By Kebour Ghenna
The reactions to my earlier piece, “Ethiopia’s Crisis Is Not Just Political,” did more than disagree with one another. They revealed something deeper and more troubling: Ethiopia today is living inside several different stories at once, and we no longer share a common language to talk about them.
Some see Ethiopia as an empire built through conquest and hierarchy. Others see it as a fragile political home that survived an era when Africa was carved up by colonial powers. Some hear the word unity and think of domination. Others hear autonomy and fear permanent fragmentation. Many comments came from anger.
Many came from grief. Most came from pain. That, more than anything, is the mark of a nation in crisis: when the past is not simply remembered, but weaponized,and when the future cannot be imagined in words we all recognize.
One thing, however, must be said plainly. Ethiopia cannot be held together by sermons alone. And it cannot be saved by spreadsheets alone. Moral appeals without dignity ring hollow.
Economic promises without trust collapse quickly. What is needed is both: a material basis for a decent life, and a civic agreement to live together without turning the state into a prize to be captured.
Empire, Abyssinia, and the Weight of History
Several readers argued forcefully that Ethiopia has always been an empire , a Christian Abyssinian state that expanded through violence, armed by foreign powers, and behaving much like European colonizers. Others reminded us that nearly every modern state was forged through bloodshed, and that Ethiopia’s survival as an uncolonized polity shaped its political consciousness in profound ways.
Both perspectives contain truth.
Yes, domination and coercion were part of state formation. This cannot be dismissed as fiction, nor erased by pride in sovereignty.
And yes, Ethiopia’s survival during the age of imperial partition is a historical fact that still matters.
But history is not a courtroom where one final verdict settles everything forever. History is something the living must decide how to carry.
A nation is not absolved by its past. But it is not condemned to repeat it either.
The real question is not what Ethiopia was, but whether Ethiopians today still choose a shared political future, and under what conditions. Meaning, Hunger, and the Reality of Daily Life
One comment cut straight to the heart of the matter: before asking “What does Ethiopia mean?” millions are asking “How will I feed my family?”
This is not cynicism. It is reality.
When people are hungry, unemployed, and afraid, they will cling to whoever can help them survive , often an ethnic, religious, or local network. In such conditions, trust in distant institutions evaporates, and identity hardens.
No civic covenant can endure when the state is experienced as a machine of inequality or indifference. But the opposite is also true: no shared prosperity can be built if every shift in power is treated as an existential defeat.
So the choice is not between meaning and bread. Ethiopia needs both.
It needs a covenant that is:
• civic , based on voluntary cooperation, restraint, and a rejection of extermination’s politics;
• material, delivering jobs, food security, fair access to resources, and visible development across regions.
Consent without bread becomes empty rhetoric.
Bread without consent becomes a fragile truce that breaks the moment scarcity returns.
Violence, Genocide Claims, and the Trap of Competing Pain
Some comments accuse today’s rulers or elites of genocide and fascism, particularly against northerners and Amhara. Others respond by pointing to earlier violence and dispossession.
The danger here is not only the violence itself, but the logic that often follows:
My suffering cancels yours.
Your suffering justifies my revenge.
Your existence threatens mine.
This is how nations fall apart.
No political community can survive if every group treats its pain as a license to deny the pain of others. Nor can it survive if atrocities are minimized because they challenge a preferred narrative.
The only path forward rests on a simple but difficult principle:
• No group’s safety can be built on another’s terror.
• No grievance justifies collective punishment.
• No future can be built on the hope that another people will disappear.
That requires honest accounting of harm, past and present, grounded in evidence, not propaganda. And it requires institutions that can hold perpetrators accountable. Without accountability, the state becomes a battlefield and ethnicity becomes armor.
Power, Recognition, and the Limits of Ethnic Framing
Some readers questioned the idea of a “power shift” toward Oromos. Others argued the framing is simplistic, pointing instead to institutions, personalities, and leadership failure. Others noted that recognition of nations did not translate into real equality.
All of these points matter.
Power is not just who sits in the prime minister’s office. It includes control over land and capital, command of security forces, access to credit and contracts, and the ability to define belonging.
So if we speak of power shifts, we must mean structural change, not symbolic representation.
At the same time, if large parts of the population experienced the state as exclusionary, their demand for recognition is not irrational.
The danger begins when recognition becomes zero-sum, when empowerment reproduces the very domination it condemns.
The true test of leadership is not whether it represents “its own” people, but whether it governs in a way that makes losing power survivable for everyone else.
Federalism, Unity, and False Choices
Some propose democratic federalism, others confederation, others dissolution. Some warn that unity masks domination; others fear that autonomy leads to chaos.
What is often missing is this: form alone does not save a state.
Federalism without democracy becomes ethnic feudalism.
Centralization without restraint becomes authoritarianism.
Confederation without trust becomes a waiting room for separation.
Dissolution without protection invites minority terror and economic collapse.
The real question is not federal versus unitary. It is whether:
• people are protected from state violence,
• resources are distributed fairly,
• and politics rejects extermination as a strategy.
If these conditions exist, different arrangements can work.
If they do not, none will. Remembering Injustice Without Becoming Its Prisoner
Some reject “historical injustice” as fabricated propaganda. Others see it as the root of everything.
Honesty demands a middle path
Injustice is real when it shows up in dispossession, exclusion, unequal development, and suppressed languages. But memory becomes destructive when it turns into permanent accusation on one side and permanent guilt on the other.
A nation cannot be built on forgetting. But it also cannot be built on inherited blame.
The purpose of remembering injustice is repair, legal, political, economic, not endless war.
Toward a 21st-Century Ethiopia
Several readers called for a modern frame of mind, rejecting both imperial nostalgia and ethnic romanticism. That instinct is right, if modernity means dignity rather than imitation.
A 21st-century Ethiopia would mean:
• equality without erasing difference,
• autonomy without ethnic fortresses,
• development without dependency,
• and a state accountable to its people, not to a narrow elite or external discipline.
A Minimum Agreement for Survival
Ethiopia does not need one “standard Ethiopian,” or one story everyone must recite. It needs something simpler and more serious:
1. A voluntary commitment to live together without fear, a daily consent.
2. A material program that makes that consent reasonable, food, work, fairness.
3. Institutions that prevent the state from becoming a weapon.
Without the first, prosperity becomes hostage to fear.
Without the second, consent becomes empty words.
Without the third, every agreement collapses under pressure.
That is where philosophy meets reality. A nation endures when people can both choose it and live in it with dignity.
If Ethiopia cannot reach even this minimum, the arguments will continue, and so will the violence, because the country will remain not a home, but a prize.
And no one truly wins a country that way.
Editor’s Note : The article appeared first on the personal FB page of Kebour Ghenna
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