No other African leader during the independence era was revered so widely as Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. His defiant stand against Mussolini’s brutal invasion in the 1930s had won him worldwide fame. Restored to his throne in the 1940s, he stood as the symbol of an independent Africa that nationalist leaders living under colonial rule all aspired to achieve. His position as monarch of a state that traced its origins back to biblical times, that possessed a national Christian church with a tradition older than that of many European churches, as well as an ancient liturgical language and a sacred literature, all served to endow him with immense prestige. Adding to the awe in which he was held was a mystique about the monarchy that was carefully preserved. According to the Ethiopian constitution, the emperor was descended directly from the marriage of Solomon and Sheba, and among the titles with which he was graced was that of ‘Elect of God’. His divine right to rule was devoutly upheld by the Orthodox Church through its multitude of monasteries, churches and priests. His daily life was surrounded by elaborate traditions of the royal court and by religious ceremonies performed by patriarchs and priests. On the world stage he consorted with the great and the good. In Africa he was universally regarded as an elder statesman, the host of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity and its first chairman. In Jamaica he was worshipped as a living God (Jah) by adherents of Rastafarianism, a religion that emerged in the 1930s and took its name from Haile Selassie’s original title, Ras Tafari; during a three-day visit he made to Jamaica in 1966, some Jamaicans were convinced that miracles had occurred.
The sheer duration of his reign was impressive. He had ruled Ethiopia since 1916, first as regent, then as emperor from 1930. In his early years he made considerable efforts to modernise Ethiopia – abolishing slavery; building roads, schools, hospitals and a railway to the Red Sea; authorising the establishment of a parliament. In the postwar era, he laid the foundations of a civilian administration and built up a modern army, the largest in black Africa, with four divisions, an imperial bodyguard and an air force equipped with jet fighters.
But the basic character of his regime remained unchanged. Haile Selassie governed as an autocratic monarch, dispensing titles, appointments and land in return for loyal service, and holding together the empire and its 27 million subjects through a vast network of personal ties. His royal palaces in Addis Ababa constituted the centre of power from where all government affairs were directed. His name was automatically attached to schools, hospitals, roads and bridges, as well as to foundations and prizes. His effigy appeared on coinage and currency. The anniversaries of his birth, his coronation and his return to Addis Ababa from exile were national holidays.
What helped to sustain his power was the considerable extent to which the emperor, together with the Coptic Church and influential aristocratic families in the provinces, owned and controlled land and thereby the livelihood of millions of peasants who worked it. About three-quarters of Ethiopia’s peasant farmers were tenants. Under the Civil Code of Ethiopia, promulgated in 1967, tenants were required to pay 75 per cent of their produce to landlords, to provide free labour for the landlord’s farm, free transport for his crops, free firewood for his fuel, free service as domestic servants, cooks and guards, and free construction of his granaries. In some places where peasants had special skills in pottery, weaving, tanning or metalwork, they were bound by law to provide these services free as well. Tenants lived in perpetual fear of eviction.
A diminutive figure, outwardly mild-mannered, Haile Selassie was ruthless not only in crushing opposition to his rule in the further reaches of the empire but in extending its boundaries. The inner core of the empire consisted of the mountains and plateaux of central Ethiopia populated by Amharas and Tigrayans bound together by ancient ties of history and religion. But the outer regions had been added by conquest during Emperor Menelik’s reign at the end of the nineteenth century. At the same time that European powers were engaged in their Scramble for Africa, Menelik extended Ethiopian rule over Oromo territory to the south and Somali territory to the south-east, notably the Ogaden plateau, doubling the size of the empire. In 1887 one of Menelik’s most able generals, Ras Makonnen, occupied the ancient Muslim city of Harar. It was there, five years later, that Makonnen’s son, Ras Tafari, was born. Ethiopia’s claims to the Ogaden and to Oromo territory were subsequently recognised in treaties with Britain and Italy. But this southern part of the empire, threatened by Oromo and Somali dissidents, was never fully secure. Haile Selassie’s authority there was maintained only with the help of the army.
The opportunity for Haile Selassie to expand the empire further came during the 1950s when the future of Eritrea, given to the United Nations to decide, came under discussion. As an Italian colony for fifty years, called Eritrea after the Latin name for the Red Sea, Mare Erythraeum, it had gained a distinct identity of its own. When the Italians were defeated in 1941, the British military administration which provisionally took control of the territory further stimulated a sense of Eritrean identity by encouraging the creation of political parties, labour unions and a free press, none of which was to be found in Ethiopia.
Eritrea’s future proved difficult to resolve. Ethiopia, anxious to gain control of the port of Massawa, laid claim to Eritrea on the grounds that historically the territory, or parts of it, had previously belonged to the empire. Arab countries proposed an independent state. The Eritreans themselves, numbering about 3 million, were divided over the issue. The Christian half of the population, mostly Tigrayan, who inhabited the Eritrean highlands surrounding the capital, Asmara, tended to support unification with Ethiopia. The Muslim half of the population, also found in the highlands but mainly occupying the harsh desert region along the Red Sea coast and the western lowlands, tended to favour independence.
The compromise reached by the United Nations was a form of federation linking Ethiopia and Eritrea under which the Ethiopian government was given control of foreign affairs, defence, finance, commerce and ports, while Eritrea was allowed its own elected government and assembly to deal with local affairs. Eritrea was also permitted to have its own flag and official languages, Tigrinya and Arabic.
From the outset, however, Haile Selassie regarded the federation as nothing more than a step towards unification. Ethiopian officials, using a combination of patronage, pressure and intimidation and supported by amenable Christian Tigrayan politicians, steadily consolidated their control. The various freedoms which Eritreans had briefly enjoyed – political rights, trade unions and an independent press – all were whittled away. In 1958 the Eritrean flag was discarded. In 1959 the Ethiopian law code was extended to Eritrea; political parties were banned; the labour movement was destroyed; censorship was introduced; and Amharic replaced Tigrinya and Arabic as the official language. Finally, in 1962, the Eritrean assembly was persuaded to vote for the dissolution of the federation and its own existence in favour of annexation by Ethiopia.
From then on, Haile Selassie’s treatment of Eritrea was no different from any of the other thirteen provinces of Ethiopia. Amhara officials were awarded senior posts in the administration. The principle of parity between Christian and Muslim officials, once carefully observed, was abandoned. In effect, Eritrea became simply another acquisition of the empire.
During the 1960s the empire faced revolts on several fronts. An Oromo uprising in Bale province in the south lasted for seven years. Somali insurgents in the Ogaden formed the West Somali Liberation Front aiming to drive out the Ethiopians and restore Somali sovereignty. Periodic clashes between Ethiopian and Somali government forces erupted along the border, culminating in a brief war in 1964 which the Ethiopian army won in a matter of days. In Eritrea guerrilla groups launched a war for independence that eventually required a whole division of Haile Selassie’s troops to contain. The brutal methods of repression the Ethiopians employed in Eritrea, burning and bombing villages and inflicting reprisals against the civilian population, served only to alienate increasing numbers of Eritreans and fan the flames of Eritrean nationalism.
Even in his late seventies Haile Selassie showed no sign of willingness to loosen his grip on power. Nor would he discuss the issue of his succession. His favourite son, Leul Makonnen, the Duke of Harrar, had been killed in a car accident in 1957. His eldest son, the crown prince, Asfa Woosen, he never trusted. Everything depended on the emperor’s decision. He alone was the arbiter between competing factions and individuals. He alone decided on appointments, promotions and demotions. He in person redressed grievances, received petitions, granted pardons, distributed largesse, cancelled debts and overturned court decisions. He insisted on retaining personal control of even small administrative details, deciding on petty expenditure, ruling on the most minor of ministerial disputes, authorising each trip abroad of his officials. No minister would dare to take any decision of consequence without having first obtained the fakad – his approval.
He operated by memory, possessing a formidable ability to recall names, faces and conversations, past events, the particularities of places he visited, the peccadilloes of his ministers, long-forgotten errors and indiscretions, and intrigues that swirled around his palaces and empire. Close by his side or walking a few steps behind him, always in attendance in the course of an audience or an inspection tour, was the Minister of the Pen, ready to take down any order or instruction, to record appointments and dismissals. His signature, rather than the Emperor’s, appeared on the publication of all laws, decrees and treaties.
To keep himself informed, Haile Selassie relied on a constant stream of secret intelligence and gossip. In private audiences, ministers were encouraged to report on the activities of their colleagues. Officials competed to provide him with choice titbits of information. At the Jubilee Palace, where he lived, his routine was to take an early morning walk in the park, stopping by the cages of lions and leopards to feed them with chunks of meat handed to him by an aide and listening along the way to intelligence reports from officials who ran his spy networks. One at a time they would approach to pass on their news and rumours, falling in a step behind as he walked on, until each was dismissed by a nod of the head and retreated backwards. Finishing his walk alone, Haile Selassie would feed the dogs.
The seat of his government was the Grand Palace, Menelik’s old palace, built on a hill near the Jubilee Palace overlooking parts of the city. It was ringed by successive gates and compounds in the traditional manner of an Ethiopian encampment. At the top stood the Emperor’s office. Just below was the imperial Chelot, his personal court where, standing on a platform dressed in a black, floor-length robe, Haile Selassie passed judgement on disputes and cases brought before him, pronouncing sentences from which there was no appeal. Close beside was the powerful Ministry of the Pen, which transmitted his orders. Behind were the Council of Ministers chambers and the Crown Council building where the Emperor received petitions. Elsewhere in the grounds were ceremonial buildings such as the Throne Room used for state occasions and the Banqueting Hall.
Constant attendance at the palace was obligatory. Every day, dignitaries and officials appeared at a ritual known as dej tinat – ‘waiting at the gate’ – hoping to accomplish their business or to gain favour. The key to all advancement lay in loyalty and service to the emperor which he was careful to reward. The largesse he distributed came not just in the form of appointments, titles, land grants and salary increases but in gifts of money, houses, cars and other luxury items. Officials who served him well he rewarded with scholarships, free medical treatment and foreign holidays. Those who plotted against him or earned disfavour faced expropriation and ruin.
On his daily routine, as he was driven into the courtyard at the top of the avenue at the Grand Palace, a crowd of dignitaries and officials lined up, hoping to be noticed. In the Audience Hall, all bowed as he entered. As he took his place on the old imperial throne, dwarfed by its size, an official pillow-bearer swiftly slid a pillow under his feet to ensure that his legs were not left hanging in the air. The pillow-bearer, who accompanied the emperor everywhere he went, kept a store of fifty-two pillows of various sizes, thicknesses, materials and colours, to cover every eventuality.
Haile Selassie reached the age of eighty in July 1972, having held absolute power for longer than any other figure in contemporary history, still addicted to pomp, protocol and a system of personal rule that was no longer a viable method of government. The sharpness of his memory was fading. At times he seemed to drift in and out of senility. His long-serving prime minister, Aklilou Abte Wold, found that no matter how many times a problem had been previously discussed, it had to be taken up each time from the beginning. When the minister of public works, Saleh Hinit, appeared at the palace one day, the emperor turned to his aide asking: ‘Who is that man? What is he doing here?’ At a state dinner in honour of President Mobutu of Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa), Haile Selassie summoned an official to ask, in Amharic, who the guest of honour sitting opposite him was. During his first trip to China in 1973, he made constant references to a previous visit he said he had made there. During an interview at the Grand Palace in early 1974, John Spencer, an American lawyer who had known him for nearly forty years, found a marked deterioration in his demeanour. ‘It became apparent to me during the course of our conversation that Haile Selassie was already retreating into a dream world,’ he wrote in his memoir. ‘He appeared to have become disturbingly inarticulate. I withdrew with the piercing realisation that the curtain of senility had dropped.’
The difficulty now was that Haile Selassie had become too old and infirm to initiate any change in the system of government. Nor was he yet willing to address the issue of succession. In 1973 the crown prince suffered a stroke and repaired to Switzerland to recuperate, leaving the succession in even greater doubt. Even though ministers and leading aristocrats recognised that the system of government was far too archaic to suit the modern needs of Ethiopia, fearful of displeasing the emperor they took no initiative and allowed the government to drift on indeterminately.
When drought and famine overtook the province of Wollo in 1973, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of peasants, the government, though aware of the disaster, made little attempt to alleviate it; nor did it seek help from international agencies for fear of damaging the country’s reputation. When Haile Selassie belatedly paid a visit to the area, he merely referred to the ‘natural disasters beyond human control’ that had often afflicted Ethiopia and implied that little could be done to prevent them. The government’s inertia over the Wollo famine caused a wave of exasperation among the educated Ethiopian elite. But there were no signs of overt opposition to the emperor’s rule other than among student groups who were habitually troublesome.
Then, in early 1974, a few small and random incidents occurred that were eventually to culminate in revolution. On 12 January enlisted men at an army outpost in Neghelle in southern Ethiopia mutinied against their officers in protest against poor food and a shortage of water. The soldiers’ water pump had broken down; when officers refused to allow them the use of their own well, they were imprisoned. The mutineers sent a petition to the emperor asking for their grievances to be redressed. Haile Selassie responded by sending an army general as his personal envoy to investigate the matter, but he too was detained. Despite the insubordination, Haile Selassie promised an improvement in the mutineers’ conditions and decided against any punishment.
News of the Neghelle mutiny spread through the army’s network to every unit in the country. On 10 February airmen at an air force base near Addis Ababa staged a similar revolt, holding officers hostage, in protest against pay and conditions. Again Haile Selassie tried to deal with the mutiny by promising salary increases. On 25 February a more serious revolt broke out in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. Led by a group of seven middle-aged sergeants and corporals, mutineers took control of the radio station and broadcast demands for more pay and improved conditions of service. Messages of support came from other units. In Addis Ababa rebel officers in the Fourth Division took eight ministers hostages, demanding they be sacked for corruption. Haile Selassie responded with more concessions, sacking a bevy of senior officers and further increasing pay and allowances.
Simultaneously, a series of spontaneous civilian protests erupted on the streets of Addis Ababa: students demonstrated over plans for educational reform; teachers went on strike demanding higher pay; taxi drivers struck in protest against fuel price increases; labour unions took to the streets to voice grievances over pay, food price rises and union rights. On 23 February, addressing his ‘beloved’ people on radio and television, Haile Selassie offered concessions, postponing changes in the educational system, reducing fuel price increases and implementing price controls to check inflation. He also dismissed his prime minister, Aklilou, and agreed to revise the constitution to make the prime minister answerable to parliament, a change that in Ethiopian terms amounted to major reform.
In March a chaotic profusion of strikes and demonstrations burst out in the towns and cities of Ethiopia. One group after another – civil servants, teachers, students, journalists, even priests and prostitutes – took to the streets. A massive demonstration was held in protest against official discrimination against Islam and calling for the separation of Church and state. The most persistent demand was for the arrest and trial of former ministers and palace officials on charges of negligence and corruption. The outbursts were unplanned and uncoordinated, but insistent on the need for widespread reform.
The old aristocratic establishment held out, paying scant heed to the demands other than to permit the arrest of some colleagues and palace officials as a token gesture. They attempted no serious reform but instead turned to loyal units of the army for help in curbing strikes and demonstrations.
Within the armed forces, however, a group of radical junior officers conspired to take control. Meeting at Fourth Division headquarters in Addis Ababa at the end of June, they formed a military ‘committee’ or ‘Derg’, comprising 108 representatives chosen by units of the armed forces, to run the country. For many months the Derg remained a shadowy organisation: none of the names of its members was announced and its activities were kept hidden from the public. Moving cautiously at first, unsure of how much resistance it would encounter from the emperor, the aristocracy and loyal units of the armed forces, the Derg issued a statement on 4 July pledging loyalty to the emperor, giving its main goals as the upholding of the Crown and the smooth functioning of civilian government. The slogan adopted – ‘Ethiopia Tikdem’, ‘Ethiopia First’ – was suitably vague.
But stage by stage, growing in confidence, the Derg began to dismantle the whole imperial structure. During July and August it issued long lists of names of palace functionaries, high government officials and prominent aristocrats, including Haile Selassie’s closest advisers, calling on them to give themselves up or face confiscation of their assets. Most surrendered voluntarily; some were arrested by force. Hundreds were incarcerated in the basements of buildings in the Grand Palace, packed so tight that they had to take turns lying down on the bare earthen floor in order to sleep. At the Jubilee Palace, Haile Selassie was left with only a handful of personal servants.
The Derg turned next on the emperor himself. In the government press, on radio and television, a barrage of attacks was unleashed on the ancien régime, condemning it for corruption and exploitation. Haile Selassie himself was accused of squandering the country’s meagre resources on expensive trips abroad and of being wilfully negligent over the Wollo famine. One by one, the imperial institutions were abolished: the Ministry of the Pen; the Crown Council; the Chelot; the emperor’s private exchequer. Royal investments in the St George Brewery and Addis Ababa’s bus company were taken over. On 25 August the Jubilee Palace was nationalised and renamed the National Palace.
There was to be no dignified exit. At a four-day secret meeting in early September, the Derg voted to dethrone Haile Selassie. On 11 September nine princesses, including the emperor’s sole surviving daughter and seven granddaughters, were imprisoned in a dungeonlike cell, their heads shaved, allowed only two mattresses to share between them. On the same day officers from the Derg interrogated Haile Selassie on the whereabouts of his fortune. He vehemently denied possessing any fortune. ‘But surely, Your Majesty, you must have put something aside for your retirement?’ he was asked. ‘For an emperor, there is no retirement,’ he retorted. ‘Having not provided for our retirement, we have nothing.’
They suggested that he watch a film due to be shown on state television that night. The film, a British television documentary called The Hidden Famine, was an exposé examining how thousands of men, women and children had been allowed to starve in Wollo the previous year. It was spliced with scenes showing the emperor and his entourage drinking champagne, eating caviar and feeding meat to his dogs from a silver tray. Sitting in an armchair, Haile Selassie watched the film to the end and then, according to a servant attending him, became lost in thought.
Early the following morning, 12 September, three officers from the Derg, dressed in combat uniforms, entered the chamber where Haile Selassie awaited them. After a preliminary bow, one of them read out the proclamation dethroning him. The proclamation charged that Haile Selassie had ‘not only left the country in its present crisis by abusing at various times the high and dignified authority conferred on him by the Ethiopian people but also, being over eighty-two years of age and due to the consequent physical and mental exhaustion, is no more able to shoulder the high responsibilities of leadership’.
Standing before them, Haile Selassie listened impassively, then replied that if the revolution was good for the people then he too supported it and would not oppose his dethronement. ‘In that case,’ said a major, ‘His Majesty will please follow us.’ ‘Where to?’ Haile Selassie asked. ‘To a safe place,’ replied the major. ‘His Majesty will see.’
A green Volkswagen was waiting for them in the palace driveway. The driver, an officer, opened the door and held up the front seat so that Haile Selassie could get in the back. Huddled in the back seat, he was driven through the empty streets of Addis Ababa – where a night curfew was in force – and disappeared through the gates of Fourth Division barracks.
Haile Selassie spent the last months of his life imprisoned in rooms in the Grand Palace. He continued to get up at dawn, attended morning mass and spent much time reading. In a building nearby, members of the Derg met to maintain their grip on power. What had hitherto been a revolution without bloodshed turned increasingly violent. On 23 November the Derg ordered the execution of some sixty prominent prisoners, mostly high officials associated with Haile Selassie’s regime, including two former prime ministers and the emperor’s grandson. The key figure behind this decision was a young ordnance officer, Major Mengistu Haile Mariam, soon to become infamous.
Haile Selassie died a prisoner on 27 August 1975. According to the Derg, the cause of his death was circulatory failure. According to his followers, he was smothered with a wet pillow. His body was buried beneath a lavatory in the palace, remaining hidden there for sixteen years while the revolution raged on.