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.