Ethiopian System of Domination and Consequences

"Oromo democracy is one of those remarkable creations of the human mind that evolved into a full-fledged system of government, as a result of five centuries of evolution and deliberate, rational, legislative transformation." (Asmarom Legessa, p.195).

Emperor Haile Selassie (1930 - 1936, 1941 - 1974) consolidated Menelik's empire by modernizing the state machinery. He introduced laws to institutionalise the means of violence against subject peoples. Military and civil administrations were rationalized and put under central control. State power was defined and differentiated -- but not separated -- into executive, judicial, and legislative functions. The emperor's power and prerogatives were absolute and inviolable. Personal servitude and slavery were abolished and, to compensate for lost rights and privileges, the colonists were given by law property rights over land confiscated by Menelik from the colonized peoples. Educational system was introduced to serve two main objectives: (1) to develop manpower to provide service for the empire; (2) to serve as instrument for Ethiopianization through suppression of the identity of subject peoples and promotion of Abyssinian history, language, culture and values.

Emperor Haile Selassie promulgated in his constitutions of 1931 and 1955 the mythology of divine right to rule over Ethiopia. Among the western powers, "Ethiopia, and the Amhara imperial mythology, was celebrated as paradigm of African kingship in general while immediate European interests could be served in the Horn by supporting traditional authority" (Sorenson, p. 31). Only Italy challenged that Ethiopia is not enlightened enough to own a colony. Italy conquered and occupied Ethiopia from 1936 to 1941. After the occupation, and during the cold war, Haile Selassie's regime and his policy of "social engineering" was accorded all-round enthusiastic support from western powers led by USA. An American legal expert who advised the regime, a French jurist who drafted the civil code, American professors who established the Law School and Business School of the Haile Selassie University, British educators who charted the system of education are some examples of foreign technical assistance provided the emperor. From World War II until 1977 US was a major arms supplier to Ethiopia. Another diplomatic coup was that black Africa and African-Americans considered Ethiopia as a symbol of black pride and independence. With a shift of strategy from the early colonial era, the image of the emperor was promoted as a champion of liberation of peoples under colonial domination. "Somewhere along the line, the African colonizer had turned into the African liberator, but a great deal of history had to be swept under rug in order to bring about that metamorphosis" (Legesse, p. 20).

A few of the major characteristics of Haile Selassie's system of domination were:

• constitutionalization of the imperial mythology of divine right to rule;
• institutionalization and modernization of means of state violence against the colonized peoples, including salaried standing military and security forces;
• introduction of organizational rationality and centralization of colonial administration with salaried civil servants;
• promotion of the emperor's image as a benevolent reformer and champion of African liberation;
• promotion of the image of Ethiopia as a symbol of black independence and pride;
• continuation of the image of Ethiopia as a Christian outpost; 
• social engineering to achieve Amharization under the code name of Ethiopianization;
• abolition of servitude and slavery.

With the fledgling state apparatus and backward socio-economic base, it was not easy for Haile Selassie's regime to negate the identities of the colonized peoples and build a nation-state of Abyssinian core. Tight centralization of authority created bureaucratic dysfunction and inefficiency. Nepotism, corruption, and incompetence created paralysis of the bureaucracy. Liberation struggles by the oppressed peoples, disillusion among the Abyssinian elites, disaffection by intellectuals in general about the performance of the empire -- particularly poor development performance in comparison to newly independent African states -- eroded the belief in legitimacy based on the divine right of the emperor.  Lack of a consensus among the aristocrats and ruling elites regarding the question of who should succeed the aging emperor was another factor that led to the ultimate implosion of the Haile Selassie regime.

The Marxist Model of Domination

The Dergue, a military junta that consummated the final overthrow of Haile Selassie's regime did not at first have an idea of what form of government to replace the regime. The military maintained its professional commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of what they perceived as the "mother land". In desperate effort to save the "mother land" from disintegration by mass upheaval, with intellectual pressure from members of the intelligentsia, with fear of counter offensive by supporters of the deposed regime, discouraged by lack of support from the western powers, the military junta made a radical departure from the legitimacy based on divine right and adopted a legitimacy based on a socialist ideology. It restructured government organizations, introduced land reform, and nationalized private enterprises and urban houses. The military junta declared itself a dominant socialist revolutionary party. Peasant and urban dwellers' associations, women's associations and youth associations were organized to mobilize revolutionary mass support.  Through monopoly of state power to formulate socio-economic policies, state ownership of enterprises in all economic sectors, party control of mass organizations, the Dergue regime tried to exercise unprecedented control over the empire's political, economic, and social life. Because of its ideological orientation, the regime, on one hand, achieved all-round support from the communist bloc. On the other hand, it was isolated by the western bloc, the traditional patrons of the Ethiopian empire. Political groups subscribing to different variations of socialism challenged the ideological legitimacy claimed by the Dergue regime. National liberation movements opposed the continuation of domination in a Marxist totalitarian form.

Some of the salient features of the Dergue regime's domination were:

• retention of Abyssinian control of political power under a cover of Marxist-Leninist party;
• control of economic power under a cover of state ownership of the essential means of production of goods and services;
• use of ideological doctrine to suppress cultures and values of the subjugated peoples as manifestations of "narrow nationalism";
• control of the society through party infiltration of mass organizations;
• maintaining huge military and security forces to suppress resistance to the regime's tyrannical rule.

The greatest victory by the subjugated peoples over the Ethiopian empire was scored by the land reform -- the people got back their land, at least for the moment. But, the regime was not going to let the people to peacefully enjoy the use of their land. Political repression, wars of liberation, natural disaster, and mal governance were malignant causes of human sufferings of great magnitude. The Dergue regime could not rule the empire, particularly after the Soviet Union -- whose demise was imminent -- denied the regime its support. The Dergue regime was overthrown essentially by forces external to the regime itself.

The Wayyane (TPLF) Paradigm of Domination

A report by US Consulate dated 4/21/1919 reads:

"In the British Legation at Addis Ababa I saw a report from the British Commandant of the Moyale district, British East Africa, in which were listed 87 different raids in the past nine years ... Most of the raids were reported to have been made by Tigrean soldiers from northern Abyssinia who have come ... [and] become little more than brigands and slave raiders." (Borg G. Steffenson and Ronald K. Starvett, vol. I, page 184)

The Washington Post in its Sunday November 5, 2000 print, under a title "Group to Seek Slavery Repatriations", carried an article by Paul Shepard in the Associate Press on lawsuit planned to acquire compensation for black descendants. As quoted in the article, Harvard law professor Charles J. Ogletree said:

"We want full recognition and a remedy of how slavery stigmatised, raped, murdered and exploited millions of Africans through no fault of their own."

The relevance of the above two passages is to demonstrate the travesty of justice currently existing in Ethiopia. The Tigreans were the founders of the original Axumite Abyssinian polity. As mentioned earlier, emperor Menelik of Amhara dynasty undertook his early conquests as a vassal king under emperor Yohannes of Tigrean dynasty. Since the Dergue regime was overthrown in 1991, a power shift has taken place in favour of a Tigrean hegemony led by the TPLF, also known as Wayyane. Under this circumstance, if there is going to be international compensation to Africa for the genocide caused by slavery, ethnic Tigreans of Abyssinia who played active part in the commission of the genocide are going to receive the compensation by virtue of their continued domination over the people who were victims of the genocide. It would be not a remedy, but a travesty of justice. It may be asked whether the imperial nature of Ethiopia has not changed under the TPLF regime. No, it has not changed as will be explained next.

Just as Haile Selassie's regime used modernization as a code word for consolidation of Menelik's empire, and the Dergue regime tried to use Marxism-Leninism to maintain Abyssinian domination, the TPLF regime found democratisation to have a useful currency as a code word for its agenda of domination. The TPLF regime, by signing the July 1991 Charter, recognized the fact that "nations, nationalities, and peoples" in Ethiopia have the right to self-determination including independence (July Charter, Art. 2). The preamble of the charter mentioned "the end of an era of subjugation and oppression". But, time proved that it was actually the beginning of subjugation and oppression under ethnic Tigrean hegemony. The TPLF, operating under the cover of surrogate parties, quickly consolidated its exclusive control over the transitional government at all levels. In the name of assisting democratisation, traditional patrons of the Ethiopian empire pumped billions of dollars into the coffer of the TPLF regime. During the first three years, the regime obtained US$2.3 billion from the Paris Club (G 7) countries. The World Bank and IMF sponsored funds to undertake a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) which, in its first phase, focused on macroeconomic stabilization and stimulation of private sector development.

International assistance obtained during that period to undertake legal and institutional reform was in fact nothing less than assistance to the TPLF to consolidate its power by dismantling Amhara-centric state apparatus and replacing it by Tigrean controlled institutions. Today, there is no public institution -- the military, judiciary, civil service and regulatory agencies -- outside the control of the TPLF and its surrogates. Military assistance is among major programs sponsored by the US for the TPLF regime. The program helped to transform TPLF militia into a "professional" army.

Judicial independence is declared on paper; but it does not have a functional existence. The judiciary is simply an appendage of the ruling party that exercises exclusive control over its budget to manipulate the administration of courts. The appointment, training, promotion, transfer, discipline, and tenure of judges and prosecutors are subject to heavy-handed manipulation by the regime to subvert the legal system to serve the political and economic interests of those in power. There is no safeguard against arbitrary decisions by government officials. In effect, the regime has absolute power to pass any legislation, to enforce or ignore any of its laws with impunity. For instances, according to reports by private newspapers, in 1995 the regime purged several judges who tried to assert judicial independence by resisting political pressure. The most recent victims include five Oromia Supreme Court judges, including its president as reported in March 2000 (07/08/92 Ethiopian calendar) by a private newspaper called "Seyfanabalbal". The usual false government alibi for dismissals is corruption, incompetence or abuse of authority. A former president of the Oromia state, Mr. Hassen Ali Ibrahim, has this to say in his asylum request written on December 7, 1998 to the US Justice Department:

"I opposed the human rights abuses committed by the Federal Government soldiers and secret service men in Oromia. Although Oromia is autonomous in name, the government soldiers and secret service agents have total power to do whatever they want to do in Oromia. They imprison, torture, or kill anyone ... without due process of law. For example, my own nephew, Abdalla Adam Ibrahim, was accused of supporting the OLF and has been for the past three years at Ginir secret detention in Bale zone (south-east Oromia).... Despite having been President, and now Vice President of Oromia and a Central Committee member of the ruling party, I have not been able to bring my nephew's case before court of law. This is because the Federal Government soldiers, more appropriately the TPLF soldiers, are in practice above law in Oromia".

In recognition of the role of civic societies to consolidate a democratisation process, international funds are made available to the TPLF regime for the purpose of promoting the grass-roots democratic institutions. However, mass organizations set up by the regime and penetrated by its loyal members to manipulate the populace are presented to the international donors as civic societies. It is common knowledge that the Relief Society of Tigray (REST) was used by the international donors to channel resources to the TPLF since the 1980s. It now enjoys increased funding by international NGO and governmental aid-organizations. Another NGO, the Tigray Development Association, was formed to supplement the activities of REST by tapping the economic resources of the Tigray diaspora for development activities within Tigray. While NGOs affiliated with the TPLF regime are encouraged and supported by the regime, indigenous NGOs not loyal to the TPLF regime are harassed, intimidated, and prosecuted under false charges. For instance, the Oromo Relief Association was falsely accused and shutdown. Prominent leaders of the Mecha and Tulama Self-help Association and the Human Rights League are incarcerated and are being prosecuted on false charges.

Funds generated from bilateral and multilateral international sources were used to consolidate the TPLF home base under a plan known as the Emergency Reconstruction and Rehabilitation of Tigray. Billions of dollars raised from the international community through loans and aid grants for the whole country have been diverted to develop Tigray in the last nine years, while other areas are deliberately neglected. An impressive number of schools, colleges, highways, airports, factories, telecommunication networks and introduction of computers into schools, and electrification of towns and districts are some of the development projects carried out in Tigray. Meanwhile, Oromia and other areas are suffering from famine, AIDS epidemics, abject poverty and social stagnation. The regime tries to cover up this naked reality by touting an achievement of over 5% rate of economic growth. The fact is that the majority of the population has not benefited from the claimed growth.

Privatization of public enterprises was supposed to stimulate private sector development as one of the primary objectives of the first phase of SAP. Through manipulations of bidding processes, control of bank credit facilities, corruptions, and related methods, non-Tigrean investors were denied the opportunity to benefit from the program. Parallel to privatization and ownership diversification of public enterprises, there emerged a huge conglomerate of enterprises owned by the TPLF through its prominent members and supporters fronting as shareholders. They are now interlinked with the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT), which was formed in 1995 with an envisaged total investment of 2.7 billion birr. TPLF companies formed earlier include: MEGA Communication, SUN Construction, and GUNA Trading. According to one study:

"... [By] the end of 1996 most of the companies set up by TPLF prior to the formation of EFFORT had been restructured with EFFORT taking over most of the shares previously held by the TPLF-frontpersons. Some other companies controlled by the TPLF through EFFORT became minor shareholders and a few shares went to high-ranking TPLF members (who are also sitting on the Board of Directors of EFFORT) who became Chairpersons of the Board of Directors of these restructured companies. ..."

The point is that structural adjustment program is effectively used to consolidate Tigray oligarchy which now dominates the entire political life and all economic sectors of the country.

The idea of Ethiopia as a Christian outpost has revived under a new doctrine of stopping the spread of Muslim fundamentalism. Ethiopia under the TPLF regime is accepted as pivotal state partner of the US and its allies, despite well documented, systematic egregious violations of human rights by the regime. In a study sponsored by the USAID-Ethiopia in May 1993 to assist preparation of TPLF's constitution for Ethiopia, Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington advised the regime that "a dominant party democratic system" "might be possible and would be desirable" to maintain the regime in power. A reminder included in the Machiavellian advice by the professor was that "constitutions and the institutions they create do make difference. They have a decisive influence on the allocation of power and resources, who gets what, when and how." What the advice did not mention is that respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms is an internationally recognized duty of a government.  Evidently, what USAID does in Ethiopia directly serves US foreign policy goal. The Agency's budget for this FY is about US$50 million, out of which about US$2 million is to assist TPLF democratization effort. It should be mentioned that, according to USAID sources, Harvard Institute (sic) of International Development is a contractor for the project implementation.

According to Article 1 of the two UN Covenants on human rights: "All peoples have the right of self-determination". The UN Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria, in 1993 declared: "All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and inter-related. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing and with the same emphasis."

Enjoyment of individual human rights presupposes the realization of self-determination, which is the synthesis of individual human rights. While the right of their people is violated, individuals cannot be really free to exercise their basic rights and freedoms. Under the circumstance, denial of the right of self-determination becomes the root-cause of violations of rights of individual members of the society.  Those who have responsibility under International Bill of Rights to "strive for protection and observance" of human rights violate their international duty when they maintain a client relationship with the repressive Ethiopian regime at the expense of the Oromo and other oppressed peoples. There is currently an international trend to define a precise scope of the legal and moral responsibility arising out of such violations. 

Some characteristic features of TPLF regime's domination are:

• Tigrean domination of the Ethiopian empire state through a surrogate party, the EPRDF;
• systematic grave violations of individual human rights to maintain the regime in power;
• aggressive use of state power to dominate the economic life of the country for the benefit of the dominant ethnic group;
• partisan control of military and security forces and other state apparatus;
• forcible denial of the right of self-determination of peoples;
• duplicity to achieve international legitimacy and support.

From the foregoing brief review of forms of domination employed by successive Ethiopian regimes, the following common characteristics can be observed:

• autocratic form of government in which a narrow circle of Abyssinians control state power to exercise domination;
• dependence on violent use of state power to suppress democratic change and to deny the right of self-determination of oppressed peoples;
• fear of people-based sustainable development as a threat to autocratic political power;
• heavy dependence on external assistance.

Suggestion for resolution of the situation in Ethiopia

The TPLF regime has compounded the problem of the Ethiopian empire by three main factors:

• polarization of the core-state of Abyssinia along Tigray-Amhara ethnic divide;
• exploitation of the question of "nations, nationalities and peoples" to promote its own narrow ethnic interest in reckless disregard for genuine resolution of the problem;
• aggravation of natural and man-made disaster due to its irresponsible and tyrannical rule.

To remedy the situation:

• create an alliance between political representatives of the peoples of the north and south around a minimum program whose primary objective would be to terminate tyranny;
• create a transitional mechanism to provide a political climate of mutual trust for genuine resolution of the issue of right of self-determination and other pressing problems;
• initiate and conduct during the transition a constitution drafting and adoption process that could reflect freely expressed will of every people through fair and free elections;
• provide adequate international input to support the peacemaking process, to guarantee compliance with agreements, to provide technical and material assistance for a successful transition to lasting peace and stability.

References

1. Asmarom Legesse, Oromo Democracy: An Indigenous African Political System (2000).
2. Gadaa Malbaa, Oromia (1988).
3. John Sorenson, Imagining Ethiopia: Struggles for History and Identity in the Horn of Africa (1993).
4. Borg G. Steffenson and Ronald K. Starrett (eds), Documentary Publications: Documents on Ethiopian Politics 1910 - 1929 Vol. I The Decline of Menelik II (1976). Vol. II Consolidation of Haile Selassie's Power (1977).

(NOTE: The author presented this paper at a forum held at Harvard University Center for International Development (CID) of the J.F. Kennedy School of Government on November 21, 2000)

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