Chapter Four

4. Politics and Government under the Emperor Haile Silassie- I

Haile Selassie was crowned emperor in 1930 (after serving as regent from 1916 to 1930 during
the reign of Empress Zewditu). Furthermore, the mid-twentieth century in Ethiopia, from 1916
through to the revolution in 1974, was dominated by a single man called; Emperor Haile Selassie
who had a critical impact on the formation of modern Ethiopia. After the power competition
among the Shewan nobility and coup d’état against Lij Iyasu, Teferi’s role in Ethiopian politics
became significant. His role in the coup d’état that overthrew Iyasu in September, 1916 was
exaggerated and insignificant. However, the intervening period was consumed in a struggle for
power at the centre that ended with the accession of Haile Selassie to the throne in 1930.

Emperor Menelik fell ill in 1906 and was gradually incapacitated until his death in 1913. Despite
several marriages and many illegitimate offspring, Menelik had no direct male heir and only one
living daughter, Zawditu. An older daughter had married King Mikael, the Wollo Oromo ruler
who had been forced to become a Christian, and in 1908 the male issue of this marriage, Lij
Yasu, a mere boy of thirteen was named heir to the imperial throne. His accession would have
meant the passing of the throne to an Oromo dynasty, threatening the political hegemony of the
Shoa nobility and the privileges it had accumulated under Menelik. A conspiracy was hatched to
prevent this from happening, and Lij Yasue never succeeded to the throne. The guiding spirit of
the conspiracy was a young Shoa noble, twenty four years of age, named Ras Tafari Makonnen.
A scion of the Shoa nobility, he had good credentials for the role, but was obliged to bide his
time, while Menelik’s daughter, Zawditu, was enthroned. Ras Tafari was named Regent and heir
to Zawditu. It was a crude division of power, undermined further by the distrust that marked
relations between the rivals at the top. Virile provincialism reclaimed Ethiopia during the next
ten years, with powerful provincial satraps plundering the periphery and ignoring the
government in Addis Ababa.

The power gridlock was broken in 1926, when a formidable obstacle represented by the Minister
of War, Fitawrari Habte Giorgis, was removed by his death. The old warlord’s army of some
16,000 men passed into the service of the Regent, as well as vast estates, stores of weapons and
other sources of wealth. Thus reinforced, Tafari moved against his rivals. Over the next few
years, the most powerful provincial lords were shorn of their power and possessions by a mixture
of guile and force. Having thwarted an attempt, abetted by Zauditu, to remove him in 1928 he
forced the cowed Empress to name him Negus (King), putting control of government affairs
entirely in his hands. Zawditu died in 1930, and Tafari became King of Kings at thirty-seven
years of age, taking the throne-name Haile Selassie (‘Power of the Trinity’). The taming of the
provincial lords was completed the same year when, following the death of Abba Jiffar, Jimma
lost its administrative autonomy. The same fate had earlier befallen the traditional rulers of
Wallega and Beni Shangul. Thus, the struggle for succession ended seventeen years after
Menelik’s death.

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Typically, “he remained behind the scenes while others made the running, but he emerged from
the coup, which elevated Menelik’s daughter Zawditu to the throne, with the title of ras and the
status of heir to the throne”( Prunier, etal, 2015:185). As a result, he played a prominent role
during the short reign of Empress Zewuditu, he was also made regent to the Empress (Bahru,
1991). Upon the death of empress in 1930 Teferi was “proclaimed king of [kings] of Ethiopia
and had established strong support from intellectuals and progressive section of the society, even
if internal and external opposition dominated through his entire reign”

4.1. Nation building model: Power centralism and assimilation

If only because it feared rebellion, the ruling class became concerned with the political
implications of ethnic and cultural heterogeneity among the subjects of the empire, and it was
only natural that they should wish to replace such diversity with a homogeneous ‘nation. State
builders have always feared ‘the failure to homogenize increased the likelihood that a state…
would fragment into its cultural subdivisions. Homogeneity and a shared national identity endow
the state with legitimacy and reduce the need to use force as the instrument of rule. Striving for
legitimacy, ‘empires construct themselves around a specific culture that they intend to defend,
promote, or possibly expand.

It was taken for granted that integration meant assimilation and Ethiopia was to become
Abyssinia writ large. This was succinctly stated by a member of the first generation of
Ethiopians educated abroad. The policy of assimilation should be at the top of our reforms; for
without the union of the Amhara and Galla, it is impossible to visualize the future with certainty
or enthusiasm...It is for the Galla to become Amhara (not the other way round); for the latter
possess a written language, a superior religion and superior customs and mores. Language, the
emblem of culture, is the cutting edge in the process of homogenisation. ‘Cultural and linguistic
unification is accompanied by the imposition of the dominant language and culture as legitimate,
and by the rejection of all other languages into indignity.

Traditionally known as lesane negus (‘the King’s language’), Amharigna was the main tool in
the assimilation process inevitably dubbed ‘amharisation’. A Ministry of Education report in
1955 declared: ‘the promotion of Amharic at the various levels…is an important task that is
fundamental to national integration. To smooth the path of the preferred official medium, the
regime sought to eradicate all other indigenous languages, including Tigrigna. Amharigna was
named the official language of the state in the 1955 Constitution but, long before that, no
vernacular was allowed to be printed, broadcast, taught, or spoken on public occasions. Private
schools were permitted to use foreign languages as long as they taught Amharigna as a subject,
but no school could use an indigenous language, or teach it as a subject. Proficiency in the
official language was required for entry to the University, although its language of instruction
was English.

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The exclusiveness afforded to the official language was reflected in the ethnic composition of
university students. In the entering class of 1968, Amharigna-speakers accounted for 55.5%,
Tigrigna-speakers (including Eritreans) for 23.5%, Oromo-speakers for 10.4%, and Gurage-
speakers for 2.3%. A survey in the same year of students who sat for the Ethiopian School
Leaving Certificate examination upon completing secondary level showed 60% Amharigna-
speakers speakers and 22% Tigrigna-speakers, including Eritreans.

To the outside world, the imperial regime presented Ethiopia as an ancient society welded in
unity by its history and devotion to the Christian faith. Addressing the United States Congress in
1954, Haile Selassie described his realm as the ‘largest Christian state in the Middle East’. On
the subject of religion, the regime’s policy was ostensibly based on a statement attributed to the
Emperor: to wit, ‘religion is personal, the state is for all’, despite the glaring fact that the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church was the official state church, the owner of immense wealth and
beneficiary of state largesse. The pursuit of homogeneity reached a peak when the regime
began to ‘abyssinianise’ place names in the periphery. For instance, the Oromo towns of Adama
and Wolliso in southern Shoa became Nazareth and Ghion (Zion) respectively.

The Ethiopian Church lacked missionary zeal and did little to spread the faith in the periphery,
where it was part of the neftegna ruling class and resented by the gabbar. In the wake of the
conquest, traditional rulers in the periphery who converted to Christianity sometimes brought
their people to mass conversion ceremonies, where all men were baptised with the name Gebre
Maryam (servant of Mary) or Wolde Maryam (son of Mary), and women took the name
Wolete Maryam (daughter of Mary).

So, despite the fact that Ethiopia is extraordinarily diverse in culture with a broad mix of ethnic
groups and religions, the Amhara and the Christian Church have for centuries together controlled
the political culture of the country. They acted in unison to foster a policy of imperialism
incorporating vast chunks of territory into the realm, and in so far as they were able, they
prevented any other group from attaining power.

Domestically they brought the Muslims, Oromo, Sidama, Arusi and Somali under their heel,
and internationally they prevented other countries from establishing suzerainty over Ethiopia.
Feudalism in Ethiopia was the bedrock of the entire political and social system. Without the
feudal structure the Shoa-Amhara would never have been able to control Ethiopia as long as they
did.

Status, class and power were shaped by it and the political order was based upon it. The ruling
class of contemporary Ethiopia was made up essentially of individuals who were responsible to
or supportive of Haile Selassie I. As the great warlords of the nineteenth century died off, Haile
Selassie appointed his supporters to positions in the central or local administration. Many were
given large quantities of land as patronage and many were already large landowners. These
landlords and government officials, together with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, owned

3
the bulk of the land in the country and controlled the everyday lives of the peasantry. This landed
class imposed upon an oppressed class of tenant farmers a power hold in which the latter held no
legal, political or economic rights.

But through tax and land tenure legislation initiated by Haile Selassie the feudal system was
legitimized within the political structure. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is one of the most
reactionary and was one of the most powerful institutions in the country. Church ownership of
land was rooted in the traditional right of emperors to grant lands to churches and monasteries
that included tax privileges, a right going back to biblical times. Prior to 1974 the Church owned
some 18 per cent of the land in the country. Legally and traditionally exempt from the payment
of land taxes, the Church, in 1942, was granted the statutory right to collect its own private taxes
from its tenants, something it had always traditionally done in any case. Through tax collection,
tax exemption and rental of land, the Church evolved into a political, social and economic power
of unusually large dimensions.

Most of the land outside the provinces of Gojjam, Tigre and Beghemdir/ Semien, where land is
held communally, was owned by individual land- lords, many who at one time or another held
government positions and who maintained a rigid feudal relationship to tenant farmers. Through
traditional and contemporary tax exemptions they remained almost totally free of land tax
obligations, while at the same time they too were granted rights to tax their tenants privately and
mercilessly. Traditional tax exemptions were often tied to individual rights to collect taxes.
Under the rist-gult form of land tenure, granted since the Middle Ages by emperors to members
of the royal family for services rendered, the landowner was entitled to collect and keep taxes
under prescribed rates. Maderia land, granted to individuals in place of salary, was exempt from
land tax, as was Galla land which was granted to landlords as pension. Woqf lands, granted to
the Islamic Church, were also exempt from land taxes.

When land tenure did not call for exemptions landlords often illegally shifted the burden of
payment of land taxes upon the tenant farmer. And since the tenant farmer held no functional
legal rights, refusal to pay meant eviction. In addition, landlords demanded at least 50 per cent of
the produce as rent, loaned money to tenant farmers at above 100 per cent interest rates,
demanded free services such as threshing, fencing, and herding of cattle, and collected a 10 per
cent tithe on produce (a tradi- tional practice in Ethiopia since earliest times). Under Haile
Selassie, the Church, the Imperial family (which itself owned some 42 per cent of the total land
in the state) and the landed class made up a polity that to some degree competed structurally.

The peasant, prior to and under the regime of Haile Selassie, bore the brunt of supporting four
layers of the political and social system: the landed elite, the Church, the central government and
the Imperial family. In this structure the peasant easily fits under the rubric of serf Oppressed
without mercy, he was lucky to survive from year to year. No leader ever came close to altering
the feudal structure until 1974, and in fact emperors usually supported it, since it was the
determining factor in the accumulation of class and power.

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If there is a moral to this account of the Ethiopian story, it is not to raise the question whether the
end justifies all means, but whether violence is the most effective means to that end in the 21st
century. To attempt to answer this question we must examine the process of nation-state building
in this country in the context of African and world experience. Unfortunately, Africa is ‘omitted
from the scholarly literature on state creation and consolidation the assumption being that the
state in Africa emerged fully formed from the colonial womb.

Among the insights generated by the studies one was considered a seminal contribution. This
concerned the role of war as the catalyst in the process of state building. ‘War made the state,
and the state made war’. To a lesser extent, war making likewise led to state making through the
expansion of military organization itself, as a standing army, war industries, supporting
bureaucracies, and (rather later) schools grew up within the state apparatus… In the course of
making war, extracting resources, and building up the state apparatus, the managers of states
formed alliances with specific social classes. This analysis of state formation and nation building
refers to the early modern history of Western Europe – 17th and 18th centuries.

There are some who attribute the failure of post-colonial state formation in the continent to the
absence of war. Convinced that state building in Africa can best succeed through war, there are
even those who welcome the on-going violence in parts of the continent. The African paradigm
notwithstanding, Ethiopia’s experience conforms closely to the notion of war as the midwife in
the birth of states. Therefore, ‘there was no time at which the empire as a whole could have been
said to be at peace. Ethiopia at the time was in the midst of its own expansion which turned the
legendary Christian kingdom into a veritable empire. Completed within a few years after Adwa,
this was the last and greatest stride in a centuries-long process of expansion that had seen the
Christian kingdom’s frontiers shift steadily southwards and the native people in its path
subjugated and assimilated.

Halted for nearly three centuries – mid-16th to mid-19th – when the throne was submerged in a
protracted struggle for supremacy and the kingdom itself dissolved into its provincial
components – a period known as the Age of the Princes – the expansion resumed with great
vigour in the second half of the 19th century. This was when the Age of the Princes concluded
with the resurrection of the throne, and the unity of the Ethiopian state was restored.
Subsequently, Ethiopia fought a series of wars to preserve its independence, and also competed
successfully in the imperialist partition of the region. ‘While rebuffing imperialism successfully
in the north, Ethiopia managed to practice it in the south’.

Not a victim but a participant in the ‘scramble’, Ethiopia doubled its territory and population in a
burst of expansionist energy, and thereafter proudly styled itself the ‘Ethiopian Empire’. The
people who took pride in calling themselves Ethiopians were known also as Abyssinians
(Habesha), a name commonly used by mapmakers and historians until well into the 20th century.
When the kingdom became an empire, the name acquired political meaning: the builders and
rulers of the empire were known as Habesha, regardless of ethnic origin.

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Ethiopia as state, its structure changed from a quasi-feudal form to a robust monarchical
absolutism, and its administration was revamped in a quasi-bureaucratic pattern focused on
extracting resources efficiently from a population cowed by a standing professional army. To
rule the territories incorporated by the expansion, a complex system was devised that combined
colonization by transplanted Abyssinians and the cooptation of a subordinate indigenous elite. A
parallel search went on for a formula that could give the state legitimacy and secure the loyalty
of its subjects, and at the same time define a national identity broadly enough to represent a
vastly heterogeneous population. After an aborted attempt at assimilating the entire population to
the Abyssinian culture, resort was had to socialism and more recently to cultural pluralism and
federalism. None of these addressed the fundamental political issue that continues to galvanize
resistance: the assumed exclusive right of the Abyssinian elite to rule the state and plot the
course leading to national integration with the illusioned ambition of building nation-state.

4.1.1. The Centre/Periphery Perspective

The process of state formation is initiated and managed from an expanding centre of power that
radiates outwards to annex territories along its geographical periphery, and then weaves an
administrative network to incorporate them and capture their resources. What distinguishes the
centre from the periphery is not simply geography, though this is often a salient feature. The
locus of power is the most significant indicator. Imperialism is founded on an uneven power
relationship, ‘a hierarchical system of political relationships with one power being much stronger
than the other’, and a ‘relationship of a hegemonial state to peoples or nations under its control.

What defines the centre is the monopoly of power and the hegemonic position it occupies in the
state. ‘Ultimately the notion of centre-periphery relations should not be based on geographical or
cultural criteria, but primarily on a model of the structure and distribution of political power’.
What defines the periphery is its marginal position in the power structure of the state, or more
precisely, its exclusion from state power. Normally, exclusion from power translates into lack of
access to state resources, as well as the loss of native resources appropriated by the state and
transferred to the centre. Powerlessness, economic exploitation and cultural discrimination add
up to a severe form of marginalization, the defining feature of the periphery; this reality properly
fits the Ethiopian state formation and nation-building process.

In Ethiopia, ‘Specific regions and communities could be defined as more or less peripheral, in
accordance with their physical distance from the capital, their level of incorporation into the
coercive and economic structures of government, and their degree of association with the
legitimizing myths of nationhood’. On either side of the divide, the position of different
population groups and classes on the integration/power scale varies, making it impossible to
draw lines on the map to distinguish centre from periphery. For example, what we refer to as an
‘auxiliary elite’ in this study constitutes a class in the periphery enjoying a share of state power.

6
Likewise, there is a world of difference on the power scale between the peasant class in the
historical Abyssinian centre and the ruling elite of the same nationality. Consequently, reference
to the ‘centre’ in this study is to the power elite and decision makers, who invariably find or
create subordinate elite to help them administer the periphery, and thus introduce class
distinctions where they did not exist. The fact that there are elite groups on both sides of the
centre/ periphery divide, does not mean they belong to the same ruling class, for the simple
reason that the peripheral elites are creations of the centre and wholly dependent on it. The elite
at the centre make decisions; the elite in the periphery implement them.

Administrative integration comes first because it is a prerequisite for resource extraction. In its
initial phase the state relied on the armed immigrants from the north, the neftegna, and the local
chiefs who were incorporated into a system of indirect rule. Efficient as an instrument of control,
it proved wasteful in raising revenue, and was scrapped after World War II in the reorganisation
of the state under Emperor Haile Selassie. The nation-building idea is likely to be most
mischievous in center- periphery cultural polities. The historical association of the state with the
core culture means that the nation is inevitably identified with the dominant group. The
imperative of nation-building then means the imposition of the core culture upon the periphery.
Given the higher levels of cultural consciousness now generally prevalent, this type of national
integration strategy is likely to provoke a hostile counter-mobilization of the periphery. Burma,
Iran, and Ethiopia are exemplary cases of this process. Nation-building as a moral cloak for
intensified domination is a dangerous doctrine.

4.2. The Adoption of Constitutional with bicameral houses in 1931

Ethiopia acquired its first constitution in 1931. Both the 1931 and 1955 constitutions translated
this myth into legality and thus its importance and vitality to the House of Solomon cannot be
underrated. An early monument to the kind of formalism that was to become a noted trait of
governance in this country ever since, it was intended to create a modern facade for the absolute
monarchy that Haile Selassie was fashioning, and to improve Ethiopia’s none too bright image
abroad. The gist was contained in the article that stated simply: ‘In the Ethiopian Empire
supreme power rests in the hands of the Emperor’, whose person was declared ‘sacred’, his
dignity ‘inviolable’, and his power ‘indisputable’. Thus, a modern instrument designed to limit a
ruler’s power was enlisted by a traditional ruler in pursuit of absolute power.

With his country ringed with European colonies, and his capital crowded with foreign diplomats,
concession seekers, merchants and adventurers of all sorts, Haile Selassie was forced to employ
foreign advisors, none of who were fully trusted by the Ethiopians. It was through them that he
was able to introduce such innovations as a national currency, a state bank, a postal, telephone
and telegraph system, and the training of Ethiopian soldiers in the use of modern weapons. In the
early 1930s, the central government was revamped. New ministries were added, the customs
service was reorganised, new tax regulations were introduced, and a new currency was issued in

7
1933. Road building and other public works began to change the rustic image of Addis Ababa,
motor cars made their appearance in the capital’s streets, and a police force was assembled.

4.2.1. Italian occupation and Liberation

Mussolini’s regime in Italy revived that nation’s ambitions for expansion in the Horn of Africa,
and after a campaign of provocation on the ground and vilification of Ethiopia internationally, it
launched a two pronged invasion from Eritrea in the north and Somalia in the southeast. The
Italians committed more than one-quarter of a million of their own soldiers, plus a large number
of auxiliaries from Eritrea and Somalia. Determined not to repeat the fiasco of Adwa, the Italians
waged a ruthless campaign using aircraft and mustard gas. The Ethiopians fought bravely but in
vain. Haile Selassie went abroad, and in May 1936 made a dramatic appearance before the
League of Nations in Geneva to deliver a memorable and prophetic speech pointing out to his
cynical audience the inevitable and universal consequences of their timidity. This performance
gained the diminutive ruler world-wide recognition and a store of sympathy that proved
inexhaustible.

Inside Ethiopia, a resistance movement soon became a major problem for the Italians.
Collaboration with the invader was also not unknown. As was to be expected, the most
prominent collaborators were to be found among the enemies of the Shoa regime. Released from
prison, Ras Hailu was restored to the governorship of Gojjam. One Tigray lord and imperial son-
in-law, Haile Selassie Gugsa, assisted the invaders, and another, Ras Seyoum Mangasha,
apparently came to an understanding with them and was allowed to keep his position.

Not surprisingly, the abrupt collapse of Ethiopian rule in the periphery gave vent to acts of
revenge and hopes of emancipation among the subject peoples. The Guji rejoiced with a song:
‘We were jailed and released by Atala (a Guji balabbat); we were jailed and bitten by Habasha;
now it’s our time, we have the opportunity to retaliate against them’. When the Italians arrived, a
Selti chieftain named Sugato Zayni greeted them saying: ‘When a government comes, I welcome
it, when it leaves I say farewell, like to a guest’ (Bustorf 1997: 6). There were many such
incidents in the highland periphery. A Wollo Oromo chieftain, Amedi Ali, was made ras by the
Italians in 1939. Abba Jiffar and some forty other Oromo dignitaries were taken to Rome in May
1938 to meet Mussolini. Another traditional figure who courted Italian favour was Emir Sufian
Abdulahi of Harar. Other Oromo fought against the invader.

After the Emperor’s flight abroad and before the Italians arrived in the southwest, an attempt was
made to forestall Italian occupation by placing this Oromo region under British protection.
Petitions signed by leading Oromo chiefs in Wallega, Jimma and Illubabor were submitted to the
British Consul at Gore, proposing the formation of a Western Oromo Confederation to be ruled
by Britain under a mandate from the League of Nations.

The Consul reported to London: The Galla provinces have disarmed the Amhara officials and
soldiers in their areas and the Galla hereditary chiefs have assumed control of the government in

8
their areas. All Galla chiefs have sent seals and signatures and delegations asking the League of
Nations to place the provinces of Western Abyssinia under British mandate. An Oromo
delegation met British officials in Gambella on 8 June 1936. It carried a similar appeal signed by
the traditional rulers of Leqa Nekempt, Leqa Qellam, Jimma and Beni Shangul. Initially, the
Italians confiscated the land holdings of the Ethiopian royal family, the grand nobility and those
who led the resistance against them, declaring them state domain. The Ethiopian Orthodox
Church was allowed to retain its vast landholdings in return for a promise of cooperation.

Italian propaganda against Ethiopia had made the gabbar system its focus and its abolition a
priority. Finally, they freed all the slaves. All in all, the Italian interlude brought welcome relief
from the burden of Ethiopian rule to the people of the periphery, something that made its
restoration in 1941 all the more unwelcome. Nevertheless, despite the Italians’ systematic
attempt to foment dissension by courting the Muslim population, they failed to gain the active
support of that or any other section of Ethiopia’s population. Brief though it was, the Italian
occupation unwittingly made a significant contribution to the project of state-building. The
Italians invested heavily in road construction over terrain so difficult that it had prevented the use
of the wheel until then. Using native labour, the Italians constructed 3,200km of metalled and
tarred roads with innumerable bridges within twenty-four months, and completed 6,400km of all-
weather road before they left. Urbanisation also made progress during a period that saw the
proliferation of provincial towns linked by the new road network, and the introduction of an
elementary form of urban architecture in stone and brick to replace the traditional wattle.

Another aspect of the Italian episode was that it facilitated the process of centralisation of state
power after liberation. The war and occupation accelerated the disintegration of an already
crumbling quasi-feudal system, whose capacity was stretched to the limit by the expansion. The
Abyssinian traditional elite that had strenuously opposed the rise of monarchical absolutism was
gravely weakened; many of its leading figures had been killed or compromised by collaboration
with the enemy. The violence of that episode decimated and uprooted the ruling class in the
periphery, as most of the neftegna abandoned their landholdings for the duration of the
occupation. The experience of this class during the Italian occupation sharpened an awareness of
its vulnerability in the midst of a hostile gabbar population, and made it much more accepting of
tightened central government authority than it had been previously.

The Italians were ousted from Ethiopia by a two-pronged British attack; from the south via
Kenya and the west via Sudan. An Ethiopian contingent accompanied them from Sudan, and in
May 1941 Haile Selassie made a liberator’s triumphant entry into Addis Ababa. He faced no
opposition on reclaiming the throne and was soon able to gather the reins of power in his hands
once more. Those who led the resistance against the Italians were rewarded with titles,
appointments and land grants. Prominent collaborators were punished. The most serious
challenge to the Amhara regime came from the Abyssinian heartland, the province of Tigray,
where the provincial dynasty was tainted by its collaboration with the enemy. After liberation,

9
the province was put under Shoa governors and garrisoned with government soldiers who ‘ate’
the land.

The result was a spontaneous rebellion that brought Tigray nobles and peasants together in fierce
battles against government troops lasting several months in 1943. The rebellion was finally put
down with great force and heavy rebel casualties, adding fresh fuel to the store of Tigray
resentment against the Amhara regime.

4.3. Unlimited power of the King

In the second phase of his reign, Haile Selassie was able to recruit a group of younger, educated
men of humble social background to positions of power in the central government: men he had
chosen himself, whose careers had unfolded under his personal aegis, and who depended upon
him exclusively for their position. They formed a corps of imperial retainers and functioned as
the physical extension of the imperial person himself. People from Shoa remained predominant
in the higher ranks.5 Muslims neither sought, nor were sought, for membership in the corps of
imperial retainers who transformed the central government through a process of modernisation-
cum-centralisation. The first decree issued in 1943 reorganised and expanded the ministerial
system, defining the functions and powers of ministers, and a Council of Ministers was
established headed by a Prime Minister. Vis-à-vis the Emperor, they were given essentially
advisory powers, which suited Haile Selassie’s inordinate concern for his own power and
characterised his style of rule. As a foreign adviser to the regime put it, the intention ‘was not to
liberalize government but to centralize it.

Imposing a uniform legal system throughout the state is a key element in the process of
centre/periphery integration. A Codification Commission composed of foreigners and Ethiopians
drafted a series of codes – Civil, Commercial, Maritime, Criminal Procedure, Civil Procedure –
and revised the 1930 Penal Code. The Civil Code avoided giving offence to Abyssinian customs
by opting, as its main author stated, ‘pour une solution transactionelle’. The 1931 Constitution
was revised in 1955, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Haile Selassie’s
coronation. The basic motives for the revision were the same ones that had inspired the
constitutional exercise in 1931, namely, legitimisation of monarchical absolute rule and concern
for Ethiopia’s image abroad. Other African states, soon to become independent, were adopting
constitutions of the most advanced kind.

Eritrea, with which Ethiopia had formed a federal union, already possessed a modern
constitution. Far from threatening the authority of the throne, the revision greatly reinforced it.
The emperor was vested not only with ‘supreme power’ but with the ‘sovereignty of the Empire’,
a provision that had clear implications for Eritrea’s relationship with Addis Ababa. The usual list
of freedoms and rights of the people were also included in what amounted to a grand exercise in
formalism. Few Ethiopians took the constitution seriously, and the masses were unaware it
existed. The introduction of elections for the Chamber of Deputies on the basis of universal adult

10
suffrage was a purely cosmetic gesture, while the Senate remained an appointed chamber
reserved for retired nobles and high officials. In theory, Parliament was entitled to play a role in
initiating and approving legislation. In practice, legislative traffic was predictably one way, with
Parliament’s role being less than minimal. As it turned out, this was not an unmitigated loss,
since the best known example of parliamentary initiative was the addition of flogging as a
punishment in the Penal Code of 1957.

4.4. The Movements against the System

4.4.1. The Un-successful Coup

On Tuesday, 13 December 1960, the brothers, Brigadier General Mangestu Neway and his
younger brother Germame Neway with other with some of the military component and d a few
educated radical, attempted a coup d’état against the regime of Emperor Haile Selassie. Since
1960, when an abortive coup against Haile Selassie took place, led by elements of the Imperial
Guard, the Ethiopian military has recognized its political power. To keep the armed forces in
line, pay increases were granted by the emperor in 1961; these had previously been rejected as an
unnecessary financial burden. In 1965, in a further effort to develop the support of the military,
serving members of the armed forces were granted tax-free title to forty hectares of land each.
Using traditional sources of patronage, Haile Selassie had tried to introduce a modern military
system in an archaic and feudal Ethiopia. His actions, however, had the opposite effect.

By 1965 the political consciousness of junior officers had increased considerably. They realized
that in 1960 the armed forces had been the only entity able to prevent the overthrow of Haile
Selassie and now began generating demands. The military was no longer apolitical and was not
prepared to do the emperor’s bidding unless he met their expectations. Haile Selassie, by
advancing financial benefits to the military, assumed it could be bought off so that it would not
question a regime which after 1960 was kept in power by its guns.

For Haile Selassie, in gaining the support of the military in the slow reform of the country had
created a political force that tried to coerce the emperor into moving more quickly than he was
willing to. After 1960 his authority over the military declined as it saw that the political
legitimacy of the emperor’s regime was non-existent. Independent political consciousness was
also developed within the military in respect of both the Eritrean conflict (under way since 1962)
and the 1967-8 Gojjam rebellion. With half the army stationed in Eritrea, opposing the
secessionist liberation armies, and with some one thousand troops utilized to halt the Gojjam
rebellion, the military became aware that it was not only defending the political structure but the
entire feudal fabric of Ethiopia. Its political education was reinforced by these events.

4.4.2. Peasant Uprisings

Gojjam, which rebelled against a 1967 land reform programme using both political and military
tactics, took on vast political overtones. If Gojjam was such a threat, then the revolutionary

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situation posed by the Eritrean rebels was far more politically dangerous to the regime and its
ideology than had previously been recognized. The 1960 coup suggested the possibility of a
student, intellectual, military, peasant front in opposition to the feudal system.

Gojjam showed the weakness of the government in dealing with non-revolutionary violence of a
feudal nature. The inability of the Haile Selassie government to stem the movement of the ever
more powerful and successful liberation fighters in Eritrea showed clearly the regime’s political
weakness in halting revolutionary violence. Together, the 1960 abortive coup, Gojjam and
Eritrea, showed the contradictions inherent in the ruling class and its inability to deal with
violently articulated opposition.

4.4.3. Student Movements

Students too became politicized during this period. A growing number of them have been
involved in political activity since 1960. With the stymied coup as the starting point, many
students at Haile Selassie I University (renamed Addis Ababa University in 1975) have since
1967 articulated their growing class consciousness. Students pressured for land reform in 1967,
1968 and 1974, and for political reform within the university in 1968, 1969 and 1970.

In 1972, after repeated protests by students against high-school leaving examinations seen as
limiting college entrance, government troops and police stormed the university campus in Addis
Ababa and some two thousand students were arrested and expelled. The students were rebelling
against Haile Selassie whom they accused of moving too slowly in political reforms. Both they,
and elements of the military, had moved far ahead of the emperor politically.

Though largely reformist, the students represented a link among three groups: the younger
military officers who opposed the feudal state, had the guns, and were not tied directly to the
aristocracy; the urban proletariat, which became more and more outspoken in its discontent; and
the peasants. Through the Ethiopian University Service (EUS), in which the third year of
university was spent in the interior teaching or aiding in agricultural development, the students
had the ability to communicate their discontent to the peasants.

Thus the 1960 abortive coup, Gojjam, Eritrea and the violence against students were essential
factors that tied together opposition to the feudal Ethiopian regime into a loose political
community. In 1974 this community became firmly intertwined and destroyed the government of
Haile Selassie. On three crucial occasions, in 1960, in 1967/8 in Gojjam, and in 1974 when Haile
Selassie was finally overthrown, the emperor’s authority, based on the shifting sand of charisma,
tradition and feudalism, was not adequate to maintain the loyalty of significant groups within the
population.

As a result of drought, famine, oil crises, and many other reasons, dissatisfaction and anger
among the military, among the peasantry, among the students and the urban middle class fed the

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so- called ‘creeping coup’ that began in February 1974 and by September of that year had led to
the abolition of the monarchy.

By February 1974 when Haile Selassie had made the First public pronouncements on the famine,
the monarchy and the entire feudal system was already disintegrating. Whatever support and
legitimacy the government had was swept away in 1974, and to a very large degree the cover-up
of the famine was directly related to the dissolution of the regime. One other element which
significantly contributed to this process was the international oil crisis, which brought about
increased inflation and economic pressure on all except the upper class in the country. These two
events, the famine and the oil crisis, impinged upon Ethiopia, and led to increasing opposition to
economic and political decisions.

4.4.4. The Eritrean Federation and the consequential civil war for Liberation

Eritrea had been placed under British military administration in 1941 after the Italian surrender.
In keeping with a 1950 decision of the UN General Assembly, British military administration
ended in September 1952 and was replaced by a new autonomous Eritrean government in federal
union with Ethiopia. Federation with the former Italian colony restored an unhindered maritime
frontier to the country. The new arrangement also enabled the country to gain limited control of a
territory that, at least in its inland areas, was more advanced politically and economically.

The Four Power Inquiry Commission established by the World War II Allies (Britain, France,
the Soviet Union, and the United States) had failed to agree in its September 1948 report on a
future course for Eritrea. Several countries had displayed an active interest in the area. In the
immediate postwar years, Italy had requested that Eritrea be returned as a colony or as a
trusteeship. This bid was supported initially by the Soviet Union, which anticipated a communist
victory at the Italian polls. The Arab states, seeing Eritrea and its large Muslim population as an
extension of the Arab world, sought the establishment of an independent state. Some Britons
favored a division of the territory, with the Christian areas and the coast from Mitsiwa southward
going to Ethiopia and the northwest area going to Sudan.

A UN commission, which arrived in Eritrea in February 1950, eventually approved a plan

involving some form of association with Ethiopia. In December the UN General Assembly
adopted a resolution affirming the commission's plan, with the provision that Britain, the
administering power, should facilitate the UN efforts and depart from the colony no later than
September 15, 1952. Faced with this constraint, the British administration held elections on
March 16, 1952, for a Representative Assembly of sixty-eight members. This body, made up
equally of Christians and Muslims, accepted the draft constitution advanced by the UN
commissioner on July 10. The constitution was ratified by the emperor on September 11, and the
Representative Assembly, by prearrangement, was transformed into the Eritrean Assembly three
days before the federation was proclaimed.

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The UN General Assembly resolution of September 15, 1952, adopted by a vote of forty-seven
to ten, provided that Eritrea should be linked to Ethiopia through a loose federal structure under
the emperor's sovereignty but with a form and organization of internal self-government. The
federal government, which for all intents and purposes was the existing imperial government,
was to control foreign affairs, defense, foreign and interstate commerce, transportation, and
finance. Control over domestic affairs (including police, local administration, and taxation to
meet its own budget) was to be exercised by an elected Eritrean assembly on the parliamentary
model. The state was to have its own administrative and judicial structure and its own flag.

Almost from the start of federation, the emperor's representative undercut the territory's separate
status under the federal system. In August 1955, Tedla Bairu, an Eritrean who was the chief
executive elected by the assembly, resigned under pressure from the emperor, who replaced
Tedla with his own nominee. He made Amharic the official language in place of Arabic and
Tigrinya, terminated the use of the Eritrean flag, and moved many businesses out of Eritrea. In
addition, the central government proscribed all political parties, imposed censorship, gave the top
administrative positions to Amhara, and abandoned the principle of parity between Christian and
Muslim officials. In November 1962, the Eritrean Assembly, many of whose members had been
accused of accepting bribes, voted unanimously to change Eritrea's status to that of a province of
Ethiopia. Following his appointment of the arch- conservative Ras Asrate Kasa as governor
general, the emperor was accused of “refeudalizing” the territory.

The extinction of the federation consolidated internal and external opposition to union. Four
years earlier, in 1958, a number of Eritrean exiles had founded the Eritrean Liberation Movement
(ELM) in Cairo, under Hamid Idris Awate's leadership. This organization, however, soon was
neutralized. A new faction, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), emerged in 1960. Initially a
Muslim movement, the ELF was nationalist rather than Marxist and received Iraqi and Syrian
support. As urban Christians joined, the ELF became more radical and anticapitalist. Beginning
in 1961, the ELF turned to armed struggle and by 1966 challenged imperial forces throughout
Eritrea.

The rapid growth of the ELF also created internal divisions between urban and rural elements,
socialists and nationalists, and Christians and Muslims. Although these divisions did not take any
clear form, they were magnified as the ELF extended its operations and won international
publicity. In June 1970, Osman Salah Sabbe, former head of the Muslim League, broke away
from the ELF and formed the Popular Liberation Forces (PLF), which led directly to the
founding of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) in early 1972. Both organizations
initially attracted a large number of urban, intellectual, and leftist Christian youths and projected
a strong socialist and nationalist image. By 1975 the EPLF had more than 10,000 members in the
field. However, the growth of the EPLF was also accompanied by an intensification of
internecine Eritrean conflict, particularly between 1972 and 1974, when casualties were well
over 1,200. In 1976 Osman broke with the EPLF and formed the Eritrean Liberation Front-
Popular Liberation Front (ELF-PLF), a division that reflected differences between combatants in

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Eritrea and representatives abroad as well as personal rivalries and basic ideological differences,
factors important in earlier splits within the Eritrean separatist movement. Encouraged by the
imperial regime's collapse and attendant confusion, the guerrillas extended their control over the
whole region by 1977. Ethiopian forces were largely confined to urban centers and controlled the
major roads only by day.

4.4.5. The Ogden factor in the East

Ethiopia's entry into the Somali region in modern times dated from Menelik's conquest of Harer
in the late 1890s, the emperor basing his actions on old claims of Ethiopian sovereignty. In 1945
Haile Selassie, fearing the possibility of British support for a separate Somali state that would
include the Ogaden, claimed Italian Somaliland as a “lost province.” In Italian Somaliland, the
Somali Youth League (SYL) resisted this claim and in its turn demanded unification of all
Somali areas, including g those in Ethiopia.

After the British evacuated the Ogaden in 1948, Ethiopian officers took over administration in
the city of Jijiga, at one point suppressing a demonstration led by the SYL, which the
government subsequently outlawed. At the same time, Ethiopia renounced its claim to Italian
Somaliland in deference to UN calls for self-determination. The Ethiopians, however, maintained
that self-determination was not incompatible with eventual union.

Immediately upon the birth of the Republic of Somalia in 1960, which followed the merger of
British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland, the new country proclaimed an irredentist policy.
Somalia laid claim to Somali-populated regions of French Somaliland (later called the French
Territory of the Afars and Issas, and Djibouti after independence in 1977), the northeastern
corner of Kenya, and the Ogaden, a vast, ill-defined region occupied by Somali nomads
extending southeast from Ethiopia's southern highlands that includes a separate region east of
Harer known as the Haud. The uncertainty over the precise location of the frontier between
Ethiopia and the former Italian possessions in Somalia further complicated these claims. Despite
UN efforts to promote an agreement, none was made in the colonial or the Italian trusteeship
period.

In the northeast, an Anglo-Ethiopian treaty determined the frontier's official location. However,
Somalia contended that it was unfairly placed so as to exclude the herders resident in Somalia
from vital seasonal grazing lands in the Haud. The British had administered the Haud as an
integral part of British Somaliland, although Ethiopian sovereignty had been recognized there.
After it was disbanded in the rest of Ethiopia, the British military administration continued to
supervise the area from Harer eastward and did not withdraw from the Haud until 1955. Even
then, the British stressed the region's importance to Somalia by requiring the Ethiopians to
guarantee the Somali free access to grazing lands.

Somalia refused to recognize any pre-1960 treaties defining the Somali-Ethiopian borders
because colonial governments had concluded the agreements. Despite the need for access to

15
pasturage for local herds, the Somali government even refused to acknowledge the British treaty
guaranteeing Somali grazing rights in the Haud because it would have indirectly recognized
Ethiopian sovereignty over the area. Within six months after Somali independence, military
incidents occurred between Ethiopian and Somali forces along their mutual border.
Confrontations escalated again in 1964, when the Ethiopian air force raided Somali villages and
encampments inside the Somali border. Hostilities were ended through mediation by the OAU
and Sudan. However, Somalia continued to promote irredentism by supporting the Western
Somali Liberation Front (WSLF), which was active in the Ogaden. Claims of oil discoveries
prompted the resurgence of fighting in 1973.

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