Haile Selassie's Ethiopia: Myth or Reality?

Author(s): Donald Levine

Source: Africa Today, Vol. 8, No. 5 (May, 1961), pp. 11-14
Published by: Indiana University Press
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Haile Selassie
Ethiopia - Myth
By DONALD LEVINE
THE PUBLIC HANGING of General Mengistu Neway
in Addis Ababa on March 30 may seem to have
brought to a close the unexpected episode in Ethiopian
history that began with a short-lived coup d'etat by
the Imperial Bodyguard last December. The rebels
have been identified as a perverse group of power-
seekers. Emperor Haile Selassie's clemency has been
manifest once more by his lenient treatment of rebel
sympathizers. The Emperor's own modernization pro-
gram has been resumed with new purpose, as appears
from the appointment of several younger men to high-
er positions and his recent upbraiding of the bureau-
crats for failing to carry out their responsibilities to
the people. And so the West can breathe easily once
again: all is well as usual in Ethiopia.
The West has long been more disposed to wax
sentimental about Ethiopia than to grasp its reality.
For Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Ethiopia was
the land of "Prester John," a legendary bastion of
Christianity in the Orient which European rulers eyed
with fantasy as an ally against the Mussulmans. Since
the late Nineteenth Century, when she emerged the
only native polity to survive the imperialists' scramble
for Africa, Ethiopia has been a beacon for suppressed
Negroes-in the United States, in the West Indies, and
at the London School of Economics. Among Western
Jews, Ethiopia has been romanticized as the home of
Falashas, an obscure tribe of potters and metalsmiths
practicing a pre-Exilic form of Judaism. In recent
decades Ethiopia, as Mussolini's victim, became a cry-
ing symbol of innocence in the face of Fascist aggres-
sion and of the need for a world compact more serious
than the League of Nations.
Haile Selassie I, Regent of Ethiopia after 1917 and
Emperor since 1930, has inherited the awe and good
will felt for his fabled kingdom by so many outsiders.
His own reputation was elevated by the dramatic
stand at Geneva, and has soared ever since thanks to
a spate of Western writers who have gilded his regime
and a censorship system which assures that every-
thing published in his country rings with eulogy. Thus
MAY 196196
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Ss7
or Reality?
he has become a legend himself-that of a wise ruler
who knows how to combine social progress with po-
litical stability.
Incredible as it may seem, this image has scarcely
been shaken by the revolutionary events of last De-
cember. Instead of attending at last to the realities
of present-day Ethiopia, the Western press has al-
lowed the rhetoric of the restored regime to revive
our old credence in the myth of Haile Selassie. Per-
haps we would not be so ready to do this if we could
have heard General Mengistu's inspired reply to
the judges who sentenced him to death: "I will not
appeal your decision. You have already denied me
justice by not letting me have proper defense in this
trial. I have done what you say, but I am not guilty.
Ethiopia has been standing still, while our African
brothers are moving ahead in the struggle to over-
come poverty. What I did was in the best interests
of my country."
As all who knew him will attest, General Mengistu
was no ideologist, but a bon vivant. The fact that he
was led to sacrifice his easy life and enviable position
and to betray the Emperor's trust in him should sug-
gest to all concerned that there is precious little
progress or stability in the Empire of Ethiopia.
HERE IS NO DOUBT that Haile Selassie wants to go
down in history as the builder of modern Ethio-
pia. Indeed, some of the most radical Ethiopians assert
that he does not lack good intentions.
The tragedy is that he has been kept from realizing
his progressive ideals by characteristics traditionally
connected with the Ethiopian monarchy. Consistent
with the traditional attitude that delegation of author-
ity deprives the ruler of some measure of dignity, he
has insisted on retaining the powers of an absolute
despot. Similarly, believing that the welfare of the
sovereign is more important than that of the people,
he has diligently amassed a huge personal fortune.
(Estimates which I have been unable to verify state
that his assets exceed US $200,000,000, a large part
 of which has been taken from Ethiopia illegally and
cached in Switzerland, Sweden, England, and the
United States.) Finally, in keeping with the basic mis-
trust and ad hoc policy-making of Ethiopia's tradi-
tional rulers, he has failed to commit himself to a
coherent program of national development. The result
has been a compromise that has inspired no one but
the court parasites: he has continued to behave much
like his imperial forefathers while indulging at will
in the oratory of modernization.
Perhaps in no other "under-developed" country
have so much thought and energy gone into producing
the appearance of progress. Embellishment of the
capital city has epitomized this concern. Millions have
been spent on broad boulevards to approach the
palaces, while large numbers of diseased and unem-
ployed still beg on the streets. A large commercial
school was constructed on the airport road in order
to confront the visitor at once with the signs of civili-
zation, against the advice of planners who rightly
predicted that classwork would be impaired by the
sounds of heavy traffic. For the sake of Addis Ababa
the provinces have been heavily taxed and left rela-
tively undeveloped. Thirty-seven percent of the capi-
tal's children go to school, as compared with about
four percent in the provinces. With regard to medical
services, the discrepancy is many times greater
(though in the last year the inauguration of a pro-
gram of public health centers in some of the provinces
is an encouraging step).
In nearly every area of Ethiopian public life a
progressive facade has been erected to cover the
status quo. Land reform, which American and Yugo-
slav advisers agree to be the prerequisite for any sig-
nificant increase in agricultural production, was
achieved in September 1959 by a proclamation promis-
ing land to all who have none, but which in fact meant
that some hundreds of peasants were permitted to
borrow money from the Government to be paid back
with interest after five years. Plans for industrial
development were often announced on high, but for-
eign investors were given conditions which none but
the most dim-witted would accept; the Emperor and
his relatives buried fortunes abroad; and Ethiopian
entrepreneurs were checked at every turn lest they
become an independent bourgeois class. An elaborate
exercise in popular elections took place in 1957, pro-
ducing a house of representatives that has done little
but what the Emperor has ordered of it. A massive
program to develop the arts got as far as the construc-
tion of Haile Selassie I Theater, whose staff has had
to limit its functions to the preparation of spurious
folk-lore spectacles to impress foreign dignitaries.
Haile Salassie has often stated that the keystone of
progress is education. He prides himself on retaining
the portfolio of Minister of Education, and claims
personal responsibility for the education of hundreds
of young Ethiopians abroad. Yet these Western-edu-
cated Ethiopians have in effect been just another sec-
tion of the large facade. Personal loyaIty, to the
Emperor or one of his favored ministers, has been the
basis for government appointments. The office-holder
who ventures to do something more efficiently or
imaginatively-in short, to carry out his responsibility
to the peoplefinds himself "promoted" to a lesser
position. "The problem," said one official of the Min-
istry of , "'is that we get punished for doing
what in your country would bring rewards."
The returned students tried many ways of adjusting
12
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to this state of things. Some got used to the pace and
intrigue of Ethiopian administration and worked as
best they could: some withdrew to drink or orgies
of chess-playing; some shed their schoolday principles
to become informers and apologists for the regime.
But the number of convinced dissidents grew steadily
larger. "The Emperor will have to learn that our
education is not a plaything he can turn on or off as
he pleases," shouted one of them-when we were alone.
T HE FRUSTRATIONS of the educated, however, com-
prise but one aspect of the opposition to Emperor
Haile Selassie. Haile Selassie has never really been
secure, in both senses of the word. The fact that he
himself came to power following a coup and years of
factional strife has left him with a constant pulse
of anxiety. The monotonously repeated assertions of
his legitimacy are so many attempts to make Ethio-
pians forget that his climb to power was at the ex-
pense of the then legitimate monarch, Lij Iyasu, and
that with regard to genealogy other men had better
claims to the throne.
Actually, the chief criterion of succession in Ethio-
pia has usually been might, and the fear that others
might be acquiring too much power has always
troubled Haile Selassie more than his dubious origins.
He never lacked grounds for such fears. Many battles
had to be fought to suppress his enemies before he
was crowned Emperor. The Fascists released a number
of his political prisoners, and the quick progress under
their Occupation made some Ethiopians think that
Haile Selassie had not been doing all he could. His own
flight from Ethiopia to appeal to the League of Na-
tions-by Western standards, the cinly rational thing
to do-was widely regarded by Ethiopians as a be-
trayal of his solemn obligations as warrior-king to
fight to the finish. Even at the time of his "triumphant
return" in 1941, when Haile Selass:ie was more popu-
lar than ever before or since, some of his own fellow
Amharas waged a battle to prevent him from seizing
power again.
The dozen or so revolts and projected coups which
have threatened Haile Selassie since the Liberation
have sprung from three main sources. Most visible
have been the provincial revolts-Ethiopia's form of
tribal conflict. In the 1940's two revolts were based in
the western province of Gojjam and a serious one
broke out in the northern province of Tigre. These
were squelched by the Army, though the rebellious
feelings of the people did not die. Several smaller
incidents in the provinces consisted of the expression
of tribal grievances by the suppressed Hamitic and
Nilotic peoples in the southern half of the country,
which the Amhara overlords were usually quick to
muffle. One such incident, occurring about April 1960,
involved the massacre of over a thousand Darasa
tribesmen who had protested the dispossession of
DR. DONALD LEVINE recently returned from three
years of sociological research in Ethiopia. While
in Addis Ababa he organized a Seminar in Ethio-
pian Studies at the University College, and in
1959 was one of two American scholars to par-
ticipate in the first international convention on
Ethiopian Studies in Rome. He exspects to com-
plete his book, Wax and Gold: Explorations in
Ethiopian Society and Culture, later this i.ear.
AFRICA TODAY
 their land by the Emperor's daughter and some of her
children.
A second type of dissidence has been of the palace
revolution variety. Several ambitious individuals have
hoped to seize power for their own purposes, but the
centralization of power under Haile Selassie enabled
him to check such plans before they began to mate-
rialize. The most famous scheme was that of Wolde
Giorgis Wolde Yohannis, the Emperor's right-hand
man until his demotion in 1955. Another notable case
was the conspiracy led by then President of the Sen-
ate Negash Kebede, to assassinate Haile Selassie in
the early 1950's. It is an irony of Ethiopian politics
WALL;;: t3io-A
I S1PAtR
that this group was apprehended by a squad under
the command of Mengistu Neway. (Many Ethiopians
maintain, however, that the conspiracy was actually
organized and financed by the Emperor himself-
through Dejazmatch Geresu Duke, the "betrayer" of
the group-in order to get rid of some influential peo-
ple and also, by appearing to be threatened by Com-
munist subversives, to gain greater bargaining power
vis-a-vis the United States.)
With the return of foreign-educated Ethiopians
from abroad a third type of dissidence began to grow.
This was based more on ideological than on tribal or
personal ambitions. These dissidents were moved by
intense dissatisfaction with the widespread corruption
and inefficiency in the government. They felt that if
the Emperor had really wanted to improve things, he
could have. Germame Neway, the civilian mastermind
of the Bodyguard coup, was an outstanding example
of this third sort of dissident.
After returning from the United States, where he
studied political science at the University of Wis-
consin and later Columbia, Germame was made Gov-
ernor of Wollamo Sub-Province. This was the sort of
post usually dreaded as exile by most urbanized Ethi-
opians, but Germame turned it into a day and night
struggle to improve the living of his people. He set
up scores of primary schools, built a number of
MAY 1961
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bridges, and fought to bring justice to the peasantry
there. Desta Fisseha, a wealthy Wollamo landowner,
protested all this commotion and, through the custom-
ary channels of Palace intrigue, managed to have
Germame transferred to another area, Jigjiga. In the
new post Germame's reformist energies were cramped
by the need to spend so many hours presiding over
Somali litigation-he was often at court from early
morning till late at night-and to attend to the secur-
ity problems of that province lying on the Somali bor-
ders. But he spared no pains to listen carefully to all
the disputes brought before him, and found time to
have a hospital built nonetheless. Like most Amharas,
Germame was quiet and well-mannered, giving no clue
to the outsider that a storm of rebellion was brewing
within.
F THE FACADE of progress was built with empty
words and hollow architecture, the facade of
stability was achieved through the system of shum-
shir, appoint-demote. This system consists of a con-
stant shuffling of political appointments, whereby
every Ethiopian official has been kept continually
anxious about any appearance of disloyalty and so
has been prevented from acquiring a significant fol-
lowing in any position. Haile Selassie's appointments
were made in such a way that the officials in any min-
istry would be constantly spying on each other. For
example, Abiye Abebe, the loyalist general who held
down Asmara during the coup, and Tadesse Negash,
one of the hostages slain by the rebels, had been life-
long friends. When they found themselves in the
adjacent positions of Minister and Minister d'Etat of
Justice, they began to inform on each other. "We have
learned that the Emperor wants us to be enemies
now," Tadesse once remarked.
The shum-shir system turned men's thoughts from
I social action to personal advancement. It virtually
eliminated the possibility of sustained development
since officials no sooner got acquainted with one post
than they were transferred to another, and their
budding programs were sabotaged by their successors.
It intensified the atmosphere of mutual distrust that
had been created by the ever-felt eyes of the Security
Department and the personal networks of reaction-
aries like Makonnen Habtewold. The resulting sus-
picion choked all public discussion, smothered what
intellectual interests had been cultivated abroad, and
cramped the most innocent social relations. It was im-
possible to form groups of any sort-even a medical
association, let alone an alliance of intelligentsia fr-)-
to ponder their country's problems.
The engineers of the December uprising were thus
forced to keep their plans strictly to themselves. Fear-
ing to confer in advance with other dissident elements,
they assumed that once the daring move was made the
others would rally behind them. But the facade of
stability was not yet ready to crack. In none of the
dissident provinces was a finger lifted to support the
coup. The educated civilians were afraid to show
themselves until the new government proved itself a
sure thing, though a group of college students did
stage a demonstration in the final hours of the coup.
Most important, despite widespread sympathy with
the aims of the coup among the officers of the Army
and Air Force, these forces did not come to terms with
the Bodyguard, and ended by destroying the rebel gov-
ernment. Haile Selassie's masterful policy of divide?
et impera served him well in that fateful1 hour.
13
THE DECEMBER coup was bred of genuine domestic
discontent, aggravated by the consciousness-
after the big year of African independence-that the
ancient symbol of African statehood had fallen well
behind other countries on the continent in the race
for modernization. It was triggered, after years of
waiting, by the conviction that the old feudal-monar-
chical order could be changed only by some swiftly
applied social remedies. The students who demon-
strated sensed what it was all about; the placards they
carried read "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."
And though all these dreams were drowned in blood,
one great accomplishment remains. A true word has
been uttered in this land of deception. Haile Selassie
could get away with his policy of facade because
Ethiopian custom envelops all human affairs in a thick
mesh of equivocation. The traditional order admits
only one kind of truth: loyalty to one's superior. Be-
tween father and son, ruler and ruled, there are no
habits of honest communication. The alternatives are
obedience and rebellion. The Bodyguard revolt has
spoken aloud, by the loss of much life, what many
Ethiopians have been aching to tell their ruler; it was
probably the only way he could ever be told. The
statement read by the (commonly misunderstood)
Crown Prince when setting up the new government
was indirect, but its meaning was unmistakable-to
end the rule of the few for the few, and to make the
monarchy an instrument for serving the people.
Can Haile Selassie listen? Can he yet make use of
the great respect which the office of Emperor still
holds in Ethiopia-which led the rebels to attempt a
coup without resorting to assassination, to their great
credit and their ultimate undoing-and push ahead on
an imaginative program of real development? This is
the question to which the blood of those who died in
December demands answer.
One thing is certain: the Emperor cannot for long
ignore this overwhelming question. Thanks to the
heroic action of Germame, Mengistu, and their com-
rades, the facades are beginning to crumble. Many
Ethiopians who heretofore have been quietly obedient,
from the Empress and the Crown Prince down to the
common citizen, now venture to voice a degree of
criticism. Some have even taken to swearing in the
name of the martyred Mengistu instead of that of the
Emperor.
No one at all acquainted with Ethiopia will pre-
tend that Haile Selassie's task is easy, especially at
this late date. Wealthy landlords, an obstructionist
clergy, and those corrupt officials who survived the
rebels' purge still hope to forestall change. The edu-
cated progressives often lack experience, daring, and
careful knowledge of their country's problems. The
Emperor, moreover, after having succeeded in bluffing
his countrymen, then Europe and the United States,
now manages to bluff even himself. Nevertheless, each
day makes his alternatives more clear and ineluctable
-either to launch at last an unambiguous program of
modernization and liberalization, and perhaps redeem
his place in history despite everything; or else to face
the downfall of his throne and possibly the Congoli-
zation of Africa's oldest independent nation.

BOOK REVIEWS
African Anthologies

'The Breath of Our Forefathers'

By SEAN BOUD

BOOK OF SOUTH AFRICAN VERSE. Guy
Butler, Editor. London: Oxford
University Press, 1959. 270 pp.
$2.90.
AN AFRICAN TREASURY.Langston
Hughes, Editor. New York: Crown,
1960. 207 pp. $3.50.
As selections of literature and po-
etry thrown to the surface in the
tempestuous readjustment of the Af-
rican continent, these two books rep-
resent, respectively, an emergence
and a decline. It is not Afrophilic to
claim that the treasury of Black Af-
rican literature-although the selec-
tions are poor-represents the emer-
gence.
If the white South Africans who
contribute exclusively to the book of
South African verse are to survive
as true muses of their unhappy coun-
try, a cure will be required for their
14
neurotic preoccupation with the South
African race bogey. The poets know
well enough that there is a cancer
gnawing at the heart of South Afri-
can society-but the trouble is they
know it too well: awareness of the
disease somehow takes second place
to a self-conscious absorption with
the symptoms.
Tension is necessary for vigorous
cultural activity, and activity pro-
duced by this tension is a catharsis, a
self-expression that is creative, with-
out which the spirit would succumb to
a compromised or enervated condition.
Tension should act as a catylist. But
here the creativity is consumed with
treating the tension itself, which is
reasonable enough as a backdrop to
the central action. But there was
never a more boring play than one
in which the center of interest is the
backdrop. The actors in this play are
not the people of South Africa; they
are
The serf who held his master's fate
In hollow of his swarthy hand.
-A. S. Cripps
or
The butterfly whose bite can kill a
man. W. Plomer
or as in "Cape Colored Batman,"
The man the Empire made,
From lesser breeds, the Child of
Trade,
Left without hope in History's
shade. -Guy Bi;tler
And their action is too often repre-
sentative, not personal, as Roy Camp-
bell says, "to plough down palaces
and thrones and towers," or as he
jibes less reverently in another place,
"politics and little else besides." In
other words, the subjects of the poems
are not the people but are generali-
zations and stereotypes.
The themes of travel, exile, home-
coming, savage and innocent Nature,
AFRICA TODAY

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