Ethnic
Self-Determination or
Centripetal Dismemberment
of a Nation
Polarity of Incarnate Narratives and
Avant-garde Ideology
Public Lecture - RL Vol XII No 340
MMXVIII
Costantinos
Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD
Professor of Public Policy &
Sustainable Institutional Reforms
Abstract
Despite the success the new
charismatic Prime Minister Abiy, some regions are locked up in a round of
vindictive ethnic violence. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Ethiopians are caught between ethnic
violence and shadowy politics. Ethnic violence in Ethiopia's Southern regional
state has left at least 770,000 people displaced. What
is re-emerging now after almost 27 years of revolutionary democracy rule is the
deep division and heated debate about the wisdom of ethnic based
regionalisation of the country. The modern state that emerged was a
heterogeneous society comprising of major ethnic groups. Irredentist and
secessionist parties claim that there was no meaningful effort undertaken to
integrate the indigenous populations into the expanded political system. Moreover,
the swing to the left in the late 1960s was attended by the adoption of a
virtually infallible recipe for organisation, in its Stalinist variant for the
urban setting and its Maoist one for the rural. A cardinal feature of the
recipe was the principle of ‘democratic centralism’. The ‘Dergue’ discovered
its utility and applied it to achieve the highest level of mobilisation and
regimentation of society ever recorded in Ethiopia. Utilising the same
organisational recipe, the rural guerrilla forces smashed the gigantic military
machine and defeated the ‘Dergue’. The same ideological baggage has permeated
economic policy since 1974.
Nevertheless, citizens complain
that, in this light, the issues of ‘democratisation’ that the nation poses and
seeks to settle may be seen more as a feature of its ideology than a feature of
Ethiopia, though the country certainly faces problems of democratic transition.
For it is difficult to see how ethnic-based ‘democratisation’ constitutes the
‘democratisation’ of Ethiopia. When all that is constitutive of its historic
identity and unity is subject to rejection and deconstruction, how does this
become a subject of democratic change? This claim of reductionism in
approaching national tradition along with the naively rationalist criticism
that goes with it, is predicated on the polarity the new political order draws
between historically sedimented values, sentiments and symbols of the
tradition, on the one hand, and contemporary ideas and projects of
self-determination which they are being promoted, on the other. It is
based on a dualism of effective history and revolutionary ideology. This
polarisation is indefensible in its assumption that the two forms of Ethiopian
national experience are mutually exclusive. If we do not accept it, and there
may be good reasons for not accepting it, the arguments that the incumbents
make on its basis become untenable.
On top of many programmes
proposed by the lecture, the most significant is the devolution of power to the
zones (awrajas during Emperor Haile Sellasse) will no doubt address issues of
identity, resources use, livelihood security (entrepreneurship, employment) and
ethnic peace. The human and financial resources of the regional states must wither
away along with decision-making tasks to the zones so that they can serve the
populace better and faster. The most intimidating challenge is to free society
and polity from the pugnacious, belligerent and bellicose legacy and
doctrinaire traditions of the junta era by fostering the brighter aspects of
the past while consciously fighting the darker ones.
Key words: self-determination,
ethnicity, Ethiopianness, history, tradition, political transition, parties
See lecture here or https://www.academia.edu/37686246/Ethnic_Self-Determination_or_Centripetal_Dismemberment_of_a_Nation_Polarity_of_Incarnate_Narratives_and_Avant-garde_Ideology_RL_Vol_XII_No_340_MMXVIII
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