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| The Emperor Haile Selassie arrested in 1974, escorted to a VW Bug |
A pivotal event in the Ethiopian Revolution was of course the arrest of Ethiopia's monarch, the Emperor Haile Selassie, in September of 1974. It must be acknowledged that this was a very long time ago, and the forty-two years that have followed have certainly left many Ethiopians weary of politics and struggle. The nostalgia for better, more peaceful and certain days seems to manifest itself — at least judging from the internet — as nostalgia for the Emperor himself. Everyone loves a legend: certainly Haile Selassie himself knew this, for he carefully cultivated his own legend as the freedom fighter against fascism, the founder of the Organization of African Unity, and the heir to the rich historical legacy of the centuries-old Ethiopian monarchy. Indeed in the West Indies he is even worshiped as a divinity. It's no surprise that this image of Haile Selassie is the one remembered by those looking to recall greatness in the Ethiopian, especially the Amhara, past. Seemingly forgotten in the horrors that followed were the horrors of his last years when he ordered guns turned on unarmed students and turned a blind eye to thousands dying in a famine while his pets dined richly on fresh meat.
Which is why these two slim volumes were a timely read, splashing cold water on the selective memory that holds Haile Selassie in glowing and soft-focused fond regard.
By Blair Thomson
Robson Books Limited (London), 1975 paperback, 160pp.
Blair Thomson was a BBC correspondent in Addis Ababa. He witnessed the revolutionary events of 1974 from his reporter’s perch, and was more or less forced to abandon his post in early 1975 by the military government. This book, long unavailable, seems to have been rushed into print to capitalize on unfolding events, probably the Emperor's death, and while it is riddled with careless production (so many typos!), it’s actually an exciting week-by-week account of that first revolutionary year as it happened. Thomson was not any kind of insider: his reportage and insights are the sort one would read in a good newspaper or magazine. He had access to government press conferences and seems to have been a sound reporter with certain connections, but this is not a behind-the-scenes exposé. Indeed some of the most interesting things here are the musings of the conventional wisdom of the time about the social forces involved.
“Had Haile Selassie been a man of unshakable integrity, he might have been able to keep the system free of graft. But he himself used either force, or more usually, bribery — in the form of cash, lands or positions — to get what he wanted, and many of the men around him took their cue from the top. Thus over the years vice and corruption in top places became the rule rather than the exception.” (pp. 20-21)
Thomson chronicles some of Haile Selassie's more egregious acts, like the time he sold some of his extensive financial holdings to the state and then continued to collect profits. He presents an aristocracy isolated and out of touch with an advancing society. The Emperor tries to make limited reforms, but only if there seems to be profit in them for himself. And so Thomson paints a picture of Haile Selassie's last year; watching the Emperor acquiesce to the gathering revolution, futilely making changes to government while trying surprisingly passively to preserve the ancien regime by pretending nothing was happening. Haile Selassie gradually loses all of his intangible moral or regal authority and is soon openly challenged and disrespected in public. In the aftermath of the February revolution, the military committee known as the Derg gradually seizes the reigns of government leading up to the coup of September 1974 and the violence of November 1974, the Emperor's presence seems to shrink.
Thomson doesn't really have time to investigate the revolutionaries. He notes student radicalization, the new confidence of the Ethiopian labor movement under CELU, the waves of leaflets and open debate in the press.
“The combined effect of the Yekatit Riots [February revolution] and the army pay mutinies gave the country's radicals an opportunity to take the initiative. It also opened the way, for the first tie since the 1960 coup attempt, for those deliberately created divisions in the aristocracy and military to come to the surface. And it forced the Emperor to appear at least to be giving up his almost god-like hold over the nation.” (p. 46)Interestingly, Thomson presumes that it is Chinese communists, not Soviets, who are behind the radicalization of the military by the end of 1974. And he (like the US embassy reported here before) calls Atnafu Abate, not Mengistu Hailemariam, the key leftist in the Derg: “...Major Atnafu was believed to be the real ‘brains’ behind the socialist — now increasingly Communist — programme.” (p.142)
It’s worth quoting from the almost hilarious promotional copy on the back cover of this paperback: “Here, revealed for the first time, are the incredible plots and counter-plots in the struggle for control of a country in the grip of a multi-sided tug of war between Peking, Moscow, Washington and the Arab world, and of a people so politically unsophisticated that their language has no word for ‘socialism’.” While long out of print, and despite this bit of condescending sensationalism, I'm really happy I tracked this book down.
By Ryszard Kapuscinski
Vintage International, 1989 paperback, (Original 1978/1983)
165pp.
Kapuscinski’s book is beautifully written. While the Polish journalist spent the tumultuous year of 1974 in Ethiopia, the book roughly covers the period from the abortive 1960 coup up until Haile Selassie’s arrest and deposition in September 1974. He intersperses his own experiences of life in Ethiopia with what one assumes are heavily embellished post-deposition interviews with former members of the royal staff, from courtiers and aristocrats to servants. These interviews drip with bitterness and sarcasm.
In stunning prose he weaves a picture of life at the court in Addis Ababa. It's a picture of a man in absolute control of his country who cannily if ruthlessly exercises all of his survival skills to remain in power and control amidst unimaginable luxury in one of the poorest countries of the world.
“It was a small dog, a Japanese breed. His name was Lulu. He was allowed to sleep in the Emperor's great bed. During various ceremonies, he would run away from the Emperor's lap and pee on dignitaries' shoes. The august gentlemen were not allowed to flinch or make the slightest gesture when they felt their feet getting wet. I had to walk among the dignitaries and wipe the urine from their shoes with a satin cloth. This was my job for ten years.” (p. 5)The Emperor turns out to have been a micromanager, personally engaged in decisions both great and small. One former Palace staffer describes how late in his reign, Haile Selassie replaced his staff with people with shorter memories and less experience:
“They had no past, had never taken part in conspiracies...indeed they didn't even know anything about conspiracies, and how were they going to find out about them if His Noble Majesty had forbidden the history of Ethiopia to be written?... They could not know...that in the face of Italian invasion he had sworn publicly to spill his blood for Ethiopia and then, when the invaders marched in, had gone by boat to England and spent the war in the quiet little town of Bath....” (p. 80)As with Blair Thomson’s book, the description here of the Emperor’s last year is riveting, and Kapuscinski successfully and vividly contextualizes the almost languorous decline inside the palace with the turmoil, upheaval and gunfire out in the streets.
The Emperor is still in print. Together these two books have provided a really extraordinary portrait of the world in which the revolution was happening.
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