No To Political Tutorship
An Abstract

(From A Paper Prepared for the International Conference On Ethiopia, Scope for Partnership, Justice, Peace and Development.)

02 - 04 August 2001
Centre for Civic Action and ECB,
London, United Kingdom

Author: Messay Kebede, Professor

Not long ago I read that Oromo students in Addis Ababa University, reflecting on the crisis of Ethiopian society, has come to the conclusion that what is best for the Oromo people is not "revolutionary democracy" but "real democracy." This perspicacious distinction contains the solution to all of Ethiopia's problems inasmuch as the main source of the Ethiopian predicament has been and still is the wanderings of its Western educated elite. Though Ethiopia has never been colonized, the fact remains that the introduction and the spread of Western education has generated a colonized mentality. Such mentality is characterized by a negative view of Ethiopian history and legacy, in line with the colonial discourse on Africa. A major dimension of the belief in a degrading past is the thought that modernization must be imposed on the peoples of Ethiopia. The thinking echoes the "civilizing mission" of colonialism, its consequence being the production of elitism, that is, the conviction that those few exposed to Western education should rule and fashion the society in accordance with the requirements of modernity. The society thus reduced to passivity becomes the victim of dictatorial rule in the name of modernization, socialism, ethnic equality, and what not. All these slogans speak of justice, equality, democracy, but in the framework of a dictatorial structure flowing from the elitist inspiration of the paradigm.

Let us have the courage to admit that modern education is the great failure of Ethiopia. All it succeeded in achieving is the elitist mentality, which feeds on the rise of groups convinced that they must bring civilization, justice, etc., to the people through forceful mobilization and political caging. Specifically, the uncritical adoption of the civilizing mission of colonialism has prevented the rise of true intellectuals. We so-called intellectuals have become not so much the critical analysts of our society as the spokespersons of established states, when we did not directly aspire to power. In so becoming, on top of giving ideological justification to political regimes, we have deprived our society of its critical awareness as well as of a creative approach to problems.

The ambition to fashion Ethiopia from above, which is, I repeat, the very ethos of a colonized mentality, first brought the divagations of socialism, then the torments of ethnic politics. The revolutionary mood that swept the country in the 60s and 70s was nourished by the iconoclastic view of Ethiopian legacy. It talked many Ethiopians into the belief that unless the country is put upside down, nothing good can be accomplished. One important source of this colonial view has been the integration of Eritrea: What else was behind the Eritrean secessionist drive but the endorsement of the colonial view of Ethiopia? Once Ethiopians and the Ethiopian state were assimilated to a backward society, membership in the Ethiopian community became intolerable. The systematic effort of some Oromo intellectuals to present the Ethiopian legacy as a colonial history so as to justify the secessionist drive partakes of the same disparagement of Ethiopian history. The Tigrean narrow ethnic chauvinism too is largely built on the stigmatization of Ethiopian legacy, especially on the idea of Tigray being the deliberate victim of Amhara ruling elite, as though the Amhara peasant had received a better treatment.

Today another stifling ideology is being made up before our eyes, to wit, "revolutionary democracy." That students scoffed at it is a sign of emancipation, all the more so when they add that what they desire is democracy without any qualification. Democracy without fuss wants people to be active in the making of their society, in the defense and promotion of their own rights. The defense of rights can no longer be delegated to a small elite who does the thinking for the people and who rules in the name of the people. Democracy without qualification is how peoples assume those rights instead of being granted to them from outside. They use them to defend their interests and well-being, including against those who claim to work for their empowerment because they have the same blood or speak the same language or profess the same religion. In a word, it demands an end to the tutelary state and parties in favor of the defense of the citizen with embedded individual, universal rights.

In no way does this democracy go against legitimate ethnic demands; rather, it signifies that they must be solved in the framework of the primacy of individual rights. Together with the inheritance of Ethiopian history and legacy, the defense of these rights makes us all Ethiopian, in addition to being Amhara, Oromo, Gurage, etc. If we cannot tell from where we come or reject our past, neither can we have a goal, a future. There is history when the future is established as a pursuit, a mission as a result of a heritage being passed on to living generations. Clearly, the denigration of Ethiopian history and legacy is but a conspiracy by which the elitist mentality strives to establish its right to think in the name of the people once it has beheaded it. The other name for this project of creating society anew is elite dictatorship, regardless of whether it brandishes socialist slogans, ethnic empowerment, secessionist goal, or revolutionary democracy.

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