Following the news of the past few years, you might get
the impression that flamboyance and bellicosity are signature traits of any
long-tenured dictator. But for every Muammar Qaddafi there’s a MelesZenawi, the shrewd,
technocratic Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Inside of the country, he’s known for
imprisoning his political opponents, withholding
development assistance from restive areas, stealing
elections, and cracking down
on civil society NGOs. In the rest of the world, he’s often praised
for his impressive economic record, though not for his human rights. Zenawi has attracted Western support by being a responsible
steward of aid money, a security partner
in a rough region, and a G20 summit
invitee.
Now, both his supporters and his detractors may have to
contemplate a future without him. Zenawi is in a
Brussels hospital with an unspecified stomach ailment that may or may not
be fatal, depending upon what news reports you believe. Today, a
government spokesperson announced that Zenawi would be taking a leave of absence from
running the country, which he’s led since 1991.
From a human rights perspective, Zenawi’s
rule has been abusive, heavy-handed, and self-interested..
Still, his apparently earnest dedication to sustainable development has long
attracted international donors, whose money has benefited Ethiopia while
propping up his regime. Zenawi, has fostered a friendlier environment for foreign
investment. Between 2000 and 2010, Ethiopia’s GDP enjoyed a staggering average
annual growth rate of 8.8 percent — China-like numbers. The country’s public
sector is hardly clean of corruption, but the Ethiopian state isn’t as
mismanaged or as predatory as others in the region. It ranks 120th out of 183
governments on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions
index, not exactly Scandinavian but still ahead of such regional leaders as
Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria.
Under his leadership, Ethiopians have suffered from a
lack of human, civil, and political rights. At the same time, their country has
earned a reputation as a place where aid money can be responsibly and
effectively spent. “The U.S. assistance portfolio in Ethiopia remains one
of the United States’ largest and most complex in Africa” according to an online U.S.
government profile of the roughly $2.1 billion in aid the U.S. has
sent to Ethiopia since 2010. The World Bank helps fund over $ 4.4 billion worth of
projects in the country.
This is the paradox of Zenawi’s
legacy. He has done much to simultaneously help and
hurt his people, with just the kind of quiet skill that you hope to see in a
benign leader and dread in a malevolent one. If he never returns to office,
should he be remembered as the technocrat behind Ethiopia’s amazing economic
rise, or the brutal strongman who resisted democracy as much of Africa adopted
it? Though one did not necessarily require the other — a kinder, gentler Zenawi might have overseen even better growth — the same
character might inform both sides of his rule.
“When I meet with Prime Minister Meles
and [Ugandan] President [Yoweri] Museveni,
I feel like I am attending development seminar,” rockstar
development economist Jeffrey Sachs said in a 2004
speech. “They are ingenious, deeply knowledgeable, and
bold.” Magnus Taylor, the managing editor of the Royal African Society’s
renowned African Arguments blog, wrote about Zenawi’s ability to
dazzle foreign investors at the World Economic Forum in Addis Ababa
this past May, while challenging the democratic world’s seemingly dogmatic
belief in the causal relationship between political freedom and economic
dynamism:
Sitting astride this economic growth, and taking pride of
place at this year’s WEF, was Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. In an event that boasted such political
heavyweights as former British PM Gordon Brown, and private sector luminaries
like the Ivorian boss of The Prudential, TidjaneThiam, whose $600 billion worth of assets makes Ethiopia
look like a minnow, I was surprised by how much Meles
came out as the dominant figure. A fiercely intelligent man, with a grasp of
figures redolent of Brown (whom Meles referred to as
‘Prime Minister’ throughout) he seemed totally in his element. Perhaps it was
the nature of the audience. He was never going to have to field too many tricky
questions about Ethiopia’s political space, (un)free
press or tight government control over telecommunications and banking in front
of a room full of CEOs and fellow technocrats.
One senses that in certain crowds his statement that
“there is no direct relationship between economic growth and
democracy” would have got him in to trouble – important players were
gnashing their teeth at this but Meles, kingpin of
Western policy in the Horn of Africa, knows exactly how much he can loosen his
Marxist instincts without upsetting his donors.
The World Economic Forum was one of Zenawi’s
last public appearances. Even if he survives his illness, there is currently no
public timetable for his return to Addis Ababa. As dictators across North
Africa and the Middle East can no longer take their survival for granted, it’s
worth wondering whether Zenawi will be the model for
the next generation of enlightened, western-coddled autocrats — or one of the
last of a literally dying breed.
