Meles’ selected speech: completing the story

By Hindessa Abdul

A giant poster that spans the length of the giant Maskel Square shows how the ruling party is desperate to immortalize Meles Zenawi, the tyrant who turned Ethiopia into a landlocked impoverished nation during his over 20 years of rule.

It has
been a year since long time Ethiopian ruler Meles Zenawi died of unestablished
causes in a Belgian hospital somewhere between June and August of 2012. The
Government hasn’t come out clearly about the cause of his death.

During the
last several weeks the state run media were preoccupied portraying a person
akin to a saint. The praises showered upon him were more than needed to
canonize him. 21-gun salute was fired; millions of trees planted; fellow
leaders of neighbouring countries were at hand to
give pomp to the event; scores of parks renamed after him, and the list goes on
and on.

University
professors, army generals, cabinet members, and party operatives were paraded
to give testimony about the deeds of his excellency.
They said he was an intellectual, a military strategist, a farmers’s
best friend, and man of the people.

ETV even
took a page from North Korean manual on cult of personality. They took us to
his office showing the working area displaying a document he allegedly was
working on; Koreans already did that telling the story of Kim Il-sung (the
senior Kim). If that is any indication, everything Meles
touched may be preserved as historical relic.

For those
whose thirst about Meles’ myth were not quenched, the
Sunday shows came up with the selected speeches that tried to make an
entertainer out of the chief priest of “revolutionary democracy.”

Meles had all the answers for every
question under the sun; he was talking to the rubber stamp parliament ready to
giggle at every phrase uttered; he was addressing the youth, the business men,
the revelers at a millennium party, you name it.

While the
nation propaganda machine wants to paint a demigod, it is only fair to complete
the story. As they say, journalism is “the first rough draft of history.” Here
are some of his pronouncements that were willingly left out:

In April
1990 a year before Tigray Peoples Liberation Front
(TPLF) controlled Addis Ababa, Meles
had an interview with the late CIA and National Security specialist Paul B. Henze in the TPLF’s Washington office. “We can no longer
have Amhara domination,” Meles
told him. While it was no secret that Henze
sympathized with TPLF, he still confronted the rebel leader to which Meles tried to soften a bit: “ When
we talk about Amhara domination, we mean the Amhara of Shoa, and the habit of Shoan supremacy that became established in Addis Abeba during the last hundred years.”

In a visit
to the Tigray region shorty
after his ascendance to power the then Ethiopian President played to the
emotions of the public somewhat in the line of Hitler’s rhetoric about the
Aryan race: “We are proud to be born out of you…we are proud to be gotten out
of you.” ( Enkwae abhatkum tefetirna…enkwae abhatkum terehibna )^_ That
part of the speech is always left out when ETV takes sound
bytes from that “historical” speech, not to offend the “nations and
nationalities.”

In August
1994 (some say it was October 1995), Meles Zenawi visits the U.S. and confers with members of
Ethiopian community in Washington D.C. Flanked by his yes-men like Seyoum Mesfin, Berhane G.Kristos, Dr Tekeda Alemu
and other TPLF top brass, Meles was entertaining
questions from the audience. A lady asks him what his vision was for Ethiopia
ten years from then. Meles responded his vision was
to make sure the people eat three times a day.^_ Decade after the
promised era, Ethiopians scavenge for left overs at restaurants or in city
waste disposal sites.

In an
interview with Professor Donald Levine – a renowned U.S. sociologist and
professor of Ethiopian studies – the late premier retorted: “The Tigreans had Axum, but what could that mean to the Gurague! The Agew had Lalibela, but what could that mean to the Oromo! The Gonderes had castles, but what could that mean to the Wolaita?”

            That comment was to haunt him on the
eve of the 2005 general elections where he was afraid to face any opposition
politician for debate. In his last appearance prior to the vote, Meles explained that gaffe saying it was taken out of
context. But he implied that the Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture (then
Ambassador to France) Teshome Toga who hails from Wolaita Zone was put in charge to counter the perception
his words created. Teshome eventually oversaw the
return of the Axum Obelisk in April 2005.

When
history is written by historians rather than victors, those speeches and
comments hopefully will get their rightful place in the interest of posterity.