The victory of Adwa and the universal ideals reflected therein—to which the victors showed an unflinching loyalty— are undying lessons to humanity. Some will, however, doubt whether the current generation, that asserts ownership of the victory, has really understood its proper meaning. By “universal ideals”, this writer would mean the unity of human cultures and languages as well as freedom, which are vital in the struggle for survival.
Human beings live in two worlds: the physical world, which is natural, and their own creation—the social world. In their struggle for survival, humanity has created the social world, which, of course, is a huge and highly complex institution that keeps embracing its experiences.
On September 1895, —11 years after the Berlin Conference, King of Kings Menelik II called for total mobilization for his campaign of Adwa. The swift response to his call showed the level of wisdom that Ethiopians of the period had reached in understanding their own creation, the social world. The codes that mobilized all communities to send their best men to Adwa were clear and succinct; “an enemy that imposes his alien belief or religion had pushed inland,” Menelik’s proclamation stated.
“Menelik II crafted his awaj (proclamation) carefully … in a way neutral, and appealed to both Muslims and Tewahedo Christians,” a paper presented on July 7, 2018 by Ethiopian professor of political science Paulos Milkians further supports this view. The idea that Ethiopians of the time was not undivided internally is, however, a myth.
Kings of Kings Yohannes IV designated heir, his nephew Ras Mengesha, and Menelik were rivals. Italy also attempted to manipulate both sides: While vowing to join forces with Ras Mengesha to fight Menelik who was ostensibly their common enemy, the Italian envoys were also negotiating with Menelik to put Ethiopia in their protectorate. But, both were to no avail. Other internal political crises and power competitions were also defining attributes of the time. This buoyed the confidence of the Italian command led by one of the “most exaggerated” war leaders after General Garibaldi, Major-General Oreste Baratieri.
It is certainly true to say that the generation had to choose between falling on their knees and watching, as their social and natural worlds destroyed, or standing on their feet, dying, to save and pass on their worlds to posterity. They chose the latter.
Western powers designed another project: to partition the continent, declaring that Africans must live under their rule to see “the light of Civilization and Christianity, not to mention Commerce.” The Berlin Conference of 1884-5, in which almost all major colonial powers were represented, legitimized their colonies in Africa, with only Ethiopia having maintained its independence, and slowed down competition among them—a further impetus to consolidate their colonies.
Most of the boundaries drawn at the time are the borders that exist today. 11 years later in Adwa, the people of that independent country checked the colonial edifice well, founded on a solid base in Berlin. If Berlin, therefore, can be said to symbolize the mixing ground of colonial concrete, Adwa was the tearing down of the edifice of colonial projects. Africans bled to defend themselves, from the battle of Intombe of Zulu (1879) in South Africa, to Samori Ture who resisted French colonialists in West Africa from early 1880 onward. But those were futile attempts. The unity of Ethiopians did not give way to internal skirmishes when a danger to their survival surfaced— a real danger that sought to destroy their social creations and to loot their natural world.
An eminent danger now is the societal division of the elite and the intellectuals, which seems to be deepening. The drum of reform may be sounding loud in the premises of Ethiopian politics. The social media landscape, however, seems to have sting some young people with venom of narrow-minded views and narrow nationalist sentiments.
Our ancestors confronted the real danger in unison. Their cultural or linguistic background was no barrier in their fight against the aggressor. To this writer’s understanding, the war equipment and strategy of all cultural and linguistic groups were well exploited at Adwa to defend their homeland—from cavalry to music and food preservation methods, to mention a few.
Looking at the ancestors’ understanding through the lens of the philosophical concept of culture, one cannot fail to conclude that they must have perceived differences in cultural and linguistic issues as not only natural in humanity, but also saw the confluence of the tributaries of each and every society to form the great lake that enemies cannot sail on. Unless forefathers and foremothers understood that human beings are the architects of cities, markers of boundaries, creators of social networks, or developers of languages, which are suabject to changes due to social relations and natural factors, the victory would have been impossible, in the writer’s view.
In this modern time, when information and knowledge are accessible at a swipe of a finger; this generation has a huge responsibility to understand the threats and opportunities ahead. Cultural and linguistic boundaries are hard to demark, many scholars have argued. It is a logical consequence of life that people are mobile in nature.
Market force, intermarriage, war, and drought, or whatever else it may be, make humans move and exchange their culture, adopt, and adapt to people of different cultural or linguistic groups. It is also natural that people’s boundary consciousness may stir, as they feel the risk of losing cultural distinctiveness (Patterson 1977, and Gans 1979). Repairing and cultivating a culture at risk of extinction, or losing and working for cultural rights is certainly a healthy move. It can, however, not be left to one community alone.
Governments, civil society organizations, and the academia also have a huge responsibility in this regard. The bigger picture, though, is that of the very survival of a country and its people. Our ancestors handed down to us an independent country.
We must not risk losing that on the grounds of cultural and linguistic “differences”—when, in fact, Ethiopians share, among other things, similar religions, psychological makeup, dressing codes, methods of land cultivation, and cuisine.
The Ethiopian Herald March 1, 2019
BY WORKU BELACHEW
