Modernisation: a poisoned chalice for Ethiopians (Part II)
By Tseggai Mebrahtu
Aug 25, 2004

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”…Where the entire safety of the country is to be decided, there ought not to exist any consideration of what is just or unjust, nor what is merciful or cruel, nor what is praiseworthy or ignominious; rather, ahead of every other consideration, that proceeding ought to be followed which will save the life of the country and maintain its liberty.” – Nicolo Machiavelli

Why has modernisation been a poisoned chalice for Ethiopians?

I would like to thank Dr. Marcos Lemma, Dr. Girma Bekele, Awoke Abegaz and all those who reacted positively to a section of the first part of this article defending King Menelik’s great historic role in preserving Ethiopian independence and national pride against colonial invasion. I wish only that Zewge Fanta had a rudimentary knowledge of the logic of arguing before hastily priding himself on having ‘demolished’ my arguments. Yes, arguments are forwarded to be demolished. However, to my regret, Zewge has only suceeded in admitting involuntarily that he is completely at loss for a matured reply to challenge my ideas let alone to demolish them. If really Zewge is a concerned Ethiopian as he pretends to be, there was no reason at all for him to try to defend amateurishly his childhood friend against Ethiopia. The nation is incomparably far more important to Ethiopians than one individual who pretends to be right against all Ethiopians including against Zewge himself. Zewge seems to have ‘forgotten’ or not to ‘have read at all ‘ the central argument of my article which is a plea for sharing responsibility for the political, economic and military tragedy befalling Ethiopia. After a lenghty discussion of why sharing responsibility is an indispensable condition to national reconciliation, I concluded my article by exhorting Ethiopian political elites to forget their past personal or organisational animosities and to accept the fact that ‘bygones are bygones’ in order to work together for the political and economic renaissance of the nation. While this is the central point of of my article, Zewge quotes the phrase ‘bygones are bygones’ out of its context and talks about Eritrea, the port of Assab and about the arrival of 250 Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia. What do all these have to do with my plea for the national reconciliation of Ethiopian opposition political parties? I give this example just to show why Zewge’s ‘response’ is exactly the same as that of the response of a drunk or a senile person. In the past, I have never deigned to respond to bad-faith individuals with serious problems in marshalling their reasoning in a logical and relevant manner; and I don’t see now any reason why Zewge Fanta should be an exception to this rule of mine.

As for Tecola Hagos, the biggest holier-than-thou that I have ever known, I am eager to see how well this wisehead will do his ethnic hatemongering homework next time. Tecola has for certain a very high opinion of himself, and that is why he dirties his website with an offensive language by insulting everybody who does not accept his divisive politics and hocus-pocuses on Ethiopian sovereignty as a gospel truth. Tecola suffers seriously from a delusion of intellectual grandeur. Modesty is a word completely unknown to Tecola. He ‘believes’ that all what he says is ‘true’ and ‘just’ and therefore ‘good’ for Ethiopia and Ethiopians. And, what others say is either a ‘silly denial of facts’ or a ‘lie’. Even the poor Zewge who has believed to have come to the help of Tecola by pointing finger at Eritreans is confounded by Tecola. As if Tecola did not rebuke past Eritreans , which criticism led some Eritreans to react by accusing Tecola of being a weyane agent, Tecola now defends Eritreans against Zewge by saying that they were victims of the ‘conspiracy’ of King Menelik’s decision to abandon them. But why does Tecola absorb uncritically the propaganda of some Eritreans that their ancestors were ‘victims’ of the Menelikian ‘conspiracy’ to abandon them at the mercy of colonialists? The other question is that if Tecola defends Eritreans who have now become the number one enemies of Ethiopia, why is it then so difficult for him to keep for himself his personal biases against some of his own compatriots, who, unlike him, have never failed in the recorded Ethiopian history to defend their motherland ?

Tecola is congenitally incapable of persuading people through logical arguments or of expressing his diagreement in a civilised way despite his being a lawyer. More than any other profession, the legal profession is known for being a civilised war of words. The principal aim of the war of words is to persuade the judge or the jury why they should enter a judgment in one’s favour and why they should reject the allegations of the adverse party. Insult is not only legally punishable but it cannot occur to the lawyer to resort to it because it is a sign of disrespect for the court and for the adverse party. The respect of the person of the adverse party is the absolute rule in the quest for justice. Because of this, two lawyers can be engaged in a war of words while remaining at the same time the best friends. The modern idea of democracy as a political war of words aiming at convincing the people has also been largely inspired by the practices of the legal profession. So does the modern idea of science. Scientists and intellectuals forward ideas with view to confirming or disconfirming a scientific idea. The aim is to contribute to the progress of human knowledge. Then the idea which has the support of the majority of scientists becomes a scientific ‘truth’ even though this does not mean that the idea which has less supporters will be considered as false. This is to say that it is completely strange to the scientific/intellectual community to resort to offensive language in their debate in the search for truth. In the Ethiopian tradition, recourse to insult had never been known until 1974 and any one who resorted to insult was a deviant known by the name of baleghé. Regrettably, insult has become Tecola’s preferred means of persuasion. I don’t for example understand why Tecola should be led to brand me a silly denier of ‘facts’ simply because my position on the role of King Menelik is diametrically opposite to his own. In reality what Tecola calls ‘facts’ are nothing but his subjective interpretation of the unequal colonial treaties. By themselves, those so-called treaties say nothing about the intention of King Menelik. But Tecola interprets them in such a way as to corroborate his preconceived judgment that Menelik concluded them in order to ‘sell out’ Ethiopian patrimony. This interpretation is a total distortion of history inculcated with admirable subtlety by Eritrean fronts on the minds of the followers of the TPLF. It is really very sad that Tecola who preens himself on his intellectual seniority/superiority can be cheated by uneducated Eritreans into buying the EPLF propaganda. Arguably, Tecola’s rabid hate of the Shewan elite and his sympathy for Eritrean fronts have made him totally blind to a more objective interpretation of history.

As for me, I have argued that Menelik was duressed into signing the pseudo-treaties and as I have discussed this issue at length, there is no need to return to it now. To counter the idea that the pseudo-treaties were not treaties in the legal sense of the word, Tecola says that these ‘treaties’ were a demonstration of Italy’s recognition of Ethiopian sovereignty. That clearly shows that Tecola does not know the history of the practical evolution of international law and the behaviour of Italy and Great Britain towards Ethiopia from 1890 to 1935. The fact is that colonial powers believed that their ‘colonial ownership’ in Africa derived not from a treaty concluded with local chiefs but from their ‘colonial right’ itself recognised by ‘international law’, which was in reality a Eurpean public law. This interpretation was in full accord with their racist belief that the African continent was a terra nullius, meaning unclaimed land which they could own. If that was the case, how can Tecola say that Italian colonialists considered Ethiopia as sovereign state while the fact was that Italians believed that Ethiopian territory was an ‘unclaimed land’which they could own? As was demonstrated by Dr. Hailemariam Larebo some time ago, the fact that the Italian administrator of Eritrea embarked on annexing Ethiopian territories in the 1920’s showed that Italians had never recognised Ethiopia’s right to international personality. For this reason, Tecola’s argument that Italy recognised Ethiopian sovreignty by concluding treaties with Menelik or by lending him money is totally incorrect; because it does not reflect the Italian policy towards Ethiopia before and after the signing of those unequal colonial treaties. The question is: does Tecola have the right to brand me ‘silly’ because my ideas are different from his own ?

There is nothing more easy than to resort to divisive politics and insult. However, aware of the fact that divisive politics and insult is the last thing Ethiopia needs and out of respect for myself, for the editors of different websites who post my articles, for readers and for the person of Tecola himself, I refuse to follow his bad example of using insult as a means of persuasion. I wonder only whether the old man will one day get really old and conduct himself sagely and responsibly as a self-respecting, respectable and responsible old man should do. Tecola Hagos can rest assured that that unless he comes to his senses, this writer and patriotic Ethiopians will be merciless in exposing his divisive and hatemongering discourse. Because the issue is about Ethiopia’s sovereignty, unity and modernisation and not, as Tecola says about a ‘baby’ wanting to become hurriedly a ‘man’. Why does Tecola want to personalise a national issue? If by saying that Tecola wants to push me to speak about myself, I am afraid he will be disappointed. I hate every form of egotism such as talking never-endingly about oneself and naming a website after one’s name. It is a very un-Ethiopian behaviour. As for the metaphor baby versus man, Tecola sounds as if he had never been a baby. He is not either aware of the fact that the future belongs to babies and it is the duty of the babies to rectify the damages inflicted on the nation by the treasonous acts of those who have now become irreperable political fossils.

What is more, Tecola cannot understand that every Ethiopian, irrespective of his age or the level of his education, has a national duty to defend the nation from invasion by outsiders and from sabotage by collaborationists masqueraded as the ne plus ultra of Ethiopian patriotism. By the way, when it comes to defending Ethiopian sovereignty and the unity of Ethiopians, I don’t think that Tecola can be given the role of a baby leave alone spearheading the intellectual war for the defense of the national interest. Because Tecola thinks that he and his bizarre opinions are more important than the unity of Ethiopians. Tecola excels in dividing Ethiopians than in working for their unity. If that were not the case, Tecola would come up with new ideas which enable to rally all Ethiopians without exclusion around the resolution dictatorship and poverty instead of bashing never-endingly King Menelik, the Shewan and the Addis-Ababan elites and warning the weyane leader against the danger of him being toppled by the Shewan elite.

He could follow the example of those giant intellectuals who not only behave themselves respectably and respectfully but who have been writing extensively on very important issues such as sovereignty, famine, development, education, etc, so that Ethiopians can have a very good understanding of the problems of their country. He could also follow the example of those who work hard for Ethiopian unity, which is an absolute condition for its democratisation/ modernisation .

Democracy cannot be a reality in Ethiopia unless the Ethiopian politico-intellectual elite fight for the advent of a civilised culture of mutually beneficial dialogue by saying condemning all kinds of backward divisive politics. On my part, it was with this in mind that I tried in part one of this article, which was more of a ground-clearing excercise for the present and next discussions, to demonstrate the falsity of the conventional marxist-Leninist explanations on the causes of Ethiopia’s non-modernisation. In this article, I will try to discuss why modernisation has become a poisoned chalice for Ethiopians. However, I would like to make it clear from the outset that far from being an exhaustive discussion of the problem of modernisation, my ideas should be seen merely as an attempt to provoke further discussion and debate on the causes of Ethiopia’s problems of modernisation. For the sake of the clarity of our discussion, let me add that it is not non-modernisation per se that leads me to describe modernisation as a poisoned chalice for Ethiopians. There are many countries in the world which are not modern. In fact most countries of the world are not modern in the Western sense of the word because most of the inhabitants of the planet live under the strong influence of tradition, religion, superstition etc., even though some of them could be the most technologically and economically advanced ones. The typical example is Japan.This is to say that modernisation is above all about mentality and not about technological development, being economically rich or about urbanisation although there is no doubt that all these can eventually influence the mentalities and traditions of a given society. Most of the Gulf Arab states are for example among the countries of the world with highest per capita income and have ultra modern towns; but they are not at all modern. In fact most of them have a very archaic world view about their society such as forbidding women to drive a car or to go out unaccompanied by a father, a husband or brother. In some of these countries a young girl or a woman can be killed by her own brother, son or husband for having ‘dishonoured’ the reputation of her family if she consents to a sexual intercourse and the murder is not legally punishable.

If I say that modernisation is a poisoned chalice for Ethiopians, it is because that the imported modernisation has led us to be highly dependent on Western financial and food aid to make function our civil and military bureaucracy and to feed a part of our rural population. What is more, with the importation of modernisation, we have lost our culture of mutual respect for each other. We call each other reactionary, feudalist, chauvinist, narrow nationalist. The list of the political incivilities is very long not to mention the many negative ethnic stereotypes against each other. We don’t seem aware of the fact that by behaving towards each other in a politically primitive way, we have been weakening Ethiopia irreparably. That is why, it is very rare at the dawn of the 21st century to hear or to read educated politicians or intellectuals forwarding new ideas which help Ethiopians to respect and reconcile each other with view to finding solutions to the dangerous politico-economic health problems of the country. On the contrary one hears very often Ethiopians backbiting, insulting, defaming politically each other. The origin of this extremely irrational political behaviour dates back to the 1960’s when modernist Ethiopian intellectuals started to covet political power. Because of the political intolerance, modernist Ethiopians have been led to kill each other in the name of modernising Ethiopia. The political intolerance of modernist Ethiopians towards each other has also led every body to believe in armed violence to realise their political objectives. The result is the advent of a very disastrous culture of zero-sum political thinking. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that our country has suffered from nasty colonialistic dictatorship and abject economic poverty. On account of this, many Ethiopians are eager to leave Ethiopia in search for a better life in foreign countries. To that end, they are even ready to accept humiliation and suffering in foreign lands whereas this was unthinkable for our ancestors sixty years ago. In short, the balance sheet of the forty years of discourse on modernisation is incredibly disastrously negative. Modernist Ethiopians are perhaps the only ones in the contemporary world to have extremely weakened their own country and exposed it to its traditional enemies who have always been waiting for the opportune moment to attack it. In the developed world the preoccupation of the political elites is how to make their respective countries enjoy a respectable economical, technological, scientific and militray position in the economico-military hierarchy of nations. In Ethiopia, the main preoccupation of politicians has nothing to do with ensuring a respectable place for Ethiopia in international relations. The responsibility of defending the pride of Ethiopia in foreign lands has fallen on the shoulder of the heroic Ethiopian athletes who have made Ethiopia famous for her international sporting prowess. On the other hand, one can wonder if Ethiopian politicians can really give a meaning to their thirty years of political existence or if they really ask themselves to know if their existence has so far had a positive meaning for themselves and for the Ethiopian people.

The reason for this is obviously that educated politicians have so far been more interested in taking political power than in woking together with view to ensuring the political, economic well-being of all Ethiopians. In that case, it is difficult to speak of politics in Ethiopia in the etymological sense of the word. The biggest challenge for Ethiopia’s survival is therefore how to modernise the educated politicians of the outgoing generation so that they will learn that politics is about consensus building in order to decide together how best the country can be governed and not about never-ending bickering and infighting. It is only and only then that modernisation can stop being a poisoned chalice for Ethiopians and it can enable Ethiopia to claim respectable place in the globalised world of the 21st century.

That being said, any attempt to understand the cause[s] of the non-modernisation of Ethiopia must start by asking the question why Ethiopians have been importing for the last forty years western political, administrative, legal and educational models modernisation and why the seeds of the Western models of modernisation have been unable to take root in the Ethiopian politico-administrative soil. The answer to the first question is too obvious to be belaboured. Like all other non-western societies, Ethiopia aspired to build a society capable of defending its independence against foreign invasion/ aggression. The ultimate aim of modernisation is therefore to ensure national pride and honour economically, militarily, culturally, etc., by building a modern society. To catch up western scientific and technological development, non-western nations in general and Ethiopia in particular believed that following the path of progress traced by the West was the only way to reach the stage of development achieved by the western world. On the contrary, the second part of the question as to why the Western model of modernisation has not taken root in the Ethiopian politico-economical soil during the last forty years despite the alleged Westernisation of the Ethiopian political and governing elites is not easy to answer. It is a question that Ethiopians have not so far dealt with seriously. One can even argue that if the Ethiopian revolutionary intelligentsia had dealt with this issue seriously , may be the revolution would not have taken place and the last thirty years would not have been used to deconstruct the Ethiopian nation. The absence of an intellectual culture of conducting inquiry on complex societal problems and the desire to find ready-made answers to Ethiopia’s problems of modernisation may explain perhaps the reason why Ethiopian revolutionaries became the unrivalled fanatic Marxist-Leninists in Africa. We know also that the position of Ethiopian revolutionaries on the question of Ethiopia’s non-modernisation was ambiguous. On the one hand, they were extremely attracted by the western scientific and technological development; and arguably it was that attraction that led them to ‘hate’ their country and to work for the total abolition of the monarchy which they believed was responsable for Ethiopia’s problems of modernisation; on the other hand, they, unlike the young Japanese intellectuals of the 19th century or their South East Asian counter parts, hated to work hard intellectually with the aim of discovering the secrets of the West’s scientific, technological, economical and military superiority with view to drawing pertinent lessons for Ethiopia in its endeavour to build a modern society. The inability or the unwillingness to think hard led Ethiopian revolutionaries to see Ethiopia as an African Tsarist Russia and to believe that class and national oppression were the main problems of Ethiopia. In other words, it was through the reading of Marxist-leninist litterature that they believed to have diagnosed Ethiopian maladies and discovered their political medicines. And when you, basing your self on marxism-leninism, say that class or ethnic contradictions are the main problems of a society, Marxism-Leninism makes very simple the solution of the perceived contradictions between different social forces of a society. It suffices to exterminate the exploiting classes or to free one self from the perceived national domination by fighting against the perceived dominant nation. That is what did respectively the Dergue and the weyane regimes. However, it can be demonstrated theoretically and practically that the espousal of Marxism-Leninism in Ethiopia emanated more from the inability to think than from a thorough understanding and a critical appraisal of Marxism-Leninism as to its relevance as an intellectual tool to the correct understanding of the causes of Ethiopia’s politico-economic maladies. The validity of this argument is confirmed by the extreme aggravation of the Ethiopian politico-economic crisis under the Dergue regime, which killed tens of thousands of Ethiopians in the name of class contradiction/struggle and the weyane regime, which sacrificed tens of thousands of Tigrayan youth under the pretext of liberating Tigray from “Amhara national oppression”.
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