Ethiopia: Making Sense of the Past and the Present with People

By Tadesse E.A.

Ethiopia has experienced decades of turmoil. The founding fathers created Ethiopia to have prosperity, to have love for each other, and to have unity, but those who were taken aboard by force knew nothing, saw nothing, loved nothing, and only united to sort out all those goals through fighting.

In Ethiopia, author Tadesse E.A. offers a profile of Ethiopia, one of the worlds oldest and most complex countries. Part history book and part book of memoirs, it provides deep insight into the country. Based on Tadesse E.A.s strong academic background, vast international experience, and identity as an Ethiopian, he presents a look at Ethiopia in a contemporary way. He

shares his life experiences from childhood to adulthood in an unfinished country;

deals with the forces of the past;

highlights the challenges of the people and their struggle during the imperial era;

discusses two long-running governments and the national election process; and

offers insight into the nonstop struggles and challenges during the transition period.

Ethiopia melds the background of the past and the making of the present. It helps in the understanding of yesterday, which warrants many questions of its own, and todays mood, the uncertainty, and the central fact of the ongoing fractures between Ethiopians. It shares the journey of Tadesse E.A.s life and what his country and its people have meant to him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Nov 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452526072

Tadesse E.A.

Tadesse E.A. earned a master’s of science degree in dairy production and management from NDRI India. He has worked as a lecturer and as an officer of operations assistant. In the last decade, he has been involved in social group activities and religious, community, and political group associations.

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Copyright © 2014 Tadesse E.A.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-2606-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-2607-2 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 10/31/2014

Contents

Demonstrative Maps

Abbreviations And Acronyms

Preface

Introduction

1. Starting Life: From Childhood To Adulthood

2. The Process That Produced And Maintained The Ethiopian Throne

3. Dilemmas, Challenges, And Struggles During The Imperial Years

4. The Nation In Transition

5. Challenges And Struggles During The Transition Period

Conclusion

Bibliography

Demonstrative Maps

img-924190038-0001.jpg

Map 1a. Abyssinia in the context of Africa in 1890

Source: Copyright © 2013 World Trade Press

Note accompanying map 1a

This map shows the basic sketch of Abyssinia in north east Africa with no strongly marked identifiayable borders. Abyssinia was confined to this part of Africa facing much bigger land masses of Somalis and Galla country in the south and east part of it.

img-924174648-0001.jpg

Sketch Map 1b: Outline of the position of Abyssinia in Ethiopia

Note accompanying map 1b

There is no one map memorable to which people are acquainted and have some use. Based on map 1a above and several other factors Abyssinian standing in today’s Ethiopia is outlined.

img-924175024-0001.tif

Sketch Map 2. A broader highlight of some of the popular kingdoms, nationalities, people, and their rulers

Note accompanying map 2

This presentation outlook the formal everyday map of federal Ethiopia in which each nation and nationality stand. It is a plain design to help the textbook explain the broader militancy experience of people in Ethiopian political conflicts since early times. The common thing among the west, east, centre and south people in Ethiopia is that they all were under the oppression of the North (MSD’s conquering society). The rivalry and the conquest that eventually engineered the country reflects a semblance of broader conflict direction, which remained dualistic in many people’s minds as North versus South, where the South represents the west, east, centre, and south regions (abbreviated as WECS) that possibly included no less than some seventy ethnic groups in its make-up.

img-924174435-0001.jpg

Sketch map 3. Former provinces of Ethiopia

Note accompanying map 3

In many cases, the book uses the names of the old provinces. There were fourteen provinces of Ethiopia during the imperial era and also during the Derg era, with very little alteration. A new partition of the country came after 1996.

img-924173848-0001.jpg

Map 4. Current partitions into nations, nationalities, and

peoples under the democratic federal republic of Ethiopia.

Source: Copyright © 2013 World Trade Press

Note accompanying map 4

Ethiopia is divided into nine nations, nationalities, and people based on administrative regions. The nine regions are Afar (2); Amhara (3); Benshangul-Gumuz (4); Gambela (6); Harari (7); Oromiyaa (8); Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (9); Somali (10); and Tigray (11). The two chartered cities are Addis Ababa (1) and Dire Dawa (5).

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Preface

In the West, where I live, Ethiopian-background politicians, professionals, and writers are all debating about the steadily fracturing relationships between Ethiopians on individual levels. At the community level, people are always fighting over Ethiopian issues. Interest groups and political parties keep on dividing and re-dividing themselves. It seems that this fighting and division is ordered by some form of mystical force of no limit. What is it? Tracing this phenomenon led to the birth of this book.

The book brings together the background of the past and the making of the present. It makes an important contribution, as the title suggests, in helping to understand yesterday, which faces many questions of its own, and today’s mood, the uncertainty, and the central fact of the ongoing fractures between Ethiopians, which neither mediation nor prescription stopped. So the book came at the time when most opposition politicians of Ethiopia, after twenty years, are still in confusion.

Our presence as permanent settlers in the West had removed us only physically from our birth country, Ethiopia. The hosting countries received us with all our mixed emotions, responses, and feelings, offering us everything they can to make us feel at home and the means to lead an easier life. Yes, life would have been much easier had we left our ancestral quilts behind when we faced the new life ahead of us.

In the 1990s, we were just beginning to learn how to form our own community and religious associations to share our backgrounds together and care for each other. Right from the beginning, we were shocked to confront an association that came to life as an entity with its own constitution and ran on a different line of recruiting or cultivating members to advance egos of some other purposes. Since the fighting was fierce, the voices of the members died down very early; our rights to question improper acts were fading away, and we were left without a strong enough voice to discuss this disastrous journey, until today.

Following the footprints of whoever comes to power, our associations continued to be dragged, swinging from corner to corner. I have not seen when members come together in a formidable form to confront problems that ate away their joys. Good beginnings are crippled by fighting that starts without warning, either within the members of the executive body or at the ordinary member’s level. Egos start, and it is only fighting that stops obsessions with egos. The fighting, the division, the split of friends all occurred in all forms of community gatherings: civilian, religious, political, and other special circle gatherings. The trend is not limited to one country but is a chronic disease everywhere, wherever Ethiopians happen to live.

I may say that coming together creates fertile ground for a short-cut path to the egoistic mission of different ends that we all carry within us. An association, which starts its duty with one group’s ego, will soon find itself meeting one of the many egos that rip it down by instant emotional action, enough to free it from anybody’s duty. (Ethiopia is a country of many contending traditions, beliefs, political, and social settings.) Because egoistic constraints run freely outside the given constitution, there is no such thing as a functional, broad consensus relating to meaningful activity. Conflict resolution formalities and mediator intervention efforts have all failed to hold back situations that always push associations to the threshold of their collapse. Creating new associations simply multiplies the disease. Members put off hope long enough.

I encountered with my own ego individual gatherings of civilian and religious settings to stop the evils that had precipitated the breakdown of our genuine efforts. I was left exhausted and heartbroken. I was isolated, tagged as a person of devious nature. It was unusual to see that it was not during holidays, at the weekends, or in the evenings, when we privately sit down with friends to play and entertain each other, that the fascination for fighting sets in, reflecting a different standard at work. I ruled out any conflict resolution procedures and mediation efforts to be of any help, after they failed to deliver any hope during the last twenty or more years. At the same time, I said a community association was a complete loss if it was not serving the community as it was designed to function, according to its constitution.

When I wanted to take on a full-time writing job on this matter, I started looking at the manners of fighting and the way the fighting started. This pushed me back to the conditions that produced those manners. The conditions pushed me back to egos that detached us from each other and divided our intentions. The egos pushed me back to the legacy of effectual bonding to our ancestors. Imagine my childhood story, which I share in chapter 1. When I was only about ten years old, I stepped up to confront Emperor Haile Selassie I, face to face, to disprove that he had no Godly power without me having any safety margin to my side.

What is the thing that put me in that situation? The very memory of the stories my grandma told when I was held in between her arms. When little boys like me lined up, excited, to fall down for the emperor to kiss the ground, my ancestral voice turned me away to do the opposite. May I say my smart ancestors knew how to pass their own wisdom for what would come after they have gone? The only mistake I made at that age came from a lack of maturity. Some part of me learned why I had to hate the system, and some part of me learned the balance which put me up for salutation. In childish heart, one may fade and the other may get picked.

So I had to halt writing about our association except in a general highlight form in chapter 1. I am forced to design a book according to the tradition, culture, belief, and dissension that followed me up to here. I am pushed to the wide open history and politics of Ethiopia. My ancestors, the oppressed people (who are the majority in Ethiopia), friends, and all past encounters kept their eyes on me. The influence they had on me, their sayings, their views, and their assertions are to some extent recovered and matched with what Ethiopia was and is for them. And this is the book: Ethiopia: Making Sense of the Past and the Present with People.

It was difficult, but I managed to write about a combined multi-generational society with contending egos with variable idioms sourced from history, radical politics, traditions, mysticism, and religious origin in a wholly external formula.

Tadesse E. A.

Introduction

The five chapters of this book served me as a tool and means to share my views, enthralled by people’s outlook and experience. Ethiopia presents a number of contrasting features in the manner and style in which its people suffer. We all shared them at different times. Few leaders tried hard to help their people and were able to leave behind an incredible history. Many leaders came by with ideas and left caught up in the nightmare of fighting. All these happened in those distant long-gone eras. Each of them put a stamp of their own kind on the country, but many of these stamps were ignored and remained tasteless, even when they keep on influencing us.

The founding fathers created Ethiopia and stumbled on chaos they did not mean. They created it to have prosperity, to have love for each other, and to have unity, but those who were taken aboard by force (the majority) knew nothing, saw nothing, loved nothing, and only united to sort out all those goals through fighting. When we see what life was like in the past, what come to our mind might be the worst behaviours of those ruling classes and their unsustainable political systems. Today, the new leaders claim to give the society its sense of identity and destiny. Today’s system has been moulded to the realities of the revived cultures, beliefs, and rights of the majority people. Not leaders, but the part each group plays under the federal system determines the future of the country.

All those involved in different struggles for a different system claim they are doing so to bring a system which foster people’s opportunities to participate in the country’s affairs equally. But why couldn’t people find those claims rational? This book’s five chapters highlight the whole situation and discusses forgotten realities and current passions for struggle.

In my journey (which I mention in chapter 1), from childhood to adulthood in an unfinished country, I knocked on doors, searched for the truth, followed something, associated with something, and claimed something, but I have not been able to find satisfaction. I have not won anything. I explored events and encountered individuals and community gatherings, only to find out that we all pursuing the old labelling and rituals of hostility which interferes with our harmony in a subtle way and are set so differently on issues of our community or the country.

What are the things that really push my buttons? It is not the slogans made by people, and it is not media coverage; these are value signifiers which may or may not trigger my emotion for connection. It is the sense of who I am which finally decides on real issues. Sometimes, that sense may put me at odds with my audience, but I may drive immense pleasure from taking that place. At one time or another in our life time, we all face such situations, but we cannot always drive ourselves into conflict. At times, we passively watch or compromise, even to the extent of being pacified, because we cannot afford living in utopia at the fringe of society. I noticed history, cultures, languages, values, and all the struggles made to fix them. My imagination lets me see that some paths to freedom are difficult, but promising. Some are attractive, but difficult.

Chapter 2 deals with the forces of the past. It engages with problems of history forged in the process of thousands of years of fighting each other, which require extensive study. Some native historians are unable to agree on how the Axumite kingdom began and on who the Axumite people were. The book leaves behind such mysteries to be sorted out further and presents the classical knowledge that deals with their history in brief. From there it deals with the slick and cunning politics of the Abyssinians. The Abyssinian fascination with the tales of a land called Ethiopia is examined in terms of the North and South struggling for dominance. In fact, the whole purpose of the book is to highlight the pivotal role of the South (or the oppressed) in the struggle to defend itself as opposed to the classical claim that dragged the South into a sub-system of the North in the portrait of three thousand years of history compiled by the North.

Emperors Thewodros and Yohannes are highlighted as the last emperors to protect Abyssinia, while Emperor Menelik is discussed as an emperor who gave root to Menelik’s Solomonic Dynasty (MSD), a system of hegemony that covered the whole land of Ethiopia. Conspiracies of such as history and identity, which were forced to adapt to the hopes and styles of MSD, are pulled aside to reveal the natural truth of the people’s existence. Then the broader consequences of dispossession, along with portraits of those turned-off rulers of the South lands, are presented. Emperor Haile Selassie, who came to power with a traditional picture of power as a God-given right, is discussed in terms of his absolute politics of domination. The mythical power of being Amharan is also explored. Being Amharan situated itself invisibly as a striving dream to become superior to others and to get a good taste of living; its assertions to force that way life should remain in the country. This is assessed by employing a parallel perspective of being white to other coloured people as a supportive reference. On a limited scale, a vivid personalised account of daily life under his imperial Ethiopia is also explored.

Chapter 3 highlights the challenges of the people and their struggle during the imperial era. It begins with the formal or informal denominators, themes, or texts of the system that were presented to people with surreal colours, but targeted directly towards the destruction of people’s true identity and history. What is hidden in terms such as the name Ethiopia, and other instruments of social and political control, along with the historical rift that spilled over into people’s relationships, is highlighted in some historical context. Lack of mutual agreement, imposed conformity, Ethiopian identity, and shades of the country’s destination are discussed. To figure out properly what force had done to the people, inequality is discussed in a graphic form. The prospect for social mobility, which was made in such a way to draw in more Amharas (compared to others), was based on privileges such as authority, force, culture, and language. Then we see the subdued people’s continuous challenge to create their own forms of struggles, which were all directed towards the unsettling of the oppressive MSD system. Away from people, the emperor’s rule had been challenged, mainly by students who carried slogans like Land for the tillers at marches. Here too, first-hand contributions of non-Amhara students (especially Oromos) are called in to show how they shared the student struggle. In the end, the emperor was forcefully removed from power in 1974, by all-out action of the people and the military.

There were two long-running governments after Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed. About one hundred military men united around the name Derg and brought down the emperor through a complex plot to lead the country into socialism, which it followed for seventeen years. Then another group who projected themselves into fighting for the rights of nationalities, united under the name Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), brought down Derg by force to lead the country under a federal structure. They both claimed they had come to power to solve people’s problems, but in some people’s eyes, they were seen as enemies of the people who retreated into becoming dictators. For convenience sake, chapter 4 treats both Derg and EPRDF times as transition periods. There is no link between them. It was a coincidence that Derg came to power, while EPRDF fought Derg to take over the leadership. However, both are the consequences of the struggle of truth.

During the initial phase, Derg shined brilliantly. Dancing festivals were everywhere. Derg was credited with some of the steps it took to remove oppressors from power and break up the combined legal and material grounds inscribed for the comfort and prestige of the aristocratic MSD nobles, elite, and their kin. These actions initially brought real contentment and joy to the hearts of the oppressed people. With Derg’s reform, the MSD system retreated. Much of the economic relationships of the past was seriously affected, but soon Derg attempted to settle with its own egos of a dictatorship rule. The most serious internal threat was centred on ethnic people’s rights.

The Tigray freedom fighters, Oromo Liberation Front, Somali fighters, and other groups from Amhara and beyond stood with the causes of ethnic people and showed their backs to MSD-prototype (or MSDP) elites and the Derg as they continued to fight for power. EPRDF, who formed a coalition front, won the war. In a few years, they created nationalities (ethnic)-based federalism and scrapped the one-Ethiopia sentiment. Hence, the one-Ethiopia of the imperial mould, the motto which Emperor Menelik, Emperor Haile Selassie, and Derg attempted to preserve in any way they could, totally collapsed. Nationality-based federalism has become the prime domain which underwrites many of the past faults, and with its constitution, it assured the people that their right to govern their affairs was permanently guaranteed. For all people of Ethiopia, a highly memorable situation began to happen at a much faster rate and shorter time (with a significant contribution by the Tigray fighters) than was normally expected. It was as though TPLF fighters, instead of waiting for the south, west, and east people (who involved themselves in a tide of turbulent and protracted fight) to catch their own fish, stepped forward, caught it, and gave it to them. A century later (after it lost its right), the south, west, and east people woke up one morning, and there it was. Its languages, its cultures, its leadership were all delivered to its door step. It was really amazing. Many were very happy to see this while they are still alive. However, the new change brought a great polarisation within and outside the Amhara society and between the elite, who stand for the MSD conquest of Ethiopia, on one hand, and those who care about ethnic people’s rights on the other.

There are people who distanced themselves from the old patterns and wrote positively about EPRDF—and there are many grains of truth in their writings. However, this book gives some attention to those who attempt to describe, condemn, or charge EPRDF’s failures or search for its faults. While it is tempting to regard EPRDF’s rule as dictatorial, perhaps it is equally tempting to see it as the transformer of society.

This chapter also deals with the national elections, which every five years bring a constant worry to all involved. When elections are announced, the ruling party and opposition parties make campaigns and people go to polling stations, but all impelled by the conditions of accusations, intolerance, and violence. None of the opposition groups showed success in changing the ruling coalition front. They all blame EPRDF and democratic institutions such as the electoral board, which it established.

Opposition parties gained significant votes in the 2005 national elections. The Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) obtained the highest, but its fight over vote rigging against EPRDF made it feel worse when it refused to take its seats in the parliament. Around two hundred people were killed, and CUD’s top leaders and some of its supporters were imprisoned. There was a sort of uprising in Addis Ababa, the capital city, which faced many limitations and was put down by the government. Its supporters, who denounced EPRDF by themselves, crouched down from fear and finally abandoned their struggle. The coalition party descended into all kinds of scandal and broke apart into pieces. Since the struggle on election issues reached its prominence during this time, the book gives it a special emphasis. The climax of this struggle, which nearly led to insurrection in the capital city, is discussed in light of values embodied within the rise of CUD and the central issues of one-Ethiopia enhanced by its supporters, who were left on the fringe line to federalism. A selected example of the American people’s discontent during the 1930s recession is called upon to identify some themes that were manifested in the role of this uprising. Effort is made to understand the way things are carried out and the final outcome to some extent. The 2010 national election was relatively quieter, and it seemed as though the opposition no longer existed. The EPRDF and its affiliates won the entire vote, but one.

Here again, after the society grew weary of Derg’s dictatorial era and started a shared commitment under the federal system, different groups fell into a struggle for power. So in chapter 5, the struggles and challenges which are going on nonstop during the transition period are discussed to some extent.

Derg recognised that the burden of the country was not shared equally and attempted to address some of the resentment that existed in the society by taking measures such as removing the monarchy and powerful feudal lords, removing prominent military officers and bureaucratic elites from power, and distributing land to the farmers. Other than such actions, it continued taking steps to assimilate the oppressed into one core culture of the past instead of providing answers appropriate to their needs for development and cultural aspirations. No matter how powerful and successful Derg had become, the people never abandoned their struggle. The effect of not recognising nationality issues was not immediately obvious to Derg, but when it became apparent, it was devastating to its existence. In 1991, Derg was removed from power by EPRDF.

When EPRDF took over, most of the political, social, and economic power in the country was still held by the MSDP elite: technocrats and bureaucrats with more access to power, authority, the military, education, and economic and cultural areas. So the federal system has come to repossess many of those powers and to redirect the ways which the old system had supported for a century. Obviously, under such situations, we would expect a different response. On one side, the majority of the people happily welcomed EPRDF with a sense of relief, when the country was modelled on the nationality system of federalism. The other side revoked the system with inflammatory claims and demanded the unconditional removal of EPRDF from power, with a hope to reinforce its position in the country, but no such luck. They couldn’t stand the effect that federalism brought upon them, and a struggle for reversal continued in the context of such individual rights issues, demand for a centralised rule, and refusal to recognise EPRDF as a government. The MSDP elite, as the thin edge of the past dynasty, still recounted those past patterns and tracked the issues of centralism in the country. Some of them roamed the cities of Western countries, where they dominate and remain as an open place of struggle for power in Ethiopia. They also have produced a lot of good stories in an effort to mobilise barely literate people in cities and towns within the country. Residents were bombarded with stories of living together, the tradition of dining communally, and the roles and heroism of their forefathers in defending the country together, which they claimed transcended ethnicity and regionalism, in fact anything else EPRDF has said and done. There are also liberation fronts with a hidden hand of struggle within the country. Overall, opposition groups are not able to incorporate those values and respond effectively with a positive attitude.

Federalism under EPRDF granted a degree of open debate and contests in elections, but opposition parties were not able to be successful over the years. Opposition groups were preoccupied with in-fighting and divisions, which actually worked to affect them in elections. The apparent cooperation between opposition groups was bad in the beginning. Nowadays, most of their energies are going towards organising coalitions/fronts and creating some sort of vested interest between opposition groups inside and outside the country, and between ethnic and non-ethnic political groups. Today, the rivalry seems to diminish, but they are still not capable of laying down the foundation of a strong, proper, and decent come-back. Forging a unified front, as it is seen today, could remain as an exaggerated truth, difficult to comfortably believe, unless their way of handling people’s issues changes.

The other factor is EPRDF, which never takes its eyes off any situation around opposition groups. As we know, the protection offered to the oppressed masses by EPRDF at the beginning of federalism has helped all weak groups to realise many of their rights. It was at that time that a link to EPRDF was forged very well, and the notion that EPRDF protects and defends federalism or their rights endures up to today. This has always mattered to such groups, who rambled through an abusive and degraded life well into stability, where they started to realise themselves. So people who will need a safe life of their own are aligning with the powerful who are capable of defending stability, peace, democratisation processes, and economic development. Against this background, opposition could be seen as coming to take power carrying visions of inborn difficulty, moderation, cutting and twisting, all prone to chaos and confusion that will eventually dwarf all the good things running. They fight uphill to compete with EPRDF and remained dwindled in their respective boxes.

1

Starting Life: From Childhood to Adulthood

1.1 Piecing Together what Stretches Behind and in Front of Me

1.2 The Impact of Ethiopian Politics on the Diaspora Community

1.3 Who Plays the Unfinished Game?

1.1 Piecing Together what Stretches Behind and in Front of Me

Honourable life sometimes meant different things to different systems, and such different meanings to life brought various divisions, claims, and struggles, that commanded each of us to stand where we should and face those who force us to be incorporated into their defined ways of life. We observe problems and experience difficulties in our life. Then in a struggle to change, there is nothing to be achieved in one single stroke and comfortably say, End of history. In a country that had not settled into a stable pattern, the solution may always become difficult to capture, creating a struggle that simply floats off from its direction. Everyone starts raising questions, everyone runs to get the most out of every situation, opportunities are not shared, differences are not appreciated, and the heresy we all have fallen into becomes wearing, irritating, with no end in sight, but still we have to keep on struggling.

The basic problems of our time started with the rise of Emperor Menelik. A century ago, the emperor integrated a system that contained strong challenging issues to the starting conditions of the country Ethiopia and left no room for negotiation or modification. So for a century, problems continued steaming from that original fault line. From then on, the hunt for freedom and equality continued. The past generation kept on with the fighting game. The country’s feature became recognisable as the land of revolt, and this was channelled into today’s generation.

Private identity is out of way in Ethiopia. Establishments used to promote the culture of the dominant ethnic group. As a result, people were being singled out, ethnic identities were displayed negatively, and political, social, and economic domination continued. People refused to be controlled and absorbed. Instead, they created their own experience, their own struggle that kept on appealing to the consecutive generations. No matter how much milder or stronger it might be, the truth is each of us embodies the causes of our generation.

Therefore, in the vigour of my teenage life and in the mythology of adulthood, I blended with others to follow my generational brand. We involved ourselves in many social, cultural, and political causes. We were willing to give ourselves without reservations to those causes. We carried the slogans of freedom and faced armed men without fears.

Emperor Menelik desired to move the country into the modern era. Emperor Haile Selassie came to power to nurse the same problem, with no fear of the people. Now he became a cause in the continuation of oppression. As the struggle got bigger and bigger, many of us were falling into it and found ourselves sided more and more to the left (a term used in modern times). Under such an environment, life is not handy for every one of us who wish to do what we want to do. So we had to struggle to create our own social and political reality. Despite many difficulties, the struggles which were shaped by social and political conditions paced forward.

Eventually, we faced a test of crisis when the old imperial regime crumbled in 1974. What good can come out of it? Freedom and equality are not contradictory but were twisted and rearranged to fit defenders of the old, defenders of the new, defenders of independent seekers, defenders of unity seekers, and defenders of diversity seekers, with all jumbles of freedom and equality contradictions. From the right to the centre to the left, issues mingled one into the other, and the grand drama of fighting had set in with a dog-eat-dog cruelty that drifted into anarchy.

Our true problem is not dictatorship, it is not lack of point of view; it is not a problem of perspective but lack of critical evaluation of our own journey. It is where each of us stands on the issues of ours and our past generations’ journey that muddied our waters. It is where our confidence rests that changes the game to one we can comfortably play. Without that, we will come to nothing. Here, one could understand that there is no field of history, politics, philosophy, or science which stands proud against every lurking problem in a society. No one politician, philosopher, economist, or journalist’s systematic organisation of our suffering helps. I don’t deny the contributions to humanity of any field and any book, but our potentials, our values, our aspirations, our experiences which were all learned by doing, using our own recipe, exceeds many limitations; sometimes, we need to go beyond any restricting challenges to question our facts, to see merits and seek solutions.

Today, as a solution to the older problem, the country reshaped itself and took the form of federalism. Again, the leaders of EPRDF, who came to power in 1991 through bitter struggles, are accused of tangling a system that contains confrontational issues to the starting conditions of the new era of the twenty-first century. Some (the majority) are enjoying, and some are sad. National federalism disconnected the people from the one-Ethiopia of the imperial mould.

Here again, we are divided and remained disconnected in every aspect. There are people around us who try to pull our mind away from the enormous pressure of our ethnic divisions. Modern views are brought up against our nationality aspirations, and we are marching backwards, to a point of no return, to civilisation. But we need and deserve to know our crucial issues. How could we join a struggle constructed by those who failed to give due recognition to the importance of internal historical and cultural problems, which cannot be solved in a wholly external way?

We were profoundly moved by this or that nudge, we studiously ignored one game and trusted the other more, but we saw no good reason to hope for a solution. As a result, we were wounded with the very effort we had made to free ourselves. We mistrusted others, we mistrusted this or that democracy, and we mistrusted our own journey. We have fallen in the gaps between theories, we are held up by all sorts of claims, and we are accused by all sorts of measures. Where is our prestige of winning the fight? There is more to what we can hear than what we see (and vice versa). We are toiling for something that neither disappears nor is determined by us. Eventually, the day came when I had to pose for self-monitoring and reflection.

Now writing gives me the freedom of opening the door of my heart that no other force has the power to grant me. In this writing, nothing is absolute, and nothing is foreign to the Ethiopian people as well. I am not asserting anything but presenting the process, the action, and the experience that created the realities of millions of Ethiopians. My uneasiness that started at my delicate childish day when the conscious sense of my being part of the other side imprinted in me, and the dramatic upward journey that followed, have now been taken up.

When I started writing this book, I already knew that it is difficult to write something conclusive, but the small thing I am writing would have its own implications, some doubts, some transcendent values, or anything else. No single book can draw everything each of us want in our life. There are distorted realities and twisted facts behind our ears. There are more than one claim and many justifications.

All the time, I am surprised to find myself surrounded with fractured politics subject to fits of irrationality. It is being bandaged here and there, as though there is something still to come out of it. Any statement made about Ethiopia in this environment attracts negative emotion. It is an environment where hostility is constantly being nurtured.

My attention returned to the past that engineered the present. When I see backwards, I see big things. There were many things in that past that would help me to decide how to move forward from this negative environment. I stood back. When I began to consider writing this book, my thoughts went out to those past events, places, and lives, and I gathered courage from the threads of life intertwined with thousands of people and situations associated to them. These were people who guided me where I was heading. I wanted to stick to the opinions, encounters, findings, positions, and experiences shared between me and many people in my life. I call them my mentors.

Truly speaking, my mentors had a lot of influence in writing this book, which started with my own selected distinct life experiences. It is always good to write something from voices stored in our heart. In many cases, I also take facts out of stored resources (references) as needed. Mentors present themselves to us in different forms and under different situations. My mentors are people who cared for my survival, children who had grown up with me, friends with different backgrounds, strangers with opinions, unique villages, and diverse urban centres, and all who made connection with me for good or bad and opened me up to everything I should be, like men of my generation. It is hard to identify a single person as my mentor, but I can say that many of the things written in this book are the outcome of the ideas of many people (some passed away, some living) connected in many ways and at many places to me. As I write this book, apart from my active contribution, I feel as though I am also translating something between my mentors and you the reader. Whatever has been argued, discussed, fought over, or brewing within us for long time is more or less coming into action in this book.

After EPRDF came to power, the external and internal protective covers, the emotional chants that were used to uphold one-Ethiopia and many past indecent historical tales started to break out from their imposition ranks. But the row between one-Ethiopia of the past and multi-Ethiopia of today is still hanging on in some quarters. Many writers are entering at the bid of working out how best to manipulate the gap created between the old, which hardly believes its own tracks, and the new that wake up out of that past to do its own desires. Change is unstoppable. However, meaningful change will not come by force, but only when the milieu we are in is properly transcended by understanding and trust.

In the midst of all this confusion, this book comes into existence to discuss confusing issues with a unique clarity of reason. This is the only way I guarantee to pass the very act of life that created our divisions and defensive life. This is the purpose I acquired in the end.

The Distant Past: The Childhood Images that Can Never Be Put Aside

By the time I was born, as I mentioned earlier, my relatives were in bondage within a structure that accorded them low status. My life began at a remote Oromo countryside, some six to eight hours’ journey on foot from the nearest administrative Oromo town in Shewa. I was there for a few years, right where I was born, before my mum took me with her to that nearest town. Though ordinary, I always look back to that humble origin, to a place where I took my first steps and spoke my first words with special fascination.

The day I was transferred to the town’s life, the scant vision of it, stayed with me all my life. Not because I want it, but the childhood teasing, mocking, and nagging that followed me as I grew up let that memory stay imprinted in my heart. So as I come through different ages, even after I toned my language, my name, and everything else, I continued to receive laughter at the way I sounded during my original cultural clash periods. The methodology was hate your background. It was there in that town that I passed through pseudo-Amharanisation phases successfully.

My private name given to me by my parents and grandparents was not shining well in the town’s life, and hence, I had to surrender my dearest name during that tender age to receive the privileges which authoritative MSD elites (or Amharas elites) had assumed to grant me. There was no ceremony for renaming me, I was just stripped of my former name and forced to accept a cultured one, my current name. The second thing to be surrendered was the language which I and my relatives used to communicate with each other. The third was my culture, and so forth.

As a child, I found tremendous comfort in sucking my thumbs, protected and guarded by my mum, but in the town, as I grew up, my chance to laugh, associate, or compete with the Amhara elite’s children, the dominant group in the town and the country, seemed practically zero in the beginning. Here, all negative things were thrown at me. All wrong things, all inferior things, all little things, were associated with my life, and hence, from the very beginning, I was primed for a fight. Then after, it had always been their way that I had to adopt. Since they got everyone in town in that way, I was there as another victim, who would just accept without questioning all the things happening to me.

Finally, I stopped using anything Oromo altogether and became outwardly Amhara, my passport to the world of the chosen ones. Here, I grew up, went to school, and learned modern education. During my school days, we students used to be told a pleasing but heavily conditioned picture of the country that was married to the culture and outlook of the dominant ethnic group. Deep inside me, I knew that not all those things told were true about the country, but we had to accept them blindly, without questioning. My birth place is in the south lands, but I was given the history of the north, which I could scarcely imagine as mine. My ancestors’ history had been sacrificed to nourish the monuments at Axume, Lalibela, and Gonder, all in the north part of the country. There was nothing to claim as ours; we were told we had come from Madagascar and were placed where we were not supposed to be. We didn’t have history of our own.

Arming one’s self with an oppressive culture on one hand, and countering that same culture for what it lacks on the other hand, was a difficult journey for me. Some of my disapproval of that culture was usually noticed by my friends, and wherever I went, I used to face some sort of conflict or inconvenience. From all the things that I went through, I radiated a mixture of peculiarity such as resentment, lack of confidence, and the urge to fight. These reflections have been dictating my outward actions since my early life. It was not only the oppression running around that mattered to me, it was also total disconnection from the dominant cultural assumptions of being an Ethiopian, which totally undermined the existence of millions (in fact, the majority) of people in the south and east part of the country. Very simply, I was born into a community that no longer existed officially and formally in the country. I felt out of place. How does such a phenomenon come about? How were my hero ancestors, those who fought through centuries of life debacles, reduced to such insignificance? I had to pause for self-evaluation. I began to visualise all the bad and good events in my life. I was finally forced to ask one unique, universal question: Who am I?

I want to investigate the chronicles of my history. I have to go back to my ancestors’ line and find where the leak occurred. Were they forced or symbolically tricked into such non-existence? Had I owed someone something that put me in bondage? If so, I want to take responsibility until that debt is paid. I want to stop the leak. I want to do something to stop the force and the symbolic trick. I have to go all the way back through time, to pick up their struggles from where my ancestors left off. These were the basis of my participation in the struggle over the years. I don’t have to walk hundreds of miles or dig up the earth to find evidence about my ancestors and, thereby, about myself. There are most enjoyable tales and stories, and many recently written books, which put Oromos history on edge with Ethiopian history. I don’t want to bring all that here to do with my little tentative or passing questioning. I just want to put their dim historical paths into general perspective. It is enough for me to follow some general routes followed by my ancestors themselves.

Let me put it this way: I want to start from what looks like my story, my route, and my ancient ancestors’ story. By doing so, I want to highlight how my ancestors survived and what they thought of the world in which they lived. Then, I want to know how they finally chose a destination that entangled them with today’s Ethiopian people, sending them into bondage. To arrive at such legitimate knowledge, I have to answer questions such as who, what, when, where, or how of situations, but I lack perfect sources of reference and space to come up with precise answers to those questions (though there are oral tales and scant writings). My incapacitation here does not change the situations of the past. I would like to design my story in a format which generally integrates a wider time span that would make my account the least possible story.

It goes like this. It is not only by luck or by coincidence that I am here today. It is because of those tiny, tiny decisions taken by hairy dirt-liking beings millions of years ago and by their subsequent descendants that I happen to be here today. My ancestors had to face many shortfalls in life. They had to survive the tragedies of nature: fire, earthquakes, floods, famine, and competition from fellow beings. Many life struggles were repeated at different times, in different forms or magnitude, so they had to go on through fight after fight. As one fight finished, they face another. Just like today, there must always be hope and despair, competition and surrender, success and failure.

Hence, as they went through all those things, I know my ancestors constantly shifted their positions, because nothing had been taken for granted and nothing had been found that would serve as a final settlement to life’s many problems. All the ups and downs, the quests and overpasses, imagination and inventions, together made life more valuable, more precious, more patronising, more enduring, as well as more selfish. At times, my ancestors were probably mighty, and at times, they were incompetent. Some had probably walked to the east, some to the west, all to pass through various environments and stages of development. In the end, the weak became extinct and the strong thrived. I belong to the strong ones, the heroic ones. There is a high probability that my ancestral line had many abilities that helped them to survive and thrive.

Life is a continuous process, and they had to evolve continuously from one age to another: from a band of gatherers and hunters to settled agriculturalists, passing through stone age, bronze age, iron age, racing down a track to end up in bondage, and in the process, I was born to share that bondage. Now, I can clearly see those who boasted of possessing blue blood, decent unmixed race, white race, red race, yellow race, black race. All are nothing but the result of a chilling wave of changes brought about by distance, geography, and environment. Now, I feel my ancestors were not inferiors but just unlucky in taking that step in the recent past. For centuries, they were heroes and lucky to get out of bad situations, but not this time. As I grew up, I understood that our pain can go on for years but not forever. Those above us, no matter how highly they classified themselves, we shared equal blood from that dirt-licking hairy being and that great power, heroism, blue blood, or being a royalist, are boundaries that can be broken.

It was this kind of motto that took me out of childhood play into risky, sometimes counterproductive areas of encounter that drained the energies of thousands over the years. It is the sums of all such serious chains of multifaceted problems contained in our survival and in our relationship that always confront each of us. This book enabled me to express about such matters that extend beyond our individual horizon, but creep along with us to define our position and significantly shape our outlook.

The Near Past: When Struggle Was My Principal Focus

Among my earliest recollections of my childhood, there are things that stand out such as the individual heroes (some from my own relatives) who struggled against oppression in their songs and stories, and by fighting in the jungles of their country. Their lifelong strength of character, sense of purpose, and uninterrupted focus on the struggle is unforgettable. Those people were my mentors, and it wasn’t hard for me to reconnect to their struggles later, but at the beginning, it was strange taking part in struggles without those people around me. I needed them to be there all the time to encourage me, but life is too short; they all passed away one by one, leaving me behind. Still, it is impossible to switch their influence off and lay down in my bed. The game was not finished, there was more to play, there were more mentors to come in from a life full of issues that demand fighting, lobbying, challenging, and matching, and I could go on to write briefly the cases I encountered and what I had learned from all of them as follows.

I was touched in the tales by the way the community in my home land sprang up around their country to defend their way of life from the colonising Italian soldiers and from the oppressive MSD system. I was touched by their songs, their war chants, and their spiritual strength and realised that they left behind many rewarding activities and marks that kept me on the path. I saw when the colour of those struggles were constantly changing from time to time, and in the process, I did realise that those involved in the struggle had died so soon, leaving me with many grey shades. Now, my time demanded a different kind of struggle and a vigorous debate about the past and the future. I had much to ask and answer for in the people’s struggle that followed. Yes, it became up to me to juggle with their issues, which surprisingly turned out to be mine. It had become an historical obligation for me to step into their shoes and keep screwing things in defiance of the old Ethiopian system.

When it was my turn, I contented myself with the testimony, encounters, and points of view adopted by all those around me (my mentors) and had set out to question and counter the system in place. But there was law against me, there were strong authorities, there were uncertainties, and hence there was great risk.

With some of the points raised about the country, I always understood that I wasn’t getting anywhere, because generally people did not want to tell the truth in an ordinary state about the country to begin with. Many questionable conditions were classed as sacred, made external to the common people and belonged to or made central to the will of those in power and their strong supporters. There were some misty insertions in the country’s history which were difficult to criticise, because we were told about them as if they were real situations and were simply declared untouched areas. Therefore, I got used to the feeling of them always being real for a long time, but as the days passed, finding some situations to be obscure and vague in their character was not only disappointing but humiliating for a young boy like me.

When I was at primary school, I was very much troubled, not by things people complained about in their life, but by certain things they did not want but did anyhow (and also wanted us to do). I knew that doing some of those silly things would not hurt anyone, but I still asked myself why they did them and why they asked us to do them. We also heard diverse stories and legends, depending on the society or neighbourhood we lived in. Take, for example, the way I had been told to handle (with respect) the emperor’s picture, which was always staring at me from my school-book covers (in those days, all exercise books had the picture of the emperor and his family on their front covers). I got freaked out every time I saw that picture of him when people were around me, but when I was alone, I didn’t give a damn. I had already disproved that nothing was likely to happen to me if I held it upside down or stepped upon it, for example. The emperor didn’t see or hear (despite people’s belief that he had magical ways to locate a person cheating on him) whatever I did to his picture, and I already felt in my heart that he was not a superhuman, although local tales depicted a different story. Also, there were many different ways in which people behaved strangely that I did not properly understand at the time. However, I had to learn them through experience, one by one, later.

And so one day, having had these experiences, a crazier thought happened to me when our primary school director told us to line up in front of our school, on the side of the main road, to greet the emperor, who planned a visit to our town that afternoon. Something pulled me out of being part of the cheerfully gathered kids in front of the school, and I very carefully walked away, some distance past the school, to a remote corner of a field where no houses or trees ran along the side of the road. It was at this desolate site where the king would first enter Ambo town. The road from Addis Ababa enters Ambo town in a gentle curve to the left at this point, and here, on the side of the main road, where I could be seen clearly by the emperor, I wanted to test another good belief of people and disprove their wisdom. In reality, I stepped up to confront Emperor Haile Selassie I, face to face, to disprove what the people said about him without having any safety margin to my side.

In those days, everyone dropped to the ground when the emperor or his vehicle was sighted. In fact, the way people conceived this act was very strange. They said something like this: No one can stand at the very sight of the emperor, because he has some demented power that forces everyone around him to fall down to the ground. Regarding the way the emperor moved around, if I put it down artfully, they said something like, this: The vibrant spirited emperor always sits in his elaborated long black car and moves slowly forward followed by his honorary guards. From inside this special car, every time the impressive emperor turns to his left, creatures on his left would fall to their knees, and when he turns to the right, creatures on his right all would fall to their knees to kiss the ground. Therefore, all I wanted to do at that site was to stand straight on my feet and say hi to the emperor, waving my hands with a smile, but without kneeling down as he passed by.

I said to myself, I won’t kiss the ground when I see him. I will stand firmly straight up. Hence, without me realising the full extent, I was there with only determination to disprove a century-old beautiful practice in a few seconds of childish play.

At the side of the curve, confidently feeling that I was in charge of everything around me, I waited and waited attentively for the appearance of the emperor. But as it turned out later, what I had gone though was not easy to explain. I did not find exactly what I was looking for. In a split-second, I had encountered one of the most fearful and dimensionally huge situations in