Their differences are best epitomized by the high points of their
histories: South African students were ultimately overwhelmed by the
powerful ANC and gently melted into the wider anti-apartheid
movement, while their Ethiopian counterparts not only charted the
course of the nation’s first revolution in 1974, but 17 years later,
in 1991, went on to seize state power outright, an unprecedented feat
anywhere in the world.
By African standards, Ethiopia’s student movement was a late starter.
What student movements other African countries had, which were all
essentially anti-colonial engagements, were in their late stages by
1960, the year Ethiopia’s hitherto largely depoliticized students
burst onto the political scene with their surprise support of an
attempted coup against Haile–Sealssie.
By the mid-’60s, a ferocious student-led rebellion against the Vietnam
War was raging in much of the West, complementing and reinforcing the
Ethiopian one.
In 1967, the publication of a new student union’s paper, Struggle,
heralded the advent of the militant rebelliousness which exemplified
university students up to the late ’70s, when it was finally overcome
by the Red Terror.
Devastated by the double shock of the Red Terror and the exodus of top
students and scholars to the West, Ethiopia’s universities abruptly
became dramatically transformed settings. In place of the student’s
once insatiable inquisitiveness and infectious optimism, an
unremitting mania for blending in, pessimism and malice inundated
campus sentiment.
About ten years after the Red Terror, however, in May 1990, when the
bulk of senior General’s rebelled against Mengistu Haile-Mariam by
staging an unsuccessful coup attempt, outraged university students
exploded in unison against the execution of 13 court-marshaled
Generals. Classes were boycotted for the first time in a decade, and
for three thrilling days students, not the government, had the upper
hand on campus. The regime, no less shocked than mortified, was forced
to resort to the army to wrestle back control.
Amazingly, repression strengthened rather than undermined student
resolve. Almost out of the blue, politics became less of a taboo than
it had been for a long time.
Ten months later, the students were once again in an openly defiant
mood, this time demonstrating without permit in the streets of Addis,
ostensibly in support of the government’s reluctant move towards a
free market, but effectively against its dismal economic record. The
government watched suspiciously and helplessly from the sidelines.
Besieged by rapidly advancing rebels from the north, it could not help
but suspect the invisible hand of its adversaries.
But many students were no less wary of the advancing rebels than they
were of the government. Absent the great unifying objectives of the
’60s and ’70s, land to the tiller and Communism, the prospect of
Eritrea’s secession, which the insurgents supported, diminished the
appetite for change of a sizeable number of students — large enough,
in fact, to rule out the resurgence of the kind of cohesive student
movement of the past.
The Derg had nothing to really worry about, after all
The “right to secession” continued to divide students over succeeding
years. So stringent was this division that students were unable to
stand in unity for their most basic rights. Thus, even after the
emergence of political parties and private papers in the country in
the 1990s, university students were unable to reclaim the free union
and publication they had once enjoyed, if only intermittently, under
Haile-Selassie’s regime.
It took them ten years before they were to acknowledge this
shortcoming and move towards a concerted effort to overcome it.
It happened in 2001 when an unusually independent minded batch of
AAU’s student union, led by a charismatic third year student,
Tekle-Mariam Abebe, demanded that the university should immediately
live up to its stated values: academic freedom, integrity,
professionalism, diversity, tolerance and mutual respect.
To assert their independence, a new student paper, Hilina, was
published off campus without the consent of the university’s
authorities. It was almost a step by step repeat of Struggle’s saga.
The government was simply horrified. Worse, this defiance coincided
with a dangerous rift at the core of the ruling party and government.
Feeling that its will was being tested intentionally, the government
reacted with deliberate heavy handedness when street protests in
support of student demands broke out in Addis.
Too many lives were cut short needlessly. Many more were wantonly
wounded. But the government delivered its message. It amply
demonstrated its heightened capacity beastly violence.
The budding student movement was crushed.
Note the time line: About 10 years between the advent of the student
movement and its peak in the early ’70s. About 10 years between the
peak of the Red Terror and student protests in 1990. About 10 years
between 1990 and 2001. And now 10 years between 2001 and 2011.
And mull over this: AAU has been closed for the past several weeks.
Students were on a break when Mubarak fell. They will return to campus
in large numbers as of this weekend to resume classes.
With the North African protests overlapping with the 10 years cyclical
student uprisings, should we expect protests to break out at AAU
anytime soon?
Maybe. Maybe not. Nothing is certain.
What is certain is the deep disdain of students about lack of freedoms
both on and off campus. For many students, EPRDF’s shocking 99.6 %
“electoral victory” symbolizes its estrangement and isolation from the
people. Soaring inflation and thinning employment prospects, rather
than GDP growth, also dominate their thoughts. And the sense that
high-level corruption is out of control pervades campus mood.
If these grievances do indeed translate into protests, success for
the nation, as I have written a few weeks ago, will depend on whether
the essential lessons of the Tunisian and Egyptian protests are
embraced or not.
These are:
Non-Violence
Non-ethnic affiliation
Non-religious affiliation
Non-political affiliation.
And no less, on the part of the EPRDF, if protests do break out, a
quick acknowledgment that the time for peaceful change has finally
arrived. There are no losers in a democracy.
The End.
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