Police stations were set ablaze, fire arms and ammunition seized, and
hundreds of suspected criminals—not political prisoners– freed. Any
police car within reach was torched.
The worst came the following day, though. Extensive looting and
lawlessness paralyzed Cairo’s 18 million plus residents. Egypt’s
enraged unemployed youth seized streets in affluent neighborhoods
armed with guns, knives and sticks. Those who had the means fought
back with firearms. But the majority clearly fell to the mercy of
looters.
The television images shocked the world. Perilously, this sudden turn
of events almost turned the tide of public opinion—both local and
international—against the protests.
Mubarak suddenly had a smile on his face.
Fortunately, the backlash from the Egyptian public, which was
adamantly for the protests and understood what was at stake, was swift
and decisive. People organized neighborhood watches virtually
overnight, and by Monday had reversed the threat of chaos forcefully.
Best of all, the much predicted violence between Islamic militants and
the Christian minority, which the ruling party had for years used to
discourage protests, never came to pass.
The frown was back on Mubarak’s face.
Those 48 hours dampened spirit in Addis no less than they did in
Egypt. Suddenly, the content of public debate shifted from the
prospect of the protests spreading beyond Egypt to the ominous danger
it holds for Ethiopia: ethnic conflict.
Egypt and Tunisia are broadly perceived as homogeneous societies. (But
Egypt is at least multi-religious.) Ethiopia, on the other hand, is
famously the lone champion of ethnicity based federalism in Africa; a
“nation of nations, nationalities and peoples,” as the official
parlance depicts the country. There lies latent danger, many people
fear.
In the seven decades since the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the
mid-thirties, the issue of ethnicity has had a place in the national
discourse with varying degree of intensity. It was the Italians who
first introduced it, albeit as champions of what they described as the
“disenfranchised non-Amhara majority.” And with the expulsion, at
their behest, of thousands of Amharas from what are now Oromo and
Southern regions in 1936 and 1937, a new and dangerous precedent was
set.
But even granted that the expulsions were an aberration, a consequence
of Italian divide and conquer manipulation rather than natural
outbursts, the pre-invasion land tenure in the south, the gebar
system, was the ideal setting for an impending class conflict with
ethnic overtones. The Italians were able to see that and use it to
their advantage.
Fortunately for the nation, the restored monarch, Haile-Sellassie,
resisted strong pressure from his nobility for reinstatement of the gebar system and opted for the relatively milder chesegna system.
However progressive the chesegna system looked in comparison to the
geber system, though, it stood in sharp contrast to the egalitarian
land tenure of the north, the rist system. By the mid-’60s and early-
’70s, when the politicization of Ethiopia’s youth expanded
dramatically, this disparity, two geographically delineated land
tenures in one country, arguably fueled the advent of identity
politics more than any other factor, particularly amongst Oromo
students, who hail from the nation’s largest ethnic group.
Once the genie was out of the bottle, neither the Derg’s revolutionary
land to the tiller proclamation, which uprooted the economic
foundation for identity politics, nor the rise to power of the EPRDF,
one of its multitude of militant champions, has been enough to
diminish its emotional appeal to a large number of people. It still
thrives in Ethiopia’s politics both as a powerful force and a favored
means of divide and rule.
Does this pose a threat of ethnic strife in the event of Egypt-like
protests? Would people really go as far as engaging in ethnic
conflict, particularly in relatively sophisticated Addis Ababa, home
to the nation’s greatest diversity?
Even in these times of heightened ethnic consciousness, the
melting-pot standing of the nation’s capital has persisted virtually
unchallenged. An established ethos encourages tolerance and
co-existence for first generation settlers from the regions, who have
always constituted a majority, and assimilation in to a hybrid culture
for succeeding generations. Even the Amharic spoken in Addis, which,
like American English, has developed a distinctive accent, is evolving
as it continues to assimilate increasing number of words from other
languages.
Addis is uniquely one of those rare African cities with no ethnic
ghettos. The few neighborhoods that started out as ethnic
enclaves—Wello sefer, Gimira sefer, Wellega sefer etc— have all
been overwhelmed. Amidst this diversity, all school instructions are
by consensus in the lingua-franca, Amharic. There are no private or
public ethnic schools in Addis. The protection and upkeep of ethnic
identities, which is held dear by most Ethiopians, is understood to be
the preserve of either their home regions or a private matter.
Naturally, with ethnically diverse neighborhoods the norm, the extent
of inter-marriages is exceptionally high. An ethnically homogeneous
extended family is virtually non-existent. The process of assimilation
in this realm is as vibrant as ever.
This is the Addis Ababan reality which had enabled the CUD to score a
sweeping electoral victory in 2005. For the entirety of the city’s
residents, heightened ethnicity, let alone conflict, militates against
day-to-day life. A neighbor is rarely an ethnic kin. A family member
is usually married to someone from a different ethnic group. A
co-worker almost always comes from a different ethnicity. The same
goes for a fellow worshiper. Unlike the US or parts of Africa, the
concept of an ethnically exclusive church simply does not exist. The
ties that bind Addis Ababans are extensive and deep.
It is also true that Addis Ababans argue about politics passionately.
And, indeed, ethnicity is a factor for many people in taking sides.
But their lifestyles serve as a deterrent against an outright outbreak
of ethnic conflict. There is no better antidote.
Where then does the genesis of the public’s apprehension about such
possibility lie?
The answer: EPRDF generated half truths and propaganda.
There were no ethnically motivated attacks in the 2005 post-election
riots. Some EPRDF members of all ethnicities, however, were illegally
and reprehensibly attacked. There was no rational for them.One house
was burned. One man was knocked unconscious. But, thankfully, there
was not a single fatality.
EPRDF members were not targeted indiscriminately. Those attacked were
all allegedly directly or indirectly involved in the suppression of
either the June or November protests. Omit this fact and the image is
fundamentally distorted.
But when state media went on to relate of the attacks they
deliberately highlighted only those victims with distinctly Tigrayan
names. No mention was made of their alleged bond with the ruling
party. No mention was made of their alleged role in quelling the
protests. But these were exactly what motivated the attacks. Ethnicity
was not a factor. And no less crucially, no mention was made of the
attacks against non-Tigrayan EPRDF members.
By simple acts of omissions and half truths, actual events were
twisted to fall in line with official propaganda, which for months had
fantastically accused the opposition of genocidal predisposition.
It was a classic spin.
Nonetheless, this is no reason for complacency. If protests are ever
to break out in Ethiopia, success will rely on whether the essential
lessons of the Tunisian and Egyptian protests will be embraced or not.
These are:
Non-Violence
Non-ethnic affiliation
Non-religious affiliation
Non-political affiliation (I will elaborate these “four pillars of
Tunisian and Egyptian peaceful protests” next week.)
If there is to be change in Ethiopia, it must be focused on the
future. The mistakes of the 1974 and 1991 changes were in having been
revolutions primarily against the past as opposed to being revolutions
primarily for the future. In this way, they were doomed to fail from
the very outset.
If the winds of change do reach Ethiopia, the future must dominate. It
is time to undo the dominance of the past once and for all.
A note to readers
It’s time for me to re-connect with AMHARIC readers. God permitting, I
will produce a WEEKLY article in AMHARIC every Tuesday as of March 1, 2011.
