intellocgent:

Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia (1930-1974)

The facts of his life are well known. Haile Selassie’s influence on the world is his most enduring legacy. Born Tafari Makonnen in 1891, Haile Selassie came to be identified inextricably with Ethiopia. Only rarely in the modern world does the story of a man become so closely linked to the story of a nation. It is said that great events beget great men, but they beget failures as well, and the boundary between the two is often defined by singular acts of courage. These the Ethiopian Emperor did not lack.

Not surprisingly, the fortitude of the man sometimes referred to as “The Lion” inspired Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and even Malcolm X, each of whom corresponded with Haile Selassie —who advocated civil disobedience when it was necessary to remedy fundamental social injustice or still remembered. It seems somehow appropriate that the motion picture Born Free was filmed in Ethiopia during Haile Selassie’s reign.

One speaks of leaders of men as though their public lives were completely divorced from their private ones. For a hereditary monarch, this should not be the case. What his children think of him is as important as what everybody else thinks. Haile Selassie was a devoted husband and father. His wife, Empress Menen, died in 1962. His sons, Sahle Selassie, Makonnen, and Asfa Wossen, had a great sense of duty to their father and to their people. Of his daughters, Princess Tenagne, in particular, excercised various official duties.

Haile Selassie ascended the throne in the era of polar exploration and slow communication. Africa’s oldest nation was little more than a footnote to the great stories of the day —something that Americans and Brits read about in the pages of the National Geographic. Some people still called the country Abyssinia. In certain countries far beyond Ethiopia’s borders, segregation and apartheid were long established and little questioned. Most other African “nations” were colonies. Even at home, slavery was technically still legal.

In such an era, words like “pan-Africanism” and “civil rights” were little more than esoteric philosophical notions entertained by an enlightened few. That a country as backward as Italy, whose widespread poverty prompted the emigration of millions, would seek to devour a nation like Ethiopia, was an irony too subtle to raise eyebrows outside the most sophisticated intellectual circles. With British backing, Haile Selassie returned to defeat the Italian army which, in the event, the Allies never viewed as much more than a nuisance. The British themselves considered the Ethiopian campaign in its strategic context —as a way to free the Red Sea from possible Axis control— as much as the liberation of a sovereign nation. To the Ethiopians, it was as much a moral victory as a military one.

The Emperor’s speech to the League of Nations denouncing the Italian invasion is remembered more than the aggression itself. It prompted essentially ineffectual international trade sanctions against a European nation but, like the Battle of Adwa four decades earlier, represented in a tangible way one of the few occasions in the modern era that an African nation defied the arrogance of a European one.

There were very few world leaders of the post-war era who had actually led troops in combat. Haile Selassie and Dwight Eisenhower were exceptional in this respect, which partially accounts for their close friendship.

Even when the foe is truly formidable, courage has a psychological side that has little to do with combat or physical victory. One may seem defeated materially without being defeated morally. Perhaps it’s a question of confidence, values or knowledge. Haile Selassie’s greatest strength was as a builder of bridges —across rivers but also between cultures. His travels took him to many countries, and he became one of the most popular heads of state, and one of the most decorated men in the world.

It was during one such voyage, in 1960, that he had to rush home to confront an attempted overthrow of the existing order. This perhaps served as a reminder that the most dangerous revolutions are found in one’s own house. The sovereign who was once known as a reformer now found himself resented by many members of the very social class his economic and educational policies had helped to create. Internationally, however, his prestige did not suffer. The Emperor established the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, with a headquarters in Addis Ababa.

The revolution of 1974 was supported by outside forces, and while its roots were domestic, its covert objectives cannot be said to have been supported by more than a small fraction of Ethiopians. Truth be told, administrative practices which worked well in 1950 were terribly inefficient by the 1970s, and a series of problems were cited as a pretext for a full scale coup d’etat. Ethiopia’s pre-industrial economy was no better prepared for Marxism than Russia’s had been in 1917. Communism’s ultimate social and economic failure, in Ethiopia as well as in Russia, certainly indicates democracy’s superiority, whether that democracy is embodied by a republic or a constitutional monarchy. The Derg’s alliance with the Soviet Union made Ethiopia the instrument of a foreign power, precisely the thing Haile Selassie resisted.

He had a Solomonic pedigree, but Haile Selassie was a man of the people. Perhaps that’s how he should be remembered.

#Rastafar-I

H.I.M.

(Source: warriorsrise)

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afrikanwomen:

Empress Zewditu of Ethiopia

Empress Zewditu was the daughter of Emperor Menelik II, by Woizero Abechi, a woman of mid-level nobility, born shortly after Menelik returned to Shewa following his captivity at Magdalla. Woizero Abechi died while Zewditu was still a very young child, so Zewditu was raised by her father, in the care of nannies, and was closer to him than any other person.

Zewditu also had a half sister, Woizero Shewaregga Menelik, the mother of Lij Eyasu, and a half brother, Prince Asfaw Wossen Menelik, who died in 1888 while still a child. She was often refered to by her close relatives by the nickname of “Mamite” which translates to “Baby”.

Unlike most of the rest of the Shewan aristocracy, Zewditu had very good relations with Empress Taitu. Although Taitu was brusque, and a stern mistress of Menelik’s household, Zewditu had deep affection for her step-mother. Taitu returned Zewditu’s affection, although often dispairing of her behavior. She believed that Zewditu was overly familiar with the palace serving maids saying “It’s imposible to separate Mamite from the servants”.

She often scolded her for not maintaining the dignity of a daughter of the House of Solomon. Zewditu had earned a reputation of kindness and completely lacked the haughty and imperious attitude of her step-mother and other female relatives. Zewditu treated everyone with the same sweet friendliness whether they were royalty or simple servants.

Underlying these traits was a truely innocent naivete that endeared her to many, but would perhaps be a drawback to her eventually.

Zewditu was married in 1882 at the age of 9 to Ras Araya Selassie Yohannis, son and heir of Emperor Yohannis IV, in order to cement the agreement between her father and the emperor when Menelik (then king of Shewa) submitted to Yohannis. However, Ras Araya Selassie died in 1888, and Zewditu, who had not produced any children returned to Shewa.

Ras Araya had fathered a son, Gugsa, by another woman. Zewditu maintaied very warm relations with her father-in-law who was very fond of Zewditu. Yohannis IV was very angered when Zewditu’s father rebled against him shortly after the death of Ras Araya Selassie.

Zewditu, upon recieving news that her father had rebled agains the emperor, is said to have wept bitterly, saying “My father and the Emperor would never have quarelled if only my husband had lived.” When the Emperor’s informants told Yohannis IV of Zewditu’s comments, he was much moved, and had her summoned, and the two of them wept over the cruel fate of Ras Araya together.

The Emperor then returned Zewditu to Shewa, eventhough her father was still defying him, along with a huge gift of cattle and property in 1889. Emperor Yohannis IV continued to hold Zewditu in deep affection until his death.

Zewditu did not stay a widow for long. In 1891, Zewditu married Dejazmatch Gwangul Zegeye. The marriage was short lived, not more than a few months, but Zewditu did have a daughter by him, who died in 1895 at the age of 4. Zewditu then married Wube Atnaf Seged, an unhappy marriage that ended in divorce after two and a half years.

In 1900, at the suggestion of her step-mother, Zewditu married Ras Gugsa Welle, son of Ras Welle Bitul and nephew of Taitu. Ras Welle was ruler of Simien and Yejju and younger brother of Empress Taitu Bitul. This marriage bound the princess even more closely to her stepmother, and the marriage proved to be a generaly happy one. Zewditu had no children who survived to adulthood.