WHAT THE HISTORY OF ETHIOPIA TEACHES US ABOUT THE IDEA OF PROGRESS.
By Paul Merkley.
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Recent events, both in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and throughout the land, suggest that that ancient country – Africa’s second most populous nation at about 110,000,000, nearly four times the population of Canada — is headed for division, civil war, and even anarchy.
The most recent events in a very confused chronicle include a failed coup on June 26, conducted by what is described as a “rogue state militia”, followed a day or two later by “dozens” of large-scale protests (www.dw.com/en/dozens-killed-in-weekend-protests-across-ethiopia; www.voanews.com/africa/assassinations-arrests-test-ethiopias-fragile-push-toward-democracy; http://www.nationalpost.com/pmn/elections-pmn/ethiopia-faces-more-conflict-with-ethnic-groups-push-for-region.)
It will probably be several weeks before we know what these events amount to.
This is a depressing development. Political life in Ethiopia is now in total disarray — a step closer to almost inevitable anarchy.
It would take a steady hand and nerves of steel to write the history of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is one of two nations (the other being Israel) that appears in the earliest books of our Bible—at least in the King James Version — by the name (“Ethiopia,” which means “land of burnt faces”) that it has today.
In our Bible, the Kingdom of Sheba, corresponds to what we call Ethiopia, but extends beyond those present-day boundaries to include the Horn of Africa and the south coast of the Arabian Peninsula. In Biblical days, the kingdom was renowned for its material wealth: The “Queen of Sheba,” we read, came to Jerusalem “with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones” ( IKings 10:2); “Never again came such an abundance of spices” (IKings 10:10; IIChron 9:1–9) as those she gave to Solomon.
Like every other assertion that the Bible makes, this one is, of course, disputed—in whole or in part. But there seems to be no good reason to doubt its main details.
Ethiopian historians follow this Biblical account, and add to it the detail that the child born to Solomon and Sheba was Emperor Menelik I who founded the Solomonid dynasty. This dynasty continued until Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed in 1974 by a Communist coup; the Communist regime which, in turn, was ousted a few years later.
Not even the experts can rhyme off the names of all the regimes that have governed this poor African nation. During the late Nineteenth Century, when the European nations were caught up in their “scramble” to re-organize African people into “colonies,” Ethiopia remained independent. But then, in 1936, Ethiopia’s last monarch, Haile Selassie, fled as Mussolini, dictator of Italy, sent in his armies and imposed his cruel regime – for no better reason than that the rest of Africa was already all parceled up into European-colonial blocks. But the Ethiopian people, with the assistance of the British, fought their way out of Italy’s clutches by 1945; Haile Selassie slouched back, but proved so incompetent and so venal that he had to slink away again in September, 1974. When the dust settled upon that chapter, a Communist government – of all unlikely things! – was standing in Haile Selassie’s place. This regime proved incredibly cruel, even by Communist standards. The nation lost about eight million people to famine. When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did its clients – including Communist Ethiopia (by 1991.)
Since 1991, efforts to put the Ethiopian government on a sound basis through the holding of elections have all come crashing down, as in every case one or more of countless nationalist movements have withheld their support. Today, Ethiopia is governed by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front – a grand name, but just another African kleptocracy.
Today, all across Ethiopia, massive popular protests, aimed at securing basic human rights and a fairer distribution of wealth, are being dispersed by Ethiopian police forces and military. Chronic inter-tribal hostilities have caused so much internal dislocation that the government has been able to blanket the nation with one seamless declaration of national emergency after another. Millions of people are reckoned as internally displaced.
Ethiopia, then also known as the Kingdom of Aksum, was one of the first states to officially adopt the religion of Christianity—from the top down. Today, the vast majority of the population of Ethiopia adheres to Christianity – and the vast majority of these belong to the State Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Roughly a third of the populace follows Islam (primarily Sunni.) During the late 19th-century “Scramble for Africa”, Ethiopia was one of two nations to retain its sovereignty, standing exempt from long-term colonialism by a European colonial power. But then, in 1936, the country was occupied by Italy and became part of the Italian East Africa, until it was liberated during World War II. In 1974, the Ethiopian monarchy under Haile Selassie was overthrown by a communist-military government backed by the Soviet Union. This People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, in turn, was overthrown in 1991 by the non-Marxist Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, which has been the ruling political coalition since.
Unfortunately, Ethiopia’s right to be called a “democratic nation” has been tarnished again and again, despite so many apparent new beginnings. According to the Democracy Index published by the United Kingdom-based Economist Intelligence Unit in late 2010, Ethiopia is an “authoritarian regime”, ranking as the 118th-most democratic out of 167 countries in the world. In fact, over the last decade alone, Ethiopia has dropped down a notch or two with each annual publication of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s list of the democratic qualifications of all of the world self-described “democratic nations.” The latest report attributes the sagging reputation of Ethiopia to that government’s crackdown on opposition activities as well as the low level of performance of its media and civil society. The current report of the Economist Intelligence Unit designates Ethiopia a de facto one-party state.
This is a depressing development. Political life in Ethiopia is now in total disarray—a step closer to almost inevitable anarchy.
What makes this this even more depressing is the recognition that the History of Ethiopia takes us back as far as documented History takes us anywhere. Actual historical material for the earliest centuries is, of course, sparse. Still, Ethiopia’s history takes the historians as far back as the History of the Ancient Hebrews — about two thousand years further back than the origins of any European nation.
This thought all by itself demolishes the notion of human progress. To all but the specialists, there is nothing about Ethiopia’s history to suggest that along the way Ethiopian common people were ever better governed, happier, materially better-off or more secure in their homes than they are today. Ethiopia’s thirty-five centuries or so of history – that is, about twenty-five centuries more history than that of any European nation — while colorful and very noisy, does not yield the hallmarks of “progress” that Nineteenth Century Liberals told us would stand out as the organizing theme of World History.
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