Ethnicity gone awry

Melese's strategy to establish a governing system of ethnic federalism emphasising rights of "nations, nationalities, and peoples." This high-sounding principle, cribbed from Lenin, is more Machiavellian than Wilsonian however. If the outnumbered TPLF who direct the EPRDF/FDRE can keep other ethnic based groups divided and roiled against each other in ethnozenophobias or content to manage affairs in their own limited bailiwicks, then larger matters can be subsumed by the one governing party. Thus, what Meles view as the false ideology of nationalism for a "Greater Ethiopia" can be kept in check and its proponents divided and conquered.


1) The traditional paradigms stress the importance of either the individual, the state or the country's economic system as the relevant context and subject for analysis, rather than the cultural factors
2) Both contemplate a linear tradition-modernity transition, seeing ethnicity as belonging to an earlier, pre-modern stage of tradition and as bound to disappear as the Ethiopian society modernises.

The Ethiopian intelligentsia thought that a group's ethnic or religious identity was a traditionalist obstacle to development which would disappear as Ethiopia modernises. It was a great surprise for many to see evidence of burgeoning ethnic issues in Ethiopia, which is often interpreted as symptomatic of an anti-modernist, narrow minded ideas which are against science, industrialisation and liberal views.


It is very important to note, it is sometimes argued that contemporary ethnic consciousness expresses basic, primitive human sentiments along the lines that communities have always been divided by either language, custom, religion, race, or territory or the combination of these factors. Ethnic identities are not predetermined or inevitable, rather, they can be constructed by skillful, if unscrupulous, politicians like Meles who preach that their goal of power is best facilitated by the creation of a receptive political constituency. It is no coincidence that the recent ethinicization of politics in Ethiopia has come as grate help to Meles Zenawi.


Ethnic hatreds spawned by this scheme are the source of most human rights abuses in Ethiopia. Ethnicity played a mager role in Ethiopians being arbitrarily arrested, incarcerated without charge or trial, and brutally tortured by security forces of the government.


In Ethiopia, the world is witnessing ethnicity gone awry. The division of Ethiopia into ethnic administrative regions was mandated by the TPLF government and written into a new constitution approved by faux elections. The idea of ethnic federalism did not originate from the people nor did they approve of it in free and fair elections. In light of events in Rwanda, the Congo, and the former Yugoslavia, it is doubtful that any people willingly would subject themselves to the horrors of state-enforced ethnic warfare. In Ethiopia, the people have not been given the opportunity so to choose at the grass roots level, and until they do, ethnic federalism must be viewed as an artificial system imposed from above.


Instead of ethnicity referring to cultural-linguistic communal groups, built around ties of real or putative kinship, taking pride in the in-group, common consciousness and identity of the group-as is the case in most multi-ethnic societies--under the TPLF, cultural prejudice and social discrimination against "others" has been encouraged and perverted into denying others basic human and economic rights. This ethnicity run wild exaggerates differences, intensifies resentments and antagonisms, and sharply divides races and nationalities. Mutual suspicion and hostility are bound to emerge in a society bent on defining itself in terms of such jostling and competing groups.


In ethnic kilils, or homelands, nominally ruled by front parties of the EPRDF, but actually dominated by the central party TPLF, officials ruthlessly use political dominance, economic exploitation, and psychological oppression to drive out members of other ethnic groups who may have lived in the regions for decades--or to make life miserable for those who remain. Under the color of law, conflict and violence have been whipped up in response to imaginary threats from ethnic outsiders. As a result, the cult of ethnicity has produced adverse effects on the peace, harmony, and integration of the nation's society. The endgame of such identity politics is self-pity and self-ghettoization, and ultimately, political instability. As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has noted: "The meanness generated when one group is set against another, the 'built-in we-they syndrome' has caused more dominating, fearing, hating, killing than any other single cause since time began."


The solution for all this is very simple, but, hard to implement. Removing Meles and his zealots from power, and replacing them by elected officials who will be accountable, transparent and democratic to the people who vote them. Not everyone believes that they have a Strong ethnic identity which bonds them inextricably with others of there group. It is when an identity meets an explicit demand or situation that such ties become important. Unsurprisingly, some of the most powerful ethnic-orientated identities emerge out of a subordinate or superordinate position in a social hierarchy. I sum, the relation of ethnicity to politics changes; its appeal does not remain constant but is determined to a grate extent by the level of maturity, the level of material well being and security- i.e 'the feel good factor'- which Ethiopians as a community must enjoy.