would allow tourism to contribute to progress in poor countries, Fuchs told Deutsche Welle.
This trend is one focus at the tourism fair ITB Berlin, taking place in the German capital this week. A CSR day is being held on Thursday.
Socially responsible tour operators
“More and more tour operators are engaged in CSR in their businesses,” the German Travel Association said. A good example was Studiosus, which offers “study trip” holiday packages in cooperation with partners in local destinations. It is more up-market because the vacations tend to be expensive. A two-week vacation to Ethiopia would cost well over 2,500 euros ($3,400 dollars).
Another organization that offers “alternative” volunteer holiday packages is TravelWorks. It cooperates with local partners in different parts of the world. The company offers travelers a stay with a host family combined with social or environmental work in a local institution.
Nico Siegmund, a young German student teacher who participated in a TravelWork program in Ghana in 2009, was happy with his experience there. But he said he felt that it was too costly. Siegmund’s two-month volunteer holiday cost 960 euros without air fare, vaccinations, visa or other travel costs.
“It’s pretty expensive because you have to pay for everything yourself, so the flights, the vaccines, travel insurance and the stay,” Siegmund said.
A standard for corporate social responsibility in tourism
As the number of tour operators such as Studiosus and TravelWorks grow, which incorporate CSR and make it more significant for tourism, experts feel that there needs to be a standard for evaluating operators.
In Germany, the EED, KATE Center for Ecology and Development, the University of Applied Sciences in Eberswalde and Friends of Nature have been working on a standards-based measure for a tour operator’s inclusion of CSR in their business concept.
After this year’s ITB Berlin, the CSR label will be awarded to all tour operators that are ecologically and socially responsible. It’s hoped that CSR will promote socially responsible tourism in a sustainable manner.
“Tourism needs business concepts that work economically and socially, so that people in the destination can benefit from it,” Fuchs said.
Wealthy developed nations are eyeing up land in some of the world’s poorest countries in order to feed their own. It sounds like good news for local economies but how can people in places like Ethiopia be sure they’re getting a fair deal? Coco McCabe reports.
In August 2009, I found myself sitting on the damp earth of Dida Liben, a once-prosperous pastureland in southern Ethiopia where both wild and domestic animals thrived. Today, it’s mostly hard-packed dirt, pocked with patches of stubby grass and thorny bushes ― except where I was perched with a small gathering of local elders.
Around us, the grass had grown tall and thick, the result of an Oxfam-supported conservation effort that had set aside 275 acres of pasture and fenced it off with a bramble enclosure to give the land time to recover. And it had, gloriously, prompting the elders to luxuriate in the feel of the grass all around them, as they had when they were children. Even some of the wildlife was coming back including antelopes, rabbits and boars.
But a tinge of fear coloured their reminiscences. What if someone were to see how good all of this had become and decide to take it away? That was the first thing Kotola Buyale, wrapped up in a tight red shawl, wanted to talk about as we sank into the tall grasses to get out of the wind. What if?
Shopping abroad for places to plant
Kotola Buyale worries about what may happen to some of the pastureland in southern Ethiopia now that it has become productive again. Credit: Eva-Lotta Jansson/Oxfam America.
The elder’s words came back to me like an omen when I read a story in the New York Times about how rich countries with limited land suitable for farming are now shopping abroad for places to plant so they can feed their people. And guess where they’re looking ? Ethiopia, where hunger regularly stalks almost eight million people. The story reported that the country’s ministry of agriculture has tagged more than seven million acres as virgin land and plans to lease half of it, very soon, to foreign investors for just 50 cents an acre per year. It’s part of a trend now sweeping the globe. In May 2009, the Economist reported that in the last three years foreigners had secured deals or engaged in talks on between 15 million and 20 million hectares of farm land in developing countries.
Surely Ethiopia, one of the poorest places in the world ― it’s 171st on a United Nation’s index of 182 countries that measures national wellbeing ― could benefit from some robust foreign investment. But it must be the kind that helps the government meet its responsibility to ensure people have enough to eat. Is 50 cents an acre that kind of a deal? And for people who must certainly be living on those millions of acres, will there be long-term benefits they can count on from these investments? The government, like any government in this situation, should insist on it.
The pressure is on
The pressure is on. And Ethiopians feel it, even as they scramble to find ways to feed themselves. It’s hard not to admire the drive and entrepreneurial spirit of a man like Huka Balambal, a herder in southern Ethiopia who knew he needed to find a different way to provide for his family when repeated droughts shriveled the pasture on which his livestock depended. First, he taught himself to farm. Then, he devised an entire irrigation system for his small plot near the Dawa River. Now, harvests of corn and onions have eased his situation considerably.
That kind of determination can help feed a nation ― if the government ensures people have the resources and support they need.
