A Glimpse of History Power, Treachery, Diplomacy and War in Ethiopia 1889-1906

      Axum, the Seat of the earliest Ethiopian kingdom and one of the holiest grounds, the Church of St. Mary of Zion, is located in what is now known the Regional State of Tigray. The earliest monasteries in Ethiopia, established by the “Nine Saints” who spread the gospel are also found in Tigray. It was also during the Axumite period that the first group of Moslems that migrated from Arabia and sought refuge in Ethiopia. Thus, it is properly considered the birthplace of Ethiopian state, religion, culture and civilization. As an arena for trade and communications to and from the ports of Adulis and subsequently Massawa, Tigray was the gateway of the Ethiopian Empire.

            During the last quarter of the 19^th century, there had been constant internal and external warfare and famine in Tigray. August Wylde who came to Adwa right after the Italo-Ethiopian war in 1896 pointed out that when he had visited Adwa during his earlier visit in 1884. It was a flourishing town of about 15000 inhabitants, the commercial centre of the district. Now it is a ruin, a charnel house. War and pestilence have done their work, leaving their mark in ruined homes and blackened walls. I do not think there were a thousand people left in Adwa

See paper here

Operative Clashes and Nexuses: ‘Resilient’ vs. ‘Conventional’ Human Rights

Operative Clashes and Nexuses:

‘Resilient’ vs. ‘Conventional’ Human Rights

African Union Summit 2016, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Human Rights with a focus on the Rights of Women

Political transition in Africa: Africa leadership Forum and Global Coalition for Africa Study – 1993

African Union Summit Public Lecture - CXL, MMXV

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies, College of Business and Economics, AAU

Abstract

      Almost three quarters of a century ago, the human community proclaimed a bold and revolutionary vision of the future. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 asserted that every person on the planet has certain fundamental rights that every society should aspire to their realization equally, cannot be doubted. Notwithstanding The Declaration, the perils of algorithmic power reveal that states who routinely abuse human rights will have to uphold them to remain legitimate to their digital citizenry where they theoretically draw their power from. The caveat is any system of concepts that claim to be universal must contain critical elements in its fabric that are indubitably common to all humans.

       Pundits have asked whether African laws that derive from colonial masters and notion of rights that stem from the Magna Carta and ‘democracies’ that treated blacks inhumanly as the Declaration came into force, do embrace the rights of all humans. Is it bound to be bigotry and obligated to fail because those societies whose conception of rights are not accommodated will take it as an imposition from other cultures? For instance, does the Declaration have African roots, if not; should Africa see it as as alien idea that is imposed from without? In addressing these questions, the article defines resilient rights as unique adaptive strategies of peoples that lead to self-empowered and sustainable livelihoods, which are critical for freedom from fear and freedom from want – one of the most basic human rights. It discusses the emergence of resilient rights inherent in community governance dynamics that have been relegated to the dignity of incipient archaism by vocal non-state human rights agencies and advocacy groups. Resilient rights ideology and agency relate to complexes of ideas, beliefs, goals and issues that can come into co-operative play or competitive contestation amidst the full range of significant participants and their activities for realising self-empowerment and hence self-contained rights.

Key words: resilient rights, human rights, international humanitarian law, 

See article here

The Philosophical Ascent of Contemporary Political Theory & Development Edicts: Quo Vadis Africa?

The Philosophical Ascent of Contemporary
 Political Theory & Development Edicts: Quo Vadis Africa? 
CXXXIX, MMXV

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business & Economic, AAU, 
costy@costantinos.net

Seventh International Conference on African Development (7^th ICAD)

 Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Development through Pluralistic Good Governance and Global Partnerships with African States, Jul 27-29, 2012, Western Michigan University,

Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA,

Abstract

Africa heralded the birth of a new consciousness, a kind of non-identity that was based on determined bonding acts of human societal formations and not on geological precincts. More than millennia, the Axumites united into an Abyssinian kingdom, not by vouching their uniqueness but by exalting it and merging it in the new one. Today, of course, plaguing guerrilla-cum-military dictators, that openly deny and denounce the value of the rational dialogic, have isolated themselves, choosing to suppress citizens that have risen against deceit, betrayal and even treason. They shattered multi-ethnic human formations and replaced it with a series of war hawk ethnic regimes; spawning in the end, irredentist splinter groups. Philosophers from Marx and Adam Smith to contemporary pundits including Croce, McIlwain, Crowther, Azar Gat, Inglehart, Welzel, Avineri, and Birdsall have argued intelligently and scripted road maps for political change.

This think piece in political theory is predicated on an analysis of pluralist societal transformation and developmentalism promoted by regimes and their Nobel Prize flaunting patriarchs, as against real politic in currency today that augurs on freedom from fear and want. It delves into the penury of ideological narratives of post-colonial regimes: developmentalism, which conformed to neither the delusionary neo-liberal camp nor the insipid venom of African Socialism. In combination with the vacuum in political theories and the resultant paradigmatic gridlock, the ills of governmentality were predicated upon the perpetuation of unbridled power. Hence, in political theory, openness of pluralistic liberalisation process can be understood as a dynamic two-way operation of generic forms on particular contents and particular contents on generic forms. Deployment of the conceptual and institutional machinery of pluralism is at the same time the representation of specific needs, interests, motivations, claims, rights and obligations by individuals and groups. Going beyond structuring or rearranging political actors and institutional activities in their spontaneous, often turbid reality, such operations should result in their transformation into transparent agency and practice within a plural political system.

Key words: pluralism, developmentalism, neo-liberalism, generic vs. particular representations 

See article here

An Epic Chronicle: ‘Renaissance’ of Ethiopian Contemporary Art (2005-2015)

   

  The history of art in Ethiopia goes back millennia as depicted in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church paintings. Modern art in Ethiopia is pioneered by Artist Agegnehu Engida (Geberew, Aénd Béel… died of unknown causes in 1950, shortly after finishing the painting Twelve Donkeys). This was followed by Artist Ale Felege Selam’s painting and the modern art belongs to titans such as Maître Artist Afewerk Tekle (glass elimination), Gebre Kisrstos Desta (abstract), Alexander Skunder Boghossian  (magic scrolls) & Lulseged Retta (The coordinator of the Art of Ethiopia). Taddesse mamecha is a ‘drawing’ pio­neer. Other pioneers are Taddesse Mesfin, Worku Mamo, Abdulrahman Sherif, Desta Hagos, Taddesse Bekayneh & Worku Goshu - not necessarily in that order.

        Art can transform any experience into beauty, and by so doing transforms its horrors in such a way that they may be contemplated with enjoyment. Scho­penhauer believed that the forms of the uni­verse, like the eternal Pla­tonic forms, exist beyond the worlds of ex­perience, and that aesthetic satisfaction is achieved by contemplating them for their own sakes, as a means of escaping the painful world of daily experience. Fichte, Kant & Hegel are in a direct line of development. Schopen­hauer was influenced by Kant's view of disinterested contemplation. Nietzsche concurred that life is tragic, but thought that this should not preclude ac­ceptance of the tragic with joyous affirmation, the full reali­zation of which is art that con­fronts the terrors of the universe.

       True to these centennial philosophies, Art of Ethiopia has opened the doors to the world stage for young Ethiopian artists. Through the years, it has come of age in all possible dimensions. Forms and content of Art of Ethiopia have also expanded enormously. Though each has its particularities, yet, each year’s Art of Ethiopia encompasses oil paintings, watercolour compositions, sculptures, graphics, art on canvas, cotton, acrylic, crayon and charcoal art works. Mr. Antony Wade, General Manager of Sheraton Addis said, each year it is becoming more difficult to choose which works of art should be exhibited, as the population of talented artists is ever growing and the quality is continuously improving.

See article here 

Afewerk Tekle -1932-2012 - A Titan Rests

     

      Afework was so much more than those long ago metaphors extolled in our minds. He was a rural boy, blessed with loving parents and who grew into an artist with piquancy for life and a love of challenge, a pied piper who brought our nation to the modern era of philosophical aesthetics. A man of the African renaissance, he epitomised the African, who knew the true meaning of the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty that changed the trajectory of many lives through art, the basis of the highest spiritual development.

      He taught us that beauty is everything that the human spirit finds pleasing and congenial to the exercise of spiritual and intellectual freedom; an avant-garde concept of aesthetics that began to challenge traditional views, in his pencil, stained glass, brushes and canvas…

Words cannot describe how the world would feel when we know that Afework will not be with us in person anymore, a senseless vacuum of incredulity for the loss of a laureate that personified intellectual, spiritual and moral vigour. These fleeting memories will remain frozen in our mind forever, the tapestry of art Afework has left in his paintings, stained glass windows, in the Africa Hall, St George Cathedral, The Trinity Cathedral, Maskal Flower, in his work on the ‘Backbones  of African Civilization, ‘African Movement’, African Atmosphere, ‘African Unity’ and African Heritage’.

     I knew the legend Afework through his works of art and his compassion for humanity that many may not have been fortunate enough to share; as a board member of the Red Cross during the 1984 famine that hit our nation with apocalyptic force and a million compatriots perished. He raised his voice against a regime that heralded terror and pestilence -- what was branded by BBC THE HIDDEN FAMINE’. Afework raised his voice in the global advocacy for change when he led the candle light vigil on the eve of Glasnost ‘LIGHT THE DARKENSS’ ‘yibra bechelemebet’ in 1989.

     Today is our chance to say thank you to a colossus who perked up our lives, to truly realize what we are now without his persona. Nevertheless, if we did not know what he has done to inspire hundreds of Ethiopian young artists, especially during the past five years, life without him would have certainly brought back harrowing images of the dark ages before the renaissance.

     Out of that tension between his elitism, which stoked Afework’s ambition and a post-Cold War dream in his bones of a leveling democratic shtick in Africa, emerged, through art, his frenzied comprehension of the African fantasy of a new era, an idea that espoused his virtue of aristocratic arrogance and human nobleness that merged with a scuttle for accomplishment.