[First of two parts]
On November 14, 1977, the official Ethiopian news agency announced that Lt. Col. Atnafu Abate had been subjected the day before to "a revolutionary measure"'—a euphemism for execution. He had been vice-chairman of the Provisional Military Administrative Council-known as the Dergue-and until then had been considered the most important figure in the junta after its chairman, It. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam.
The announcement charged that Atnafu had been guilty of "twelve specific antirevand "five specific olutionary crimes"
arch-reactionary stands." He was accused of displaying "feudal arrogance" and of consorting after working hours with aristocrats and capitalists, as well as with "extremely dangerous imperialist agentsespecially C.I.A. agents."
Given the extreme secretiveness of the Dergue, and its practice of labeling all its opponents as "counterrevolutionary," the real reasons for Atnafu's purge and execution may never be known. He will simply join the growing list of top military figures, such as Gen. Aman Michael Andom and Gen. Tafari Banti (the first two chairmen of the Dergue), who have been eliminated during the numerous power struggles within the junta.
These purges, and the accompanying bloodletting, are a powerful testimony to the completely undemocratic nature of the regime. In the absence of even the most elementary bourgeois democratic rights, political differences, personal rivalries, and so on, can only be resolved in such brutal ways.
To a certain extent, the instability within the Dergue is a reflection of the tremendous strains bearing down on it. The months immediately preceding Atnafu's death provided ample indications of the mounting opposition to the regime, especially in Eritrea and the Somalipopulated Ogaden, and its inability to bring the massive unrest under control. This has begun to undermine the morale of the Ethiopian troops, a particularly ominous development for a military regime.
When Somali nationalist forces advanced on the town of Jijiga in September, the troops of the Ethiopian Third Division put up little resistance, abandoning Jijiga and the strategic Gara-Marda Pass near it. According to a report in the November issue of the London Monthly Africa, " they made it clear to the government in Addis Ababa that they were not going to go on fighting." The troops reportedly presented a list of demands to the Dergue, including a call for the resignations of both Mengistu and Atnafu. The mutiny was put down within a few days and some of those involved in it were shot.
A month later, during a visit to the battlefronts in Eritrea, Atnafu was briefly detained by one garrison and told that Addis Ababa must immediately negotiate an end to the war there.
About the same time, opposition to the Dergue resurfaced in Addis Ababa itself. A series of demonstrations were staged in the capital, with demands being raised for the release of political prisoners and the establishment of a civilian regime. Lt. Gebevan Temesgen, one of the top fifteen members of the Dergue, was assassinated in November, as was Gutta Sernessh, a leading municipal official.
The Dergue responded with more reprisal killings against alleged supporters of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party, an underground group influenced by Maoist conceptions that is opposed to military rule. According to the December Africa, "Some Diplomatic sources said as many as 350 anti-government activists were killed in the first two weeks of October."
On November 12, just one day before Atnafu's execution, the Dergue announced a new process for controlling the population. Those deemed to be "trustworthy and genuine revolutionaries" would be issued identity cards. Everyone else would be subjected to further restrictions on their freedom of movement.
The Dergue is clearly a regime in crisis. No matter how much it claims to be "Marxist-Leninist," it has been unable to garner enough support to retain firm control over the urban masses of Addis Ababa and other cities or to prevent large sections of Ethiopia from being liberated by the oppressed nationalities fighting for their self-determination.
The Dergue's difficulties are partly the result of its repressive and procapitalist policies. But they are also a legacy inherited from the former regime of Emperor Haile Selassie. When the Dergue seized power in September 1974, significant social forces, including the urban working class and the landless peasantry, were already in motion. And Selassie's feudal empire, based on Amharic domination over a number of oppressed nationalities, was beginning to come apart at the seams.
The size of the mass mobilizations that burst into the open in 1974 marked the release of powerful social tensions that had been building up over the years under Selassie's long reign.
In the countryside, where 90 percent of the population lived, feudal property relations continued to play a significant role. About 0.01 percent of the population owned 70 percent of all arable land. The biggest landlords were from the Amharic, and to a lesser extent the Tigrean, nationalities. They owned enormous estates, especially in the southern parts of the coun try. Some were as large as two million acres.
About half of all peasants were tenants or sharecroppers on these estates and had to give the landowners between one-half and three-quarters of their crops as rent. Since the peasants were in constant debt, many of them were in effect tied to the land. Peasants in some parts even had to provide labor or other services to the landlords.
In the central and northern highland region, most peasants cultivated their own plots of land, generally under communal ownership systems. But they were usually so small that the peasants were barely able to scratch out a subsistence living.
As a result of this backward system, average per capita income was less than $70 a year. Infant mortality was extremely high, disease widespread, and average life expectancy only about thirty-five years.
To the overwhelming majority of the population, agrarian reform was clearly the most immediate and pressing issue.
The landlord class controlled the state and generally resisted industrial development. Its wealth was based on the extraction of surplus product through rent or tribute.
Ethiopia was not totally isolated from the world capitalist market, however. In the last decades of Selassie's reign, there was the beginning of some capitalist development, mostly in agriculture. Coffee, cotton, sugar, and fruit were grown for the international market and a small layer of the landlord class became capitalist farmers.! Petty-bourgeois elements in the cities, who aspired to become capitalists, also arose.
These bourgeois forces were still too weak to push through reforms or advance their particular political interests on their own. One sign of this was the failure of the 1960 coup attempt against Selassie. A group of young intellectuals in the military, who considered themselves "modernists," tried to overthrow the aristocracy. They promised to institute land reform, spur economic growth, and, as they saw it, usher Ethiopia into the twentieth century. But most of the military was still loyal to the emperor and the coup was quickly crushed.
Besides their social weakness, one other factor inhibiting the efforts of the procapitalist forces from removing the parasitic Selassie regime was their fear of the masses. Though they chafed at the numerous constraints on capitalist economic growth, they were unwilling to mobilize the workers and peasants, the only classes with the power to take on the landlords. But the hesitancy on the part of the bourgeois elements did not prevent the masses from eventually moving against Selassie in their own interests.
The latent tensions within Ethiopian society were brought to the breaking point by the disastrous famine of 1973. The estimates of the number of people who died in it range from 100,000 to 250,000. Besides keeping millions of peasants at a subsistence level, the landlords profited directly from the famine, hoarding grain stocks until scarcity forced prices upward. They then sold the grain-to those who could afford it. Selassie tried to cover up the very existence of the famine for months.
The deaths spurred widespread anger and resentment over the responsibility of Selassie and the rest of the aristocracy for the country's extreme poverty and economic backwardness.
The 1974 Upsurge
It was in Addis Ababa, the largest city in Ethiopia, that the revolution against Selassie began.
In early February 1974, taxi drivers, teachers, and students staged strikes and demonstrations, resulting in clashes with the police. Within a few days, about 10,000 troops, supported by most of the lower ranks and junior officers, seized Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, to press their demands for higher pay.
Although Selassie made some concessions, the upsurge continued to spread, eventually involving every major sector of the Ethiopian population that was opposed to the aristocracy and the landlord class. In one of the earliest protests, students raised the slogan "We want democracy!"
In early March, the young Ethiopian working class joined the upsurge, almost in its entirety. The Confederation of Ethiopian Labor Unions had originally been set up by the regime a number of years earlier. But it came under pressure from its members and was forced to call a general
484h1P+
MATC
Lall.h.7.
$CZ+
МеМЯНЛЯЧУ
1039-91
8391"
130%:3000F:0007/0 7°).09.
84-107-7:0011
chi
Jeune Afrique
ADDIS ABABA: Thousands of students and young workers march through the streets April 29, 1977, in protest against military dictatorship.
strike. It demanded a minimum wage, the right to strike, and other concessions. For four days about 100,000 workers stayed away from their jobs, paralyzing all airports and harbors, most factories, and all other unionized sectors of the economy.
Selassie again conceded some of their demands, but not the one for a minimum
The conservative union leaders wage.
called off the strike anyway. But in the weeks that followed, other strikes broke out as more militant unionists began to take the lead. The strike wave spread to most of the larger cities and towns in the country, as well as to those in Eritrea.
In addition, women workers protested to demand equal rights and equal pay for equal work. About 100,000 Muslims marched through Addis Ababa to demand an end to religious discrimination against Muslims.
One of the most important developments in the upsurge was its extension to the countryside. Peasants in the southern provinces began to revolt, seizing crops and land and burning down the homes of landlords. The upheaval spread throughout a 250-mile stretch of the fertile Rift Valley. Despite their relative lack of organization, the peasants began to implement a radical land reform program on their own, under the popular slogan of "Land to the Tiller!"
Most of the demands raised during the early stages of the upheaval were of a democratic character: for freedom of speech, the press, assembly; for the right of workers to organize and strike; for agrarian reform; for equality for women; for an end to religious discrimination; for an elected government. They directly threatened the monarchy and the economic position of the landlords.
The antifeudalist but procapitalist elements in the military were not necessarily opposed to some of these demands, but they were terrified by the manner in which they were being raised-independently by the masses themselves.
There were already signs that the upsurge was passing beyond the stage of spontaneous rebellion and was beginning to throw up new forms of mass organization. Reporters described the formation of what they called revolutionary committees" and "people's tribunals" in some of the provincial towns. In some cases these popular bodies tried to substitute themselves for the local authorities, who had fled toward Addis Ababa as a result of the peasant revolts.
This process went the furthest in Jimma, the capital of Kefa Province, which is southwest of Addis Ababa. Describing the upsurge there Addis Hiwet wrote:
Towards the end of March there was a popular uprising by the townsmen of Jimma: a mammoth demonstration that embraced almost the entire population of the town confronted the police force, expelled the governor, and elected, by popular will, a 34-man committee that would administer the town in place of the deposed provincial administration. This committee, composed mainly of teachers and students and merchants, and accountable to the people, remained in power for weeks. Jimma was the only place where popular insurrection developed into a popularly elected urban administration.?
In fact, a similar process started within the military itself. In unit after unit troops and junior officers arrested the top officers and elected various committees They issued leaflets demanding democratic rights, land reforms, and the ouster of aristocratic officials. In Eritrea, some leaflets went so far as to call for legalization of the Eritrean independence groups, an especially significant development among troops fighting a colonial war.
The Dergue unior offices come fores, don a number o an Armed Forces Coordinating Committee in April. It was the predecessor of the Dergue. From its earliest days, one of the dominant figures in it was Maj. Mengistu Haile Mariam, now a lieutenant colonel and the dictator of the country.
In its early days, the committee may have included various contending interests and political approaches, but its overall aim was to bring the upsurge under its exclusive control, dampening the mobilizations and breaking strikes when they got out of hand. But to bring that off, the committee members had to cultivate some political credibility. They were forced to champion many of the demands raised against the Selassie regime.
The concern of the committee over the upsurge was publicly expressed shortly after it was formed. It accused the regime of being unable to halt the strikes and demonstrations. It also despaired at Selassie's failure to suppress the Eritrean independence struggle. The committee decided to act on its own. As a Le Monde correspondent reported April 30, 1974, the committee began "to take the initiative in putting the brake on the development of anarchy.
They were partially successful, but still far from bringing the mass protests under control. Sensing the threat the independent mobilizations posed-not only to the aristocracy, but to their own reformist schemes-the young nationalist officers desperately negotiated with Selassie for months. They tried to get him to make enough concessions to defuse the unrest. When that failed, they were finally forced to depose him in September. But the monarchy itself was not abolished until later.
Col. Tessema Aba Derash, a member of the Dergue, later explained why they had to dethrone Selassie. He said, "We had offered the Emperor to place himself at the head of our movement-he refused. We reminded him of the Shah of Iran, who made a revolution from above, as his throne and land were endangered by a revolution from below-the old man didn't listen to reason."3
Among the Dergue's first actions after seizing power was to ban protests and strikes. Barely a week after Selassie's ouster, the new ruling junta was confronted with a demonstration of 4,000 university and high-school students, who chanted, "We want democracy" and "No military rule." The Dergue responded by launching the so-called zemecha campaign, in which tens of thousands of students and teachers were sent into the rural areas. Supposedly, they were to teach peasants to read and write. The real aim was to remove the militant students from the cities and disperse them throughout the countryside.
A general assembly of the Confederation of Ethiopian Labor Unions passed resolutions calling for an end to military rule, the lifting of the ban on strikes and protests, and the establishment of what they called a "people's provisional government." The Dergue cracked down and arrested the three top leaders of the union federation.
"Socialism in Uniform'?
Within a few months of coming to power, the young nationalist military officers began to institute reforms, arbitrarily, from the top down, with the intention of "modernizing" Selassie's old empire and providing the basis for the growth of capitalist industries.
They did not explicitly state that they favored bourgeois policies, of course. Because of the continuing unrest and their own political weakness, the members of the Dergue were forced to masquerade as something else. At first they were confused about what kind of rhetoric would serve their purpose. For instance, early an
Dergue statement declared its intention to form a regime that was anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-communist." But by December 1974 they hit on a more attractive label. They called it "Ethiopian socialism.
In the first two months of 1975, the junta nationalized all banks, credit institutions, and insurance companies, as well as many imperialist and some local concerns. Many of the local companies had already been statal me under Soldinge, here orched. state-owned under Selassie, however, and
In March, the Dergue decreed its most radical measure so far-a broad agrarianreform program that nationalized all rural land and abolished, at least in name, the private ownership of land. All debts and obligations by tenant farmers and sharecroppers were canceled. A limit of 25 acres was placed on the size of farms cultivated by individual farmers. The formation of village cooperatives was urged. The few large commercial farms in the country were nationalized.
The heaviest blows of the land reform fell on the large absentee landowners in the southern provinces
However, the Dergue's land-reform program was enacted largely in response to the ongoing peasant revolts. It tried to institutionalize a process that was already under way, so as to bring it under government control. To neutralize some of the independent peasant associations that had been formed during the revolts, a new system of peasant associations was set up, based on a pyramid structure from the top down. The new formations were designed to serve as transmission belts for the implementation of government policy.
Essentially, the Dergue tried to stifle all independent initiatives. As a result, the land reform itself has only been partially completed.
The last fundamental reform enacted by the regime was the nationalization of urban land and housing in July 1975. There has been little else since then.
Despite the Dergue's "socialist" rhetoric, none of these measures went beyond a capitalist framework. Nationalizations, even extensive ones like those in Ethiopia, are insufficient in and of themselves to break the grip of imperialist domination. Limited state planning is not capable of doing so either. Many other neocolonial regimes have adopted similar measures. They may gain a greater degree of bargaining power with the imperialists, but they still face foreign economic domination.
What is needed to end the imperialist stranglehold is a revolutionary mobilization of the masses. But by its actions, the Dergue clearly showed that it was opposed to such a course.
Basically, what the economic reforms amount to are an effort to foster capitalist economic growth through the apparatus of the state. Like similar regimes elsewhere, it is characterized by a strong strain of nationalism. The regime seeks to encourage the growth of an indigenous capitalist class, protecting it as much as possible the more powerful imperialist from concerns—as well as from its own workers.
The Dergue's efforts to encourage the growth of local Ethiopian industries is evident from its own policy statements. At the same time that it decreed the nationalizations, it also explicitly provided a role for private companies. And to reassure Washington and the other imperialist powers that it is not against imperialism as such, the Dergue's Declaration of Economic Policy stated that "foreign private investment will be given ample opportunities in many areas of economic activity and will be assured fair and adequate returns."
At the end of 1975, the junta lifted some of the restrictions it had placed on foreign and domestic companies. A few months later it promised incentives to Ethiopian businessmen and traders. The September issue of the government- 10, 1977, controlled Ethiopian Herald declared that "local businessmen and industrialists are also encouraged to continue their functions in serving the interests of the broad masses.
In order to protect the fledgling capitalists from these very same "broad masses" and to stifle "excessive" wage demands, the Dergue set out to control the labor movement and tie it directly to the state. Besides banning unauthorized strikes, the Dergue abolished the Confederation of Ethiopian Labor Unions, which opposed the military regime. The last chairman of the federation was killed. The Dergue replaced it with a more subservient body, whose officals are appointed by the government.
In addition, a new labor code prohibits workers from quitting their jobs without permission.
Opposition From the Right and the Left
The Dergue's moves against the landed aristocracy, as well as the masses, has generated opposition to the regime from both the right and the left.
The Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU) is a rightist army founded by former aristocrats. It has recently been joined by some bourgeois figures, civil servants, and even a few lower-ranking members of the regime who defected. It no longer openly calls for the restoration of the monarchy and appears to be trying to present itself
"democratic" alternative to the as a Dergue, or at least one more capable of restoring "stability." It is openly supported by the Sudanese government and is said to get some backing from some of the imperialist powers.
The EDU had a base in some of the northern and western provinces for a while, but the Dergue has claimed to have routed it in Gondar, where its forces had been most active.
Like Selassie, the junta is having considerable problems in governing Addis Ababa itself. The mass upsurge of 1974 spurred a radicalization among the urban population, especially among workers and students.
During the upsurge and shortly after Selassie's downfall, some of the political tendencies within the student movement began to crystalize into political parties and organizations. Almost all of them, to one degree or another, were influenced by Maniet noliting Maoist politics.
One of these tendencies, which supported the junta for a period, became the Mela
Ethiopia
Socialist Nekenake
(Me'ison-All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement). It adhers to the classical Stalinist theory of a two-stage revolution. Since Me'ison characterized the current stage of the revolution as antifeudalist, it extended its support-or "critical support" as it said-to the Dergue, at least until mid- 1977. In that period, it worked within the government-established neighborhood committees and trade unions.*
There are several other groups. But the most important is the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (BPRP). The EPRP released its program in April 1975. In it the party states that its ultimate goal is the establishment of a "Proletarian Dictatorship," but that its immediate aim is a "New Democratic Revolution." It thus has its own version of the two-stage revolution theory. It calls the Dergue "fascist" and pledges to overthrow it. It demands the establishment of a civilian "people's provisional government." And, significantly, it supports the Eritrean demands for independence.
Since the EPRP functions underground, it is difficult to accurately gauge how much support it has. From the few signs available, it seems to have a significant base, at least in Addis Ababa and maybe a few other cities. In January 1977 it called a student strike in the capital and managed to bring out 90 percent of all students in the university and high schools.
At the same time, the EPRP has adopted an adventurist course. It has set up an armed wing, which carries out urban guer-
When y it's nice to ha move w
New Address:
Name
Address
City
State
Zipcode
Country rilla warfare and terrorist actions in the capital. It has assassinated dozens of lower-ranking government officials and supporters. However, there are some signs that the EPRP's ultraleft approach has begun to isolate it politically from the population.
The Dergue responded to the EPRP campaigns with massive repression, gunning down hundreds of suspected EPRP supporters on the streets, in the schools, or in their homes. Over the May Day weekend in 1977, when the EPRP staged a series of four simultaneous demonstrations in different parts of the city, hundreds of them were rounded up and summarily shot. Up to 600 or more youths may have been killed in that one massacre alone.
Clearly, the regime is using its drive against the EPRP and other activists in an effort to terrorize the population as a whole.
Since mid-1977, however, the Dergue also moved against its former allies in Me'ison. The Dergue charges the group with having plotted to seize power. Many Me'ison supporters have been purged from their positions in the regime's civilian apparatus. According to a report by correspondent David Ottaway in the October 8, 1977, Washington Post, "the All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement, has joined the ranks of the opposition now and 200 of its top officials have either gone underground, fled the country, been killed or captured in the past six weeks."
Foreign journalists in Addis Ababa have reported that gunfire can be frequently heard in the capital as opponents and supporters of the regime engage in continual street battles.
[To be continued]
u move, ye your mail ith you.
Old Address:
Name
Address
City
State
Zipcode
Country
P.O. Box 116, Varick Street Station, New York, N.Y. 10014
Notes
1. See "From Absolute Monarchy to Bonapartism?" by Tabor and Hanna in Inprecor, March 31, 1977, p. 24.
2. Addis Hiwet. Ethiopia: From Autocracy to Revolution (London: Review of African Political Economy, Occasional Publication No. 1, 1975), p. 107.
3. Revolution in Eritrea (Eritreans for Liberation in North America, 1975), p. 11.
4. For a brief description of Me'ison's positions, see "Upheaval in Ethiopia: Toward Civil War?" by Tabor and Hana in Inprecor, May 26, 1977, p. 16.