It was 128 years ago, on 23 July 1892, His Majesty Haile Selassie was born in the village of Ejersa Goro, in the Harar province of Ethiopia. Haile Selassie’s royal line (through his father’s mother) descended from the Shewan Amhara Solomonic King, Sahle Selassie. His mother was Woizero Yeshimebet Ali Abba Jifar, daughter of a ruling chief from Worre-ilu in Wollo province, Dejazmach Ali Abba Jifar.
His maternal grandmother was of Gurage heritage. Tafari’s father was Ras Makonnen Wolde Mikael, the grandson of King Sahle Selassie and governor of Harar. Ras Makonnen served as a general in the First Italo Ethiopian War, playing a key role at the Battle of Adwa; HaileSelassie was thus able to ascend to the imperial throne through his paternal grandmother, Woizero Tenagnework Sahle Selassie, who was an aunt of Emperor Menelik II and daughter of the Solomonic Amhara King of Shewa, Negus Sahle Selassie. As such, Haile Selassie claimed direct descent from Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, and King Solomon of ancient Israel.
On 3 August, he married Menen Asfaw of Ambassel, niece of the heir to the throne Lij Iyasu.
In 1924, Ras Tafari toured Europe and the Middle East visiting Jerusalem, Alexandria, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Stockholm, London, Geneva, and Athens. In Paris, Tafari was to find out from the French Foreign Ministry (Quai d’Orsay) that this goal would not be realized.
However, failing this, he and his retinue inspected schools, hospitals, factories, and churches. Although patterning many reforms after European models, Tafari remained wary of European pressure. To guard against economic imperialism, Tafari required that all enterprises have at least partial local ownership.
Of his modernization campaign, he remarked, “We need European progress only because we are surrounded by it. That is at once a benefit and a misfortune.”
In this period, the Crown Prince visited the Armenian monastery of Jerusalem. There, he adopted 40 Armenian orphans (forty children) who had lost their parents in Ottoman massacres. Tafari arranged for the musical education of the youths, and they came to form the imperial brass band.
Tafari’s authority was challenged in 1928 when Dejazmach Balcha Safowent to Addis Ababa with a sizeable armed force. When Tafari consolidated his hold over the provinces, many of Menelik’s appointees refused to abide by the new regulations. Balcha Safo, the governor (Shum) of coffee-rich Sidamo Province, was particularly troublesome.
Popular support, as well as the support of the police, remained withTafari. Ultimately, the Empress relented and, on 7 October 1928, she crowned Tafari as Negus (Amharic: “King”).
With the passing of Zewditu, Tafari himself rose to emperor and was proclaimed Neguse Negest ze-’Ityopp’ya, “King of Kings of Ethiopia”.
He was crowned on 2 November 1930, at Addis Ababa’s Cathedral of St.George. The coronation was by all accounts “a most splendid affair”; and it was attended by royals and dignitaries from all over the world.
On 16 July 1931, Haile Selassie introduced Ethiopia’s first written constitution providing for a bicameral legislature. The constitution kept power in the hands of the nobility, but it did establish democratic standards among the nobility, envisaging a transition to democratic rule: it would prevail “until the people are in a position to elect themselves.”
The constitution limited the succession to the throne to the descendants of Haile Selassie, a point that met with the disapprobation of other dynastic princes, including the princes of Tigrai and even the emperor’s loyal cousin, Ras Kassa Haile Darge.
Haile Selassie spent his exile years (193641) in Bath, England, in Fairfield House, which he bought. The emperor and Kassa Haile Dargetook morning walks together behind the high walls of the 14-room Victorian house. Haile Selassie’s favorite reading was “diplomatic history.” But most of his serious hours were occupied with the90,000-word story of his life that he was laboriously writing in Amharic.
During the celebrations of his Silver Jubilee in November 1955, HaileSelassie introduced a revised constitution, whereby he retained effective power, while extending political participation to the people by allowing the lower house of parliament to become an elected body.
In 1963, Haile Selassie presided over the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the precursor of the continent-wide African Union (AU). The new organization would establish its headquarters in Addis Ababa. In May of that year, Haile Selassie was elected as the OAU’s first official chairperson, a rotating seat. Along with Modibo Keïta of Mali, the Ethiopian leader would later help successfully negotiate the Bamako Accords, which brought an end to the border conflict between
Morocco and Algeria. In 1964, Haile Selassie would initiate the concept of the United States of Africa, a proposition later taken up by Muammar Gaddafi.
On 25 November 1963, the emperor was among other heads of state, including France’s President Charles de Gaulle, who traveled to Washington, D.C., and attended the funeral of assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
The Derg, a committee of low-ranking military officers and enlisted men, set up in June to investigate the military’s demands, took advantage of the government’s disarray to depose the 82-year-old Selassie on 12 September. General Aman Mikael Andom, a Protestant of Eritrean origin, served briefly as provisional head of state pending the return of Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, who was then receiving medical treatment abroad.
Haile Selassie was placed under house arrest briefly at the 4th Army Division in Addis Ababa, while most of his family was detained at the late Duke of Harar’s residence in the north of the capital. The last months of the emperor’s life were spent in imprisonment, in the GrandPalace.
On 28 August 1975, the state media reported that Haile Selassie had died on27 August of “respiratory failure” following complications from aprostate examination followed up by a prostate operation.
The Ethiopian Herald July 25, 2020
BY ZELALEM GIRMA
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