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| ISBN-13: | 9780870138928 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2012 |
| Series: | African Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 371 KB |
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The Emperor's Clothes
A Personal Viewpoint on Politics and Administration in the Imperial Ethiopian Government, 1941-1974
By Gaitachew Bekele
Michigan State University Press
Copyright © 1993 Gaitachew BekeleAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87013-892-8
CHAPTER 1
Family Background
My grandfather Zewdu was born in 1863 in Bulga/Tedla-Mariam. His father, Wolde-Hawaryat, was a native of that area, a middle class farmer married to the daughter of a prominent highland (Terra) family of the soldier-farmer class. Zewdu and his younger brother Wolde-Selassie were their children. As a young boy, Zewdu did not show much interest in the farming activities in which his family was engaged. He was not keen to go out into the field with the other boys to tend the livestock. On the occasions when he did, he usually lured the other boys away to play games and the livestock ran astray. The only interest he showed was following his father when he went on trips or to public meetings, local courts or other errands. He liked to sneak away to the nearby river to swim; he was an excellent swimmer as well as a good horseman.
These tendencies of their older son made the parents worry about his future. They wanted to discuss their concern about Zewdu with a close relative in government circles who would be able to advise them on what measures to take. They realized it was important that he should be directed early in life so that his natural abilities could be encouraged and developed. The man Zewdu's parents had in mind to help them solve the problem was his uncle Aladeneh, the elder brother of Zewdu's mother. Aladeneh had grown up in the court of Menilek and had become his personal treasurer at the time he was King of Shewa. Aladeneh was delighted to help his sister and brother-in-law by taking his ten-year-old nephew to Court as a page boy. However, after Aladeneh had brought his nephew to Court and arranged for him to be attached to the Court institution which had been his own alma mater, Aladeneh resigned from the service of the Imperial Court in a dramatic manner that made a lasting impression on his nephew of how justice could prevail over even the power of the emperor.
Aladeneh had been one of the young retainers who had accompanied Menilek when he was taken prisoner by Tewdros to Meqedela. Later, when Menilek became King of Shewa and Aladeneh his treasurer, the King one day sent a page boy to Aladeneh. The page boy was to ask Aladeneh for a certain item from the treasury which Menilek wished to present to somebody. When the messenger did not find Aladeneh at the treasury, he picked up a similar article and ran back to the palace with it thinking that he understood what the emperor wanted.
The article he had been brought was not the one Menilek wanted. Assuming that it was Aladeneh who had made the silly mistake, he sent for him; and as soon as he saw Aladeneh approaching, he flew into a rage. Without waiting for an explanation, Menilek tried to strike Aladeneh with his fist. Aladeneh remained calm and asked Menilek for an explanation of his behavior. The king abused him, saying how foolish he had been to send him an item for which he had not asked. Realizing that he was being unjustly accused, Aladeneh in turn became furious and rounded on the king, asking him:
Is this the way a king is expected to use his God-given authority and power, abusing it as an instrument to the dictates of his emotions instead of using it to administer justice? Such a king does not deserve my service. From this moment I have resigned my position in the service of the king and I also curse my children if they should enter the service of this king.
He left the palace, never to return.
Menilek, realizing too late that he had blundered, confided to two of his officials what had happened between him and Aladeneh. He sent them to the house of Aladeneh to beg his pardon and to offer compensation for the wrong. The two officials found Aladeneh at his house and told him the king was contrite, offering him compensation for the moral wrong he had suffered and urging him to forgive the king. Aladeneh obliged the two officials by giving them his solemn word of honor that he would not bear any grudge against Menilek, saying that he had already forgiven him for losing control of his emotions. He added, however, that he had sworn an oath never to return to the Court: "Even my children I have cursed them if they enter the service of the King." Menilek compensated Aladeneh by granting him one gasha of land in Bishoftu near Qajima Georgis and Aladeneh never again set foot in the palace.
My grandfather would sometimes recount the story and, when he had finished telling it, would declare that Menilek had been a great and God-fearing leader; genuinely kind, free from pretension suspicion, and intrigue with his main preoccupation being the welfare of his people, the proper administration of justice, and the development of his empire.
So it was that Zewdu was formally admitted into and grew up in one of the Imperial Court institutions, known as Yenjera-Assalafiwotch Denb, an order which literally means "The Food Waiters' Establishment," but which was a court and military unit comparable with the Catering Corps of a modern army. Joining such an Imperial Court institution did not automatically entitle a young person to paid employment but offered an opportunity to train on the job, opening avenues for further advancement, while at the same time providing subsistence at the table of the Imperial Court. Such a system maintained the continuity of family ties by encouraging the young person to continue to look to his family for economic assistance. However, it was not an easy system for an independent-minded and resourceful young person to accept if he wished to establish a household of his own. It was a spur to devising a way of becoming self-sufficient.
Zewdu would go back to Bulga to visit his parents for two or three months every year to exchange experiences and to remind his parents of their obligations toward their son. They gave Zewdu a half-gasha of land (20 hectares) in Minjar, on the plateau. He started developing and built a house for a relative who would stay there and continue with the development. Zewdu's parents also arranged for him to marry Woletehana, the only child of a farming family in Shenkora/Bocan, also on the plateau. Since Bulga was crowded and the subdivision of individual holdings of land between children made farming uneconomical, the strategy to overcome the problem was either to buy land on the plateau or to develop marriage ties with the neighboring highland families.
In the meantime, war on the northern frontier of the empire against the invading colonial force of Italy became imminent and Zewdu was called to arms. He was ordered to join his unit to march to the front at Adwa. His young wife Woletehana was pregnant with their first child. As Zewdu was preparing to leave, Woletehana insisted that she accompany her husband to the battle-front and share his fate. Nothing could make her change her mind. She was so determined that she said she must accompany him as his wife or he could go alone after divorcing her. So Zewdu divorced the mother-to-be of his only child and left for the front.
Four months after the divorce in 1896, Woletehana who was living with her parents in Shenkora/Bocan, gave birth to a baby boy whom she named Bekele Zewdu, which means Zewdu reborn. Because of the victory of Adwa, 1896 was a year of great significance in Ethiopian history but in the life of Bekele it also reminded him of two other events, his birth and the divorce of his parents.
Zewdu survived the battle of Adwa and returned to Addis Ababa. He went straight to Shenkora/Bocan, to see his son Bekele. Although he was welcomed with great emotion and rejoicing by Woletehana, she was adamant regarding their divorce, so Bekele was brought up by his mother until he was four and then went to his father at Addis Ababa and from there to Wollamo where he grew up, married and lived until the Italian invasion in 1936. Bekele was the only child of Zewdu, who had no issue from his subsequent marriage, but Woletehana remarried and gave Bekele two half brothers, Teshome and Lema Tekaligni.
Zewdu built his residence in Addis Ababa at Arat-Killo close to the Imperial Palace on the plot allocated to him by his unit. This was expropriated in 1931 for a historically worthy cause. The first Ethiopian parliament building at Arat-Killo stands on the exact spot where Zewdu and his son Bekele built their residence in Addis Ababa.
Soon after his return from Adwa the government felt the need for administrative reform and reorganization of the central institution known as Mehal-Sefari, hence Zewdu's unit was allocated Gebar in Wolayta. gebar was a system by which, instead of the government collecting tax from its subjects and paying salaries to its servants, the servants would be allocated a group of subjects from whom they would collect tax on their own behalf for their personal use. Zewdu was promoted to the rank of Basha and put in charge of one of the three units of the Yenjera Assalafiwotch Denb. As the head of his unit he went to Wolayta to take up residence among his gebars and he took along with him his son Bekele.
As this arrangement was going to affect the working schedule of the institution regarding the service at the palace as a whole, it called for a complete reorganization that took into account the physical distance between Addis Ababa and Wolayta, the available means of transportation, the time requirement for the new settlers to manage the development activities as well as the official responsibilities of enforcing law and order in their area and then the duty in Addis Ababa. This was achieved by arranging for the three units of the organization to take turns for duty in Addis Ababa which meant that the officers and men of one unit would be in Addis Ababa for four months of the year and for the remaining eight months would be devoted to meeting their economic and cultural needs and to overseeing law and order in their area. This arrangement was referred to as Wor-Tera, which means monthly turn.
The new settlers were referred to as Denbegnotch, which translates as customers or regulars, among the Wolayta people. The Denbegnotch, with their Christian culture, in time earned for themselves respect and a good name in the administration of justice and the fair treatment of their gebars. This should not be surprising when we consider the fact that they had been brought up under the strict discipline of the Imperial Court system where justice and honesty were the cardinal virtues, along with the ability to fill a position of leadership. It has been said that the need for this quality of leadership was recognized and insisted upon during Menilek's regime. The relationship between the gebar holders and he gebar having been well-defined as a rule, there was very little room for friction as the former mainly depended on the latter for revenue. The consent of the gebars to be ruled depended on the reciprocity of protection and reasonableness on the part of the gebar holders in their exercise of authority.
By keeping groups small, the gebar system was structured to resolve a social and political problem of the time so as to bring the parties concerned closer and afford them direct communications for understanding the circumstances of each other while allowing individual needs to be met easily and to promote unity between the two communities. The system which replaced it, inherited from the Italians, failed to take into consideration the local aspect of the problem; therfore, there was no mutual interest to draw the parties closer, the taxpayer and the collector had no chance to cultivate a friendly relationship and remained strangers which encouraged corruption and oppression.
The unfounded criticism of Menilek's rule and the condemnation of the gebar system as feudal are based on the superficial impression received by European observers who generally ignored local aspects in their analysis and failed to perceive anything but stagnancy and backwardness. They found it difficult to believe in the existence of a unique sociopolitical dynamism and in the political fluidity which characterized the long course of Ethiopian political history. The most damaging and humiliating aspect of the matter was its acceptance by our leaders and the educated generation without questioning its validity, which revealed their confusion and bankruptcy. If the sociopolitical system had not been flexible and pragmatic, how could the nation have been able to stand the test of external threats and internal fragmentation? Unfortunately, today we are witnessing this very situation take place only five decades after Ethiopia surrendered to alien values.
As evidenced by later developments, the relationship that developed between the gebar holders and the gebar in Wolayta was genuinely harmonious and based on mutual respect and interest. For example, during the Italian invasion the propaganda used to incite former gebars to take revenge against former gebar holders failed completely; there was hardly an incident worth mentioning of any attempted retaliation. Even a show of disrespect for the former gebar holders was absent. My grandfather Zewdu, who had retired a few years earlier and was living among his gebars, continued living there throughout the occupation without experiencing any change of attitude on the part of the Wolayta community. His servants remained in his service voluntarily until he left Wolayta to go to Shewa in 1950 because of old age. He needed the close attention of his son who was at that time a provincial judge at Wollisso. Zewdu passed away in 1953 at the age of 90.
Even though his parents had divorced, Bekele grew up in a big household in Wolayta. Zewdu's house was full of children. Some came from the Wolayta family, or were Zewdu's or Bekele's godchildren. The servants' children were also there. The big household, which was considered essential as a status symbol for a government official, provided the right atmosphere for Bekele to be brought up in Ethiopian culture. The child was immersed in the crowd and participated in household activities just like the rest without any special consideration for being the son of the master. He was expected to serve at table, to collect forage and to look after mount animals, to follow the master when he was traveling and to attend to visitors, which gave him the opportunity to engage in conversation, to cultivate friendships with interesting personalities, and to attract attention.
The only special attention the master's son received was to be sent to school while the children of the servants remained on household duties. Other than that, they all ate from the same mesob, table, slept on the same earthen floor and dressed in the same cotton cloth. When the servants got married, they established a household on land provided by the master and worked there to support their families. Their children took the place of their parents in the household of the master. On the other hand, the children of the master were free to follow in the footsteps of their father or to find another profession, to attach themselves to the household of Mekuanent [nobility or government officials] or to the Imperial Court, to take up farming, to join the clergy, or to establish themselves in commerce.
Bekele went to church school at Zaba-Selassie and every year he followed his father to Addis Ababa where he was exposed to the workings of the Imperial Court institutions and was able to familiarize himself with the Court environment including the profession of his father. After school while in Wolayta, he accompanied his father to the open courts, to public meetings, and on inspection tours of the area. He also served as secretary to keep records of the court proceedings or accounts of the income of the gebar. At the age of 25 he married Assegedetch Biru, who was 12 years his junior. Assegedetch went to Wolayta with her mother Yimegnushal Ayele at the age of six and, like Bekele, grew up there in the household of her stepfather Aberilet. Yimegnushal had married Aberilet after divorcing her first husband, Biru Asferatchew, the father of Assegedetch. She took with her the second youngest of her six children. The last born, Mulugeta, was a male and his father Biru would not part with him. Both Biru and Yimegnushal were from Qinbebit, which is about 120 kilometers northeast of Addis Ababa in the direction of Debre-Birahn. The grandparents of both Biru and Yimegnushal originally came from Menz.
Normally the marriage between Assegedetch and Bekele would not have taken place because Assegedetch's father Biru was so conceited of his lineage that he would not have allowed his daughter to marry a commoner. But it did because her mother went to Wolayta with her second husband taking Assegedetch with her. They lived there among a liberal-minded community and my grandmother was a very kind person, very different from her former husband (my grandfather Biru). When Bekele asked for the hand of her daughter, Yimegnushal did not bother about his lineage; she was satisfied that he was a good match for Assegedetch in all respects. He was a handsome young man and his social status in the community was high, so she agreed to the marriage. When Biru was told of the marriage, he fumed and almost disowned his daughter. For quite a long time he refused to recognize the marriage and would not accept Bekele as his son-in-law. Eventually he acknowledged the marriage after Assegedetch had borne five children.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Emperor's Clothes by Gaitachew Bekele. Copyright © 1993 Gaitachew Bekele. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Page,
Introduction,
Chapter 1 - Family Background,
Chapter 2 - Italian Invasion (1936-1941),
Chapter 3 - Studies,
Chapter 4 - Early Career,
Chapter 5 - Department of Marine, Addis Ababa (March 1954-1957),
Chapter 6 - Assistant Minister (November 1957 - December 1960),
Chapter 7 - Attempted Coup D'Etat,
Chapter 8 - Governor of Bahr-Dar,
Chapter 9 - Ambassador (1963-1969),
Chapter 10 - Ministry of Posts, Telecommunication, and Transport,
Chapter 11 - Cabinet Resigns (February 1974),
Chapter 12 - Epilogue,