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Addis Tribune

Reflections On Changing Role Of Intellectuals In Ethiopian Politics

By Professor Bahru Zewde

Addis Ababa - The Period of Co-option (1941-1965): After he regained his throne in 1941, Emperor Hayla-Sellase went about the task of reconstituting his authority with renewed vigor. He continued his pre-war tasks of modernizing the military apparatus and creating a new elite to man the central and provincial bureaucracy.

Among his first proclamations were those that dealt with the reinstitution of provincial administration and the setting up of ministries. His much-advertised commitment to the expansion of education was driven less by any particular desire to see the expansion of knowledge and more by the need to produce the necessary manpower to staff the expanding bureaucracy.

In this respect, the post-war period saw a qualitative difference as compared to the pre-war one. For one thing, the emphasis now was on expanding domestic educational facilities rather than on sending students abroad. Secondly, there was a shift to the expansion of secondary education in the 1940s and that of college education in the 1950s, culminating in the establishment of Haile Sellassie I University in 1961.

The initial result of this process was the creation of an elite which saw its mission as one of loyal and dedicated service rather than engaging in social and political critique. There was little of the daring and exuberance displayed by the pre-war generation. As noted earlier, most of that generation had perished in the course of the war and the resistance to Fascist occupation. Those who had survived in exile (like Takla-Hawaryat and Warqenah) were marginalized on their return. Other survivors like Dr. Alamawarq Bayyana, president of the Black Lions, and the popular playwright Yoftahe Neguse died soon after liberation.

It was more in the realm of culture, notably literature and art, than in that of independent politics, that the intellectuals began to make their impact in this period. To this period belong the works of the late Kabbada Mika'el, whose stories and plays nurtured the post-war student generation. Following him were Makonnen Endalkachaw, who made more impression as a writer than as prime minister, a post which he held nominally for a decade and a half, and Germachaw Takla-Hawaryat.

This literary renaissance blossomed in the 1960s, perhaps one of the most fascinating decades in the cultural history of Ethiopia. What have now become the giants of Amharic literature all flourished in that decade or just before and after: Mangestu Lamma and Tsagaye Gabra-Madhen in the field of drama; Berhanu Zerihun, Ba'alu Germa and Haddis Alamayahu in the sphere of the novel; and Da?achaw Warqu in avant-guarde literature. There were also novelists like Abbe Gube??a whose works contained explicit political messages, notably his bestseller Alwaladem ("I Refuse to Be Born"). The art world produced two giants with different styles and varying impact: the classical Afawarq Takle who has remained a world unto himself, and the highly influential pioneer of abstract art in Ethiopia, Gabra-Krestos Dasta.

Until the end of the 1950s, political opposition came mainly from disgruntled elements of the ruling establishment. Conspiracy, rather than open mass demonstration, was the standard mode of trying to bring about change. The plot led by Bitwaddad Nagash Bazabeh in 1951, which had the avowed attention of assassinating the emperor and establishing a republic, was one very good example of this phenomenon. Even more remarkable was the perseverance and single-mindedness with which Blatta Takkala Walda-Hawaryat, once a protegee of the emperor, pursued his objective of overthrowing the emperor, until he finally lost him life in a dramatic shoot-out with the police in November 1969.

In the second half of the 1950s, a group of intellectuals began to coalesce around the dynamic and restless personality of the American-educated Garmame Neway. They included some younger members of the aristocracy as well as others like Garmame who had pursued their education abroad under royal patronage. They set up a discussion group known as the Qachane Club, after the house in Qachane which the progressive prince, Ras Emeru, had placed at their disposal.

This experiment was short-lived. Frustrated by this and his subsequent efforts to set up other organizational fora for political action, Garmame eventually turned to his elder brother, Brigadier General Mangestu Neway, the commander of the Imperial Body Guar. Together, they staged the abortive 1960 coup d'etat.

The Revolutionary Intelligentsia (1965-1977)

The 1960 coup was the outcome of the frustration of sections of the educated and military elite at the absence of meaningful political and economic reform. It was a signal that things would get worse if the political order did not take stock of the situation and mended its ways. But the regime did not heed the signal and introduce any substantial changes.

Instead, it opted for the policy of continued suppression of dissent. But the opposition, far from being silenced, assumed an ever strident character. The articulation of political opposition also passed from the civil servants to the students.

As has been said more than once, the year 1965 marks a turning point in this regard. Although it was rarely elaborated upon, the slogan "Land to the Tiller", which was first voiced in that year, marked the transition from the reformist to the revolutionary era. Thereafter, there was growing consensus among the student population that the ancient regime had to go and a new order rise on its grave. Thus, the Ethiopian Student Movement, unflagging standard-bearer of revolutionary change, was born. If the students were the products of the emperor's education policy, the movement was equally the inevitable consequence of a regime that refused to reform itself.

The student movement and the politics of the Left which it begot had certain important features which have a bearing on the theme under discussion in this conference. The first is the ascendancy of the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, which after 1976 became the creed of both government and opposition. The term "creed" is used advisedly, for the Marxist doctrine was adopted as an article of faith rather than as a tool of analysis. Any alternative doctrine was smothered before it was even born.

This ideological ascendancy of the Left gave the group of officers that seized political power in September 1974 no other option but to initiate itself into the Leftist discourse and eventually parade as the only true Left. Skillfully utilizing the organizational recipe of Marxism-Leninism, it achieved a degree of social regimentation unprecedented in the country's history. It was also able to achieve a level of social mobilization that gave it a false sense of invincibility.

Yet, ail along, there was a surrealistic atmosphere about the adoption of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine - a clear note of discordance between theory and reality. And, by the end of the 1980s, concomitant with the global crisis of the ideology, it was abandoned with the same alacrity with which it was embraced. Ironically, though, the Darg, which had been the last to adopt the doctrine, became the most reluctant to eschew it - and it paid the price for that reluctance.

A related aspect of the ascendancy of Marxism-Leninism was the sectarianism that came to bedevil student and, by extension, Leftist politics. There was an air of finality and self-righteousness about the articulation of political positions that brooked no deviation or compromise. No other tract symbolizes this better than the celebrated piece on the national question by Tilahun Takele, a pseudonym for the Algerian-based militants who became the nucleus of what eventually developed into the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP).

This influential piece, which became the Bible of all self-respecting Leftists, was as replete with polemic as it was woefully short on fact. Rather than trying to show the fallacy of the position of the leadership of the old ESUNA (Ethiopian Students' Union in North America) on empirical grounds, it castigated them, borrowing liberally from Leninist discourse, for behaving like Social Democrats and Cadets. This culture of verbal violence formed the background to the physical violence that engulfed the country in the mid-1970s.

Nor could this sectarianism be said to have prevailed merely out of a self-righteous sense of ideological rectitude. Rather, it appears to have been bound with a struggle for political power. This struggle became acute after the collapse of the ancient regime in 1974. But it had its roots in the fission's within the student movement before that date, particularly in the divisions in the Ethiopian Students' Union in Europe (ESUE).

These divisions were subsequently imported into the country and ended up in dividing the civilian Left into two antagonistic and apparently irreconcilable groups, the one led by EPRP and the other by Meison (as the All Ethiopia Socialist Movement was known in its Amharic acronym). This division was a bonanza to the Darg, more specifically its strong man Mangestu Hayla-Maryam, who successively eliminated both and eventually seized absolute power.

The politics of mutual destruction followed by EPRP and Meison had serious consequences for the country's political culture and has a direct bearing on the current situation of intellectual withdrawal. To begin with, it ensured the political ascendancy of the military elite and paved the way for the dictatorship of Mangestu. Thereafter, intellectuals were sought as atomized individuals, not as organized groups. The climax of this process was of course the formation of the Workers' Party of Ethiopia, via its mid-wife COPWE (Commission for Organizing the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia), when "genuine" Marxist-Leninists were made to coalesce around the person of the "infallible" leader.

Secondly, the mass terror that attended the political and armed opposition ultimately resulted in the political emasculation of a large body of intellectuals. In this respect, the much-publicized Red Terror was only the gruesome climax to a general atmosphere of terror which included intimidation, imprisonment and exile. The terror showed that the price of active and independent political engagement was too high. As the dominant political culture had not allowed a distinction between politics and civil society, withdrawal from one at one and the same time became withdrawal from the other.

Thirdly, the end of EPRP and Meison spelt the end of the ascendancy of the multi-ethnic political organizations. Thereafter, the stage was dominated by the national liberation front, as they came to be known. The urban-based struggle also gave way to the rural-based armed struggle. Leaving aside the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), which was fighting for independence from Ethiopia, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) emerged as the leading opposition to the Derg.

Although the TPLF was a product of the Ethiopian Student Movement, its agenda of national liberation did not at first strike a chord in the mainstream of that movement. It did not therefore succeed in attracting many intellectuals of the region. As a matter of fact, the leading Tegrayan intellectuals of the time were in the EPRP rather than in the TPLF. One might even argue that such organizations as the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which have had a rather unimpressive military record, drew on a larger pool of intellectual resources than the TPLF.

But the TPLF, or the EPRDF (as the coalition of forces which the TPLF came to spearhead was known) more than made up for what it lacked in intellectual sophistication by considerable skill in organizing the rural masses into a formidable force that played a decisive role in the overthrow of the Darg.

The Post-1991 Situation

The seizure of state power by the EPRDF, while putting an end to a regime that had managed to provoke universal distaste, brought its own complications into the political scene. Far from encouraging active engagement by intellectuals, it tended to abet the trend of political withdrawal that had started in the dark days of the revolutionary period. A number of factors seem to have contributed to this end.

The ethnic-based politics that became the norm after 1991 has had the effect of alienating a large body of intellectuals. While some of them did participate in the political process, their number was admittedly much lower than would have been the case had multi-ethnic political organizations not been actively discouraged. The absence of a strong opposition, which even the EPRDF is sometimes heard to lament, is in part a result of this continued withdrawal of the body of intellectuals that could have had a meaningful intervention in the political process. With limited success, the EPRDF tried to co-opt some of those intellectuals into its organization, notably through the Forum 84, which was primarily designed to attract former EPRP members.

Secondly, the policy of massive retrenchment of civil servants dictated by the IMF-dictated Structural Adjustment Program had the effect of depriving the government sector of persons with skill and expertise. While these were lost to the government, it was mostly NGOs and private employers who gained. Granted these casualties of SAP were government functionaries rather than political activists and thus their removal might not have been felt so acutely in the political process. Nevertheless, it had the effect of depriving the state of people with accumulated experience and technical competence. Nowhere has this lacunae been felt as acutely as in the sphere of the country's diplomatic representation, as the current struggle being waged between Ethiopia and Eritrea to win over international public opinion amply demonstrates.

The first months of 1993 stand out as an important landmark in the relation between intellectuals and the EPRDF regime. The brutal suppression of a demonstration by University students on the Eritrean question triggered a series of events which culminated in the expulsion of over forty lecturers and professors. This drastic measure, about which the government is now reportedly showing some signs of remorse, was significant in many ways. It put an end to the brief honeymoon of independent thinking enjoyed by the University community. The University Teachers' Association, which was spearheading that spirit of free investigation of social and political issues, became one of the casualties, as it lost all but one of the members of its leadership in the purge. The dismissal also claimed the three top executives, all elected for the first time in the history of the University. The student leadership also went into hiding or exile. The leadership that replaced it has been acting more like a youth wing of the government than as independent or critical body.

Yet, it would not be accurate to say that intellectuals have been denied all space in the post-1991 setup, especially in comparison with what had prevailed before. Despite government harassment and its own inherent limitations, there is a private press whose columns are open to independent opinion. There has been also a mushrooming of professional associations, some of whom have come to play an important role in the public debate of national issues. While the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, which remains in the government's bad books, still leads a precarious existence, other civic associations have been tolerated. If this overall trend of tolerance does continue, it will probably help to encourage the vibrant civil society that is such an important ingredient of the democratic process. One might even go as far as arguing that it is perhaps in the strengthening of civil society that Ethiopian intellectuals might play a more critical role in the future than through their intervention in the political process. Circumstances certainly do not seem to permit the kind of power and influence that they had arrogated to themselves in the 1960s and 1970s. Nor, in light of the consequences of such arrogation, does that seem a highly desirable option.

Finally, the current conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea has introduced a new dimension to the relationship between intellectuals and government. While there is still some lingering ambivalence about the origins and course of the conflict, the intransigent position of the Eritrean government has provoked a general rallying of the intellectual community behind the Ethiopian State. This is still a far cry from the unison between intellectual and state that one observes on the Eritrean side; not that such unison is to be desired. But it represents nonetheless a dramatic change from what had prevailed a year before. Only future developments will show what the consequences of such a rapprochement would be.

* Prof. Bahru Zewde History Department, Addis Ababa University.

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