Remembering
Meles Zenawi
August
21, 2012
Ghelawdewos
Araia
As
the maxim goes, with all the best intentions in
the world some sorrow remains, and there is no
doubt that the family and extended family of Meles
Zenawi are in deep sorrow for his untimely
departure. Before I delve into the remembrance
notes I like to extend my condolences to Azieb (Gola)
Mesfin and his children.
I
have known Meles Zenawi at Addis Ababa University
(then Haile Selassie I University) in the early
1970s. When I was a sophomore majoring in
political science, Meles joined the university
from Wingate High School and was enrolled as
pre-Med freshman, but I did not know him closely
until one day Meles Tecle, the militant student
leader, introduced him to me at Sidist Kilo campus
and asked me to accommodate him in our study
group, an extra-curricular activity of students
where ideas and experiences were exchanged and
where we have accomplished and read tons of
literature. Meles did not join our group, but he
became an avid reader nonetheless.
One
fine day, a university-wide gathering was called
upon by USUAA, University Students Union of Addis
Ababa, in which current politics were exhaustively
discussed and as always the student leaders
addressed the key burning issues such as ‘land
to the tiller’, ‘question of nationalities’,
‘women’s rights’ and ‘poverty is not a
crime’. One student leader after the other spoke
eloquently, and all of a sudden, Meles Zenawi
raised his hand, was recognized by the chair of
the conference, and criticized one previous
speaker by loudly saying, “even your English is
shaking” and that was the campus talk for weeks.
Student leaders said, then, “who is this guy?”
for Meles was an inductee and an unknown figure
amongst the students. Ever since, however, he
became more and more active in the Ethiopian
Student Movement.
Following
the 1974 Ethiopian Revolution, Meles (who was then
known as Legesse) and I have gone separate ways
and I have never heard from him until we met again
sometime in mid-1976 at the border of Ethiopia and
Eritrea, a place called Tsorona. He was with his
fellow Woyane; I with Ehapa, one nationalist and
the other pan-Ethiopian respectively but because
we had good relations in campus, he came and
hugged me and as in the Ethiopian tradition, we
kissed on the chick three times. During this
encounter the two groups on either part of the
organizations were perplexed after they saw us
exchanging greetings, because the two
organizations had markedly different political
agendas, although at that juncture they were not
at loggerheads yet.
After
the 1976 Tsorona meeting, to my great surprise and
perhaps pleasure as well, I met Meles Zenawi in
New York City in 1989. I never expected him to
come there and I never thought we were ever going
to meet again, but it happened. Before we met, one
friend calls my home phone and said, “Can we
meet today; there is someone, an old acquaintance,
who would like to see you!” I wondered who would
be that old acquaintance, but when I went to the
venue of appointment, which was at Burgher King
restaurant at the junction of Broadway and 110
Street near Columbia University, there is Meles
Zenawi surrounded by his comrades. He said
“hello Ghelawdewos,” and I said, “hello
Wedi-Zenawi” as we affectionately used to call
him. After exchanging greetings, we had a chat on
many issues and I asked him whether the TPLF is
completely independent from regional influences
and whether it has an Ethiopian agenda at all.
Meles strongly and affirmatively answered the
first question and assured me that his
organization is independent, but he only
insinuated on the latter question.
What
I did not know in relation to our meeting in New
York, then, was that Meles actually had toured in
many parts of the United States and had
discussions with other individuals as well. His
organization was approaching Ethiopians who could
be of help in the event the Meles group ousts the
military government. One other thing I did not
know, then, was they were about to find the
Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic
Front (EPRDF) and transcend the ‘Tigray
liberation agenda’.
The
next time I met Meles Zenawi was in Washington DC
in 1995. I had gone to Washington to promote my
debut book, Ethiopia: The Political Economy of
Transition, and I never knew that he was in
the nation’s capital, but one fellow Ethiopian
called the place where I was staying and asked for
my name, and the person who accepted the call
said, “there is a call for you.” It was very
early in the morning, but I accepted the call
nonetheless and spoke with the caller and I was
told that I am invited to the Ethiopian Embassy
and “P.M. Meles wanted to see you and others.”
I had gone to the embassy with some copies of my
book and there I see Meles, not much of a change
since I saw him six years before, not even a gray
hair except that he seems to have lost some hair
on top of his forehead.
Before
the formal meeting began, there was sort of
reception and Meles was shaking hands with many of
the invitees and when he approached where I was
standing, he exclaimed, “Ghelawdewos Shiftaw”
and the people near me were surprised by the
exclamation and affinity the PM had exhibited.
This meeting, however, was more of proposals
forwarded to the PM by Ethiopian professionals who
were invited and asked to present their ideas and
expertise, rather than a speech by the PM. Then
the meeting was adjourned, but I used the
opportunity to autograph my book and give it to
Meles.
After
1995, I never met Meles Zenawi in person and in
just three years dramatic political events took
place in the Horn of Africa. Unexpected and
meaningless war broke out between Ethiopia and
Eritrea and following the Algiers Peace Agreement,
split hit the Tigray People’s Liberation Front
(TPLF). I was not opposed to the peace accord
between Ethiopia and Eritrea, but I was vehemently
opposed to the Boarder Commission decision in
which Ethiopia was going to lose some lands on its
northern frontier. This stance of mine may have
caused distance between myself and the ruling
party in Ethiopia, but sometime in 2007, I have
come to realize that the Boarder Commission
decision was not implemented and no Ethiopian land
was ceded to Eritrea and I was at ease, and as a
result I contacted the Ethiopian officials via
personal courier to continue to upheld Ethiopian
territorial integrity and if that is confirmed, I
promised that I would cooperate with them in any
area related to Ethiopia’s development.
Also
in 2007, I reviewed Meles Zenawi’s work entitled
African Development: Dead Ends and New
Beginnings, and this is what I stated in part:
“The objective of this article is to critically
examine the overall thesis of Meles Zenawi’s
paradigm shift with respect to African
development. It is in effect, an overview of the
theme under discussion and the tenets and points
of view incorporated in the preliminary draft
presented by Meles Zenawi (henceforth MZ), the
Prime Minister of Ethiopia.”
“From
the outset, however, I like to warn readers not to
impregnate a misconception of the oneness of
political proclivity (or ideological faith) and
personal theoretical observation. As far as I am
concerned I like to delineate (and cautiously
de-link) what Meles has stood for so far –
irrespective of his future commitment – and what
he presented to the public now. I am interested in
the latter, and it is in this spirit that I like
to critique African Development: Dead Ends and
New Beginnings. It is difficult to dissociate
ones political devotion (especially for a head of
state) and his relatively scholarly thesis or
presentation of an historical account. But if one
can read and critique My Life and the Progress
of Ethiopia without bias to Emperor Haile
Selassie (the author of the title), one can
definitely read MZ’s ‘Dead Ends and New
Beginnings’. Reinforcing my argument further, I
like to simply state, if we want to learn
anything, we must pay attention to the information
to be learned irrespective of who provides it.”
“The
leitmotif of MZ’s thesis is paradigm shift from
neo-liberal to a ‘democratic developmental
state.’ His work, by and large, favors
government intervention in the economy and the
prioritization of rural development. In the first
part of Chapter I, thus, he argues, ‘government
created rent does not necessarily have to be
socially wasteful. It becomes wasteful only if
solely self-interested maximizing individuals use
it to create wealth at the expense of society and
only if the state is incapable of improving on the
market – i.e. there are not market failures.’
Well said, but there is a problem in terms of what
currently plagues the African state.” (The
Review runs into seven pages and I have tried to
address an entire panoply of issues that Meles
discusses; people interested in the entire
reflections I have made, could refer to www.africanidea.org/reflections_mz.html
In
1999 I went for a visit to Ethiopia and I have met
some officials and some old friends and the latter
took me to a social gathering somewhere in the Old
Airport area of Addis Ababa. In that gathering, I
met several people I knew from campus and some who
went from the United States to visit; there were
also teenagers and children and a woman whom I
know in the US was sitting beside me and asked,
“who do you think this little girl looks
like?” My answer was, “I really don’t
know,” but when she told me that she is the
daughter of Meles Zenawi, I was stunned by the
resemblance of this young girl to her father; her
eyes and especially her eye browse are identical
with those of her father’s. She happens to be
Meles’ primogeniture and truly walking with her
father’s genetic blue print, which is
unmistakably visible.
Meles
Zenawi will be remembered for many things of his
contributions, including the conception and plan
of Agriculture Development-Led Industrialization (ADLI),
a blue print for Ethiopia’s development; for his
leadership in the establishment of higher
institutions of learning (at least twenty
universities have been established under his
leadership) and the expansion of schools in the
urban and rural areas; for his leadership in road
construction and major development infrastructures
such as the Millennium Dam; for his leadership in
various capacities in the African Union (AU),
including his chairmanship of New African
Partnership for Development (NEPAD).
Meles
Zenawi may also be remembered for his failures,
which is only human. Failures and successes are
organic attributes to humans; we are genetically
engineered to make mistakes and learn from them,
while other animals cannot do that. Animals cannot
afford to fail; if they do they simply die.
Therefore, one’s failures should not be
exaggerated vis-à-vis the successes. Meles
Zenawi’s detractors or even honest critics could
write about his mistakes and even his crimes as
they put it; I respect their opinions, but for me
this is not a place and the time to entertain it.
I want to bid him farewell and simply express my
feelings by saying, May God Bless His Soul.
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