The fomer president of Ethiopia and Chairman ofthe opposition party, Unity for Democracy and Justice Party (UDJ) has "reportedly" resigned from his Chairmanship and is now in Germany, where he had spent most of his college years.
Amidst reports that the American non profit,, Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars and other organs ''reportedly'' are attempting to 'negotiate the ruling party and and some oppositions such as Medrek(Forum), a consortium of parties that UDJ is a member of, the news of the Chairman's resignation comes as a "bizarre".
According to sources, a local Newspaper reported that Dr. Negaso has left for Germany "to teach Ethiopian politics in (an undisclosed) university in Germany." He will be in Germany for the next two months. Girma Seyfu, the lone opposition member of the Ethiopian Parlimment representing UDJ/Medrek(Forum), is now the Acting Chairman of UDJ, according to sources.
Dr. Negasso Gidada Solan wasborn in 1943 in Dembidolo area, western Ethiopia. He was the President of Ethiopia from 1995 until 2001 before joining the parliamnt as an independnet candiadate and finally joining the opposition camp. He is married to Regina Abelt, a German nurse and midwife who works at a local hospital, Bete Zata as a midwife. He was elected as the Chairman of the Party, in December 2011.
Popular members and leaders of UDJ such as Judge Bertukan Miderka, Engineer Gizachew Shiferaw, and Dr. Yakob Hailemariam have all resigned previously from the Party. While the former Defense Minister under the incumbent and later Public Relations head of UDJ, Siye Abreha and the former Chairwoman of UDJ, Judge Bertukan Mideksa have both left to peruse their higher studies in America via "Scholarships offered to them", Negaso has now on his turn "left to teach for Germany". De Birhan was unable to get in touch with Dr. Negaso and UDJ leadership to verify the reports.
Let me
start today’s piece with this entendre poem by Betty Getahun, that is titled "silent pistol/machine" ድምፀአልባመሣሪያ!
ጥይትባይደቅን
ድጋንባይወጠር
ጦሩምባይቀሰር
ጎራዴቆንጨራ
ወገብባይታጠቅ
ተገኝቷልአሉድመፀአልባመሣሪያ
ጠላትንብቻሣይሆን
ወዳጅንምጭምርከምድረገፀማጥፊያ~
ባርኮሲረግምአፍቅሮሲናገርጥላቻን
ብለውይጠሩታልአንዳንዶችበግምት
የዘመኑግኝትምርጥየምርምርውጤት
ይህንንአንደበት!
This thesis may sound a bit weirdo yeah? I was
promoted to write it after watching a Youtube video by a man that I knew in one
of the Ethiopian political discussion forum started spreading accusatory
messages against his former friend, a famous young political leader, of
manipulating himself and his friends by using witchcraft. It made me look
into this understated but presumably present actuality within politics,
witchcraft, a little bit deeper. This is a taboo topic in the
Ethiopian political and academic discourse, I know how I toiled to find literature on the subject in the Ethiopian case. A short breakdown follows.
A
short anecdote
I had happened to love a very
beautiful girl. Her beauty just leaves you agape. Many of my buddies did know
that I was so much bogged down. Tried my
best to charm her but the stratagem of repellence danced to its intelligence.
It didn’t work out. One of the good pals that followed the situation closely
kiddingly suggested “using witchcraft”.
Though it was a suggestion just for the crack, I read deeply into my
friend’s advice. My response was “let me exhaust the truer source of love;
God”. Witchcraft is ingrained within our society but it is untold and unspoken
of for the most part. The issue is kept secret and a taboo topic as HIV/AIDS
was in the early 1990s. The best place to discern how embedded witchcraft is in
our society is, visiting some of the Ethiopian religious places, churches and
witch centres. I used to be a regular visitor of Entoto Mariam Church, in the
outskirts of Addis Abeba when I was in Ethiopia. I loved Entoto’s serenity, the
bush, the “island looking” baptism place and the “drama” there. Oh, it still
comes into my eyes. I wistfully always say “The only thing I miss in Ethiopia
is Entoto Mariam Church and our monasteries”.
Entoto Maryam Churchwas founded by my King, Emperor
Menelik II at the end of the 19th century and his wife Empress
Tayetu. The Church is of historical value because it is the oldest church in Addis Abeba and embraces Menelik II’s Museum. Beyond belief miracles also take
place there, and was reported by big international media such as Reuters, CNN
and Sky. There is, where you would witness the meanings, characters, exorcisms
and open/frank discussions of witchcraft. The majority of the victims I
observed were young girls. The rate and consequences are alarming.
Secondly, to understand how
witchcraft is prevalent or spreading within our society mainly in the capital
Addis Abeba, please watch a series of video clips by Priest/Exorcist Girma
Wondimu . Priest Girma offers various definitions for the varied types of witch
effected satanic problems and diseases. In one of his recent interviews on CNN
Ireport, he said “you can say almost half of the 80 million of
our population has been affected by demons. You can say after the revolution
(1974), Habessha has become devil.”
Witchcraft
According
to a study entitled African Studies of Witchcraft - Early Anthropological
Contributions, Politics Of Witchcraft: Local And Global, Philosophical
Approaches To The Study Of Witchcraft on
JRank , Witchcraft exists in almost
all societies, major Abrahamic and pagan religions and most traditions.
However, to most current Western scholarship, witchcraft and magic have been
positioned as “backward or erroneous systems of thought.” There are also
however scholars who want to solely align witchcraft and magic as an African
practice and religion. In Western society until
the 14th century, “witchcraft” had more in common with sorcery in other
cultures—such as those of India or Africa—than it did with the witchcraft of
the witch-hunts. This
writer opposes and wants certain Western media and intellectuals to discontinue
all forms of campaigns of “constructing Africa as the continent of witchcraft”. In fact, contemporary Africans espouse the
idea that witchcraft is more of an “ideal conception” that an objective reality
that exists in today’s world. Terms like witchcraft, sorcery, magic, Wicca and
traditional medicine share a good deal of synonym. They can all be
positive/good or negative/bad. They can be used as healing “medicines’’ or they
can be used as damaging tools. They usually have a pejorative meaning in most
contexts. Here after, I will be using Witchcraft/magic in their popular/negative
hurtful sense.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
defines witchcraft as “the exercise or
invocation of allegedsupernaturalpowers to
control people or events, practices typically involvingsorceryormagic.” While Helen (2005) says earlier anthropological texts distinguished between witchcraft and sorcery thus witchcraft was seen as a mystical and innate force in the world, whereas sorcery was evil magic practised against others by the use of medicine (muti) and, or objects.
This definition sounds to
be an overarching one and widely applied. There are various characterisations
and definitions of witchcraft. Some allege it to be coming from a
“supernatural” power while others say it is a scientific method. One of the
earliest writings on this same topic entitled a Treatise of Witchcraft by
Alexender Roberts B.D
1616 says “That whatsoeuer the Witch doth, it receiueth his force from that
society which she hath with the Diuell, who serueth her turne in effecting what
she purposeth, and so they worke together asassociates.” (Here “u” is used to mean “v”). Both the Old and New Testaments condemn
“sorcery”. Taking different types such as sorcery, shamanism, spell,
white/black witch and other forms, witchcraft/magic has been studied in four
corners of the world by anthropologists and other scholars. Mainly indigenous
societies, considered “backward” by popular culture and societies, still openly
apply it. Some of the major religious denominations mix traditional practices
with religion creating their own new practice like Voddo that mixes Catholicism
with traditional healings and customs. Some
atheists and agnostics are “said” be practisers of witchcraft/magic. Following Margaret Murray and Gerald Gardner's
thoughts and books on Wicca, the revival of witchcraft has been witnessed in
the Western world.Helen Seiketso on her 2005 thesis titled “Traditional Thought
and the Politics of Witchcraft” using
Botswana as a case study country says,
Witchcraft can be used by
the individual person as means of empowerment to gain access to economic and
social… it has the possibility of going from being a
revolutionary weapon on the side of the weak, to endorsing state power.
Helen
also explains that witchcraft is viewed as a “political weapon which can adapt itself to all times and places”. As
recently as 2010 “witchcraft” has been in the political discourse of U.S.
America. The Tea Party-backed Delaware's Republican Senate Candidate, Christine
O'Donnell was the centre of the witchcraft issue for what she said in
her 1990s interview, "I dabbled into witchcraft -- I never joined a coven.
But I did, I did. I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were
doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they
do," she said. Her statements had put the politics of witchcraft
into the U.S. limelight once again. Although taking
different names and forms such as hypnosis, shamanism, card reading, fortune
telling, witchcraft is practised legally and officially in many Western
countries as a business.
Let us relax with this short classical (Yanni "With an Orchid" ) and read into the Ethiopian case,
Africa, Ethiopia
Helen in her 2005 work citing the works of Evans-Pritchard’s book, “Witchcraft Oracles and Magic among the Azande” in the late 1930’s. states that witchcraft is a philosophical and logical thought and culture of African ethno-philosophy.
Evans-Pritchard saw witchcraft among the Azande as no less rational than Western thought. It was a coherent and logical system of meaning once one understood its basic premises. It was an African epistemology. According to Evans-Pritchard, the Azande believed in magic because it worked. It could explain misfortunes by addressing the “why” and not the “how” question of natural phenomena. Africans were very well aware of naturalistic causality, which answered the how questions.
In line with, Evans-Pritchard's thought, my (T,Staffer of De Birhan's) favourite African philosopher, Kewame Gyekye, analysing the Akan narrative says that witchcraft explains why events are harmful to man and not how they happen, meaning the solution/causation orientated take of the supernatural than the Onyame (God). Helen also states that in modernist world views, witchcraft is viewed differently, in contrast to the earlier views of witchcraft as primitive, prelogical and static tradition, the prevailing poststructuralist views now consider witchcraft as constitutive of modernity.The
African case of witchcrafts role in liberation movements and politics has got
an age old history. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, witchcraft has
been used by African leaders before and after colonisation
Traditional and
modern African leaders sometimes surround themselves with protective “witch
doctors,” and are themselves thought to be endowed with supernatural power.
This is the positive charisma of which witchcraft is the negative counterpart.
In the colonial period these ideas were extended to Europeans, who, in theBelgian Congoand British Central Africa at the time of
independence, were feared as cannibalistic witches. This was somewhat ironic
since colonial regimes, unlike their missionary predecessors, did not believe
in witchcraft and made accusations of witchcraft illegal in most of sub-Saharan
Africa—which has been largely reversed by their successor regimes.
Al Jazeera aired an investigative report last year that revealed a prostitution
and trafficking ring that extended from Nigeria to Europe mainly Italy all conducted under witchcraft.
For
instance, in Tanzania, the Maji Maji rebellion that were told by a witchcraft practitioner
that the witch would turn the bullets of the colonising German forces into
water/maji by wearingmilletstalks around their foreheads but
many Africans were dead. The Maji Maji Rebellion is a good case in point when
witchcraft was used in politics/liberation movements. There are many however,
who still believe and use witchcraft saying
bullets cannot penetrate the bodies of some members of armed forces in Africa
as they have been protected by witchdoctors. TheMaji Maji Rebellion, sometimes called
theMaji Maji War, was a violent African resistance to colonial
rule in the German colony ofEast Africa, an uprising by severalAfricanindigenous communities against the German
rule in response to a German policy designed to force African peoples to growcottonfor export, lasting from 1905 to 1907.
In
2007 news came out from the Western African country of Gambia. Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, claimed
that he can cure HIV/AIDS through African traditional cure. His claim was even
approved by the country’s health Minister. A university lecturer who undertook
the “healing” process said he witnessed that he had gained weight 10 days after
taking the medicine.
In Ethiopia, according to oral tradition when a large
group of Levites came to Ethiopia carrying the Ark of the Covenant,
or the Tslate Musi as it was known, during the time of Emperor Manasseh of Israel, who
was the King of Judah (697-642BC), the King made his mission to desecrate the
Temple and to attempt to convert the children of Israel into pagans. During his
reign, Manasseh instituted the blatant worship of idols and pagan rituals. So
the Ark of the Covenant was spirited away from the evil King. The Tslate
Musi was kept on the island of Tana Kirqos in Lake Tana, near Gonder, for
more than 900 years, this one version of legend on how the Ark came to Ethiopia
but also the role of witchcraft in the interstate politics of Ethiopia with
other countries.
This writer had recently phoned the Ministry of Health in
Ethiopia and sought for contact addresses of traditional healers, herbalists
and with doctors. The expert at the Board in the Ministry aware of them and
coordinator of research studies with them said “We have a list but cannot give
you because none of them are recognised and authenticated by us.”
I have been able to get in touch with one traditional
healer and a witch doctor through friends. This "doctor" advertises
himself as a herbalist who can heal many ailments on different local magazine but
can act as a witch doctor calling “spirits” when/if asked by customers. This man
who hails from the Northern town of Ethiopia, Gonder used to be a high priest
at the local churches. Leaving and denying the priesthood, he came to Addis
Abeba to start this venture that he formerly offered covert for free. Some call
such people Debtera, a highly educated priest, who are reputed for “sorcery,
and invoking Satan to do well or evil by reciting some mysterious texts.” According to this healer/doctor,
who spent half a century in this service most of the clients are young city
dwellers that either come in search of healing or for “other untold services”. The unnamed
healer/doctor however, could not say a word on how and what witches, shamanists and herbalists
could do to bring about political change.
Although King Tewodros II who ruled from 1855-68 was highly reformist and
anti-clergymen, he was reportedly assisted and chronicled by Debteras
such as Debtera Zenebe, who wrote his biography. Upon the death of Tewordos,
King Yohannes IV, who took over the emperorship of the ‘united Ethiopia’,
became one of the first kings to illegalise witchcraft. J. F. Ade Ajayi in his book “Africa in the Nineteenth Century until the 1880s” says
“anxious to purify religious practices, he (Yohannes) forbade the practice of
witchcraft,”.
Patriot Belay Zeleke who ambushed and heroically
fought the occupying Fascist Italian forces of Mussolini in the five years invasion was alleged to
have used the bones of holy ancestors that helped him shelled his body from being shot. HIM Hailessellasie, who is traditionally and
publicly known as a devout Orthodox Christian has not been spared from the
rumours and writings that non-evidently allege he had “secretly practised witchcraft in Debrezeit”.
The military junta Derg regime of Mengistu
Hailemariam has been fully socialist and secular. Little has it been attached
with witchcraft. The Dergs witchcraft was its barrel of guns that did miraculous
massacres and outright genocide against anyone that opposed or dissented their Communist ideology. In
the Derg era, witchcraft was much more prevalent within the intelligentsia and population
than the regime. There were many anecdotes when clever students who made it to the university or scored the best grades were poisoned or affected by their own jealous
peers. It was rampant then to see crazy dudes in every village doing crazy things and their stories told by everyone that looks at them with pity. This has changed a lot now,
although, Church records and experiences show that witchcraft on “love, lust, wealth
and healing” are on the steep rise.
The incumbent regime of Meles Zenawi is also widely accused
of being part of the witch business and practice. When they came in 1991 they were
said to have come with a donkey imported from Sudan (popular destination of
witchcraft in the Horn of Africa) that allegedly was a magic to hold their grip
forever. In the recent raid of witch scam artist, Tameart Geleta, it was
reported by the Ethiopian Federal police that the so called “witch” used to be
visited by high ranking government officials and even derived his authority and
“protection” from the regime’s heavyweights. This writer knows that PM Meles
Zenawi has a person named Ayele who serves as a food taster. The Prime Minister
wouldn’t eat anything that has not been taste by Ayele when he is abroad or
away. The prominent Ethiopian website Ethiopian Review often refers to the wife
of Prime Minster Meles as the Witch Lady Azeb Mesfin (instead of First Lady Azeb
Mesfin). Recently, ESAT Television had reported that the President of
Oromia Regional State, Alemayehu Atomesa, has been poisoned.
Politicians do care so much about what, where, with whom
they wine and dine for fear of being victims of witchcraft. They don’t leave
the glass that they held when they entered the cocktail party until they leave.
In July 2005 BBC held a discussion with its audience on
witchcraft asking “Is Witchcraft Alive in Africa?”, one of the opinion givers, Berhane,
London, UK put the following in Beebs Website,
If there is a power
of witchcraft for real, Africa would have been the first country to develop and
come out from poverty. I remember when Eritrea liberated from Ethiopia in 1993;
the Eritrea government widely made an open debate regarding witchcrafts and
invited the so-called experts of witchcraft, but none of them able to prove
what they claimed to have. For most of them it is business and for some a false
hope. For me, it is very sad, irrational and sham still some Africans to see
believing on the existence of witchcraft.
In
Ethiopian journalistic and literary discourses too, witches have been mostly
used as literary characters. At times, they foretold the downfall, coming and
even conspired in the toppling of regimes. Among the famous characters in
Ethiopian novels is Merigeta/Reverend Debtera Melaku. Biresaw, a simple servant
and farmer in Gojjam by seeking help from the witchdoctor Melaku had been able
to reach a top level of leadership and amass wealth under King Adal, according to the novel, Fitawrari Belay, by Ras Emeru Hailesellasie.
Conclusion
These practices have ruined the lives of many, promising youth were killed or damaged and a state of fear, distrust, suspicion had reigned over us for centuries demolishing our social capital and collective growth and development. Undoubtedly, these people might take the immense role in the backwardness and stagnation of our country. These people who "sell us love of a girl" who doesn't even dream of us, who help in poisoning and casting spell on innocent souls of Ethiopia, who tie and untie the love, respect, growth, enlightenment, development and success of our citizens and nation should take the blame for our poverty and negative energies abound in the Ethiopian air. There is this most unstudied role of witchcraft too. These people had also played immense role (positive and negative) in the kingdoms and palaces
of former Ethiopian kings and were also the back-door architects and designers
of the then polices and war. They have been sources of scholarly works, literary and medicinal discoveries, diplomacy and military analysis and tactics. They did in fact have some legacies to be wooed. What role can then witches, sorceress and traditional
healers play in modern day politics? Can they help the yearning of the youth for freedom, liberty, equality and justice and compensate us for all the dreadful works that they have been doing in that nation?
Members
and clergy of the main Abrahamic religions have been active participants in the
political state and liberation movements and theologies. Currently, the heaviest
threat to the rule of the Meles Zenawi regime is coming from the Muslim
clergies and mass of Anwar Mosque and Ortodox Christian monks of Waldeba
Monastery and their mass base.
The martyrAbune
Petros is a worthy icon. It has been a practice of the
Christian Church in most parts of the world to
refuse oppression, stand with the oppressed, challenge the depressor and assist in liberation movements. Please read the liberation theologies of Latin America. Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros II (1818 -1868) was one of the
most reformative and revolutionary kings that had introduced many changes
within the Orthodox Church, which some of them were reportedly “brutal”. He had "tortured and imprisoned clergymen" who opposed his reforms and himself. But still, in that day and age, there were priests
and clergymen who opposed him in public and
called the society to rise up against his “dictatorship”. The
online resource,angelfire.com has it,
Abune Sellama however continued to angrily denounce the
Emperor to all who would listen, even to the Emperors face. Foreign observers
have even left accounts of the two men hurling insults at each other in public.
The Archbishop calling Tewodros a mad man and an apostate, while the Emperor
called the Archbishop an Arab and a Moslem. Finally, both men had enough and
Tewodros ordered the Archbishop imprissoned on Magdalla, and the Archbishop in
turn called on the people of the land to refuse to be ruled by Tewodros and
resist his authority anathemizing those who didn't.
Today also there are priests and
clergymen who oppose the inhumanity and suffering of Ethiopians at home.
Especially, the Orthodox synod based in the Diaspora is known for publically
calling Ethiopians at home and abroad to stand up against injustice in
Ethiopia. Where are the witchdoctors, herbalists and magicians as negligible
parts of the society? Can they come up with their own association and call for
same? Would they come together, contemplate and devise a “medicine’’ that
removes the Meles Zenawi regime? If killing with guns for freedom and justice is justified why not hypnosis for same? Or as my friends and we the “modernists” would say
“these things are totally untruthful and irrelevant in today’s politics of
Ethiopia?” The arguments here are still taking the beliefs and views of both
sides of the continuum that say witchcraft/magic doesn’t exist or it exists,
into consideration. And seriously, how long will we continue keeping this topic as a taboo/no touch and play a hide and seek in of witchcraft in our politics. Which politician or public intellectual will come forward and debate this narrative in public? Helen (2005) says “It (witchcraft) can speak a modern
language in a modern context, and achieve the desired results. This is only
possible because people believe in its existence and efficacy, irrespective of
their social status.
” Helen also says "the newer theories of witchcraft are relevant in that they point to the ambiguity and ambivalence of witchcraft. This ambivalence rests on the observation that witchcraft can be used as resistance towards unjust power structures, but it can also just as well serve the interests of those in power." How about us?
It is to be recalled that De Birhan featured a "speculative analysis/news" using Google Insight last year that Ethiopia might be the next stop of the Arab Spring. Following that trend this time, I conducted another analysis of what Ethiopians have been searching in the last 12 months in Google. I made a random search of generic nouns, names, events and cognate terms such as "Porn, love, hate, Sport, Church, drought, Arab Spring and the like". In total, I randomly chose and searched over 50 terms that I felt Ethiopians or anyone in any part of the World would search. Here are my findings.
Democracy
The first term that came into my mind was "Democracy". My impression before I started searching "who Googled this word most?" was that, it won't at all from our continent, Africa. Contrary to my assumption, I found out that, FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, Ethiopians were the first ranking people/ the most to search the word "democracy" in the last 12 months. I made a similar search for words such as "food, hunger, famine, and development" but none of them were in the list of top searched terms by Ethiopians. In this time of radical economic hardship and inflation that Ethiopians find themselves in, none searched for a word that relates their nourishment needs. If at all they were searched by Ethiopians, it was in the bottom the top 10 countries list. This is an empirical evidence that is supportive of long held theories of developmental theorists such as E.M. Young and Amartya Sen. Ethiopians in the last 12 months disproved the "full belly thesis" online.
Here is the list of top 10 countries - geographically, that searched for the term
"Democracy" in the past 12 months upto today (02 May 2012):
"Obama" (Barack Obama), the President of United States of America (U.S.A) has been one of the most searched words on Google since he took the Office. In the last 12 months, Ethiopia was the 2nd country/region after Uganda that searched the name "Obama" from all regions of the world. In another Insight test I did, in the last 90 days, Ethiopia tops in searching the term/name "Obama". Ethiopians are still in "love" with him.
Here is the list of of top 10 countries that searched "Obama" in the last 12 months:
News was the other term that I looked into. Evidently, the noun/term, "News" was most searched by the most censored nation in the world, as to
CPJ's report, the one and only, our neighbour, Eritrea. Eritreans top in searching the term "News". Ethiopia is the 8th searcher of the term "News" in the last 12 months.
The next term I wenttosearch was sports related. It was my favourite sports club, although they are pissin' me off these days was "Arsenal". Google Insight tells me that from all the regions of the world in the last 12 months Eritrea/ns were the highest searchers of the word/term "Arsenal". Ethiopia was the runner up in the search. Not in the case of Manchester United. Manchester United was most searched in Mauritius in the last 12 months, Ethiopia ranks at the bottom 10th in searching the term "Manchester United". BTW, the term "Sport" was also most searched in Ethiopia in the last 12 months from all regions of the world.
The top searching regions of the term "Arsenal" (detailed analysis shows that over 95% of term "Arsenal" were in relation to the soccer club) in the last 12 months have been:
The Virgin Mary, the dearest Mother of God, is popularly known as Mariam in Ethiopia and also in many other countries although the spellings might differ regionally. The term "Mariam" was also most searched in Ethiopia in the last 12 months. The top 10 are here:
There are many more words and terms to search. These were the few that I found Ethiopians searching most in the last 12 months. The fact that the word/term "Democracy" was searched most in Ethiopia than any other region or country in the world makes me nothing but proud. You can go to the Google Insight yourself and search for other terms , I will leave you be.
