“…the present regime’s ethnic based federal setup, which is designed along a liberal democracy trajectory, appears to be failing to produce the desired result” of “equitable share of power and resources.” In effect, it is a policy of “decentralization on paper and centralization in practice.” – Professor Merera Gudina
“There is increasing recognition that institutional and political economy factors are central to economic development. Many problems of development result from barriers to the adoption of new technologies, lack of property rights over land, labor and business, and policies distorting prices and incentives.” — Raj Nallari, Development Outreach, April 2011
In light
of the above, potential options and choices that emanate from open multiparty
competition may or could inevitably lead to the prospect of “equitable share in
power and resources.” If and when this occurs, there is the prospect of
reversals in policy and decision making that will undermine the political and
economic hegemony of the Tigrean minority ethnic elite. In turn, this may lead
to accountability, for example, of the billions of dollars stolen. Political
governance is intricately and organically linked to the protection of a vast
network of business interests and control of natural resources for the top
leadership, the party’s endowments and the regime’s domestic and foreign
allies. The facts speak for themselves.
The top
leadership of the governing party knows what it is doing. It is the opposition
camp that is unable to move forward with innovative ideas and pioneering
organization and leadership and challenge it head on. The first step in the
process is to recognize that the inherited mindset among political and social
elites that justice, a semblance of democracy and equitable access to economic
and social opportunities could be achieved through the lens of ethnic divide
and not through national politics has failed the vast majority regardless of
ethnic affiliation. I contend that the root ideology of this toxic inheritance
emanated from external powers such as Arab governments inimical to Ethiopia and
their surrogates such as the EPLF, the TPLF and OLF. Intellectual supporters of
the EPLF and later the TPLF were masters at crafting theoretical arguments why
Ethiopia should be kept weak, divided and devoid of national leaders at any
level. The kilil system is an outcome
of the process of divide and rule.
The EPLF
core leadership was singularly determined to wipe out Ethiopian nationalists by
pitying one group against another, often using the rational of ethnic or
nationality oppression. Some fell into its trap and did its dirty work. The
military junta led by Mengistu Haile Mariam preoccupied itself with naked
power; made the arrogant assumption that military response can solve social and
justifiable causes. In the process, it made the country more vulnerable, weaker
and void of nationalist social capital. Hundreds of innocent lives were lost in
the process. This enormous loss and flight of intellectual capital gave the
EPLF, TPLF and others an edge to weaken the country even further.
The
Military Dictatorship approved and or sanctioned the wholesale “murder” of an
entire generation of the most experienced; and most seasoned Ethiopian leaders
of the 20th century. It contributed to the de-institutionalization of Ethiopia
in the name of a failed revolution. Further, this same junta played an
instrumental role by sponsoring; supporting; and or condoning the mutual
destruction of the country’s best and brightest through the “Red and White
Terror” schemes that should have been and could have been avoided through wise
political leadership at the top. Mengistu Haile Mariam, whose book generated curiosity
recently, failed to display personal courage. He refused to accept
responsibility for the atrocities he sponsored as head of government. His
failure reinforces the arrogant position taken by Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian
Prime Minister, who continues to violate the fundamental rights of Ethiopians
regardless of ethnic affiliation.
In all
cases perpetrated by the Military Junta, the beneficiaries were not the
Ethiopian people; but the EPLF, TPLF and Ethiopia’s foreign adversaries. This
tradition of anti-Ethiopian nationalism and nationally oriented human capital
formation is now a core strategy deployed by the TPLF core. The TPLF core has
retained the worst features of the regime it replaced. The governing party
issues visas to nationalists, patriots and democratic activists to leave the
country or sends them to jail. Unlike the regime it replaced, the TPLF
government does not condone open killings in the streets. It is a silent
killer. It does it in more “civilized ways.” Continuous exodus of the country’s
human capital illustrates the fact that there are only two major options for
those who dissent: stay and fight and go to jail and or leave the country
peacefully.
During the
height of the Eritrean conflict, many of us played into the machinations of the
EPLF and later the TPLF and fought their proxy wars. We are now paying a huge
price. Some of this unfortunate tradition persists. Whatever form of democracy
we may wish for the country, we are unlikely to achieve it without rejecting
this inheritance or implant from the past. Here is my concern. Many of us
within the opposition camp continue to play to the same tune as the country’s
rulers while expecting a different outcome. The TPLF core plays us against one
another to do its dirty work the same way that the EPLF pitied us against one
another. The demobilization of the Diaspora in churches, mosques, eating
places, sports, schools and so on is in large part an indicator of our weakness
and not a reflection of the strength and wisdom of the governing party and its
advocates. It is unfortunate that those of us who live in freedom are silent,
afraid or reluctant to challenge this continuous ethnic divide, demobilization
and disillusionment?We seem to be
gripped with fear the same way as those who live under the watch of a
repressive system that spy on them daily. At least, they have reason. Why do we
allow this to occur?
What makes
us vulnerable abroad is that we are divided along ethnic, religious and
ideological lines. It is as if we spy on one another and do not even know it. We
surely know that, at the moment, ethnic-federalism bestows on the Ethiopian
people the notion that they are a collection of ‘independent states’ and that
they enjoy a modicum of freedom and autonomy that will lead them to eventual
prosperity. Is this true? There as some folks who believe this; and we need to
convince them why they should not. Here is the problem. By any definition, the kilil concept is separatist, retarding,
adversarial and corruption-ridden and conflict prone. This is the essence of
ethnic-federalism. If the kilil system
is a collection of fragmented and separate states any one of which has the
right to secede, it is more akin to Apartheid Bantustans than to the 50 states
of the United States or to Tanzania or Indonesia or to Mauritius or to Ghana or
to Malaysia or to India. The Bantustan system in South Africa accepted skewed
distribution of wealth and incomes as a norm. In turn, this resulted in uneven
development that is still persistent. The TPLF survives by making kilil an instrument of division rather
than national cohesion and democratization for a smart reason. The kilil system weakens collective
resistance while allowing the core ethnic elite and its allies to control natural
resources and to make insane wealth on the back of the Ethiopian poor. It does
this through fear and division.
Resistance
to this retarding ideology can and should come from those of us who live in
freedom. Lessons from the past suggest that it is only when we reach-out to
one another; promote and build trust with one another; and cooperate with
one another that we can resist our own demobilization; and serve as catalysts
of change in the country we left behind. We live in countries that allow
freedom of thought and encourage private ownership of property. Yet, we fail to
challenge a system that violates both principles. The kilil system the TPLF core pursues is not only anti-national human
capital; it is also anti-private property for the vast majority of Ethiopians.
The kilil system makes private property
virtually unattainable
Most
people establish the legal right to private property by acquiring or inheriting
or leasing or buying urban land within established parameters and by building
homes that he or she can afford to build on this land. Everyone has aspirations
to own a home. This fundamental right of ownership is being undone by the
governing elite that are determined to allow private property only for its
elite members and foreigners and disallow same for the majority. Private
property that is increasingly common in socialist market economies such as
China is an anathema to the minority ethnic governing elite in Ethiopia for a
good reason. People with private property and private assets are more likely to
challenge it than people who are destitute. Here is the contradiction for
everyone to see. None of today’s high income and high asset members and
supporters of the governing elite can make rightful claim that they worked hard
and produced goods to earn their riches. They are where they are because they
control politics and economics. They became wealthy through redistributive
power that bestows rent without productivity. It is within this context
that one should consider the recent proclamation on urban land. It
disenfranchises Ethiopians from owning private property in their own country.
At the same time, it makes the governing party stronger than ever before. It
denies ordinary Ethiopians the right to own, transfer and collateralize any personal
property that is built on the land for good; while strengthening the prospect
of more wealth and incomes for the few.
The
minority ethnic elite that rules the country argues that all land and natural
resources belong to the Ethiopian people. The party defines itself as representing, and in fact, being the
Ethiopian people. The party is now the people. I suggested in previous works
that the TPLF has effectively merged ethnicity, party and state into one. Its
action now suggests that it has assumed the status of people. Merger of
ethnicity, party and state suggests that Tigrean ethno-nationalism requires
super-ordinate loyalty to a tribe (Tigrean) rather than to Ethiopia or to all
nationality and ethnic groups in the country. The government and state operate
on behalf of a minority ethnic elite. It is this merged state that the ruling
party says represents the entire country and its 90 million people.
There is
no contest that ethnicity, party, state and people are practically merged into
one. What does it mean in practical terms? It means that the governing elite
defines the term people as it wishes; decides on who belongs and who does not
as it wishes; legislates who owns private property and who does not as it
wishes; facilitates who leaves the country and who stays as it wishes; and
regulates who becomes rich and who remains poor as it wishes; and condones who
steals and get away with it as it wishes. There is no challenge to its verdict
even when the lives millions are at stake. It is this draconian.
The
governing elite alienate land from private investments on the land. Here is the
implication for this and the coming generation. A young woman or man, who goes
to school and works hard, saves and plans to build a home, cannot aspire to do
so under the new system. When the new proclamation takes effect, only the rich
and super rich can and will build homes, villas and mansions. If you wish to
look at it from an ethnic lens, an ordinary Tigrean who is poor or even works
as a soldier or small bureaucrat can only gaze at a mansion in Mekele and
wonder who owns it and how. The same is true in Gondar or Bahir Dar or Awassa
or Jima or Harrar and so on. The rich will have the right to transfer and
collateralize. The poor would have the right to gaze at the glitz and ask how?
The Ethiopian people have no say or stake in their national resources including
urban and rural lands. This is what experts call alienation and
disenfranchisement. In summary, the minority ethnic government and state it
leads has become the new landlord. Everyone is reduced to serfdom.
The
parallel to the urban land crisis is yemeret
neteka ena kirimit in rural areas where the new landlords are Indians,
Saudis, Chinese, Egyptians and others from outside; and the few chosen Tigreans
from the inside. The government says that it is standardizing land leases. In
my estimation, standardization is a cover. The real motive is to make sure that
Ethiopians do not own substantial property. Why? Ownership of private property
and economic independence enhances freedom. Freedom advances accountability.
The well to do and the less dependent would be in a position to challenge the
current system. It is far easier to order and rule the poor than the
prosperous. Just think of the reality the poor face on the ground that
compounds the problem even further. The glitz of villas, condos and mansions
that dot the country should never mask the dire situation the vast majority
endures each day. The glitz in construction that employed thousands is now
completely stalled. This has led to more unemployment and homelessness in
cities and towns. Take a look at the statistics and ask whether or not the
current system would solve a looming national social crisis. The fact that some
ethnic elite members at regional levels are better off under the current regime
misses the point entirely. Has the wellbeing of the majority in kilils where allies thrivechanged substantially? The data says
no.
Fifty two
percent of the population earns less than a dollar a day; just below the poverty
threshold of US$1.25. Statistics do not lie. UN estimates put stunting of
children at 55 percent. The economic cost to the country from stunting alone is
estimated at US$ 2 billion per annum. Malnutrition at 57 percent is one of the highest in Africa. Three
percent of Ethiopians are retarded; more than one million are blind; and about
one million lives are lost due to vitamin deficiencies. In 2011, close to 7
million Ethiopian children were identified as orphans. Maternal mortality, one
of the leading causes for the high orphan rate, is among the highest in the
world. Human trafficking and especially of girls has risen at an alarming rate
as has adoption. Both are multimillion dollar businesses. The country’s largest
export is human capital.
Ninety percent
of these and other major diseases and social ills that take away millions of
lives are systemic and preventable. These diseases and other social and
economic indicators of multidimensional poverty illustrate the dire situation
that the vast majority of Ethiopians face whether they live in Addis Ababa,
Dire Dawa, Afar, Gambella, Beni-Shangul Gumuz and SNNP, Oromia or any other kilil. It is this reality too that
should push all opponents to set aside minor differences and take the regime to
task. If opponents cooperate, the regime would have no leg to stand on.
It is
against these dreary statistics that Ethiopia’s miraculous growth should be
gauged. The same social and economic indicators by the UN system present a
troubling picture of the rural economy where 85 percent of the Ethiopian people
live and work. Seventy-six percent of the country highland croplands are
degraded. Experts estimate that each year, 200,000 ha of farmland are degraded.
This too is preventable through extension services, better technology,
education and training, land tenure security and so on. I have argued in Waves
that Ethiopian farmers including women are among the hardest working people on
this planet. With better inputs, adult literacy, improved infrastructure and
markets, tenure security, access to more lands, conservation efforts and so on,
agriculture offers Ethiopia its singular potential comparative advantage source.
The debatable
double digit growth claimed by the Ethiopian government seems to have ignored
the rural segment of the population completely. Rural farmers and others have
not fared any better under this growth than urban dwellers, government
employees, small traders and shopkeepers and other small enterprise owners. In
fact, they seem to be in the same boat: just coping each day and barely
surviving. I recall a farmer in Harrar who said that he is worse off now than
he was before.Why? His family has been
reduced to eating one or two meals a day; from three meals a day before the
current economic boom. Some experts argue that income for ordinary civil
servants, retirees, the middle class, shopkeepers and rural people have in fact
declined substantially. At the same time, a few at the top have made a killing
from the economic boom. A rental economy
allows this anomaly.
If you
believe as I do that the rural sector is the backbone of the national economy
and possesses substantial potential for further productivity, it behooves us to
shed our ethnic garbs and reject the
kilil system. Why? It deters social cohesion, mobility, domestic market
integration, and sustainable, equitable and integrated development. The country
is unable to feed itself and make poverty history not because of lack of
natural resources or people; but because of poor economic and natural resource
management. The kilil system
contributes to this abnormality.
There are
a number of reasons for this condition. Land tenure insecurity is among the
lead causes for low productivity. Intensification and diversification have not
taken hold. Farmers suffer from low inputs. The farming population is clustered or “concentrated” (a term used by a
colleague), on 12 million ha of lands. Each farming family consists of an
average of 6 persons and farms less than half ha of land. It is predictable
that small plots of land cannot support larger numbers of people without
substantial technological and cultural innovation. With a few exceptions,
smallholders do not receive the kind of input that triggered agricultural
revolutions in South and East Asia. Inputs such as better seeds, credits,
fertilizers and lands are dictated by loyalty to party rather than merit and national
productivity need.
In a
country with millions who are either land poor or landless, the governing
party’s giveaway of millions of ha of the most fertile farmlands and water
basins to Indian, Chinese, Egyptian and Saudi and other foreign firms and
governments and domestic allies is, to say the least, unjust and unfair. Given
the types of investment agreements made without public discussion and local
community consent, it is entirely unclear what benefit the country and local
communities gain. For this reason, land giveaway is tantamount to compromising
the country’s source of comparative advantage. It undermines citizenship and
ownership and degrades the wellbeing and security of rural families. Evidence
in the country (in the late 1960s and early 1970s) and other successful
economies where smallholder revolutions have taken place shows that Ethiopia’s
varied climate and varied crops offer enormous possibilities to scale up and
transform agricultural production to unprecedented levels. This can only happen
through smart and deliberate government policies and public participation.
Empowered
and equipped with new technologies and inputs and given tenure security,
smallholders and the Ethiopian private sector can eliminate hunger altogether.
This will not occur as long as land tenure is politicized to serve the
governing party. De-politicization would-I am convinced-lead to an Ethiopian
smallholder revolution. This is the key to agricultural productivity and to the
elimination of abject poverty. Experts estimate that if the current system
persists, 50 percent of Ethiopia’s growing population will go hungry by
2020–less than 8 years. Tenure security is therefore a matter of survival. Opponents
cannot afford to let this happen. They must champion empowerment.
It is
absurd to imagine—unless we let it—that the current repressive and corrupt
system would last under these conditions. Everywhere one looks; there are
pockets of popular dissent and protest: Oromia, the Ogaden, Gojjam, Gambella,
Silte in the Shoa sub-region and others, colleges
students and domestic workers in the Middle East. What do they share in common?
All of them cry out for justice. They do it in isolation from one another
because the kilil system is designed
to punish or contain them in isolation from one another. In light of this
continuous phenomenon I suggest that any dissident who is not ready and willing
to respond to these nation-wide cries cannot blame the governing party and sit
back. He or she has a moral duty to respond through concrete action by
cooperating with one another. Action requires that we accept the simple notion
that, no matter the level of oppression, punishment and
disenfranchisement–done in deliberate isolation–the Ethiopian people will not
accept their status as tenants and as passive recipients of brutality,
punishment and injustice for long. The question then is where we stand on these
seemingly isolated protests and dissent?
Socioeconomic
data is useful for a sound reason. It is ethnicity and religious or demographic
blind. Every Ethiopian wants to own something that she or he can claim as her or
his own. A small hut or tukul is as
private as a mansion. This takes me back to the recent urban land proclamation
that reinforces my plea for greater cooperation among opponents regardless of
ethnic affiliation and past history. The regime allows and dismisses localized
incidents and people’s calls for justice intentionally and deliberately as
simple or as triggered by “terrorist groups and external enemies.” The kilil system and culture are conducive
for this to happen. Kilil elites
defend the system with a passion that defies reason. Do not blame them. They
are part of the system that sustains them. Information and knowledge is not
shared. It is natural that people do not react to remote incidents because
these do not affect them directly and immediately. The phenomenon suggests that
threads of commonality that bind people together as citizens (Ethiopians)
rather than as religious and ethnic enclaves are undermined. Restrictions on
press freedom make matters worse.
Here is my
socioeconomic argument. A home cannot be built in thin air. Ordinary Ethiopians
understand fully that their alienation from owning land, transferring land to
their children, collateralizing land to borrow, and selling their property to
upgrade or downgrade is unjust and unfair. People understand fully that land
giveaways to foreign investors and preferred elites will not serve them or the
country. Rather, it disenfranchises them; and forces them to move from their
ancestral homes. These governing party policies and programs are therefore an
abrogation of fundamental economic and social rights of ordinary Ethiopians
that will affect all in the long-term. Can you imagine that anything of value
can be built without land? A home or any other physical asset that is anchored
on this earth does not float in thin air.
The
governing elite tell us that in Ethiopia, it does. It forces people to accept
this as a norm without public debate. What the party says is literally gospel.
It does this in the political arena as much as it does in the economic and
social arena. In a country where corruption is endemic, those with wealth are
able to transfer out billions illicitly: US$11.7 billion between 2000 and 2008
and US$3.26 billion in 2009 alone. No big thief has been charged and sent to
jail. The kilil system is well suited
for corruption to take place at a massive scale. It seems to be the only way to
gain wealth. Even those who love their country move their money out because
they are unsure of the future.
Endemic
corruption emanates directly from a system of minority ethnic elite and will
not stop unless the kilil
system–that gives a semblance of democracy for the elite–changes. Therefore,
the key is not what the minority ethnic elite think or do. It is what those who
oppose it think and act against this absurdity in government policy and
programs that make the vast majority of Ethiopians subservient tenants and
poor; and that allows the elite to steal
billions from one of the two poorest countries in Africa.
In the
next article, I intend to show how the kilil
system championed as success by the upper echelon of ethnic elites and allies
sustains itself by recruiting and or enticing advocates who should know better.
