I have a hunch; at present globally there are more ‘experts’ on Ethiopia than on any other country. How about that! And you couldn’t help yourself but give them the credit for their high-caliber credibility. Yes, maybe they are in the wrong profession of being political experts on Ethiopia. They should be writing novels! And we are craving for the Anna Karenina’s and the ‘Fir Eseke Mekabers’ of this century. If you have been musing as to where all the novelists have gone that is the answer. With the level of highly ‘creative’ political commentary God must have sent them as authors and nothing else. Just as hindsight don’t pressure your minds to know everything about Ethiopia and Ethiopians; we too are yet learning new information as we dig deeper and deeper into the history archives.
By the way, I considered myself a fairly consistent follower of current affairs. Every day I wound up my day with a few minutes of news on each of the major TV stations. And I’ve to admit, after seeing and hearing about all that’s being said about my own country, I must have been duped many times into taking fictions for facts, despite all the literature we read about media politics. After following about all those bizarre, deliberately one-sided (and at times outright racist) ‘news and’ opinions about my own country, about things I am in the midst of I have tamed myself into taking everything they say with a grain of salt.
“God and history will remember your judgment” that was what Emperor Haileselassie told the League of Nations in Geneva when Mussolini’s planes were raining poison gas on Ethiopians. His country being a founding member of the organization the emperor thought truth will have its day. “It is us today. It will be you tomorrow,” he warned them. The rest is history.
Look, even if you brush aside the gold digging individuals the politically tainted statements of some supposedly nonpartisan international bodies on the situation in Ethiopia is the manifestation of a world where truth is as the powerful want it to be. Of course we’ve been through it; I mean the backstabbing, the betrayals, the political shenanigans and the back room conspiracies. While the volume and the diversity of the so called comments and opinions force us to raise an eyebrow or two it’s not a completely new scenario; it is just the latest version.
“For Ethiopia, those who wanted to fight-African Americans, black British colonials and sympathetic whites –were barred from doing so.” Jeff Pierce writes in his ‘Prevail- the Inspiring Story if Ethiopia’s Victory Over Mussolini’s invasion 1935-1941 And after in the twentieth century we ask “Are pro-Ethiopia voices being stifled one way or another; like denying space and airtime especially in the Western media! But we’ve gone through it all. We have braved the rough waters on intrigue and deception by forces who want our demise. When groups which seldom see eye to eye start speaking similar atrocious lies about you and your nation, well, something is not right. So, given all the conspiracies that are being directed at us such suspicions are only natural follow-ups. The attempts to erase our history or slant it ways they think fulfills their interests is the stupidest of political mugging. There is this interesting clip ion the social media. Chief Judge Frank De Caprio asks a man accused of speeding. While hearing the case he sees a kid on side of the court.
“Who’s this other guy?”
“My other son.”
“What’s his name?”
“Menelik.”
This happened only a few weeks back. The judge summons the kid to his bench
“I’m gonna ask you two questions; ok?”
“Ok.”
“And you’re gonna say one or the other. Now we’re talking about your father. Now you’re gonna say “guilty” or “not guilty”
And the boy answers. “Guilty:”
Even after more than a century and more the Menelik sprit lives on.
In his introduction to the book ‘The Ethiopian Patriots’ by Andrew Hilton, the late Richard Pankhurst writes, “Ethiopia, an age-old state located in east Africa between the Red Sea and the Great African Rift valley had almost alone survived the European ‘Scramble for Africa.’” These days some of us guys on the streets feel exactly that; facing the forces of prejudice and evil alone. But twentieth century politics being a very strange world, we can’t help suspecting if there aren’t those forced to keep silent or else face repercussions. Repercussions for what? Of course, for talking the truth! The present scenario is of one side a long-suffering people to try to breathe the air of real peace and rid themselves out from poverty on one hand, and the forces of evil which are working them their right to exist on the other.
And when so-called experts and ‘all-knowing ‘commentators’ talk about our country being on the verge of breaking up into multiple pieces we can’t help hearing echoes of history; then also when a poorly armed but highly patriotic army routed white army for the very first time, a feat no one saw even in their craziest dreams, the victory was hard for many to swallow. “A poor, black largely barefooted army defeating the invincible whites? Get out of here!” They didn’t have the courage or the intention to acknowledge the victory. They couldn’t deny it as it happened with the world watching. So they have to cook up some ‘plausible’ reason for the routing of the invaders; denying Ethiopians are black. Raymond Jonas writes that the Atlanta Constitution asserts the Ethiopians were, ‘“of Phoenician origin” that is to say, not black at all.’ According to the author another paper, the New York World, ‘flatly stated that “the majority of the inhabitants of Abyssinia are of Caucasian race.”
A panelist in a roundtable discussion of Ethiopian intellectuals in London sometime back says right after the victory an apartheid South African newspaper wrote something to the tune of that “Menelik has to be stooped.” A sentiment echoed by many European newspapers.
So, what’s unfolding all around us we can’t help but look back at what history had in store. Many believe that as the Adwa victory was a historical first which shattered the concept of white superiority and a matter of pride for the blacks everywhere it has also gotten us enmity which manifests itself in different ways. But believe me, sooner or later the storm would clear up, and truth will have its day in the sun.
Jonas’s ‘The Battle of Adwa’ ends with this historic affirmation, “The signal moment for our times, the event that reopened previously settled questions for a new century, occurred not in 1905 or even in 1898. It took place in 1986 at a place called Adwa.”
We’ll prevail!
Ephrem Endale Contributer
The Ethiopian Herald May 16/2021