Remembering Haile Selassie

Ethiopundit, a moderate-conservative Ethiopian-American blogger, argues that it is politically incorrect in Ethiopian circles to discuss Emperor Haile Selassie and it has been that way for too long: "How else can anyone explain a government of millions with roots stretching back three thousand years ... simply fading away? That was the real tragedy of his reign. The country’s institutions and thoughts raced ahead of the Emperor and he did not prepare for a political future of stable government and more rapid democratization. Neither did he fight to guarantee what had been so far achieved at such cost by his people.


The young Tafari Makonnen who took the throne and embarked on the hazardous journey of modernization would surely not have made that mistake. What followed him is a seemingly endless nightmare of national turmoil and suffering that may yet reach its crescendo in ethnic politics. The traditional absolutes of God, Emperor and Country were abandoned in a fevered search, not for solutions, but for new absolutes to answer every question of existence. The hard earned optimism in the country and in the future was hijacked by the promise of salvation in a new trinity of Marx, Engels and Lenin. The high priests of the new religion did not discover the keys to heaven but did find a glib catechism that justified their own rule and any crime in the pursuit of power.



Traditional authoritarian government was far less jealous and brutal towards opposition than the actual totalitarianism represented by the subsequent occupants of the Menelik Palace."More from Ethiopundit: "While it is also impossible to argue that Haile Se[l]assie's rule was ideal - it did have the significant virtue of not being revolutionary.....If the past century, actually the past centuries, have taught us anything it is that radical re-organizations of society and mantra-derived solutions are harmful and invariably lead nowhere good. The lessons range from the palpable messianic evil of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to the local but similiarly loathsome Afro-Socialism of Siad Barre's Somalia or Mengistu's Ethiopia and the Clerical Dictatorship that is Khomeni's legacy in Iran."