Development propaganda or Journalism?

By T, staffer of De Birhan Media

28-5-2012

This thesis would in general try to asses development reporting and journalism in the developing world’s media. Cognizant of the complexity of under development and its multi dimensional effects and also the re-emergence of development communication, this write up attempts to analyse development journalism in developing countries from a birds eye view.

 Literature

Reaching a mass, educating and bringing changes within a society are mostly made most possible by mass communication. Mass communication itself can take different forms and be done with various mechanics and methodologies. Development communication (Journalism) is one of the genres of communication (mass) that is highly focused on developing countries with the aim of lifting them out of abject poverty and stepping on the development ladder. Propaganda is another genre of mass communication that shares aspects from politics, sociology, psychology and journalism itself. According to indiastudychannel.com, coined in 1968 at press foundation of Asia conference in the Phillipines, the term (Development journalism) refers to the press's catalytic role in the socio-economic development in developing countries. While in the case of propaganda ,Richard Alan Nelson (1996) neutrally defines propaganda as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels. A propaganda organization employs propagandists who engage in propagandism—the applied creation and distribution of such forms of persuasion." In light of such definitions in mind and aware of the dangers and benefits such reporting brings, it is worth analysing the type of development journalism and its weaknesses in the developing world. The literature has it that the capacity of mass communication especially one that is of persuasive qualities in guiding, influencing and indoctrinating groups and societies is of immense goals and objectives including poverty reduction and development.

Ethiopia’s development journalism document

Yet ungratified but used officially, the 48pages, Ethiopian development journalism policy document interrogates “philosophical and operational” issues. Ethiopia might be the only African country with such a policy document (Skjerdal, 2011).

This policy document defines development journalism as,

Development journalism is a journalism that makes people understand, accept and actively participate in the implementation of appropriate development ideas that may extricate people from poverty and backwardness by bringing about rapid national change and building on positive values of development and democratic change. (Ethiopian policy document on development journalism, EPA 2008) in Skjerdal (2011).

Positive success stories and positive promotion of development are the pillars of Ethiopia’s Policy Document on Development Journalism. The Document and internal administrative rules advocate the application pro- government, pro-development news reports. Investigation is neither promoted nor cultured. The following news is one of the many typical development reports practiced by the government media such as Ethiopian News Agency. This news was written on May 6, 2012.

Construction of 17 safe water facilities finalized

S.Tigray, May 6, 2012 (Maichew) - Construction of 17 safe water projects launched in Raya-Alamata Woreda, Southern Tigray Zone with over three million Birr has been finalized, the woreda information and public relation office said. Office Representative, Amanuel Gedamu told ENA over the weekend that the facilities include digging of ten water wells and development of seven springs. Amanuel said 9000 farmers will benefit from the facilities constructed in areas, which had no access to safe water service. He said the facilities will help to raise the service to 60 per cent from the previous 43 per cent. The regional government and the woreda administration allocated the budget for construction of the facilities.

The above news item does not critically examine the source of funding, if it was properly used, the complaints of the community, the views of the engineers and local stakeholders; if there have been complaints during the construction from any side and related critical questions.

Development journalism is given as an elective course within many African universities that teach journalism. The course is popularly called DJ or DC acronym for Development Journalism and Development Communication. African journalism students who aspire to see the development and progress of their nation study it with enthusiasm and dedication to apply it broadly as soon as they join the work force and life of reportorial.

‘Development journalism’ was said to have emerged in South East Asia in the 1960s in the case of Afria  Ghana’s Kwame has been credited to have promoted development journalism.   Hemant Shah’s 2008 paper titled “development journalism” emphasises this view saying,

Development journalism was conceived in the 1960s at the Press Foundation of Asia (PFA), where Filipino journalists Alan Chalkley and Juan Mercado were concerned that news organizations were inadequately covering socio-economic development. Journalists were reporting government press releases and quotes but giving little attention to detailed analysis, interpretation, or evaluation of development.

The author also states that the meetings of the 1970s and 80s that were popularly called   New World Information and Communication Order [NWICO] debate were also the emerging periods of development communication when countries of the South argued that media of the North misrepresented them and that they needed development journalism to avert that.

The Asian Development Journalism

Dixit, a Nepali journalist who was the regional director for Asia Pacific of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency from 1991 to 1997, said in an internal memo to journalism staff in 1993: 

Development journalism has been done so sloppily for so long by so many people that when you mention DJ, their eyes glaze over. One thing you don’t say nowadays when you introduce IPS (Inter Press Service) is that we specialise in development journalism. The concept and need for development journalism is still valid. Unfortunately the phrase is tattered and hackneyed because it has been sabotaged by violently unreadable writers. 

IPS, which was originally set up in the 1960s by a group of Latin  American journalists living in Europe and unhappy with the Western media’s negative reporting of their continent, specialises in develop-ment journalism and is very much modelled on Tarzie Vitachi’s vision of a ‘critical assessment’ of the development process (Vitachi, 1987).

Media in Asia argue in their development reports argue that the media are hardly keeping an eye on government and relief agencies in terms of helping to ensure that monies raised and aid get to the needy. They argue that “Questions are not being asked about why reconstruction efforts are taking so long to complete, or why some aid agencies are not following the Red Cross’s code of ethics for relief work and rather, are more interested in proselytising.”  The media in Asia focus on the critical aspect of the development story than merely reporting the success and positive side of it.  Development news should examine development plans critically, evaluate and point out disparities between the original plan and actual implementation (Aggarwala, 1979). In the few cases of development news reports that I have come across, the above prerequisites of development journalism by Aggarwala were applied but in the Ethiopian.

Conclusion

If Ethiopian journalists are going to adopt a better form of development journalism; it should not only oppose or be inquisitive of the government ideological sprout developmental democracy but also try not to reflect Western perspectives, prejudices and misconceptions that are blindly followed by African journalists and are reproduced locally. If development journalism was going to be against the New World Order remaking the image of the South/Africa, then Ethiopian developmental journalists should consider the balancing of Ethiopia’s image at the world fora too. Studies on media ownership and proportion of development news coverage show that conglomerate-controlled newspapers cover more governmental news than development news in comparison to independent newspapers (Vilanilam, 1979b). Same was the case in the Ethiopian media be it online News agencies such as Ethiopian News Agency and Walta or the government owned broadcast and print media. They all reported development stories from a positive and success story angle making them propaganda and mouth pieces of the incumbent. In addition to that, the developmental journalism policy of 2008 stipulated what the journalist in the government media should and should not do. As a nation and government that is increasingly going “developmental authoritarian”, policies and programs that are tuned to the developmental rhetoric of the incumbent have entered every sector from arts, politics, business to mass media and many other. They reported either just "what they were told" or "served as conduits of whatever the regime leaked as developmental". The developmental state that is statist by its nature promoting full government interference and leadership in all sectors memos and does the same with the media. Therefore, it won’t be hasty to generalise that the media in Ethiopia except few private press are and perform a kind of development reporting that could be called propaganda journalism.

References:

Aggarwala, N.K. (1978). News with third world perspective: A practical suggestion. In P.C. Horton (Ed.), the third world and press freedom (97-209). New York: Praeger

Jowett, Garth S. and O'Donnell, Victoria (2006)Propaganda and Persuasion 4th edition. Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications

Nelson, Richard Alan (1996). A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press

Punch, Keith F (1998) Introduction to Social Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches. London: SAGE Publications

Shoemaker, P.& Reese,S.(1996)Mediating the Message: Theories of  Influences on the Mass Media Content. NY. Longman http://www.indiastudychannel.com/resources/99080-What-Development-Journalism.aspx

EPA (Ethiopian Press Agency). 2008, April. Basis and directives for an operational philosophy of our democratic and developmental media. Draft policy document.

Skjerdal, T. 2011. Development journalism revived: The case of Ethiopia African Journalism Studies 32(2), 58–74

Shah H. (2008) Development Journalism, The International Encyclopedia of Communication http://www.communicationencyclopedia.com/public/tocnode?query=studies&widen=1&result_number=1326&from=search&id=g9781405131995_yr2012_chunk_g97814051319959_ss31-1&type=std&fuzzy=0&slop=1

Vilanilam, J. V. (1979b). Ownership verses development news content: An analysis of independent and conglomerate newspapers of India. In J. A. Lent & J. V.  Vilanilam (Eds.), the use of development news: Case studies in India, Malaysia, Ghana, and Thailand. Singapore: Asian Mass Communication Research and Information Center.

A SWOT Analysis of Ethiopian opposition parties and movements in the Diaspora

By T, Staffer of De Birhan Media

24 May 2012

First I would analyse political parties found outside Ethiopia. In another issue, I will deal with home based parties but I consider them as “choked and paralyzed”. The slight motion so far has been by those based/active in the Diaspora. Parties and movements established under ethno nationalistic and unitary stances are both lumped up and analysed here. I am doing so because with my subjective comparison, I found both polar having relatively the same objectives and goals. The overarching objective of most of these parties is removing the incumbent regime of Meles Zenawi. These parties can use the following or do their own SWOT Analysis and re-strategize their strategic goals and objectives. SWOT is an acronym for Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat. Naga Jyothi et al in their 2008 paper Object Oriented and Multi-Scale Image Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats-A Review say, in theory, SWOTs are used as inputs to the creative generation of possible strategies, by asking and answering the following four questions numerous times:

• How can we use each strength?

• How can we stop each weakness?

• How can we exploit each opportunity?

• How can we defend against each threat?

Developed by Albert Humphrey in the 1960s, the Analysis has been used from private business to political parties and individuals. Below is a short SWOT Analysis of opposition organisations based/active in the Diaspora.

Strengths

• Mass base/support
• Human capital within the parties –highly experienced, educated and rich leadership and members.
• Vision- most opposition movements and parties have clearly spelt out vision, mission and goals.
• Good linkage with International rights groups
• Good relation and usage of the private media
• Opinion leadership/ agenda setting skills
• Successful at PR and propaganda campaigns
• Dedicated campaigners and protesters
• Innovative and strong track record in media usage and formation. 
• Good culture of discussing political topics.
• Branding themselves- their parties.

Weaknesses

• Lack of unity
• Lack of action – violent or non-violent
• Absence of armed, organised forces – militarily
• Weakness to coordinate, mobilise and organise self, others and the mass.
• Using passive aggressive methods
• Absence of offensiveness/strategies – mostly defensive
• Intra and inter party grudges, jealousy, arrogance, dishonesty, intolerance and little party discipline
• Lack of/no resilience  
• Inability to draw young  members and leaders
• Inability to think ahead and strategically
• Absence of/weak Intelligence 
• Poor party secrecy and confidentiality
• Spending time, effort and resource on an unnecessary meetings, conferences and projects
• No culture of criticism and self-evaluation
• No sense of urgency
• Fear and lack of creativity. Most stick to the books. They prefer to apply and debate about the resistance strategies of M. Ghandi, M.Luther King and Gene Sharp than look back and dig their own indigenous methods of resistance.
• Taking the struggle as a hobby or means of employment.
• No risk taking. Most leaders apply “Safety Regulations” and fear taking risks.
• Detachment/ignorance from/of what is on the ground.
• Easily infiltrated 

Opportunities

• Disgruntled mass base across all religious groups, ethnicities, ages, sex, parties, media, civic societies, students, teachers, farmers, business people, associations and all groups that are on the edge.
• Growing sense or inter-party understanding, coming together and readiness to form unity of purpose.
• Horn of African geopolitical developments such as  North Sudan’s frustration with Meles’ duplicities, Egypt’s anger with Meles’ new water schemes and Eritrea as the incumbents arch foe
• International organisations and rights groups with huge focus on land grab, environmentalism, internal displacement and rights should be tapped into as opportunities.
• A youth mass to organize and recruit.
• Veteran and redundant officers that could voluntarily serve opposition groups.
• Attracting and engaging knowledgeable, courageous and reputable Ethiopian and international journalists, bloggers and PR officers
• An emerging and popular media - ESAT
• Legal experts, who can start, aid and pursue cases against the regime. Especially against international institutions and business that contract with regime in Ethiopia.
• Initiated and psychologically ready to ‘revolt’ population – Abebe Gelaw’s catalysis that showed authoritarians can be traumatized by just one unarmed person’s loud voice.
• Logistical, manpower, legal and money to start up new businesses that can refund their movements.
• Highly educated and innovative Diaspora/youth
• Disgruntled and determined Christian and Muslim faithful unhappy with regime’s hand on their faith. Care needs to be taken here tough.
• A regime with a deflected attention that can be easily 
• perforate and do away.
• New media technologies 
• Especially time; this a suitable and right time for oppositions to use. 

Threats

• Blockage and censorship of all forms of media that are not owned or directed by the regime.
• Presence of double agents within the opposition camp.
• Siding of superpowers with the regime and a “Yes Boss” strategy of the incumbent that is disfavouring the opposition.
• The instability of the Horn of Africa
•  Restrictive local laws and proclamations
• Lack of steady source of income to fund the struggle
• The emergence of new parties, movements and civic organisations every day that draw back the on-going movements and community
• The recent protests of Ethiopian Muslims – as it brings opportunities it also brings indirect threats too
• Neighboring countries such as Kenya, Sudan, Djibouti and Somalia that have become stooges of the Ethiopian regime.
• Losing members and supporters who lurk for immediate changes or actions.
• Increased tightening and control of CSOs, media and parties by the regime.  
• Absence of armed and organised force that would act as as savior or kick starter.                                                                                     The organisations or you the reader can do the SWOT Matrix or maybe I will do at a later stage. You can add your own bullet points to  the above SWOT list. The parties could also do a cross-comparison and weighing of the S-O, W-O and S-T,W-T.

Human Interest News from Gonder : An anecdote as narrated

By T, Staffer of De Birhan Media

22/05/2012

“It was June 24, 1981, the Feast of John the Baptist, the proclaimer of the coming Messiah. In the evening the Virgin Mary appeared to two young people, Mirjana Dragicevic * and Ivanka Ivankovic.* The next day, four more young people, Marija Pavlovic,* Jakov Colo, Vicka Ivankovic,* and Ivan Dragicevic saw the Virgin Mary, bringing the total to six visionaries. These visionaries are not related to one another. Three of the six visionaries no longer see Our Lady on a daily basis. As of July, 2009, the Virgin is still appearing every day to the remaining three visionaries; that’s well over 12,820 apparitions.” reads  Medjugorje.com.    

These kids were following what they have been seeing and communicating with it. When they later told their parents and neighbors what they saw and talked, they were criticized and nobody believed them. After a lot of religious “tests”, it was declared later that the apparition and miracles of Our Mother Mary in Medjugorje were true. Countless miracles, cures and visits take place in the area still today.

Međugorje or Medjugorje  is a town located in western Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Herzegovina region around 25 km (16 mi) southwest of Mostar and close to the border of Croatia. The town is parto of the municipality of Čitluk. Since 1981, it has become a popular site of religious pilgrimage due to reports of apparitions of the Virgin Mary to six local Catholics.




^Gonder

Ethiopia is a land of miracles. Such miracles where people live and survive with just under a dollar a day and such miracles where diseases that have been declared “cureless” by modern day doctors, are healed cured and wiped out. It takes a lot to believe it or even consider it sensical to a digitalised mind of ours. But there are miracles in Ethiopia I tell you, especially religious ones.

I adulate human interest news items. There are millions of them back home, were there eyes that can perceive them. So farther that I am from my home, I, therefore, am hit with human interest news destitution. The following “scuttlebutt” had come to me from a very very reliable source. I had to think a lot before noting it down because it was less substantiated and fails to fulfil at least few of the basic news values. It is just an anecdote of my closest source who has been to Gonder and who came across this narrative. Do you recall one of those kinds of narrations that you were told when you were a kid and you said opening your little mouth and twinkling eyes wide, “weyyyyyyy gudddddddd”. It sounds one of those kinds hard to believe fictious stories but I am saying one more time since the true narration came from a person I trust, feeds me with policy level and status quo news leaks, am sharing it with you.

The incident has been happening over the past few months. They are three rural kids between roughly the ages of 8 years old girls in Yifag (pronounced as yeefag), a town in "Kemekem" woreda of southern Gonder, located southwest of Addis Zemen, and a short distance away from Lake Tana , Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia. My narrator says that these three kinds have been taken by a “severe cyclonic storm” on Miyazia 18 (April 28) 2012 at around 3pm in the afternoon and were taken to "another world" for three hours. The kids were members of the Sunday Church School at the local Selasie (Trinity) Church.   After hours of disappearance, they were found back and to the delight of their families they were all safe. Few days later, the kids began showing miracles; disabled people, sick and aching patients these kids touched, were getting immediately cured and healed. This news went viral and people from villages to towns afar came in search of healing from the kids. Of the three kids one of them is said to have been sick for weeks and was suspected by the other two as showing "satanic and skeptical behaviors". According to the narrator, the two kids and the community were unable to handle the overflow of people estimated to be well over 10,000 in the past two weeks before the local government and police stopped it.  Miraculous Holy Water has also sprung where the kids were conducting the "healing". The children have been in hiding since the past two weeks unable to manage the number of people coming from all corners of the country. The two children are named Serke and Helen. 

That was the human interest news. We may see this narration covered by other mainstream media in detail soon, provided that it is as accurate as I was gossiped about. Aren’t I lucky to share this anecdote first to you though? 

Eleutherophobia and Collective narcissism

By T, Staffer of De Birhan Media

20 May 2012

Short News : On a "spectacular" fund raising event organised for the Ethiopian Satellite Television (ESAT) in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the presence of Artists Tamagne Beyene, Shambel Belayneh and Gelila Mekonen, over 3000 Ethiopians living in South Africa participated. Good lot was raised.  This was how the guest artists were recieved in Johannesburg,

                                                                         

-------

And a short piece here

I wouldn't go into much detail and discuss these terms by contextualising and decontextualizing them. This would rather be just a copy and paste of two definitions collated from various websites. Both terms suit present day Ethiopia if not less but perfectly.

The first term that showed Ethiopian Prime Minister's shock/phobia at the current meeting is Eleutherophobia (እሉትሮፎቢያ). Here is how http://common-phobias.com defines the word

Eleutherophobia is the fear of freedom. The origin of the word eleuthero is Greek (meaning free or freedom) and phobia is Greek (meaning fear). Eleutherophobia is considered to be a specific phobia, which is discussed on  here.

 Many were those that asked what did really get Meles to shiver, stammer and boil his blood while others sitting next to him did not even show any sign of reaction to the loud noise. Some said it was high insecurity while others said it was just because his name was called. I feel it is Eleutherophobia. The phobia of all the Revolutionary Democrats, freedom, has been publicly noticed when their Commander in Chief was panicking in public.

Eleutherophobic symptoms can be mental, emotional and physical. The anxiety and fear can go from mild feelings of apprehension to afull-blown panic attack. Meles can test the severity of his problem with this 2-minute online eleutherophobia test.

The second term that best describes the ruling party in Ethiopia mainly TPLF and its heavyweight leaders including Meles is collective narcissism. Narcissism is synonymous with egoism, vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness. In psychology, the term is used to describe both normal self-love and unhealthy self-absorption due to a disturbance in the sense of self. Wikipedia reads, "The word narcissism comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus. Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus "lay gazing enraptured into the pool, hour after hour", and finally changed into a flower that bears his name, the narcissus."

And collective narcissism, according to De Zavala AG et al is "an emotional investment in an unrealistic belief about the in group's greatness--aiming to explain how feelings about an ingroup shape a tendency to aggress against outgroups." While Wiki posits on the terms further aspects as,

Collective narcissism is related to ethnocentrism; however, ethnocentrism primarily focuses on self-centeredness at an ethnic or cultural level, while collective narcissism is extended to any type of ingroup beyond just cultures and ethnicities.

TPLF is the best Party that exhibits the "Charismatic Leader-Follower Relationship” concept of collective narcissism meaning when a "narcissistic charismatic" leader like Meles (of the Gold People) leads and bosses, the narcissistic “ideal-hungry” followers support him blindly. Surf the boundless World Wide Web to learn more about these two most pertinent terms of today's Ethiopia. And watch this catalysing video below too...

Ethiopian journalist's loud protest dishonurs Ethiopia's dictatorial PM

By De Birhan

18 May 2012

In this footage that would soon be a hit worldwide on YouTube and International media, accomplished Ethiopian journalist Abebe Gelaw's loud protest at the at G8 Symposium Advancing Food and Nutrition Security at Ronald Reagan Building, USAID, in Washington DC. today May 18, 2012, dishonored the Ethiopian dictatorial Prime Minster Meles Zenawi in front of leaders and international guests from around the globe. As soon as the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, labelled by some of his gullible co and opportunists , as one of Africa's "Wisest, intellectual and developmental leaders" due to mainly his silver tongue, can be watched in this video scared, ashamed and disillusioned in total humiliation. The protesting journalist, Abebe in an interview he gave for ESAT TV after he was made to leave the Auditorium said that one of the bodyguards of Meles had  made a threatening statement on life.

Journalist Abebe is loudly heared as saying " Meles Zenawi is a Dictator! You are committing crimes against humanity. We need freedom! Free Eskinder Nega and all political Prisoners in Ethiopia" Meles Zenawi then bows down in shame and fear for a while before he continued his jib jabs. Ginbot (May)  is a month of coups and revolutions in Ethiopia. This is tantamount to a coup. Kudos Abebe Gelaw again. Meles has been coup/mutinied both emotionally and verbally today.

 

Similarly, hundreds of Ethiopians had protested Meles' presence at the G8 meeting in mass.

You can watch and distrbute this unique footage worldwide.

 

What disillusions?

By T, Staffer of De Birhan Media
16 May 2012

Little kids playing outside the government built residential estates or condominiums stop when they see a coloured person, black i.e. me (Tekur Sew). 


One of them whispers the other girl as I, the Tekur Sew (Black Person) approach them walking on the pavement peacfully partillay filling my ears with my earphones. The ear phones slowly pour Backstreet Boys' - I want it that way. As soon as  Tekur Sew passes them, he hears loud name calling form the kids "Nig** go back" again and again. Totally bewildered, unable to act, Tekur Sew posits " what the heck is this?"  Why the provocation? and from these little kids? Tekur Seew continues to wonder, passes his destination, misses his appointment and  finally finds himself in a place where he did not set out to go to. 

He starts to watch everyone and anyone with a harder Euroscepticic disillusionment and cynicism. Tekur Sew blames all: he blames the regime of his country of origin, then he blames himself, then he blames his identity, then he blames his hosts, he blames the parents of those little kids who "teach" them to hate and provoke peaceful pedestrians. And then he retreats from his grudges and says "well there are bad apples the world over", hence blames the few out of the generous Western nations that host and enliven non westerners with humanity. 

But insult and provocation are really disturbingly disillusioning. The often times Tekur Sew gets abused and insulted in the streets, he promises to teach his natives back home not to be bad to foreigners and at times says well let them insult me and be racist against me 'cause from problems come solutions therefore, I would get high selling and succulent stories after stories from my own experiences of disrespect, abuse, insult, dishonour, spitting, name calling and what have you. Tekur Sew recalls an Oriental saying that approximately says "bad mouthing is equal to a six month illness", then he misses gets immersed into homesickness, how wonderful was it, had Meles been couped over the night and Tekur Sew was able to go back home and revenge his disillusionment by loving, being loved and appreciated. 

Living in the West for a few years now, Tekur Sew sees a fault line within the Welfare State System that may be ridiculed by some readers. It is the Housing Estate system. Public housing ,"council estates" or Social housing as used variably is a rental housing which may be owned and managed by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of the two, usually with the aim of providing affordable housing. This type of housing has been instrumental in alleviating homelessness, enabling ownership and creating communal life. The last few weeks, Tekur Sew was relocating thus was told by friends not to move into any apartment that is near a housing esate. He asked why? "because it is rough area." they said. Housing esates don't have a good fame. Not only to live in them but even around them. That was where I got my 'due' too today from the kids. 

As the economic crisis and cuts shake the economies of European countries, the already existing anti immigrant sentiment has gotten firm hold. Immigrants are blamed as the causes by some nutter politicians and hater citizens. Mainly, people of the African origin are scapegoated.Many Terkur Sewoch who have run away from persecutors in their native land, have now again started to look for a farther land from their seemingly coming "tekat".  Oh life of Tekur Sew.


As the incumbents in Ethiopia are engaged in an ambitious scheme of social housing- condominiums for city dwellers; the regime and all concerned should highly, not least, worry about the social crisis that would be born within the condominiums. The condos of Addis could verily be the "rough social/council housing estates of Europe" where haters, delinquents and anti socials would be bred. I don't want to see what happened to me repeated on others . 

Hate, insult and such provocations disillusion the victim!!

Who didn't listen Backstreet boys in his college years? 

Backstreet Boys - I Want It That Way

Fixing Dictatorship

Cooperatives for bringing democracy in Ethiopia

By De Birhan Media  

12 May 2012

“I hear many say we need to bring a democratic government in Ethiopia, we may but we can’t realise it lest we also change our bad socio-cultural underneath” anonymous in a social forum.

1. Introduction

In a very literal sense, cooperation means working together for a mutual benefit then are derived the adjective, adverb, noun and so on forms of the word i.e. cooperative, cooperatively, cooperativeness and cooperation. Some aspects of the Gada Syetem, Edir, Mehaber and Equib are indigenous and typical examples of cooperation of societies in the Ethiopian case. I would here now focus on cooperative, not on its linguistic meaning but on its business/organisational model and idea.  A Cooperative/coop is a self help business owned and democratically controlled by the people who use its services and share its benefits (Briscoe and Ward, 2005). The International Cooperative Alliance defines coops as “A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.” Cooperatives in Ethiopia today are mainly agricultural and at times serve as "controlling local populace and teaching party policies". Elections are done unfairly and the most broad members and heads are stooges of the regime. 

It is also an idea of any form of organisation formed under these concepts of member controlled, owned and benefiting organisations. We can use the Amharic equivalent of cooperatives- Ye Hebret Sera Mehaberat, hereafter. The cooperative movement has been instrumental in fighting poverty, deprivation, creating social cohesion and promulgating progress. Cooperatives had negative fame too for they were used as political instruments by socialist and communist regimes such as Mao Zedong of China, Mengistu Hailemariam of Ethiopia,   Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania and few others. Thus, when one talks about cooperatives, what comes to the mind of many first is communism. As every farm, business, land and wealth was coopertivised; entrepreneurship, capitalism, competition and “development” were prohibited in many of these communist nations. Although, the idea of cooperatives is grand, if they are fall in the hands dictators and ideological regimes and leaders then become less rosy.  In this short piece, I hypothesise that “if people are free, then cooperatives can be used to build and nurture democracy in poor/developing countries”.

Cooperatives are best categorized according to four best main types based on their user/member such as consumer- retailing, financial services, utilities and housing; Producer –agriculture (processing), farmers markets and taxi; Workers- owned and run companies by workers; Community- community radio, heritage, community development and infrastructure, and Multistakeholder- cross-owned by the above coops such as producers and consumers and so on, cooperatives. There are few more types of cooperatives that have begun to develop recently.  In 2005, the most recent year for which detailed data is available; there were 1,066 societies with approximately 270,000 members and sales/income of €3.8 billion. According to the International Cooperatives Union, currently, over 800 million people are members of cooperatives worldwide and in the United Stated 4 in 10 individuals are members of a cooperative (25%).

Before forming cooperatives the first step to be taken is pointing the real problem or task which in our case could be summarised as democratisation inclusive of justice, good governance and human rights. The next step is making sure that a coop is the right organisation. Followed by : calling a meeting, forming an investigation/steering committee of 5 to 7 people that help the maturity of the project with a chairperson, secretary, and treasurer.

Democratisation

S.W.R. de A. Samarasinghe on a paper titled “Democracy and Democratization in Developing Countries” 1994 says

The concept of democracy, in its simplest form, can be defined using the two Greek words demos (people) and kratos (rule) that combine to make the word democracy, meaning “rule bythe people”.  Theories of democracy attempt to make this basic concept operational by prescribing how democracy might be realized, in what institutional form, and the content of democracy. 

And states that there was no general agreement as to the issues bringing two main questions such as “the debate whether democracy should be extended beyond the political sphere to include the social and economic spheres and secondly is the question of the adequacy of a theory of democracy that addresses only the procedural or input side of the political process ignoring the output side.” Jennifer Franco in a 2008 paper entitled “Rural Democratisation: (Re) Framing rural poor political action” states that democratisation could be either changing regimes or political processes within the regime. Jennifer also says that in order to consider regimes democratic it must provide: free and fair electoral competition, civilian control over the military and guaranteed respect for basic political rights and freedoms.

Democratization can generally be translated as the transition to a more democratic political regime. Democratisation can be affected due to different reasons that may help propel or curtail its growth. Wealth is arguably one of the major causes cited to affect democratisation. The argument is that it at times has been found out to be irrelevant in democratisation processes. Education or information is the second; better informed and knowledgeable people make informed choices and act “morally”. Market economy, social and economic equality- democracy is more stable in egalitarian and intermediate societies. Civil societies and civic culture are also important in that when civil societies that build social networks are existing and a certain common civic culture exists, democracy improves. As contentious as the others though, culture is considered as important, some argue Western culture as being conducive although there are cases within non Western cultures.  Free and fair election, political parties (opposition), independent election board and vibrant media are the other essentials.

From there very democratic principles, cooperatives enshrine their enlightening second principle: democratic member controls, Co-operatives are democratic organisations controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives are accountable to the membership. Primarily, co-operative members have equal voting rights (one member, one vote) and co-operatives are also organised in a democratic manner.

In addition to this, the main cooperative values such as self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity and belief in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others make cooperative peculiar forms of organization/enterprise. These main values and beliefs are all pertinent to democratic behaviour.  It is possible to assume that coops are then by their very nature suitable for any democratisation activity, purpose or role.

Conclusively, it boils down to the point that democratisation is a process to be built from the grassroots than top-down as is the case in Ethiopia and most authoritarian countries. The process aspect of democratisation, the building up, nurturing and maintaining of institutions, culture and human development that instils democraticness within the society is the prerequisite.

Human Empowerment and Emancipative Values are considered to be one of the important aspects in democratisation. Some theorists assume democratization as the result of a broader process of human development. Briscoe et al say cooperatives take people as origins meaning their philosophy is based on the assumption that creativity and the ability to make meaningful decisions are widely distributed talents.

Here to solidify my premises I would offer two empirical cases of CSOs that could be used by Ethiopians or all those that are interested in establishing cooperatives for the sake of developing democratisation.  The types of coops that I am going to explain may fall within the category of community cooperatives. Local Economic Trading System (LETS), single cause advocacy coops, time banks, Work Integrated Social Enterprises (WISE) and heritage business coops are good examples in this case. They all in common are not for profit, are self help, have reciprocity- every member gives and receives, offers payment, service and solidarity based incentives.

Journalism Cooperatives

Principle number six of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) on Education, Training and Information stresses the need of information (communication) within and outside cooperatives. The role of mass media and cooperative journalism specifically, in achieving this principle is of the essence. Veerakumaran (2007) says the journalist in the cooperative sector should have faith in the philosophy and principles of cooperation and skill in selecting the suitable media as well as skill in the treatment of the message. According to a 2009 news report of SavetheNews.org, as applied to the news, this alternative (cooperative journalism) ownership structure can liberate news production from the predatory commercial pressures that have contributed to journalism's current predicament. Verma, an Indian Researcher of cooperatives says mainstream media containing the virtual components of print, electronic and radio acts as a strong catalyst of enhancing the image of any organisation as it portrays the popular mood of the masses. Conventionally, the media that we know of today are either owned by corporations, governments or PLCs. I am challenging this type of media ownership as a thing that is against the basic ideals of journalism. When owned under the conventional form of business, media becomes highly manipulated and serves the interests of few owners than the public/ community interest. To amend this, cooperative media; owned, controlled and benefiting the members should proliferate.

One good example here is the New Internationalist magazine that has over 30 years of publishing history under its belt, and more than 55,000 subscribers worldwide, the New Internationalist is renowned for its radical, campaigning stance on a range of world issues, from the cynical marketing of baby milk in the Majority World to human rights in Burma. Publications from the New Internationalist are produced by an independent trust working as a not-for-profit cooperative. Originally the group was sponsored by Oxfam, Christian Aid and the Cadbury and Rowntree Trusts, but since the early 1980s sponsorship has no longer been needed. According to the official website of the publication, Newint.org, because the New Internationalist operates as a not-for-profit, income from sales of publications and gifts goes into the production of its titles and to spread its aims and ideals, not “into a rich media tycoon’s pocket!”

Structural Details

The New Internationalist communications co-operative is based in Oxford with editorial and sales offices in Toronto, Canada; Adelaide, Australia;Christchurch, Aotearoa /New Zealand; and Tokyo, Japan. NI adheres to the core co-operative values of self-help, responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. NI states that it exists to inform, educate and communicate its message and ideals in an accessible style through the New Internationalistmagazine, books, internet and other media.

NI is a financially independent company. It does not distribute profits to its members. If profits are earned they are retained and used to further the aims as set out in its statement. NI maintains a democratic, co-operative and non-hierarchical structure and operates an equal opportunity policy. Equality of worth, equality of opportunity and equality of voice are central tenets of co-operative membership and aims to maintain a safe, healthy and non-discriminatory work environment. Staff members earn their income through the various forms stated in the benefit distribution ways of cooperatives. The Chicago, USA based Cooperative Media is another example of the few. 

Cooperative media as in the above cases have no financial dependence on shareholders as other big media, thus the neutrality of the publications is not in question mark as they would be less partial from the owners’ bias but would be biased to the interests of their diverse public and community that are their members and audience. Ownership of a media is important. Herman and Chomsky (1988) argue that the sheer size, concentrated ownership, immense owner wealth, and profit seeking imperative of the dominant media corporations could hardly yield any other result.

Currently, there are ongoing debates about the future of the print media as online media is “replacing” it. Many argue that most papers are closing as a result of this and that press may die out soon. However, I very much disagree with them. The closure of most newspapers has not come due to the emergence of online media but as a result of the economic rescission that came due to the capitalist economic model's failure. Most papers in the world are owned by few individuals who run a chain of newspapers as conglomerates thus as they were hit by the recession they closed their papers. But those which followed the cooperative model like the New Interenationalist survived and continue to do so.

Additionally, if media organisations apply the cooperative business model they would by default apply the main media ethics such as fairness, objectivity, impartiality, balance, accountability, transparency, public interest and the like.  

CSO cooperatives  

Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) play huge role in the democratisation process. Especially, CSOs that work on human rights, democracy and justice are necessary for any democracy. The usual model of such CSOs is that they are formed as charities that derive their finance from external funders putting their accountability soley on the interest of their funders. There are almost none NGOs/CSOs that take the cooperative organisational/business model. However, it is possible for CSOs modelled under the cooperative models that are member owned, controlled and benefiting to be formed. Similar to the cooperative media, the cooperative CSOs and NGOs would be voluntary, open membership, and member benefiting.

For example let’s take an ideal coop X. Coop X is located in southern part of Ethiopia, Shashemne city. The Coop was established in 2011 with a single cause of teaching and helping its members and the community about their legal and constitutional rights and entitlements. It has around 100 members who paid 5 Ethiopian birr each as an initial capital to establish the coop. The background of the members ranges from carpenters, farmers, lawyers, students, and business people to local government members. The services that the coop offers are village level seminars, house to house teaching, outreach and drop in service. As most members of the coop are not knowledgeable of the legal issues, they are given aprior training that enables them to have the basic knowledge of the issues that their coop would work on provided that they may represent the coop. When a coop member is assisted or assists a community member legally, he will be charge/d a minimum price of 5birr or he may pay/ed in goods or voluntary service such as helping the housing construction or farming another member’s. In such a manner, the coop consolidates the legal, justice, human rights and democratic know how and culture of the local community.  At the end of the year, members will benefit from the cooperative in proportion to their use and members’ capital could recive at most a strictly limited rate of interest. In addition to these benefit, members will benefit from the educations offered, openness, and participation in decision making which would always be “one member one vote”, social capital and ownership.

Jennifer Franco (2008) has also used some country cases of rural areas to study democratisation in a rural context. For instance, one CSO project in the Mexico focuses on rural people’s efforts to promote greater state transparency through a ‘right to know’ campaign in the state of Guerrero. It does this by working with a local NGO in studying the campaign strategies and implementing them.

Similarly, political parties are being established under the principles of cooperatives. One of such oldest political parties is the Cooperative Party in the United Kingdom. The Co-operative Party is the fourth largest political party in Parliament, and the political arm of the Co-operative Movement. The Party on its website says “We believe that the only way to create a just and fair society is through power being spread evenly throughout society, and not arbitrarily based on wealth, class, gender or race.”

The purpose of the Party is to promote co-operative and mutual forms of economic, social and voluntary organisation, which are based on the principles of mutual ownership and democratic control, and to support political action in pursuance of the Values and Principles of the Cooperative Movement in the UK and internationally as defined from time to time by the International Co-operative Alliance.

It works in partnership with the Labour Party as its sister party to achieve these ends. There are currently 29 Labour Co-operative MPs and representation in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and hundreds of councillors around the country.

Conclusion

As quoted at the start of this piece, dictatorships cannot be fixed by simply removing dictatorial regimes and making them the last. Dictatorialness lives within the society and community as a culture. Therefore, a grassroots level culture building and nurturing of democracy is important in order to have a sustainable democracy. Long used as party machines by communist regimes worldwide, cooperatives as I analysed throughout, are the ultimate forms of organisation to bring about democraticness in countries such as Ethiopia thus ensuring stability, development and peace. The cooperative model importantly contributes to alleviating the problem and a worker cooperative might be helpful in specificity. Taking various steps such as increasing the solidarity among workers, ongoing process of education and training in many areas could establish a greater cooperative pressure in the selected area.

Cooperatives are people centred than profit orientated. They focus on collective growth than self interest and they make regimes responsive to the needs of grassroots community. There are policy level debates at the moment if cooperatives are the best alternatives in such a time when capitalist economy has proved to be ''a failure''.  In Ethiopia political power, decision-making and planning are centralised in all forms. Participation and empowerment are the crucial genres of democratisation and they are the building blocks of cooperatives too giving evidence why they are suitable places of nurturing democraticness.

The above cases of free media, CSOs and political parties as applied in the cooperative model and implemented at the grassroots level do best describe that cooperatives can be used as ways/ organisations of drying dictatorships and building democratisation from the bottom up.

Bibliography

Aldrich, Howard, and Robert Stern. "Resource Mobilization and the Creation of US Producer Cooperatives, 1835-1935

Briscoe, R. and Ward, M.(2005) 'Helping ourselves :Success stories in Cooperative Business and Social Enterprise, Cork: OAK Tree Press

Journalism Co-ops, SaveTheNews.org, 2007, USA

Lull,J(2000) Media, Communication, Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press

Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky (1988) Manufacturing Consent: The

Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon.

Sanjay Kumer Verma: Cooperatives and community culture -The Role of Media, National Cooperative Union India,Delhi

Shoemaker, P.& Reese,S.(1996) Mediating the Message. Theories of Influences on the Mass Media Content. NY.Longman

Veerakumaran, G., Ethiopian Cooperative Movement-An Explorative Study, 2007, Mekele University

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© De Birhan Media May 2012