THE USEFUL DELUSION OF BEING INDEPENDENT
Without going deep into the not so negligible difference between an illusion (more of a perceptual problem) and a delusion (concerning belief despite facts to the contrary) it is safe to state that most of Africa suffers from the delusion of being independent fifty years after some 18 African countries allegedly gained their "independence" from Colonialism which was a tricky monster if there ever was one.
Colonialism came with the Bible in one hand and as the Africans bowed to pray the white man took the land and their alleged freedom (at least from being colonized by a foreign country). Colonialism played many tricks on gullible Africans and its most damaging joke was to declare that it has left (front door exit) while actually rushing back in through the back door (neo colonialism using the black bourgeoisie). The puppets wearing black masks, denounced so bitterly in another way, Black Skins White Masks, by Frantz Fanon for one, were quick to declare that formal independence (flags and a native government that played the puppet role to the hilt) was actually the real thing while the delusion was being promoted as actual. A national flag, a black oppressor in a Mercedes Benz and a Rolls Royce, palaces and corrupt and hedonistic existence for the few and Africans were expected to hail this as freedom and salvation. Those who said the Emperor was actually naked and that colonialism has continued in a new garb (with the old stink in place) were quickly silenced. Belgian and CIA agents collaborated to have Patrice Lumumba murdered. Freedom fighters Um Nyobe, Felix Moumie and later on Mondlane, Machel and Cabral were gotten rid off in one way or another. Pan Africanists with a strong anti imperialist stance were made victims of foreign engineered coups as in Ghana and Nkrumah. Colonialism never left but wore a new mask, Africa was doomed as the traitors had a field day selling the whole continent without any scruples or qualms.
The one party state that was the darling of the West fleecing Africa through a corrupt and malleable strongman (Mobutu is a good example) went against any notion of democratic governance. Rebellions were bound to erupt here and there and the colonizers had to spread again the virus of what Nyrere called "tribalism"and is nowadays referred to as "ethnicism", the "Ethnic assaulting the Nation" as Samir Amin put it in a book. Africa's desire to consolidate nation states broke against the iceberg of ethnic assault and the division helped carry the goal of the rapacious West to its zenith. (Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union were also to become victims of this sponsored ethnic or nationality assault). Worse still, even the ethnically or nationally cohesive people like the Somalis succumbed to the virus, divided on clan levels and are still going on with their carnage no matter what. Yet, we must admit that, fifty years on, the delusion of independence is no more a big problem--we all know few African countries are really independent. Actually, the two countries that had never been colonized, mainly Ethiopia and Liberia, are also fine examples of dependence and neo colonial servility. Liberia was handed over to freed American slaves and these imposed their corrupt rule over the "natives" with the help of America and North American companies like Firestone rubber company and when the jury of revenge came (via the Samuel Doe coup) it was indeed violent (Tolbert and many ministers were summarily shot). Liberia was not independent in the 19th century and is not so now either. Ethiopia was never colonized (maybe the Ethiopians read the Bible before the white man and were not duped to close their eyes and pray) but the regimes in power for more than seventy years were/are puppets of foreign powers (USA and the Soviet Union) and Ethiopians have never realized their dream of democratic governance. This is not to say that there was little difference between the colonised and the not colonized (perhaps there is some in the psyche and type of wounds) but it is to assert that colonialism did not leave, not ever, but stayed on with more fangs and new garbs. As I said, colonialism is a tricky monster.
Like it can even change colour and appearance given the fact that China is now busy replacing the old and known plunderers. As a Young Turk plunderer, China seems to have little or no scruples other than fiercely pursuing its own national interests but it has learnt the moves and gives lip service to the "delusion", the flag and the false belief in a non existent sovereignty. Buttering up our ego, telling us we are rich and proud when we are poor and miserable and they are taking away our wealth and backing our killers (Beshir, Meles, Mugabe, etc). In reality, the assault on our pride and self respect has been so strong that most of us have succumbed to self hate (a bonanza for the skin lightening product manufacturers for example) and lack of self confidence. We claim that partaking wisdom at the feet of the white man is all, we speak English or French and we are wise and we know it all (as opposed to the "ignorant" majority that doesn't), and our salvation can only come from the good will of the new colonizers. The pathetic souls who pray "Our Father who art in the White House" are good examples of this malady. The dependence and absolute lack of belief in the strength and power of one's people is very damaging especially in light of the real situation in which there seems little hope of achieving meaningful social change peacefully. And yet, it is sadly true that the armed rebels claiming to fight for our liberation have turned out to be murderous thugs ( Renamo, RUF, LRA and others), lumpen guerrillas if you want. Our misery is compounded; colonialism is dead but long live colonialism is not a dead cry.
It is of course possible to contend that we should be left alone with our delusions. It is probable that if one takes one's hell as a paradise then the suffering may appear less (illusion). Ethiopian say if we call it life dwelling in the graveyard may be comfortable or warm. The perspective matters. If the poor man does not drink butter in his dream he would have died sooner from constipation is another favourite saying in Ethiopia. Delusion plays a role. Instead of a white Bwana governor we have a black native oppressor--is there no difference? Isn't it better if we delude ourselves that there is a difference especially when we cannot find an iota even using a magnifying glass for investigation? Less expectation, less frustration. More delusion, less pain. The bastards have not left (blood diamonds, blood Coltan, a whole continent plundered without mercy) but why not delude ourselves that they have? Viewed from this angle, the delusion of independence makes our graveyard feel warm. We all know we live in a "cold" continent so why harp on it and shiver when we can embrace our delusion and sweat from the imagined heat?
Friday, April 23, 2010
The Return of the Coup
THE RETURN OF THE COUP
Those who had been claiming that Africans enjoy sequels and the comfort of the misery they are used to have now been vindicated. The return of the coup d'etat highlights and confirms this for all to see. Expectedly, there would be those cynics who would ask "why not the coup?" indeed when civilian power holders are corrupt and their sanity really in question.
Take the case of Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, another of the African leaders who want to pass power to their sons. For long, old man Wade acted almost as if the Cabinda mess was not in his house and paraded as an international peace maker ("let me help in Kashmir please" but there were no takers, alas).The delusion or confusion went on to mess up the situation in Senegal (so much so that some claim the country will soon have its own Islamist hardliners problem) and has led to the ridiculous project of spending more than US$ 30 million to erect an African Renaissance monument. Unmitigated waste and the monument has already been called ugly by none other than the world famous Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow. Isn't Wade really asking, nay begging, for a coup? Travel to the east of our continent and the Ethiopian dictator, who has sold 3 million hectares of fertile land to the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, Saudi Arabians, etc has also spent millions on a monument (one of many) for the victims of the Red Terror of the previous regime while almost all Ethiopians know that the present dictator is also hunting down the same people (the EPRP) who were victims of the Terror. The Swaziland King is also begging for a coup as are Deby of Chad, Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Beshir of the Sudan and the sick and incapacitated Nigerian president. No wonder the coup has come back with a vengeance removing fossil in Guinea, Mauritania, Guniea Bissau and Mali and threatening to do the same elsewhere too.
Actually, many of the present African leaders going through the funny motion of refusing to accept within the AU any coup maker are themselves notorious coup makers. Campaore, Sassou, Nguema, Beshir, Gaddafi and more made their own coup in their own time. Others usurped power, few are freely elected and almost all are corrupt dictators. The AU atmosphere reeks of coups and the military, the Armani suits notwithstanding. The African situation continues to make the coup an enticing alternative. If ignorant military officers like Idi Amin and Bokassa and Samuel Doe can take over power who can blame other sergeants if they say why not me or us indeed? It is our turn to eat sort of claim as they say in Kenya. The lowest level had been reached; there is nowhere to go but high up even with a slightly educated sergeant. Who can also forget that the coup was a gift given to Africa by the former colonial powers and new would be masters like America? Independence in the sixties led to unfurling a flag and going through the motions od being free while colonial or neo colonial puppets came to power to rob the countries blind. The deception was great, the disappointment unbearable. An yet there were sparks, harbingers of hope or at least those promising change and national pride and self governance but these were extinguished fast and furious by the West. Patrice Lumumba was murdered and Mobutu helped to stage his coup eventually and to assume absolute power. Nkrumah was ousted by a coup. Sekou Toure survived by the skin of his teeth by turning into a despot and wiping out ruthlessly any aspiring or potential coup maker. We Africans are nothing but good students of Bwana pale face and thus the coup was born, assisted by the West or freelanced by our own.
And no coup was dull, we must admit. They had flamboyant names with promises of all or nothing--Redemption, Salvation, Correctional, Revolutionary, Resurgence and Nationalist and what have you. They were of course anything but. We liked the fact that they ended many falsehoods called Constitution, parliament, democracy and even the One Nation claim. Tribalism or "ethnicism", as it is said today, came out of the hole, became halal/kosher, the politics to uphold. The coups came to put an end to the one party system of the civilians ands set up the one man military rule, with or without a party. And as time went by, the coup became refined, it even happened accidentally once, it came again and again in Dahomey (now Benin), baptized itself as a movement and not a coup and soon after it happened started to go through the motions of an election (thoroughly rigged) and the coup maker dumps his uniform for Armani suits and his military title for the less intimidating His Excellency. Yet again, some naive souls who took their own dreams for the reality, that is to say like Sankara in Burkina Faso, were physically removed by a sober and correctional coup that brought the situation back to its rails, no more talk of being free and self reliant. Still, the coup may try hard to be a non coup but we can still see that its main features linger on. In Guinea Bissau we now have the latest version: the confused coup. Coups and violence against the people and any notion of the rule of law have been synonymous and the tradition is being kept as we saw in Guinea (Conakry). And only the naive amongst us still imagine that Britain, France and Washington are in no way involved in the coups and counter coups and conflicts bedevilling our hapless continent.
Emperor Tewodros of Ethiopia, who killed himself rather than surrender to a British invading force, told the British to send their invading troops outright and not to waste time by sending missionaries and spies. No meandering and procrastination. We tend to welcome the return of the coup because it is ending the fiction of democracy and good governance, of free elections and popular participation. The real thing in Africa, all these talks of elections notwithstanding, is the lack of democratic governance and the predominance of neo-colonial powers. We hail the return of the coup because it highlights the reality we live in, the massacre in the Conakry stadium, the murder of political dissidents, the campaign against the free press, the arrogant and murderous swagger of almost illiterate officers and generals, the blind violence against defenceless people and the real face of the African State. The truth shall set us free, no? We want and we shall get more coups. Amen.
Those who had been claiming that Africans enjoy sequels and the comfort of the misery they are used to have now been vindicated. The return of the coup d'etat highlights and confirms this for all to see. Expectedly, there would be those cynics who would ask "why not the coup?" indeed when civilian power holders are corrupt and their sanity really in question.
Take the case of Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, another of the African leaders who want to pass power to their sons. For long, old man Wade acted almost as if the Cabinda mess was not in his house and paraded as an international peace maker ("let me help in Kashmir please" but there were no takers, alas).The delusion or confusion went on to mess up the situation in Senegal (so much so that some claim the country will soon have its own Islamist hardliners problem) and has led to the ridiculous project of spending more than US$ 30 million to erect an African Renaissance monument. Unmitigated waste and the monument has already been called ugly by none other than the world famous Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow. Isn't Wade really asking, nay begging, for a coup? Travel to the east of our continent and the Ethiopian dictator, who has sold 3 million hectares of fertile land to the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, Saudi Arabians, etc has also spent millions on a monument (one of many) for the victims of the Red Terror of the previous regime while almost all Ethiopians know that the present dictator is also hunting down the same people (the EPRP) who were victims of the Terror. The Swaziland King is also begging for a coup as are Deby of Chad, Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Beshir of the Sudan and the sick and incapacitated Nigerian president. No wonder the coup has come back with a vengeance removing fossil in Guinea, Mauritania, Guniea Bissau and Mali and threatening to do the same elsewhere too.
Actually, many of the present African leaders going through the funny motion of refusing to accept within the AU any coup maker are themselves notorious coup makers. Campaore, Sassou, Nguema, Beshir, Gaddafi and more made their own coup in their own time. Others usurped power, few are freely elected and almost all are corrupt dictators. The AU atmosphere reeks of coups and the military, the Armani suits notwithstanding. The African situation continues to make the coup an enticing alternative. If ignorant military officers like Idi Amin and Bokassa and Samuel Doe can take over power who can blame other sergeants if they say why not me or us indeed? It is our turn to eat sort of claim as they say in Kenya. The lowest level had been reached; there is nowhere to go but high up even with a slightly educated sergeant. Who can also forget that the coup was a gift given to Africa by the former colonial powers and new would be masters like America? Independence in the sixties led to unfurling a flag and going through the motions od being free while colonial or neo colonial puppets came to power to rob the countries blind. The deception was great, the disappointment unbearable. An yet there were sparks, harbingers of hope or at least those promising change and national pride and self governance but these were extinguished fast and furious by the West. Patrice Lumumba was murdered and Mobutu helped to stage his coup eventually and to assume absolute power. Nkrumah was ousted by a coup. Sekou Toure survived by the skin of his teeth by turning into a despot and wiping out ruthlessly any aspiring or potential coup maker. We Africans are nothing but good students of Bwana pale face and thus the coup was born, assisted by the West or freelanced by our own.
And no coup was dull, we must admit. They had flamboyant names with promises of all or nothing--Redemption, Salvation, Correctional, Revolutionary, Resurgence and Nationalist and what have you. They were of course anything but. We liked the fact that they ended many falsehoods called Constitution, parliament, democracy and even the One Nation claim. Tribalism or "ethnicism", as it is said today, came out of the hole, became halal/kosher, the politics to uphold. The coups came to put an end to the one party system of the civilians ands set up the one man military rule, with or without a party. And as time went by, the coup became refined, it even happened accidentally once, it came again and again in Dahomey (now Benin), baptized itself as a movement and not a coup and soon after it happened started to go through the motions of an election (thoroughly rigged) and the coup maker dumps his uniform for Armani suits and his military title for the less intimidating His Excellency. Yet again, some naive souls who took their own dreams for the reality, that is to say like Sankara in Burkina Faso, were physically removed by a sober and correctional coup that brought the situation back to its rails, no more talk of being free and self reliant. Still, the coup may try hard to be a non coup but we can still see that its main features linger on. In Guinea Bissau we now have the latest version: the confused coup. Coups and violence against the people and any notion of the rule of law have been synonymous and the tradition is being kept as we saw in Guinea (Conakry). And only the naive amongst us still imagine that Britain, France and Washington are in no way involved in the coups and counter coups and conflicts bedevilling our hapless continent.
Emperor Tewodros of Ethiopia, who killed himself rather than surrender to a British invading force, told the British to send their invading troops outright and not to waste time by sending missionaries and spies. No meandering and procrastination. We tend to welcome the return of the coup because it is ending the fiction of democracy and good governance, of free elections and popular participation. The real thing in Africa, all these talks of elections notwithstanding, is the lack of democratic governance and the predominance of neo-colonial powers. We hail the return of the coup because it highlights the reality we live in, the massacre in the Conakry stadium, the murder of political dissidents, the campaign against the free press, the arrogant and murderous swagger of almost illiterate officers and generals, the blind violence against defenceless people and the real face of the African State. The truth shall set us free, no? We want and we shall get more coups. Amen.
Hama Tuma's Case of Socialist Witchdocotor reprinted
For long out of print, Hama Tuma’s book:THE CASE OF THE SOCIALIST WITCH DOCTOR AND OTHER STORIES has now been reprinted and is available for the public. To order your copy e mail to Menberu.lemma2@gmail.com. Price: US$ 12 plus US$ 3 for mailing cost paypal address: menberu.lemma2@gmail.com
Review of Hama Tuma's poems
»Of Memories and Dreams in Hama Tuma’s”Of Spade and Ethiopians ‘
By arefe
By Kumlachew Fantahun
‘The struggle of the writer is the struggle of memory against forgetfulness.’
Milan Kundera
Many critics are of the opinion that Ethiopian literature in English is a closed book. Apart from a few novels, poems and plays, one can find scattered here and there; writing in English is not the norm in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia boasts of an ancient writing tradition and unique alphabet in Africa and accordingly it has a rich Geez and Amharic writing heritage. But when it comes to English, it lags very far behind other African countries.For example, our neighbor, Kenya far surpasses Ethiopia in the amount of literary production in English. The reason of course, is not far to seek. Debebe Seifu in his master’s thesis ‘Ethiopian Literature in English’ has the following to say about the dearth of writing in English. ’Looked at from the point of view of the hoary Geez and Amharic literature creative writing in English is a baby tradition in Ethiopia…. It has brief history of only two decades. When we look at the amount of English writings produced in some other African countries, the output in Ethiopia strikes us scanty intermittent and not very encouraging.’
The reason for this paucity of creative writing in English are the following, according to Debebe
1.Ethiopian writers have a strong background in Amharic that disallows them to resort to or at least give an undivided attention to writing in English … And, English has never been the first official language in Ethiopia.
2.English has not been given emphasis in Ethiopian schools; hence, lack of adequate mastery or command of the language inevitably barred those who might otherwise have as pined to write in English
In I In particular, English poetry is a rare phenomenon in Ethiopian. There are notnotnot many writers trying their hands at poetry.
ha Debebe’s theses treat only two poets writing in English, Tsegaye
Ge GebreMedhin and Eyasu Gorfu.
E Nowadays, the situation appears to be improving with many writers
incr increasingly trying thier hands at poetry English.Hama Tuma ‘s poetry pc collection, ‘Of Spade and Ethiopians,’ (Free Ethiopian Press, 1991) is a cas a case in point.
The predominant theme in Hama Tuma’s ‘Of Spade and Ethiopians’ is that of cultural memory and an attempt to make archeology of wrongs and cruelties of the Red Terror, and infamous phenomenon that followed in the wake of the misdirected-1974 Revolution. It seems that those who survived through those dreadful days are nowadays looking back and putting the memory of this Ethiopian Holocaust to writing, there by redeeming the lost, if only in imagination. They reminiscence on the horror and heinous acts of the ‘inhumanity of man against man’ wrought by the then rulers. Fictional and non-fictional works that are coming out bear testimony to this tendency of invoking the past and reminiscence on it.
Himself a significant actor in the EPRP and with first hand experience, Hama Tuma often dwells both in his fiction and poetry on the horrendous acts perpetrated by the architects of Red Terror. We read of such appalling cruelties as cutting the penis of a man and make his mother eat it, women’s genitals ripped open by hot iron, bottle of wine filled with sand hanging by thread on a person’s penis. In particular, his poems, ‘Of Spades and Ethiopians’, “To Bury a Brother’, ‘No Wine Bottles please!’ ‘Voice of the Dead’, ‘The Grader and Dreams. ‘Responsibility’, ‘Breaking the Monoculture Economy’, ‘Some Threads from History’ deal with those evil days and the attendant atrocities.
In ‘Of spades and Ethiopians’ the poet not content to write about the events says
What I need is not a pen, but
A shovel with which to dig the dirt
And throw it down the garbage can of non-history’s oblivion.
A country of ‘an ignorant mass, backward and more’, though blessed with ‘a modern king far sighted to the core’ was still wallowing in misery and poverty until the monarch’ successor took the throne and assert “it pulled Ethiopia out of the middle ages in just a handful of years.” by introducing land to the tiller, Soviet style democracy and mass-organizations. Since the country is lucky enough to have the privilege of being governed by this ”cool, intelligent, wise and determined leader’ in order for his noble objectives to be achieved and for the country to remain safe, nobody should be-allowed to tamper with the progress of the revolution. The mighty wave has to go untrammeled, sweeping everything that stands in its way to reach its destination.
All revolutions devour their sons
be they French or Russian
Why do you want an exception in the Ethiopian one?
Reminiscent of the communist saying, ‘revolution is not a dinner party’, the next stanza gently reminds us of the sorry but ineluctable choice the revolution was faced with;
So don’t exaggerate the Terror bit
For the enemy must be hit
Too bad if a generation dies
Revolution means trying times
As is the case with his brilliantly ironic stories, his poems also are full of wry humor and subtle irony. The laughable silliness as well as the slavish servility of the revolutionary leaders are portrayed very vividly and also mocked.
If Brezhnev hums a tune,
Mengistu will sing it loud
The stupidity that results from total allegiance to an alien creed is brought out in the following sarcastic poem;
I have been to Russia and even Georgia
But the worst Russian I’ve ever met lives some where in north Ethiopia
He thinks Stalin’s death is an imperialist plot directed against Ethiopia.
Some of the atrocities of the red terror were so horrible that any question as to appropriateness and rationality of the actions could be silenced with a resort,’ it also happened in Russia.’
Human life was rendered so cheap amid easily expendable that towns were turned into killing fields where minions off the powers that be could shoot people at will and with impurity, so eyewitnesses tell us. The Red Terror people were busy killing and with so many people to shoot they eventually run short of bullets, which therefore had to be retrieved from the corpses and be paid for by any one who came to claim the bodies of the dead. The following lines depict this gruesome picture; the lesson ostensibly being in a worthy revolution nothing comes gratis.
The soldier outside
counted the bullet holes
in my brother’s corpses.
I paid the price
got the receipt
and took my brother away.
Away from the pile
forgotten already
I still had a burial to pay.
Here we are faced with the irony of paying for having for brother killed for the sake of revolution, which promised better days.In ‘No wine bottles, please’, the poet relates the gory spectacle he witnessed in the third police station. A wine of bottle filled with water is hung with a nylon thread on a penis of ‘anarchist recalcitrant’. In case some find this too horrible to contemplate, the poet adds some mitigating remarks, which implies that this manner of torture pales in comparison with other crueler ones;
A torture to make you holler
But some say it is bland
And not so bad
Compared to other threatens they have had.
In ‘The voice of the Dead’, the personae of the poem confronts its implied readers with penetrating and piercing questions to which, one has to give satisfactory answer or be tortured with guilt feeling. It seems that the one to whom the question is posed won’t able to escape unless he can account for what course of action that he took in relation to the massacre.
Where were you?
When you brother screamed for help
When young girls got raped
And mothers went mad seeing their children butchered
Right in front of them.
In another similar poem, those who felt it unwise to be engaged and dirty themselves with realities of the day are castigated and brought to task. The crude and absolutely deeds were such that, the poet seems to say; it would be a crime to simply stand and watch, unengaged and non-committal.
When the knife entered
your brother’s heart,
You simply watched
worse still,you walked away
without a protest or a shout.
The tragedy of the Red Terror was not only physical. It killed bodies yes. But it did much more than that. It killed and buried a nation’s beautiful dreams and hopes. The student movement which helped to overthrow the centuries old feudal system gave rise to hopes of better future and emancipation. But no sooner was the monarch ousted than a new and more sinister leader took his place, there by dashing the hopeful expectations of the people by snuffing out the lives of the educated youth who with enthusiasm and verve were trying to inaugurate democracy to the nation.
The short poem, ‘The Grader and the Dream’ deals with this poignant loss,
The ditches are filled
The burial complete
no speeches are made
no epitaphs planned
no building rises up
It’s only dreams
of a fair tomorrow
only the nation’s hope that is getting buried .
However, though the revolution is chiefly to blame for the dashing of hopes and dreams of the nation, the poet points out that we Ethiopian as a people are not much given to dreaming and imagination. He seams to attribute this paucity of imagination and incapacity for being visionary to moral cowardice and pursuit of ephemeral pleasures.
In “An empty cry” he deplores what he takes to be his fellow countrymen’s myopic vision and inability to transcend inconsequential hedonistic pursuits, He asks rhetorically.
Are we born so wretched
that our dreams
got only as far as a woman’s thighs.
as to clap for the boots
which crushes the flowers to dust.
The poet seems to imply that our fear of change is such that it would amount to visionary quixotism to dream of an Ethiopia free of war and famine. Of course, when a people are so accustomed to a succession of misfortunes, it would take courage of utopian scale to ever imagine a radically different future. This appears to be the idea contained the following lines, suggesting incredulity at the thought of an Ethiopia bereft of strife.
Who knows what will happen
If Ethiopia finds peace.
Will the world turn upside down?
Or will is stay the same
The point, of course is not lost on the reader. A peaceful Ethiopia is almost impossible to imagine. Their phonetically similarity nonetheless, Ethiopia and utopia are poles apart. Hama Tuma says facetiously to dream of utopia in Ethiopia is crime, a treachery because it would threaten its pact with its plight. In a supremacy ironic poem, ‘I love my nightmare’, the poet echoes the observation many writers have made about the Ethiopian (and African) fear of change.
Last night I had such a dream
an utopian unEthiopian dream
I thought I saw famine gone
He goes on to relate a bright scenario he envisioned, people smiling “with their hearts and eyes; a noise of festive drums, well-fed peasants, mothers going to church to praise not to pray. But somewhere along the poem, the poet tells us that he wakes up from his dreams in-fear for having such ‘a terrible dream’ because he saw the future and it was not… bleak’
I woke up in fright
scared the kebeles might jail me
as a dissident not content
with his nightmare present
and dreaming like those in forest.
As the above sketch attempted to show, memory and dream are the salient features of Hama Tuma ‘s poem.
By arefe
By Kumlachew Fantahun
‘The struggle of the writer is the struggle of memory against forgetfulness.’
Milan Kundera
Many critics are of the opinion that Ethiopian literature in English is a closed book. Apart from a few novels, poems and plays, one can find scattered here and there; writing in English is not the norm in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia boasts of an ancient writing tradition and unique alphabet in Africa and accordingly it has a rich Geez and Amharic writing heritage. But when it comes to English, it lags very far behind other African countries.For example, our neighbor, Kenya far surpasses Ethiopia in the amount of literary production in English. The reason of course, is not far to seek. Debebe Seifu in his master’s thesis ‘Ethiopian Literature in English’ has the following to say about the dearth of writing in English. ’Looked at from the point of view of the hoary Geez and Amharic literature creative writing in English is a baby tradition in Ethiopia…. It has brief history of only two decades. When we look at the amount of English writings produced in some other African countries, the output in Ethiopia strikes us scanty intermittent and not very encouraging.’
The reason for this paucity of creative writing in English are the following, according to Debebe
1.Ethiopian writers have a strong background in Amharic that disallows them to resort to or at least give an undivided attention to writing in English … And, English has never been the first official language in Ethiopia.
2.English has not been given emphasis in Ethiopian schools; hence, lack of adequate mastery or command of the language inevitably barred those who might otherwise have as pined to write in English
In I In particular, English poetry is a rare phenomenon in Ethiopian. There are notnotnot many writers trying their hands at poetry.
ha Debebe’s theses treat only two poets writing in English, Tsegaye
Ge GebreMedhin and Eyasu Gorfu.
E Nowadays, the situation appears to be improving with many writers
incr increasingly trying thier hands at poetry English.Hama Tuma ‘s poetry pc collection, ‘Of Spade and Ethiopians,’ (Free Ethiopian Press, 1991) is a cas a case in point.
The predominant theme in Hama Tuma’s ‘Of Spade and Ethiopians’ is that of cultural memory and an attempt to make archeology of wrongs and cruelties of the Red Terror, and infamous phenomenon that followed in the wake of the misdirected-1974 Revolution. It seems that those who survived through those dreadful days are nowadays looking back and putting the memory of this Ethiopian Holocaust to writing, there by redeeming the lost, if only in imagination. They reminiscence on the horror and heinous acts of the ‘inhumanity of man against man’ wrought by the then rulers. Fictional and non-fictional works that are coming out bear testimony to this tendency of invoking the past and reminiscence on it.
Himself a significant actor in the EPRP and with first hand experience, Hama Tuma often dwells both in his fiction and poetry on the horrendous acts perpetrated by the architects of Red Terror. We read of such appalling cruelties as cutting the penis of a man and make his mother eat it, women’s genitals ripped open by hot iron, bottle of wine filled with sand hanging by thread on a person’s penis. In particular, his poems, ‘Of Spades and Ethiopians’, “To Bury a Brother’, ‘No Wine Bottles please!’ ‘Voice of the Dead’, ‘The Grader and Dreams. ‘Responsibility’, ‘Breaking the Monoculture Economy’, ‘Some Threads from History’ deal with those evil days and the attendant atrocities.
In ‘Of spades and Ethiopians’ the poet not content to write about the events says
What I need is not a pen, but
A shovel with which to dig the dirt
And throw it down the garbage can of non-history’s oblivion.
A country of ‘an ignorant mass, backward and more’, though blessed with ‘a modern king far sighted to the core’ was still wallowing in misery and poverty until the monarch’ successor took the throne and assert “it pulled Ethiopia out of the middle ages in just a handful of years.” by introducing land to the tiller, Soviet style democracy and mass-organizations. Since the country is lucky enough to have the privilege of being governed by this ”cool, intelligent, wise and determined leader’ in order for his noble objectives to be achieved and for the country to remain safe, nobody should be-allowed to tamper with the progress of the revolution. The mighty wave has to go untrammeled, sweeping everything that stands in its way to reach its destination.
All revolutions devour their sons
be they French or Russian
Why do you want an exception in the Ethiopian one?
Reminiscent of the communist saying, ‘revolution is not a dinner party’, the next stanza gently reminds us of the sorry but ineluctable choice the revolution was faced with;
So don’t exaggerate the Terror bit
For the enemy must be hit
Too bad if a generation dies
Revolution means trying times
As is the case with his brilliantly ironic stories, his poems also are full of wry humor and subtle irony. The laughable silliness as well as the slavish servility of the revolutionary leaders are portrayed very vividly and also mocked.
If Brezhnev hums a tune,
Mengistu will sing it loud
The stupidity that results from total allegiance to an alien creed is brought out in the following sarcastic poem;
I have been to Russia and even Georgia
But the worst Russian I’ve ever met lives some where in north Ethiopia
He thinks Stalin’s death is an imperialist plot directed against Ethiopia.
Some of the atrocities of the red terror were so horrible that any question as to appropriateness and rationality of the actions could be silenced with a resort,’ it also happened in Russia.’
Human life was rendered so cheap amid easily expendable that towns were turned into killing fields where minions off the powers that be could shoot people at will and with impurity, so eyewitnesses tell us. The Red Terror people were busy killing and with so many people to shoot they eventually run short of bullets, which therefore had to be retrieved from the corpses and be paid for by any one who came to claim the bodies of the dead. The following lines depict this gruesome picture; the lesson ostensibly being in a worthy revolution nothing comes gratis.
The soldier outside
counted the bullet holes
in my brother’s corpses.
I paid the price
got the receipt
and took my brother away.
Away from the pile
forgotten already
I still had a burial to pay.
Here we are faced with the irony of paying for having for brother killed for the sake of revolution, which promised better days.In ‘No wine bottles, please’, the poet relates the gory spectacle he witnessed in the third police station. A wine of bottle filled with water is hung with a nylon thread on a penis of ‘anarchist recalcitrant’. In case some find this too horrible to contemplate, the poet adds some mitigating remarks, which implies that this manner of torture pales in comparison with other crueler ones;
A torture to make you holler
But some say it is bland
And not so bad
Compared to other threatens they have had.
In ‘The voice of the Dead’, the personae of the poem confronts its implied readers with penetrating and piercing questions to which, one has to give satisfactory answer or be tortured with guilt feeling. It seems that the one to whom the question is posed won’t able to escape unless he can account for what course of action that he took in relation to the massacre.
Where were you?
When you brother screamed for help
When young girls got raped
And mothers went mad seeing their children butchered
Right in front of them.
In another similar poem, those who felt it unwise to be engaged and dirty themselves with realities of the day are castigated and brought to task. The crude and absolutely deeds were such that, the poet seems to say; it would be a crime to simply stand and watch, unengaged and non-committal.
When the knife entered
your brother’s heart,
You simply watched
worse still,you walked away
without a protest or a shout.
The tragedy of the Red Terror was not only physical. It killed bodies yes. But it did much more than that. It killed and buried a nation’s beautiful dreams and hopes. The student movement which helped to overthrow the centuries old feudal system gave rise to hopes of better future and emancipation. But no sooner was the monarch ousted than a new and more sinister leader took his place, there by dashing the hopeful expectations of the people by snuffing out the lives of the educated youth who with enthusiasm and verve were trying to inaugurate democracy to the nation.
The short poem, ‘The Grader and the Dream’ deals with this poignant loss,
The ditches are filled
The burial complete
no speeches are made
no epitaphs planned
no building rises up
It’s only dreams
of a fair tomorrow
only the nation’s hope that is getting buried .
However, though the revolution is chiefly to blame for the dashing of hopes and dreams of the nation, the poet points out that we Ethiopian as a people are not much given to dreaming and imagination. He seams to attribute this paucity of imagination and incapacity for being visionary to moral cowardice and pursuit of ephemeral pleasures.
In “An empty cry” he deplores what he takes to be his fellow countrymen’s myopic vision and inability to transcend inconsequential hedonistic pursuits, He asks rhetorically.
Are we born so wretched
that our dreams
got only as far as a woman’s thighs.
as to clap for the boots
which crushes the flowers to dust.
The poet seems to imply that our fear of change is such that it would amount to visionary quixotism to dream of an Ethiopia free of war and famine. Of course, when a people are so accustomed to a succession of misfortunes, it would take courage of utopian scale to ever imagine a radically different future. This appears to be the idea contained the following lines, suggesting incredulity at the thought of an Ethiopia bereft of strife.
Who knows what will happen
If Ethiopia finds peace.
Will the world turn upside down?
Or will is stay the same
The point, of course is not lost on the reader. A peaceful Ethiopia is almost impossible to imagine. Their phonetically similarity nonetheless, Ethiopia and utopia are poles apart. Hama Tuma says facetiously to dream of utopia in Ethiopia is crime, a treachery because it would threaten its pact with its plight. In a supremacy ironic poem, ‘I love my nightmare’, the poet echoes the observation many writers have made about the Ethiopian (and African) fear of change.
Last night I had such a dream
an utopian unEthiopian dream
I thought I saw famine gone
He goes on to relate a bright scenario he envisioned, people smiling “with their hearts and eyes; a noise of festive drums, well-fed peasants, mothers going to church to praise not to pray. But somewhere along the poem, the poet tells us that he wakes up from his dreams in-fear for having such ‘a terrible dream’ because he saw the future and it was not… bleak’
I woke up in fright
scared the kebeles might jail me
as a dissident not content
with his nightmare present
and dreaming like those in forest.
As the above sketch attempted to show, memory and dream are the salient features of Hama Tuma ‘s poem.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH FILM MAKER HAILE GERIMA
OF DEMONS, CHARLATANS AND RREVISIONISTS
WHAT IS WRONG WITH CINEASTE HAILE GERIMA?
By KASSAHUN
First of all, let me get rid off the notion that the artist/the intellectual in a given society is/can be apolitical, uninvolved, non partisan. To quote an authority (as this seems to please certain quarters) let me cite the late and very committed intellectual, Edward Said, who wrote: (in Representation of the Intellectual, page 110)
"Every intellectual whose métier is articulating and representing specific views, ideas, ideologies, logically aspires to making them work in a society. The intellectual who claims to write only for him or herself, or for the sake of pure learning, or abstract science is not to be, and must not be, believed. As the great Twentieth century writer Jean Genet once said, the moment you publish essays (or make and distribute films--K) in a society you have entered political life; so if you want not to be political do not write essays or speak out" (or make films--K).
Famous Ethiopian film maker, Haile Gerima, often claims to be "beyond or outside" of politics. He is royally mistaken if he is talking honestly. For, the film maker dabbles in politics big time though he does so in a bad or wrong way. A renowned film maker, his most famous film (Samoa) deals with the slave trade and racism and in many interviews he has made it clear the issue of racism affects him deeply. So be it. His latest film, Teza (which has won some international awards) deals with Ethiopia and again with the question of racism, displacement and alienation. Haile Gerima says he knows little or nothing about the Red Terror but both in Teza and previously in another film chronicling his return to Ethiopia after the fall of the Derg regime he had to deal with it in his own way, with prejudice and a practical disservice to the martyrs and those still bearing the scars.
And here is where some of us have been forced to come in, to raise our voices in defense of our own history, to safeguard the memory of the martyrs, to honor our brave and steadfast comrades who sacrificed their dear lives or endured atrocities for the sake of their country and people. And in the process to commit lese majesty as some of these elements consider it a crime to utter even a mild word of criticism against them (of course having been out in the rain so often I am not that scared of such admonitions). It must be admitted that there is presently a fierce revisionist campaign being waged by a variety of forces to denigrate that generation that struggled against the imperial and the totalitarian military regimes for the sake of democratic change. The campaign is on but the commanders have different motives--some are covering up their criminal roles, others shamed by their cowardice and betrayal in those trying times and dishonorably attacking those who dared to fight, the present power holders who took part in the Red Terror and who have never ceased campaigning against the organization (EPRP) that was targeted by the bloody repression, the nostalgic of the old regime who hold that generation responsible for the demise of their paradise. Haile Gerima can situate himself in one of these categories that I refer to as demons, charlatans and revisionists for he has not ceased, by film and words, from attacking the generation that fought for change, a fight in which he did not take part in any direct and meaningful way.
Haile Gerima told the Addis Abeba based FOCUS magazine (no 7, Jan-Feb 2009) "I don't even know what the Red Terror was all about". Admitting ignorance could have been one first useful step towards enlightenment but alas, no. Teza carries scenes that depict the Red Terror time but in a non factual way much as that Ethio-Canadian writer whose alleged memoir read as bad fiction and who lied that the EPRP would approach to recruit you and if you declined they just shot you point blanc. Haile recently told a New York Times interviewer the following: "I am from a generation that genuinely wanted a better society and to do something for poor and oppressed people, but which got blinded and lost and turned against its own humanity to become the opposite of what we wanted to be.” Haile says he is 64 years old and he sure is (age wise) from that generation but that does not mean he is of that generation that struggled for change. He stayed for more than 40 years in America and his involvement in the struggle of that generation, if any, was only peripheral, especially if we consider the period of the Red Terror and what followed. Haile told the same Focus interviewer " Oh ya, (I hate politics) because politics is an art of deception; all politicians are liars". As the Edward Said quote aptly explains if Haile makes film and thus makes politics and thereby his claim to hate politics is empty talk. I hate politics is by itself a political position/stand. Secondly, Haile claimed in the same FOCUS interview that he had not done "any Red Terror movie" (I actually think he has touched upon it at least in two films) because, in his own words, "First, I don't know the Red Terror and (second) I have not done it because it is not my experience." (Of course Haile says right after this he would like to make films about Lij Eyasu, Zerai Deres, love story of Menelik and Taytu--experiences he lived through perhaps!)
That generation genuinely wanted a better society and laid its own life for the emancipation of the poor and the oppressed. The commitment was not verbal, nor was it from afar. As Walelign and Tsegaye Gebre Medhin (aka Debteraw) wrote in the early seventies that generation knew that "the enemy of the Ethiopian people cannot come to Madison Garden for a fifteen rounds bout" and so the generation did not flee but confronted the beast in its own lair, i.e. in Ethiopia. An experience that was not lived through in any way by the film maker. But that generation did not get blinded and lost and did not at any point in time turn against its humanity. That each generation gets its own share of monsters and sycophants is almost a natural law but the generation that fought for change in Ethiopia did not lose its humanity or commitment to the cause of the people. It did not shrink from the sacrifice that the struggle called for, did not hide on an Amba or in foreign refuge claiming I hate politics. It was there with and amidst the people, living their fear and dying their death and dreaming their dreams and hopes. It just did not want "something" for the poor and the oppressed--it wanted their total liberation, their sovereignty. There were those who betrayed their vows but they never represented a generation and Haile's generalization not only errs but does injustice to a generation that history emulates. Such false premises and mistaken conclusions tar his films, especially the last one Teza.
The ongoing revision of History has targeted that generation that consciously and genuinely fought for change, defaming it in one way or another and trying to depict it as non Ethiopian. It is as if that generation turned against its culture and history while in actual fact that generation championed the history of resistance and fierce love for the country. What the revisionists actually chafe at is the fact that generation rose firmly against the injustice and oppression, the blind worship of temporal and absolute power, harmful traditions, oppression of women, bowing to the ferenji or the colonizer and in this way launched an upheaval, a revolution as it were, to end the feudal system and the autocracy. And, consequently also, to end the brutal military rule under whose boots many intellectual worms sought false refuge and comfort. Hence, the attack against that generation, the chorus against the vision and ideology of change, the championing of conservatism and conformism under the guise of being modern, aware, "siltun", the proliferation of scribes of modern Darkness at Noon stories, and of eulogies for capitalism and new breed oppressors, and in the final instance the recourse to reaction under the cover of rediscovering oneself, one's "true" identity, history and culture. One relives the Zemene Mesafint through Article 39, the ugly past is embraced wholly and as was, and the fiery Maoist becomes a hard line Copt, a weeping Pente or a bearded Wahabist, or even a monarchist to boot. We have seen it all but then again all this has nothing to do with that generation and much to do with those who rile and fume against the generation that genuinely struggled for meaningful change and got short-circuited by despots and tyrants.
Judgment without knowledge ends up as garbage. If Ato Haile Gerima has turned against his humanity then he has himself to blame in the first place. That generation was not blinded, was not lost, did know where it was going, was fully aware of its goals (not just "something for the poor"!) and more importantly was clear on the sacrifice needed to achieve it. And it did pay the ultimate sacrifice. So, a little bit of respect please. Ato Haile should follow his own advice and talk of things he knows about and make films on subjects he is not ignorant of. Otherwise, so long as we continue to breathe and exist we shall raise our pens and voices to defend the memory of the generation that cried "Away with all Pests" and bravely assaulted the fortresses of cowardice, philistinism, tyranny and oppression.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH CINEASTE HAILE GERIMA?
By KASSAHUN
First of all, let me get rid off the notion that the artist/the intellectual in a given society is/can be apolitical, uninvolved, non partisan. To quote an authority (as this seems to please certain quarters) let me cite the late and very committed intellectual, Edward Said, who wrote: (in Representation of the Intellectual, page 110)
"Every intellectual whose métier is articulating and representing specific views, ideas, ideologies, logically aspires to making them work in a society. The intellectual who claims to write only for him or herself, or for the sake of pure learning, or abstract science is not to be, and must not be, believed. As the great Twentieth century writer Jean Genet once said, the moment you publish essays (or make and distribute films--K) in a society you have entered political life; so if you want not to be political do not write essays or speak out" (or make films--K).
Famous Ethiopian film maker, Haile Gerima, often claims to be "beyond or outside" of politics. He is royally mistaken if he is talking honestly. For, the film maker dabbles in politics big time though he does so in a bad or wrong way. A renowned film maker, his most famous film (Samoa) deals with the slave trade and racism and in many interviews he has made it clear the issue of racism affects him deeply. So be it. His latest film, Teza (which has won some international awards) deals with Ethiopia and again with the question of racism, displacement and alienation. Haile Gerima says he knows little or nothing about the Red Terror but both in Teza and previously in another film chronicling his return to Ethiopia after the fall of the Derg regime he had to deal with it in his own way, with prejudice and a practical disservice to the martyrs and those still bearing the scars.
And here is where some of us have been forced to come in, to raise our voices in defense of our own history, to safeguard the memory of the martyrs, to honor our brave and steadfast comrades who sacrificed their dear lives or endured atrocities for the sake of their country and people. And in the process to commit lese majesty as some of these elements consider it a crime to utter even a mild word of criticism against them (of course having been out in the rain so often I am not that scared of such admonitions). It must be admitted that there is presently a fierce revisionist campaign being waged by a variety of forces to denigrate that generation that struggled against the imperial and the totalitarian military regimes for the sake of democratic change. The campaign is on but the commanders have different motives--some are covering up their criminal roles, others shamed by their cowardice and betrayal in those trying times and dishonorably attacking those who dared to fight, the present power holders who took part in the Red Terror and who have never ceased campaigning against the organization (EPRP) that was targeted by the bloody repression, the nostalgic of the old regime who hold that generation responsible for the demise of their paradise. Haile Gerima can situate himself in one of these categories that I refer to as demons, charlatans and revisionists for he has not ceased, by film and words, from attacking the generation that fought for change, a fight in which he did not take part in any direct and meaningful way.
Haile Gerima told the Addis Abeba based FOCUS magazine (no 7, Jan-Feb 2009) "I don't even know what the Red Terror was all about". Admitting ignorance could have been one first useful step towards enlightenment but alas, no. Teza carries scenes that depict the Red Terror time but in a non factual way much as that Ethio-Canadian writer whose alleged memoir read as bad fiction and who lied that the EPRP would approach to recruit you and if you declined they just shot you point blanc. Haile recently told a New York Times interviewer the following: "I am from a generation that genuinely wanted a better society and to do something for poor and oppressed people, but which got blinded and lost and turned against its own humanity to become the opposite of what we wanted to be.” Haile says he is 64 years old and he sure is (age wise) from that generation but that does not mean he is of that generation that struggled for change. He stayed for more than 40 years in America and his involvement in the struggle of that generation, if any, was only peripheral, especially if we consider the period of the Red Terror and what followed. Haile told the same Focus interviewer " Oh ya, (I hate politics) because politics is an art of deception; all politicians are liars". As the Edward Said quote aptly explains if Haile makes film and thus makes politics and thereby his claim to hate politics is empty talk. I hate politics is by itself a political position/stand. Secondly, Haile claimed in the same FOCUS interview that he had not done "any Red Terror movie" (I actually think he has touched upon it at least in two films) because, in his own words, "First, I don't know the Red Terror and (second) I have not done it because it is not my experience." (Of course Haile says right after this he would like to make films about Lij Eyasu, Zerai Deres, love story of Menelik and Taytu--experiences he lived through perhaps!)
That generation genuinely wanted a better society and laid its own life for the emancipation of the poor and the oppressed. The commitment was not verbal, nor was it from afar. As Walelign and Tsegaye Gebre Medhin (aka Debteraw) wrote in the early seventies that generation knew that "the enemy of the Ethiopian people cannot come to Madison Garden for a fifteen rounds bout" and so the generation did not flee but confronted the beast in its own lair, i.e. in Ethiopia. An experience that was not lived through in any way by the film maker. But that generation did not get blinded and lost and did not at any point in time turn against its humanity. That each generation gets its own share of monsters and sycophants is almost a natural law but the generation that fought for change in Ethiopia did not lose its humanity or commitment to the cause of the people. It did not shrink from the sacrifice that the struggle called for, did not hide on an Amba or in foreign refuge claiming I hate politics. It was there with and amidst the people, living their fear and dying their death and dreaming their dreams and hopes. It just did not want "something" for the poor and the oppressed--it wanted their total liberation, their sovereignty. There were those who betrayed their vows but they never represented a generation and Haile's generalization not only errs but does injustice to a generation that history emulates. Such false premises and mistaken conclusions tar his films, especially the last one Teza.
The ongoing revision of History has targeted that generation that consciously and genuinely fought for change, defaming it in one way or another and trying to depict it as non Ethiopian. It is as if that generation turned against its culture and history while in actual fact that generation championed the history of resistance and fierce love for the country. What the revisionists actually chafe at is the fact that generation rose firmly against the injustice and oppression, the blind worship of temporal and absolute power, harmful traditions, oppression of women, bowing to the ferenji or the colonizer and in this way launched an upheaval, a revolution as it were, to end the feudal system and the autocracy. And, consequently also, to end the brutal military rule under whose boots many intellectual worms sought false refuge and comfort. Hence, the attack against that generation, the chorus against the vision and ideology of change, the championing of conservatism and conformism under the guise of being modern, aware, "siltun", the proliferation of scribes of modern Darkness at Noon stories, and of eulogies for capitalism and new breed oppressors, and in the final instance the recourse to reaction under the cover of rediscovering oneself, one's "true" identity, history and culture. One relives the Zemene Mesafint through Article 39, the ugly past is embraced wholly and as was, and the fiery Maoist becomes a hard line Copt, a weeping Pente or a bearded Wahabist, or even a monarchist to boot. We have seen it all but then again all this has nothing to do with that generation and much to do with those who rile and fume against the generation that genuinely struggled for meaningful change and got short-circuited by despots and tyrants.
Judgment without knowledge ends up as garbage. If Ato Haile Gerima has turned against his humanity then he has himself to blame in the first place. That generation was not blinded, was not lost, did know where it was going, was fully aware of its goals (not just "something for the poor"!) and more importantly was clear on the sacrifice needed to achieve it. And it did pay the ultimate sacrifice. So, a little bit of respect please. Ato Haile should follow his own advice and talk of things he knows about and make films on subjects he is not ignorant of. Otherwise, so long as we continue to breathe and exist we shall raise our pens and voices to defend the memory of the generation that cried "Away with all Pests" and bravely assaulted the fortresses of cowardice, philistinism, tyranny and oppression.
WAS THE REVOLUTION.....
WAS THE REVOLUTION TRAGIC AND BRUTAL?
by Kassahun
Someone close to my taste said "what is very tragic is to sleep through a Revolution", doing a Rip Van Winkle on the momentous event shaking the given country. Let me state from the outset that I have not (yet) read the book by Maaza Mengiste (Beneath the Lion's Gaze) and I do not know the person or the politics of the reviewer of her book, Ato Abebe Gelaw. However, his labelling of the February 1974 Revolution (Yekatit 66) as tragic and brutal spurred me to write the following lines. More motivation has also come from others who have been revising History and projecting that popular revolution in negative terms and also by the denial of the Red Terror made by the lamentable Dr, Hailu Araya (a Derg loyalist now wearing another mask) and criminals trying to hide their past despicable deeds.
No lie can live forever said another wise man. The same man who penned the poem of the truth on the scaffold and the lie on the throne. Was the February Revolution tragic? Like the Russian revolution of 1917 can it be bombarded with the question: were you premature? Was it brutal? Did it usher in a period of violence and brutality that was, as implied in Ato Abebe's comment, unknown in our past? Revolutions do not occur out of the blue though they may appear spontaneous. For all Revolutions, the Time comes, none are really premature. The Yekatit 66 Revolution exploded because it was time for it to do so, the feudal system had become moribund, the people were fed up with their condition and more importantly determined to sacrifice all to bring change. And the ruling class was unable to govern as before, its crisis had come to a head, its mechanisms of control totally derailed. The Revolution had to be and thus it came about surprising even those who had been expecting it, it was not, however, premature.
It was not tragic either. It was a people's revolution that erupted to put an end to a feudal system, to the autocracy of Emperor Haile Sellasie. And it did just that. It was thus a successful revolution that brought victory to the people. The Revolution was hijacked by military officers--that was what became tragic. That was what brought in the brutality as the officers could not peacefully defeat the popular unrest and struggle against the military rule. When it comes to violence, it must be said without any qualms at all that violence has been endemic, part of the Ethiopian systems for decades if not centuries. The campaigns of the Emperor's (we can mention Tewodros, Yohannes and Menelik) were very brutal, and violence and cruel treatment of the civilian population has been sown into the politics, the means of governance. In this way, the States were all absolute, all were violent. For the people, the State has always been alien, cruel, capricious, something on top of them, heavy. It is in the respect that Ato Abebe's reference to Hobbes becomes relevant: Here is what he wrote as he reviewed Maaza's book:
"The tragic 1974 revolution was not just a bumpy transition from a feudo-capitalist monarchy to a more progressive system as we were told time and again. It was also the beginning of untold brutality that has still continued to haunt us. It is a story of man against man, comrade against comrade, citizen against citizen…. It was simply akin to what the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes called a state of nature, where “men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man." In the state of nature life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.".
The February Revolution did not usher in "untold brutality" but the counter revolution just continued what was imbedded in the political system of Ethiopia--rule by violence and terror. The violence did not just begin, it was there, it was revived by a brutal military regime. And what followed was not a state of nature by any stretch of imagination. Hobbes mechanistic view of life or what some called his "philosophy of fear" does not apply here. The Red Terror was not a free for all, citizen against citizen, comrade against comrade. Hobbes state of nature was inapplicable by all accounts . The State was neither Leviathan nor the violence haphazard and aimless. After the Revolution was hijacked by the former bosses of Dr, Hailu, that is the Derg, there was popular protest mainly organized by the EPRP. The demand for a provisional popular government was tabled, the Revolution and the people needed no military guardian it was said. This popular protest was confronted in a short while by the violence of the State as the Ethiopian State, almost instinctively, resorts to violence when challenged. I leave out here the futile argument by the criminals of the Red Terror who want to allege that the EPRP launched what they so wrongly call the "white terror" and "forced the Derg to resort to the Red Terror". The truth cannot be hanged always and the fact remains that the repression and the violence was launched by the military regime and its intellectual allies grouped within the POMOA. The scenario of a peaceful and gentle military clique being catapulted into the realm of violence and terror by provocation on the part of the people is ridiculous and would have been funny had it not involved the deaths of hundreds of thousands. That aside, the violence was not a free for all and haphazard---the State unleashed its terror on the people, on the EPRP and its supporters. The Terror had clear cut aims: to destroy the EPRP and to cow the people unto fearful obedience. On the part of the EPRP, its actions were directed at those perceived as enemies of the people. That the Red Terror was so vast does not belie the fact that it had its aims, knew its targets and objectives. Thus, the Hobbesian State of nature, of a war pitting every man against every other man was not the reality of the Red Terror or the violent period that followed the February Revolution.
Not having read Maaza's book, I sincerely hope that her rendition of the events of that period (even if fictionalized) does not echo this aspect of the reviewer's interpretation or the crowning of lies in the form of a memoir attempted by another writer called Nega Mezlekia in "his" first book. The February Revolution is a historic event in the annals of our people as it was practically the first instance of a popular revolt overthrowing a brutal regime. It was historic also because of the fact that the Revolution had noble aims, not the coming to power of another ambitious despot but the transformation of the society in a democratic way, the empowerment of the people for the first time in the history of Ethiopia. Hence, it was neither tragic nor brutal and one should take care not to confuse a revolution with its sequel of a counter revolution that negates the revolution itself to take its place. As one revolutionary put it "Revolution, in history, is like the doctor assisting at the birth of a new life, who will not use forceps unless necessary, but who will use them unhesitatingly every time labor requires them. It is a labor bringing the hope of a better life to the enslaved and exploited masses". That was the February Revolution. The brutality came after, with the counterrevolution of the Derg.
Admirers and those nostalgic of the dead and gone imperial regime have never pardoned the progressives whom they hold responsible for the end of their beloved regime and monarchy. A vigorous attempt to revise History has been put in place with endearing and eulogizing (Ababa Janhoy) pseudo biographies of Haile Sellasie being printed. That system, that autocracy was rotten to the core and a curse on the majority of the people of Ethiopia. The revision cannot prevail-- the time is short and those with the memories and the wounds are still alive and around. The February Revolution was thus a tragedy to the ruling class of that period and a historic and beautiful event for the people who succeeded to get rid of a backward system. What followed is another matter altogether as the fall of the Mengistu regime would not be considered a bad thing just because those that replaced him are not any better. Revisionists may, to quote Brecht, wish "to dissolve the people and elect another" but the people cannot be wished or washed away and their memory, stifled as it may be at any given time, stays vivid and alive. For those of us who fought for a Revolution, Yekatiit 66 was a festival that, we hope, gets repeated against the present regime too.
The age of big ideas and robust ideologies may be over but that period of the Revolution cannot be analysed or investigated devoid of its ideological reality. Those who want to rewrite History and allege that "the intellectuals massacred one another" are not only factually wrong but also intellectually uninformed. The truth is that the military dictatorship slaughtered the people; it was not a mere spectator or a secondary player in the tragedy of the Terror. It was the perpetrator of the carnage it called the Red Performance (key tiryit ). Hailu Araya is feebly trying to cover up this fact when he blatantly denied there was any red Terror in the first place. History will not absolve but condemn him thoroughly along with his former masters and as those who deny the Holocaust are guilty of a crime so is the shameless Hailu who has denied the brutal killing of more than 250,000 Ethiopians by the regime he served so loyally to the end. Yesterday's Marxists (Hailu and company) are today's liberals, eulogizing the market, admiring pluralism, swallowing their every spit against the system they had been castigating as anti people. This conversion has not, however, led them to reassess their role and nefarious practices in the fallen system/regime, none of them have recanted or asked forgiveness from the people they had hurt so much. They have just glided smoothly, with no conscience harassing them, from being the loyalists of a Terrorist regime (that of Mengistu) to loyal followers of another equally murderous one but this time conveniently and gratuitously labelling themselves "the opposition". That being the case they justify their previous crimes by denying it altogether or by alleging that their regime "was provoked" to excesses and also by doing a somersault back to the February Revolution which they firmly castigate as "brutal, a mistake, a curse brought upon us by young devils imbued with a foreign ideology".
Forget utopian vision for today the very imagination of a better world has been dimmed and the prevailing tendency is to regress into condemning the past during which courageous people not only dreamed of a better world but fought and died to make it real. Valiant citizens who still echo Che's cry : Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear, that another hand may be extended to wield our weapons, and that other men be ready to intone our funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine guns and new battle cries of war and victory.
Long Live the February Revolution!
by Kassahun
Someone close to my taste said "what is very tragic is to sleep through a Revolution", doing a Rip Van Winkle on the momentous event shaking the given country. Let me state from the outset that I have not (yet) read the book by Maaza Mengiste (Beneath the Lion's Gaze) and I do not know the person or the politics of the reviewer of her book, Ato Abebe Gelaw. However, his labelling of the February 1974 Revolution (Yekatit 66) as tragic and brutal spurred me to write the following lines. More motivation has also come from others who have been revising History and projecting that popular revolution in negative terms and also by the denial of the Red Terror made by the lamentable Dr, Hailu Araya (a Derg loyalist now wearing another mask) and criminals trying to hide their past despicable deeds.
No lie can live forever said another wise man. The same man who penned the poem of the truth on the scaffold and the lie on the throne. Was the February Revolution tragic? Like the Russian revolution of 1917 can it be bombarded with the question: were you premature? Was it brutal? Did it usher in a period of violence and brutality that was, as implied in Ato Abebe's comment, unknown in our past? Revolutions do not occur out of the blue though they may appear spontaneous. For all Revolutions, the Time comes, none are really premature. The Yekatit 66 Revolution exploded because it was time for it to do so, the feudal system had become moribund, the people were fed up with their condition and more importantly determined to sacrifice all to bring change. And the ruling class was unable to govern as before, its crisis had come to a head, its mechanisms of control totally derailed. The Revolution had to be and thus it came about surprising even those who had been expecting it, it was not, however, premature.
It was not tragic either. It was a people's revolution that erupted to put an end to a feudal system, to the autocracy of Emperor Haile Sellasie. And it did just that. It was thus a successful revolution that brought victory to the people. The Revolution was hijacked by military officers--that was what became tragic. That was what brought in the brutality as the officers could not peacefully defeat the popular unrest and struggle against the military rule. When it comes to violence, it must be said without any qualms at all that violence has been endemic, part of the Ethiopian systems for decades if not centuries. The campaigns of the Emperor's (we can mention Tewodros, Yohannes and Menelik) were very brutal, and violence and cruel treatment of the civilian population has been sown into the politics, the means of governance. In this way, the States were all absolute, all were violent. For the people, the State has always been alien, cruel, capricious, something on top of them, heavy. It is in the respect that Ato Abebe's reference to Hobbes becomes relevant: Here is what he wrote as he reviewed Maaza's book:
"The tragic 1974 revolution was not just a bumpy transition from a feudo-capitalist monarchy to a more progressive system as we were told time and again. It was also the beginning of untold brutality that has still continued to haunt us. It is a story of man against man, comrade against comrade, citizen against citizen…. It was simply akin to what the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes called a state of nature, where “men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man." In the state of nature life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.".
The February Revolution did not usher in "untold brutality" but the counter revolution just continued what was imbedded in the political system of Ethiopia--rule by violence and terror. The violence did not just begin, it was there, it was revived by a brutal military regime. And what followed was not a state of nature by any stretch of imagination. Hobbes mechanistic view of life or what some called his "philosophy of fear" does not apply here. The Red Terror was not a free for all, citizen against citizen, comrade against comrade. Hobbes state of nature was inapplicable by all accounts . The State was neither Leviathan nor the violence haphazard and aimless. After the Revolution was hijacked by the former bosses of Dr, Hailu, that is the Derg, there was popular protest mainly organized by the EPRP. The demand for a provisional popular government was tabled, the Revolution and the people needed no military guardian it was said. This popular protest was confronted in a short while by the violence of the State as the Ethiopian State, almost instinctively, resorts to violence when challenged. I leave out here the futile argument by the criminals of the Red Terror who want to allege that the EPRP launched what they so wrongly call the "white terror" and "forced the Derg to resort to the Red Terror". The truth cannot be hanged always and the fact remains that the repression and the violence was launched by the military regime and its intellectual allies grouped within the POMOA. The scenario of a peaceful and gentle military clique being catapulted into the realm of violence and terror by provocation on the part of the people is ridiculous and would have been funny had it not involved the deaths of hundreds of thousands. That aside, the violence was not a free for all and haphazard---the State unleashed its terror on the people, on the EPRP and its supporters. The Terror had clear cut aims: to destroy the EPRP and to cow the people unto fearful obedience. On the part of the EPRP, its actions were directed at those perceived as enemies of the people. That the Red Terror was so vast does not belie the fact that it had its aims, knew its targets and objectives. Thus, the Hobbesian State of nature, of a war pitting every man against every other man was not the reality of the Red Terror or the violent period that followed the February Revolution.
Not having read Maaza's book, I sincerely hope that her rendition of the events of that period (even if fictionalized) does not echo this aspect of the reviewer's interpretation or the crowning of lies in the form of a memoir attempted by another writer called Nega Mezlekia in "his" first book. The February Revolution is a historic event in the annals of our people as it was practically the first instance of a popular revolt overthrowing a brutal regime. It was historic also because of the fact that the Revolution had noble aims, not the coming to power of another ambitious despot but the transformation of the society in a democratic way, the empowerment of the people for the first time in the history of Ethiopia. Hence, it was neither tragic nor brutal and one should take care not to confuse a revolution with its sequel of a counter revolution that negates the revolution itself to take its place. As one revolutionary put it "Revolution, in history, is like the doctor assisting at the birth of a new life, who will not use forceps unless necessary, but who will use them unhesitatingly every time labor requires them. It is a labor bringing the hope of a better life to the enslaved and exploited masses". That was the February Revolution. The brutality came after, with the counterrevolution of the Derg.
Admirers and those nostalgic of the dead and gone imperial regime have never pardoned the progressives whom they hold responsible for the end of their beloved regime and monarchy. A vigorous attempt to revise History has been put in place with endearing and eulogizing (Ababa Janhoy) pseudo biographies of Haile Sellasie being printed. That system, that autocracy was rotten to the core and a curse on the majority of the people of Ethiopia. The revision cannot prevail-- the time is short and those with the memories and the wounds are still alive and around. The February Revolution was thus a tragedy to the ruling class of that period and a historic and beautiful event for the people who succeeded to get rid of a backward system. What followed is another matter altogether as the fall of the Mengistu regime would not be considered a bad thing just because those that replaced him are not any better. Revisionists may, to quote Brecht, wish "to dissolve the people and elect another" but the people cannot be wished or washed away and their memory, stifled as it may be at any given time, stays vivid and alive. For those of us who fought for a Revolution, Yekatiit 66 was a festival that, we hope, gets repeated against the present regime too.
The age of big ideas and robust ideologies may be over but that period of the Revolution cannot be analysed or investigated devoid of its ideological reality. Those who want to rewrite History and allege that "the intellectuals massacred one another" are not only factually wrong but also intellectually uninformed. The truth is that the military dictatorship slaughtered the people; it was not a mere spectator or a secondary player in the tragedy of the Terror. It was the perpetrator of the carnage it called the Red Performance (key tiryit ). Hailu Araya is feebly trying to cover up this fact when he blatantly denied there was any red Terror in the first place. History will not absolve but condemn him thoroughly along with his former masters and as those who deny the Holocaust are guilty of a crime so is the shameless Hailu who has denied the brutal killing of more than 250,000 Ethiopians by the regime he served so loyally to the end. Yesterday's Marxists (Hailu and company) are today's liberals, eulogizing the market, admiring pluralism, swallowing their every spit against the system they had been castigating as anti people. This conversion has not, however, led them to reassess their role and nefarious practices in the fallen system/regime, none of them have recanted or asked forgiveness from the people they had hurt so much. They have just glided smoothly, with no conscience harassing them, from being the loyalists of a Terrorist regime (that of Mengistu) to loyal followers of another equally murderous one but this time conveniently and gratuitously labelling themselves "the opposition". That being the case they justify their previous crimes by denying it altogether or by alleging that their regime "was provoked" to excesses and also by doing a somersault back to the February Revolution which they firmly castigate as "brutal, a mistake, a curse brought upon us by young devils imbued with a foreign ideology".
Forget utopian vision for today the very imagination of a better world has been dimmed and the prevailing tendency is to regress into condemning the past during which courageous people not only dreamed of a better world but fought and died to make it real. Valiant citizens who still echo Che's cry : Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear, that another hand may be extended to wield our weapons, and that other men be ready to intone our funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine guns and new battle cries of war and victory.
Long Live the February Revolution!
THE TIME OF THE BLOVIATORS
THE TIME OF THE BLOVIATORS
or
HOW TO SAY NOTHING IN FIVE HUNDRED WORDS
by Hama Tuma
I am sure not many of you know the word bloviator--I did not till someone told me to check it in Google. It means pompous, someone who puffs his chest and makes boastful declarations. The word defines many Ethiopian pseudo and self declared intellectuals of our time. Of course, who is an intellectual is worthy of a debate these days. One who finished Scondary School? Anyone with a diploma or a degree from a foreign institution? Who? Anyone with that Dr or Professor tag? Any fool who speaks averagely coherent English? Anyone with delusions of grandeur? Feelings of elitism?
Sadly, the bloviators are too many. They start out with the assumption that speaking and writing English is expensive to begin with. Not for you and me poor souls with miserable monthly incomes if any. African intellectuals, totally brainwashed alas, boast: "we learnt at the foot of the white man" which, it seems, give them the right and capacity to tell a plant from afar by just sniffing at the air. Ethiopian intellectuals fall in the same pit: their credential is the foreign/ferenji degree, earned in most cases not even from credible or prestigious places, sometimes from correspondence universities who will give you a degree even if you fail!(check Meles, Tamrat and other mentally challenged TPLF officials). Yet, the Dr or Professor tag is all, supreme, it tell us all to shut up and listen, the bloviators have a degree, they are "intellos" par excellence. Alas, they are shallow, ignoramus to boot, word spinners, not worth the ink on their so called degrees. Take time off to listen to any of the loud pal talk rooms and you will hear many not only punctuating but drowning their Amharic with English phrases. Words like State, information, intelligence, saboteur (actually said "sabotateur" by our hyphenated souls), agenda, diversify, struggle, oppression, etc are words that seem to have no Amharic equivalent. I had previously attempted to call upon them to be modest and received a tongue lashing for may alleged "jealousy" concerning their degrees which, I am proud to say, will not accept even if offered on a golden platter.
The half baked "bloviators" use English words to impress, to be unintelligible to my mother and yours, to be pompous. I wish I had written all this in Amharic but as I am trying to deal with those who write and speak pompously in English I have chosen the foreign language and by implication cornered myself in the dilemma. Why can't we write our pieces in our own language so that the majority of our people understand what we are trying to say? The hypocritical attempt is to be above the mundane as it were, to rise above the masses, to parade before them with puffed out chest, to show we know and do speak English and can write articles in it no matter the spelling and grammar errors. We boast and silence our own parents and people, and fools as we are we feel proud as we shame ourselves. Delusion is taken as knowledge, ignorance becomes wisdom and we deny our identity to find some mirage of a respect for our demeaned self. The more they bloviate, the more they become incomprehensible, shallow and hollow. The exercise is to say nothing in many words, to use phrases from the Thesaurus, to say perambulate instead of walk, to sound like a Southern USA fiery Baptist preacher, to pepper one's articles with quotes and references that are either out of place or pedestrian. I remember one "bloviator" who had to refer to Galbraith or Tagore to tell us "yenat hod zingurgur new". The worth of an intellectual is thus situated firmly in an Ivory Tower, away from the majority of the common people, saying not I fell but declaring my verticality changed to a horizontality. One Weyane scribe, a former "tiraz netek" of the bars in Washington, recently wrote from Addis Abeba a vitriolic attack against Isayas Afewerki (of course in English and to please his Masters), and informed us of the need to "indigenize democracy in a collectivist African cultural matrix". Now, what the hell does this mean other than bloviating over our heads parading as a deep thinker, philosopher and a master of the foreign language? There is another Ethiopian who writes incomprehensible regular columns and whom I tried to criticize mildly and provoked his adoring fans (who do not understand what he writes but admire him just for that) to attack me with venom. One asked me in anger "who are you?" and I must admit I was tempted to do a French on her and answer back "I am still searching for my identity" (the French like such replies and will not make it easy where they can complicate). Fake through and through, inferiority complex of the highest order when our so called intellectuals (many have become professors recently by some collective baptism like the Moonies) look down upon our language, culture, heroes (every political pretender is taken as a Mandela if he or she lands in prison for a month or a year), and our own experience.
The bloviators are also official scribes of the dictatorship. One such pathetic person, a stain on the proud history of her martyred brothers and cousins, recently wrote the following effusive nonsense:
"It is such an incredible win and an amazing era for us to witness the open and fast gain of Ethiopia’s democracy these past eighteen years. Never in the history of Ethiopia have we witnessed such an open dialogue. A free expression of ideas among different parties is what we are witnessing for the fourth democratic election. It is so heartwarming and encouraging for those of us that live outside Ethiopia to have the privilege of being eyewitnesses to the myriad developments that is going on in the country. Thanks to humanity’s elevation of technology we are privy to follow the events of the country on a daily basis" If this is not empty talk what is? Democracy and the Meles regime are anathema, incompatible, opposites. The regime she lauds is known as the predator of the free press, the enemy of free expression, a repressive one holding some thirty five thousand political prisoners behind bars, has committed many massacres, is the one that disappeared dozens in its dungeons and practices systematic and wide spread torture. That makes the woman who wrote the above eulogy either totally ignorant or a shameless sell out. She says nothing in so many words even if she may gain some favors from her Masters in Addis Abeba. The art of saying nothing in five hundred words is often mastered by bloviators and the state of our intellectuals is such that they have all become experts at it. They want to browbeat us with verbosity, with the usage of "hard" English phrases and concepts (which they use not in the correct sense but who cares?), with their determined refusal to use their own language to communicate. I must say I am not amongst those African authors who insist that writers must write in their mother tongue or stop writing ( though the usefulness of communicating in one's language cannot be denied) but the impact of a political message is if it reaches a broad cross section of the people and influences them. Last time I checked 95% of Ethiopians are not very familiar with the Queen's English and if truth be told not many of our self declared intellectuals write proper grammatically correct English either, notwithstanding their tendency to resort to English when they could communicate better in their own language. I could even be mistaken in this assumption of mine as most of them have no clear idea of what they want to utter and whether they do it in English or Amharic ( or any other mother tongue) their mumbo jumbo is not saved from being just that.
Alas, to add insult to injury (be inkirt lye joro degif) our bloviating intellectuals are not funny. Just take the above crazy eulogy and try to say you find it funny. It is actually boring, pathetic, an example of dog- like snivelling and servitude not to say shameful narrow ethnic identification. In other contexts, bloviators can be funny--they are so ridiculous that they become clowns. He was not an intellectual per se but Debella Dinsa comes to mind while in the imperial regime Yilma Deressa was another example of the funny officials. Our present day official scribes cum intellectuals take themselves too seriously as they bloviate and thus are dour and never funny. Otherwise their declaration of democracy under Meles Zenawi should have cracked us up but they believe in it and so they squeeze out the funny in their declaration. George Bush and Rumsfeld were funny with their declarations., they pretended to believe their lies but we all knew they were playacting like their claim of WMDs in Iraq. Take Rumsfeld's foray into The Unknown:
"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
—Feb. 12, 2002.
Is not this a gem? Such bloviators can and should flourish to give grim politics a funny tinge.
Meles Zenawi, who got his degrees from a correspondence course, also plays at being an intellectual but his feeble bloviating come out disgusting and only fools take his street smart talk as a sign of intelligence.
The redefinition of the intellectual is called for in the Ethiopian context unless we confine ourselves to the basic definition of the intellectual as someone who attempts to speak English, tries to use confusing words, and is irredeemably alien to his own people and lies as a matter of routine. Come to think of it, this defines our intellectuals "indigenized in their own matrix". Whatever that may mean of course.
or
HOW TO SAY NOTHING IN FIVE HUNDRED WORDS
by Hama Tuma
I am sure not many of you know the word bloviator--I did not till someone told me to check it in Google. It means pompous, someone who puffs his chest and makes boastful declarations. The word defines many Ethiopian pseudo and self declared intellectuals of our time. Of course, who is an intellectual is worthy of a debate these days. One who finished Scondary School? Anyone with a diploma or a degree from a foreign institution? Who? Anyone with that Dr or Professor tag? Any fool who speaks averagely coherent English? Anyone with delusions of grandeur? Feelings of elitism?
Sadly, the bloviators are too many. They start out with the assumption that speaking and writing English is expensive to begin with. Not for you and me poor souls with miserable monthly incomes if any. African intellectuals, totally brainwashed alas, boast: "we learnt at the foot of the white man" which, it seems, give them the right and capacity to tell a plant from afar by just sniffing at the air. Ethiopian intellectuals fall in the same pit: their credential is the foreign/ferenji degree, earned in most cases not even from credible or prestigious places, sometimes from correspondence universities who will give you a degree even if you fail!(check Meles, Tamrat and other mentally challenged TPLF officials). Yet, the Dr or Professor tag is all, supreme, it tell us all to shut up and listen, the bloviators have a degree, they are "intellos" par excellence. Alas, they are shallow, ignoramus to boot, word spinners, not worth the ink on their so called degrees. Take time off to listen to any of the loud pal talk rooms and you will hear many not only punctuating but drowning their Amharic with English phrases. Words like State, information, intelligence, saboteur (actually said "sabotateur" by our hyphenated souls), agenda, diversify, struggle, oppression, etc are words that seem to have no Amharic equivalent. I had previously attempted to call upon them to be modest and received a tongue lashing for may alleged "jealousy" concerning their degrees which, I am proud to say, will not accept even if offered on a golden platter.
The half baked "bloviators" use English words to impress, to be unintelligible to my mother and yours, to be pompous. I wish I had written all this in Amharic but as I am trying to deal with those who write and speak pompously in English I have chosen the foreign language and by implication cornered myself in the dilemma. Why can't we write our pieces in our own language so that the majority of our people understand what we are trying to say? The hypocritical attempt is to be above the mundane as it were, to rise above the masses, to parade before them with puffed out chest, to show we know and do speak English and can write articles in it no matter the spelling and grammar errors. We boast and silence our own parents and people, and fools as we are we feel proud as we shame ourselves. Delusion is taken as knowledge, ignorance becomes wisdom and we deny our identity to find some mirage of a respect for our demeaned self. The more they bloviate, the more they become incomprehensible, shallow and hollow. The exercise is to say nothing in many words, to use phrases from the Thesaurus, to say perambulate instead of walk, to sound like a Southern USA fiery Baptist preacher, to pepper one's articles with quotes and references that are either out of place or pedestrian. I remember one "bloviator" who had to refer to Galbraith or Tagore to tell us "yenat hod zingurgur new". The worth of an intellectual is thus situated firmly in an Ivory Tower, away from the majority of the common people, saying not I fell but declaring my verticality changed to a horizontality. One Weyane scribe, a former "tiraz netek" of the bars in Washington, recently wrote from Addis Abeba a vitriolic attack against Isayas Afewerki (of course in English and to please his Masters), and informed us of the need to "indigenize democracy in a collectivist African cultural matrix". Now, what the hell does this mean other than bloviating over our heads parading as a deep thinker, philosopher and a master of the foreign language? There is another Ethiopian who writes incomprehensible regular columns and whom I tried to criticize mildly and provoked his adoring fans (who do not understand what he writes but admire him just for that) to attack me with venom. One asked me in anger "who are you?" and I must admit I was tempted to do a French on her and answer back "I am still searching for my identity" (the French like such replies and will not make it easy where they can complicate). Fake through and through, inferiority complex of the highest order when our so called intellectuals (many have become professors recently by some collective baptism like the Moonies) look down upon our language, culture, heroes (every political pretender is taken as a Mandela if he or she lands in prison for a month or a year), and our own experience.
The bloviators are also official scribes of the dictatorship. One such pathetic person, a stain on the proud history of her martyred brothers and cousins, recently wrote the following effusive nonsense:
"It is such an incredible win and an amazing era for us to witness the open and fast gain of Ethiopia’s democracy these past eighteen years. Never in the history of Ethiopia have we witnessed such an open dialogue. A free expression of ideas among different parties is what we are witnessing for the fourth democratic election. It is so heartwarming and encouraging for those of us that live outside Ethiopia to have the privilege of being eyewitnesses to the myriad developments that is going on in the country. Thanks to humanity’s elevation of technology we are privy to follow the events of the country on a daily basis" If this is not empty talk what is? Democracy and the Meles regime are anathema, incompatible, opposites. The regime she lauds is known as the predator of the free press, the enemy of free expression, a repressive one holding some thirty five thousand political prisoners behind bars, has committed many massacres, is the one that disappeared dozens in its dungeons and practices systematic and wide spread torture. That makes the woman who wrote the above eulogy either totally ignorant or a shameless sell out. She says nothing in so many words even if she may gain some favors from her Masters in Addis Abeba. The art of saying nothing in five hundred words is often mastered by bloviators and the state of our intellectuals is such that they have all become experts at it. They want to browbeat us with verbosity, with the usage of "hard" English phrases and concepts (which they use not in the correct sense but who cares?), with their determined refusal to use their own language to communicate. I must say I am not amongst those African authors who insist that writers must write in their mother tongue or stop writing ( though the usefulness of communicating in one's language cannot be denied) but the impact of a political message is if it reaches a broad cross section of the people and influences them. Last time I checked 95% of Ethiopians are not very familiar with the Queen's English and if truth be told not many of our self declared intellectuals write proper grammatically correct English either, notwithstanding their tendency to resort to English when they could communicate better in their own language. I could even be mistaken in this assumption of mine as most of them have no clear idea of what they want to utter and whether they do it in English or Amharic ( or any other mother tongue) their mumbo jumbo is not saved from being just that.
Alas, to add insult to injury (be inkirt lye joro degif) our bloviating intellectuals are not funny. Just take the above crazy eulogy and try to say you find it funny. It is actually boring, pathetic, an example of dog- like snivelling and servitude not to say shameful narrow ethnic identification. In other contexts, bloviators can be funny--they are so ridiculous that they become clowns. He was not an intellectual per se but Debella Dinsa comes to mind while in the imperial regime Yilma Deressa was another example of the funny officials. Our present day official scribes cum intellectuals take themselves too seriously as they bloviate and thus are dour and never funny. Otherwise their declaration of democracy under Meles Zenawi should have cracked us up but they believe in it and so they squeeze out the funny in their declaration. George Bush and Rumsfeld were funny with their declarations., they pretended to believe their lies but we all knew they were playacting like their claim of WMDs in Iraq. Take Rumsfeld's foray into The Unknown:
"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
—Feb. 12, 2002.
Is not this a gem? Such bloviators can and should flourish to give grim politics a funny tinge.
Meles Zenawi, who got his degrees from a correspondence course, also plays at being an intellectual but his feeble bloviating come out disgusting and only fools take his street smart talk as a sign of intelligence.
The redefinition of the intellectual is called for in the Ethiopian context unless we confine ourselves to the basic definition of the intellectual as someone who attempts to speak English, tries to use confusing words, and is irredeemably alien to his own people and lies as a matter of routine. Come to think of it, this defines our intellectuals "indigenized in their own matrix". Whatever that may mean of course.
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