The drama of ethnic identity (By Asfa-Wossen Asserate)

The article is copyrighted. It was first published on German daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. This is a translation.

After they became independent, tribalism took hold.  
Why African states are not making progress – and what needs to be done.  

By Prince Asfa-Wossen Asserate  

In 1963, the Organisation of African Unity, a predecessor of today’s African Union, was founded in  Ethiopia’s capital Addis Abeba. I was fifteen years old and a pupil at the local German school. The boys  played a kind of game there. They approached a classmate and asked him:  

‘Where are you from? What’s your home country?’ When I was asked the same question, I replied with  some astonishment: ‘What’s this question about? I am Ethiopian.’ ‘No, that was yesterday. As of today,  you’re African,’ said a fellow pupil.  

This little anecdote is a reminder of how great the euphoria was back then, not just among us students in  Addis Abeba, but throughout Africa.  

The early sixties were the period in which most African countries gained their  independence. There were great hopes: Unity of the continent, a Pan-African future, peace, independence,  economic prosperity. Millions of people all over the African continent longed for an upswing and a better  life.  

Soon, however, there were armed conflicts in the newly formed nations. The triggers were ethnic conflicts  between different ethnic groups in some of the 55 countries. When the major European powers divided  Africa among themselves, in the nineteenth century, they drew the borders of their colonies on the drawing  board. They took no account to the history of the respective region or ethnic identities. On the contrary:  according to the motto ‘divide and rule’, the colonial rulers played the various ethnic groups against each  other. They divided large former nations into different tribal territories and fueled the differences between  the respective ethnic groups, to make them compliant.  

Some ethnic groups acquired the favor of the Europeans. They collaborated at the expense of other  tribes. Even in centuries before, the hunt for slaves was a lucrative business for some ethnic groups.  

Their clients were the slave traders who between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century around thirteen  million Africans deported overseas. Hatred, envy and mistrust between the peoples of Africa were fostered  over generations. The division of African societies into ethnic groups is the main reason why Europeans  were able to conquer the entire continent in less than fifty years.  

‘Tribalism is the curse of Africa’, said the first Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda.  

Like the other founding fathers of the Organization of African Unity, he wanted to achieve the existing  colonial borders, he wanted to promote a new sense of togetherness between the ethnic groups. The  hope was to overcome tribalism within the new nations and ultimately to find a pan-African identity,  according to the motto ‘unity in diversity and diversity in unity’.  

But tribalism – discrimination based on ethnic origin – soon found its way back into the new African  societies. The former colonial powers continued to secure influence and access to raw materials, by  supporting local elites. Where the national movement had a charismatic leader, a cult of personality often  developed. Initial multi-party systems often turned into one-party rule, which supported the autocrat. The  most important power factor was usually the military, which relied on a European-trained officer corps and  in many cases was dominated by just one ethnic group.  

Even the best positions in politics and business were by those in power to people of their own ethnic  group, just like offices for judges and public prosecutors. It was not about the good of the nation. It was about bringing one’s own ethnic group the fleshpots. That is the fertilizer on which corruption thrives and  that feeds the hatred of the marginalized. New ethnic conflicts soon followed, from the Biafra war at the  end of the sixties to the genocide in Rwanda in the mid-nineties. Today, my home country of Ethiopia is at  the center of ethnic conflicts. Ethiopia is the only country on the African continent that was never a  European colony. Two generations after the founding the Organisation of African Unity it is unfortunately  the case that a student in Addis Abeba can no longer say ‘I am an Ethiopian’ without fear. He is expected  to answer: ‘I am Oromo.’ Or ‘Amhara’ or ‘Tigrey’ or “Gurage” or “Afar” or ‘Somali’ or any other of the more  than eighty ethnic groups that call Ethiopia their home. The common and unifying aspects are no longer  emphasized, but the divisive and discriminatory ones. Ethiopia describes itself in its 1995 constitution as  an ‘ethnic federation’.  

Only by belonging to one of the ethnic groups of the country one becomes an Ethiopian citizen. This is  unique. Many countries have even far greater ethnic differentiation than Ethiopia, such as Nigeria or India.  In all democratic constitutions around the world, the entire people are the common sovereign. Not in  Ethiopia: Here we are only talking about the sovereignty of the different peoples and ethnic groups.  

‘When the awareness of the unity of humanity dwindled, clans and peoples and strife without end’, wrote  the Chinese sage Lao-Tse more than 2500 years ago. Ethiopia is a country whose culture is founded on  the Bible. It is the original home of all Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. What the  Chinese sage called the ‘consciousness of unity of mankind’, the apostle Paul expresses in christian  language: ‘There are no longer Jews and Greek, not slave and free, male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3,28). For me, this is the basis for a multi-ethnic society, as it has been in  Ethiopia for centuries, living together peacefully. But what does ‘ethnic federation’ mean?  

The burish nationalist politician Daniel François Malan became Prime Minister of South Africa in 1948 and  installed the notorious system of racial segregation, the apartheid regime. ‘Apartheid’ means  “separateness”. Malan himself defined this regime as an ‘ethnic federation’. We can see similarly  devastating consequences of political segregation by ethnicity in Ethiopia today: division and hatred that  escalate into civil wars, in brutal and bloody massacres against other ethnic groups, including mothers and  children. Inhuman incitement, today especially against the amhara ethnic group, both by ethiopian  politicians and in the social media, erodes the threshold of aggression. People who have lived together as  neigbours for generations, are now being compared to a ‘virus’ that needs to be eradicated, with animals  that need to be slaughtered, or to weeds that should be uprooted. And in Ethiopia it has not stopped at  threats and incitement: We mourn the loss of tens of thousands of victims of so-called ‘ethnic cleansing’.  There is no end to the killings. Today, there is a claim that the Oromo are the largest ethnic group in the country. They also  include Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The second largest ethnic group, the Amhara, are  confronted with the historically false accusation of having dominated and subjugated the other peoples in  Ethiopia’s long history. The three-thousand-year history of the empire is said to have been an Amhara  history – which does not correspond to the facts.  

Whatever one may accuse the Ethiopian imperial dynasty of, its goal was never the dominance of one  ethnic group, but the unity and independence of the nation. That is why the ruling dynasty’s marriage  policy was designed to unite the peoples. In the long history of the Solomonic dynasty, there was never a  ruler who belonged to only one particular ethnic group. The old name of Ethiopia is Abyssinia. It is derived  from the Arabic word ‘habesch’, meaning mixed race.  

Because that is what Ethiopia has always been and still is today: a melting pot of different peoples and  ethnicities. Today, however, Ethiopian identity cards assign each citizen to a specific ethnic group, usually  that of their father. This entry can make the difference between life and death in the event of conflict. The  Ethiopian government shows little interest in uniting the country or calming the conflicts. On the contrary, it  pours oil on the fire of anger and hatred between the ethnic groups.  

The world public, however, mostly looks away. Prime Minister Abiy started 2018 with rich advance praise  for his office. I also had high hopes for him. He promised peace, unification of the country, economic  upturn and the end of the ‘apartheid constitution’. For the end of the decades-long conflict with neighbouring country Eritrea, he was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. It was not least the excessive  international enthusiasm at the beginning of his time in government that encouraged the prime minister in  his uncompromising course. Today, Abiy plays one ethnic group off against the other to maintain his  power. He seems to have lost touch with reality. Abiy sees himself as the founder of a new cushitic Oromo  empire. He is currently having a new palace built, a kind of luxury playground totaling five hundred  hectares, ‘bigger than Windsor, the White House, the Kremlin and the Forbidden City put together’, as the  magazine ‘Africa Confidential’ has noted. It is to be an urban amusement park for the elite, on a hill above  the capital, with a luxury hotel, conference center and luxury residential complexes.  

A cable car is to transport residents and guests back and forth. The construction costs are estimated at  ten billion dollars is the estimated construction cost. This corresponds to almost the entire annual national  budget of Ethiopia. Yet more than twenty million people, one sixth of the population, are currently  dependent on food rations again. The tender plant of the economic upswing has long since withered. The  Ethiopian national currency, the birr, has just been devalued by thirty per cent. The supply situation for the  population continues to worsen. War and poor harvests have been followed by famine and hundreds of  thousands of people are fleeing from rampant violence. In addition to ethnocentric politics, poor  governance and corrupt elites are the main reasons for persistent hardship and misery in many African  countries. The many billions in development aid that flow into Africa year after year have hardly improved  the living conditions of the people on the continent:  

A large proportion of this money flows into the pockets of corrupt elites, who use it to finance luxury flats in  Paris or London or fill Swiss bank accounts. What is needed is an international control body that monitors  the allocation of funds according to strict criteria. The  most important criterion should be good governance. With ethnocentric tyrant rulers who trample on  human rights in their countries, who do not uphold the rule of law, provoke ethnic conflicts, and are  generally only interested in increasing their own wealth there must be no more co-operation. It is in  Europe’s own interest to give young people in Africa in particular the prospect of a better life in their home  countries. More than half of today’s 1.3 billion Africans are under the age of twenty. Anyone visiting Africa  today is impressed by the omnipresence of the smartphone and the social media activities of young  Africans. Thanks to digital media, young people there are connected to the globalized world. Their  ambitions are orientated accordingly the prosperity of industrialized countries, which has become a global  benchmark. This has an impact on all areas of life, especially on consumer behavior and migration.  People who have nothing left to lose and see their only prospects in flight cannot be stopped in the long  term. Their numbers in Africa are constantly increasing. The main reasons for this are as follows:  ethnocentric politics, poor governance, corrupt elites.  

Prince Asfa-Wossen Asserate was born in 1948 into a family belonging to the Solomonic dynasty. He  came to Germany as a student. Today he lives in Frankfurt am Main as a management consultant for  Africa and the Middle East. He is a bestselling author; His latest book is ‘Deutsch vom Scheitel bis zur  Sohle’ (‘German from head to toe’ ) (The Other Library).  

Editor’s note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com

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