I have long wanted to take a pen in hand and write you, my dear brothers and sisters, of the things that weigh so heavily on my heart.
We, the Imperial House of Sellassie of the Solomonic Dynasty, rightly or wrongly, have been styled the Royal Family of the African Diaspora. For his courageous leadership, my great grandfather, H.I.M. Halie Sellassie I, the Janhoy of Ethiopia, was indeed the only man in history twice honored with a ticker-tape parade down Broadway in Manhattan, New York. Still, we must recall the teaching of the Jewish carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth, our Sellassie ancestral cousin through the bloodline of David: “Ye know that they that are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you shall be your minister, and whosoever of you would be the chiefest shall be servant of all.” (Mk 10: 42 – 44) “And he said unto them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and they that exercise authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’ But ye shall not be so; but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.” (Lk 22: 25 – 26) My great grandfather was a man of “love and peace,” an ardent Christian, the servant of his Ethiopian people. In his hallowed footsteps, I and the Imperial House of Sellassie, are likewise your servants. For us, each and every one of you in the African Diaspora are equally “Spiritual Children of Ethiopia.”
My esteemed cousin, H.H. Prince Ermias Sahle-Sellassie Haile Sellassie, has noted in his foreword to Gregory R. Copley’s book, Ethiopia Reaches Her Hand Unto God (Alexandria, VA: Defense and Foreign Affairs, 1998, p. 27:)
“Ethiopia today is more than a country or nation-state in the sovereign sense. It is a people who, for the first time in 5,000 years of known history and 3,000 years of Solomonic dynastic rule, have spilled over their borders. Today because of the civil war which began in 1974, the Ethiopian diaspora has placed millions of Ethiopians in various countries around the world. And yet all of us in the Ethiopian diaspora retain strong cultural and human ties with our homeland. The Ethiopian people are today a ‘world people,’ carrying with them traditions, language, religion and values forged through the tenure of one of the oldest civilizations in the world.
“Ethiopia, too, is an icon. It is a state, which was never submerged into a colonial entity, despite attempts to conquer it. Therefore, it has been a beacon of hope for many other states in Africa and elsewhere. It has been of immense pleasure to hear Ethiopia described by many Africans today as being ‘the property and pride of all Africa’ because of the unique strength of its traditions.”Marcus Mosiah Garvey was entirely correct in his early description of the entire African Diaspora as “spiritually Ethiopian.”
Let me first tell you a little of myself and of how I came to be here. I was born Aster Fikre-Sellassie in Addis Ababa, April 30, 1960 (Ethiopian Calendar 1953), the fourth of the six children of the Oromo King Fikre-Sellassie Hapte-Mariam and H.I.H.Princess Edjigaheu Asfa-Wossen, eldest daughter of H.I.M. Alga Worrash, “Crown Prince” Asfa-Wossen Haile-Sellassie, eldest son and heir of H.I.M. Haile Sellassie I, the Lion of Judah, Defender of the Faith, Janhoy of Ethiopia. I am the sister of H.I.H. Prince Bekere Fikre-Sellassie, Regent of the Imperial Ethiopian Crown Council and designated heir to the throne of Solomon. In 1971 at the age of 11, my brother, my two elder sisters and I were sent to finish our elementary education at the Clarendon School, Abergale, North Wales, and in June of 1974 returned home for the summer holidays. We found instead the Marxist coup led by the Dergue, “the Committee,” which has led to so much unhappiness and suffering for my beloved Ethiopians. All of my family was arrested and cruelly mistreated under the Mengistu regime. My mother, a kind and gentle woman, was unspeakably abused for two years in the infamous maximum security prison Alem Bekange before she died. To this day we do not know the cause of her death.
My dear brothers and sisters of the African Diaspora, I must recall that my great grandfather H.I.M. Haile Sellassie I was that one man who alone abolished the abomination of slavery in Ethiopia, an institution still practiced at that time by the Muslim population of our country. He was also the man who had successfully saved our people from White imperialist domination. Following the victory of Menelik II over the Italians at the Battle of Adwa in 1896, Ethiopia remained the only African people never dominated by European colonialism. The Mengistu regime, however, did sell Ethiopia out to the dreaded KG.B., a new, more insidious White imperialism, and it was not until the Iron Curtain fell and Soviet Russia collapsed that my Ethiopian peoples, under the courageous leadership of our Tigrean patriots, overthrew the despised Marxist puppet government.. And yes, unfortunately slavery is still practiced in the Arab countries of Islam all along the shores of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. In fact, throughout the world of Arabic-speaking Islam, from Morrocco to Arabistan, the normal, everyday term for a person of African origin is ‘Abd, “Slave.” To my knowledge, this has, however, never been the case among our own 40-45% Ethiopian Islamic population who do not speak Arabic.
The story of our escape from the Red and White Terror in Ethiopia into the African Diaspora can now be told. In July of 1977, ten children, myself and six of my immediate family, plus four of my cousins, were smuggled out of Addis Ababa and airlifted to Nairobi, Kenya.
The “mission impossible” of our escape was planned and developed by a small group of Christian philanthropists in Europe and carried out with great attention to detail by one courageous American missionary, Rev. Dale Collins, who gravely risked his own life for our safety. We were flown to the United States in August 1977 and began our residence in exile at the home of our maternal uncle, Dr. Zewdi Gabre-Sellassie, in Arlington, Virginia. Our uncle, of royal Tigrean blood, a direct descendant of Emperor Yohaness, received a doctorate from Oxford University, England, for his dissertation, Yohaness, A Political Biography. He had served as Ethiopian Ambassador to the United Nations under H.I.M. Haile Sellassie I, in which post he remained until resigning during the period of the Red and White Terror. He is ardently democratic in his political philosophy and we spent our formative years under his tutelage. Probably more than any other factor, it is to my uncle that I owe my passionate feelings of solidarity with the common people.
My education had been interrupted for three years in Ethiopia, but finally I was able to graduate from high school in rural New York in June 1980. That fall I went on to New York University where I received my B.A. in Russian history and language, and in my senior year met and fell in love with my husband, Professor Anatoly Antohin. We were married March 2, 1984, and moved to Jersey City, New Jersey, where I first became so involved and committed to the well-being of my people – all my people, those who had recently left Ethiopia and Africa, and those whose forbears had come centuries before. With the assistance of Congressman Frank Guiarini of Jersey City and the good people of that city, I was able to raise $100,000 in five months for the Haile Sellassie Fund to help the victims of famine in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Our two children, Edjigaheu (sasha) and Tafari (Alexei), named after my saintly mother and great grandfather, “Ras Tafari,” were born in Jersey City before my husband accepted employment in the Theater Department of Hollins College, Roanoke, Virginia.
The rest of the story is really quite simple and the real story is only now beginning. There is so much work to be done “to bind up my nation’s wounds,” as Abraham Lincoln phrased it, and to better the lives of all Spiritual Children of Ethiopia. My great grandfather was such a man of love and peace, you may ask how could it be possible that he and his family should have become such martyrs. One way to understand it is this: the Children of Israel were in Egypt a little over 400 years and that same period time has transpired for the African Diaspora in the Americas. The Almighty in His infinite mercy has heard the cries of His children and taken pity upon them. In His great wisdom, He brought about the exile of the Solomonic Dynasty, my family, to become a strong voice of moral leadership in the African Diaspora. Not until all our Spiritual Children of Ethiopia can return to our beloved Africa in triumph, will my family or I ever again go back to our home in Ethiopia. Our family will not be redeemed from exile until we see with our own eyes the redemption of all of our brothers and sisters in the Africa Diaspora.
How are we to accomplish the tremendous work to be done? Four of the greatest political thinkers in history were: 1) Abraham Lincoln, for his vision of participatory democracy and equality before the law of all people, and for his vision of healing his nation after a terrible civil war; 2) Marcus Mosiah Garvey, for his vision of an Ethiopianist Utopia; 3) John F. Kennedy, who insisted: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country;”and 4) Martin Luther King, Jr., for his vision of liberating all races from the sickness of “internal colonialism.” All of these great men saw the uniqueness of humanity’s divine potential. Their writings are our manifesto, and it was the holy literature of the Jewish people, the Bible, that was their inspiration and guidebook in life. The Bible was also the guide throughout life for my greatgrandfather, His Imperial Majesty Haile Sellassie I, Elect of God, Defender of the Faith, the Lion of Judah.
The reader may ask whom we mean when we speak of our “Spiritual Children of Ethiopia.” From the very beginning, we want to be explicitly clear about this principle. Ethiopian society has always been an “open” and “all-inclusive” society. We have many nationalities and ethnic groups, as well as Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Ethiopians. Throughout history we have consistently remained “color-blind,” unable to find meaning in the shade of a person’s skin, or the tint or texture of hair. In my own extended family, we have Ethiopians who look “Mediterranean” and others who are indistinguishable from the proud Maroons of Jamaica. All are included equally as unimpeachably Ethiopian, without distinction. As Gregory Copley correctly observes in Ethiopia Reaches Her Hand Unto God ( Alexandria: Pamela von Gruber Publisher, 1998, p.56:) “Ethiopia, by its emphasis throughout most of its history…has always been an “open crowd”…in which there has traditionally been enormous freedom of identity. In this respect, it has always been a society of different peoples who have come together out of pride in the symbolism of antiquity…and its collective culture and leadership.”
Copley (p. 74) goes on to add the following: “One of Ethiopia’s most senior religious leaders, the Nibure-Id [of Axum-Zion, the highest autority responsible for ordination of priests] Ermias Kebede Wolde-Yesus, noted: ‘In Ge’ez, “Am” means people and “hara” means free. So the literal translation of Am-hara is Free People – one of the essential characteristics of true Ethiopians.’ [We might compare the Biblical Hebrew equivalent ‘Am Hor , “Noble People.”] He went on to say:
‘The name “Amhara” was not meant to identify a clan, a tribe or an ethnic group… As the connotation of the word implies, they, the Amhara, are an amalgamation of liberated people made up of different clans, tribes, or ethnic groups who inhabited Ethiopia and united, spiritually by Covenantal Faith in , and physically by intermarriage among themselves, for a common or eternal cause that is called Ethiopianism.‘The Amharas are children of those original inhabitants of Ethiopia who, by relinquishing willingly their individual ethnicity, belief and dialect, accepted Ethiopianism in its entirety… Thus, when an individual believes in Ethiopianism and accepts, of his or her free will, the membership initiation in that social order with the new concept of life, he or she is declared to be an Amhara’” [ cited from Ermias Kebede Wolde-Yesus, Nibure-Id: Ethiopia: the Classic Case, p.20.]
From the proud Maroons of the High Country of Jamaica to the blond, blue-eyed youth who “just loves Reggae,” from the Nation of Islam (whom we count with our 40-45% Ethiopian Moslem population) to the One-Name Pentecostal congregations of the Deep South, all are our cherished “Spiritual Children of Ethiopia,” all are declared to be Am-hara, our “Free People of Ethiopia.”
To be continued
Notes:
The interested reader may register with the Ministry of Naturalization of the House of Sellassie his/her personal acceptance of the ethical responsibilities of an hereditary Amhara by submitting, dating and signing the following statement:
In accordance with the ruling of His Holiness Ermias Wolde-Yesus, Nibure-Id of Axum-Zion, I believe in Ethiopianism and, before God, accept of my own free will membership in its social order and its concept of life.
Date:
Signed:
Name and addressed printed:
This confidential declaration will be duly recorded and sealed by our Ministry of Naturalization, which will issue a Brevet of Confirmation conferring the hereditary personal status of an Amhara upon its registered holder.
This Registration and Naturalization Service is provided at cost. The declaration, accompanied by a personal check for $25.00 made out to The House of Sellassie Educational Fund (non-tax exempt,) should be addressed to:
Ministry of Naturalization
Secretariat General
The House of Sellassie
115 Kelsan Way
Fairbanks, AK 99709 USA
5.) All other correspondence:
International Headquarters
Secretariat General
The House of Sellassie
5936 Tulane Street
San Diego, CA 92122 USA
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