I was asked by the editor of a magazine to say something apolitical about the battle of Adwa. I wrote the following article which the magazine later declined to publish it. Excerpts:
Gentlemen,
I have pondered over Adwa and my mind fluctuates with its changing tides. Now I consent, now I deny, I approve and once more I disapprove. To disagree with the champion of my projection, I do not care. Agree with it, I may not be comforted, for I cannot fixate by nature. It is by fluctuation in to the endless nature of things that one reaches at the root of the truth.
Many [though limited] researches discussed the significance of Adwa from different vantage points – historians, political scientists, military strategists etcetera, documented a lot on the magnanimity of the battle. In fact, Adwa was Africa’s political victory in the age of empire that deterred the expansion of the west against the rest, breeding many panism movements, from Africa and Latin America to Asia. It is a victory of Africanness over a totalizing colossal force built around the Cartesian ‘I’, a successful repulsion of its attempt to impose civilizationmasked-barbarism, if you like.
On the other hand, the ontology of Adwa embeds a tragic political culture of power contest antithetical to the will of the commoners (the Ethiopian and Eritrean farmers who are to date a soldier at the same time), and a greed of unimaginable magnitude common amongst contestants of power peculiar to pre-Adwa to date, save the current regime (whether Dr. Abiy’s promises are empirical or not needs time-taste). What was so fundamental in Adwa other than its military implication that ushered in a sole and independent black political entity that shaped ‘Westphalian Ethiopia’? (Ethiopia as a state predates the treaty of Westphalia).
In other words, why the European modern army was defeated by the Spartan-styled African spear men and women? This small synopsis asserts that Adwa was a compact philosophical self-being (Africannes) that accidentally surprised its philosophical counter establishment, on the one hand, and urges for further investigation into the unimaginable ego of the pre and post Adwa ontology of power-contest that made the battle incomplete, on the other hand. Adwa, therefore, was a world view, a moral domain that shaped black metaphysics, I could argue.
Its ontological shape conceived in its epistemological clarity makes its victory immanent not by the number of sophisticated arsenals plus neoNapoleonic militarism, but through a clear and imminent conception of the self, a self-ensuring self!!! That should also be understood against its unmaking, the tragic betrayal of the other self which denied the hope of millions. Gentlemen, I would like to argue briefly that Adwa should be declared as world heritage, as a matter of facts of selfless sacrifices offered by thousands of unknown farmer-soldiers. Its basic reality should also deserve the legacies of intricate and tragic denials and counter-denials of freedom by various forms of power contenders, on the other hand.
Adwa is compact yet incomplete, I believe, and as such requires multidisciplinary treatment to unearth what it really was as it happened. As much as the victory makes one pride, its war management was shameful that lead to the distorted establishment of the geopolitics of the horn states. What is more, a skewed understanding informed by a single story that deliberately ignores the other side is bad. It has been informing post-Adwa statesmen and policy makers. It is yet a pending problem that is shaping the geopolitics of the region. Adwanization of the horn is important for the future United States of the Horn.
How, complete the narratives by telling the truth that ADWA WAS COMPACT YET INCOMPLET. Gentlemen, I claimed to affirm and negate; posit and opposite. God’s will, I will try to deliver the composite some other day. But pardon me. These are the criticisms for which, to my mind, the subject calls.
I leave it to you to pick out any that may seem to you to have merit. If you take my part, it will be easy to uphold, and not to bear me ill will in future for having in a few points contradicting myself. If you uphold not, I yield, and own myself vanquished, the more eagerly from anxiety not to be overcome but to learn. I send you greetings!!! The unknown writer!!!
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition May 26/2019
BY DEJENE SAKUME
