We & They

By Ephrem Madebo
Dcember 8, 2005


Everyone is part of many groups at once; of course one can be a woman, a parent, member of the Republican Party, an American citizen, a Christian, and an Ethiopian National at the same time. So, how do we decide which identities matter? Why do they matter so much? What makes people willing to die or kill for race, religion, or caste? In 1994, a Hutu nun in Sovu, Rwanda, called in Hutu militia and hundreds of the Tutsi were shot, hacked, or burned to death. Sister Gertrude was a Christian and a nun at the same time, but this didn’t matter because to her the Tutsi were cockroaches……”they”! Today in Ethiopia the statistically insignificant Tigryan elites control the lion’s share of the country’s wealth while multitudes struggle to have just a meal a day because to the ethno-biased elites others are not part of what they call “we”!

The “we’ and “they” issue is a very divisive issue whose meaning varies depending on who says “we” and why he/she says it. For example, “we” in a sentence like “We Ethiopians had a successful election in 2005” is different from the “we” in “We Ethiopians number about 70 million”. The first “we” is exclusive; the second “we” unquestionably is inclusive. It will always be possible to find differences between this ethnic group and that one, this nation and those, between Catholics and Protestants, but the baffling concern is that not one of these facts will tell why we divide people in to the human kinds we choose to analyze. When the Ethiopian economic growth of the last 15 years is told, citizens from Bale, Sidamo, or Wellega complain about the economic deterioration of their respective region where as their counterparts in Tigray enjoy the benefits of massive economic development. What is the root cause of such a disparity in the same country? Why do “they” in Tigray enjoy the fruits of unprecedented infrastructure build up and why does the “we” in the rest of the country suffers as a result of total neglect and resource transfer?

When society is characterized by Classification, Symbolization, Dehumanization, Polarization, and Denial; democide (fatalities caused by government) and/or genocide are inevitable phenomenon. When a certain group (they) controls economic resources and political power, the disenfranchised group (we) fights back until both power and resources are shared by all people. When EPRDF controlled Addis Ababa and allowed the proliferation of ethnic organizations, Ethiopia was crammed with a large number of ethnic-centered liberation fronts. The concept of liberation was confused for a while where no one knew whom to liberate from whom, but carried the slogan anyhow. By ethnicizing Ethiopian politics, EPRDF created a problem, a problem that was non existent in Ethiopia. It is true that EPRDF was pointing to the nature of ethnic oppression in many parts of the country, the predicament is, TPLF’s only way of ‘lancing the pain’ was to address its roots directly, and meet the demands for ethnic emancipation by means of self-determination up-to-succession.

TPLF’s ethnic federalism was designed to divide Ethiopians and force them to concentrate on matters of less significance. Ethnic politics was conspicuously used as a tool to diffuse conflict between groups while deflecting it away from EPRDF. When people are fostered to organize on ethnic lines, they tend to focus on issues that idiosyncratically define them giving a blind eye and a deaf ear to numerous common factors that put them together in the same basket as a human being. Today, the TPLF bandits classify the Amharas as “Neftegna” who if they are allowed to take the leadership role will pull Ethiopia back to Colonel Mengistu’s dictatorial regime (domestic message). According to Meles and company, if the Oromos control power in Ethiopia, Ethiopia will no more be a nation that checks the expansion of the Al-Qaeda ideology in the Horn of Africa because the Oromos are sympathetic to radical Islam (International message). According to this bunch of lunatics, “they” are the only proper mix of democracy and Christianity destined to govern Ethiopia indefinitely.

According to TPLF, its brand of ethnic federalism represents an improvement on the discriminatory situation of the past because the ethnic classification is now unconcealed and democratic, backed by justiciable rights, and effective constitutional safeguard. The truth is, TPLF’s arrangement of ethnic federalism is not egalitarian and inclusive as alleged, but in practice it institutionalizes a new and highly discriminatory assemblage favoring EPRDF, primarily Tigrayan elite. Hence, in the last fifteen years, ethnic federalism has ethnified the Ethiopia politics, i.e., federalism has made the ethnic group a prominent solution for the mediation of access to resources and decision making.

Unlike what the TPLF elites attempt to tell us, the essence of the struggle between “we” and “they” is not for a mere control of power, it is far beyond that. It is about restoring hope, building trust, curbing the poverty gap and most importantly empowering people. The concern is not why EPRDF is in power in Ethiopia, but what EPRDF is in the mind of Ethiopians --- not how they tell the Amharas or the Oromos from their fellow human beings, but why they want to! The future is not about “they” versus “we” ……it’s about us! Our future depends upon what we do today. The Western democracies have showed us how much they care for us. In his last State of the union address, President George Bush made a call for the oppressed people of the world to fight for democracy; he promised America would always be by the side of people who fight for democracy. Today the heroes who responded to his call are languishing in jail; they are accused of treason for apparently no reason! The claim of the West is no different from the Washington Red Skins fan who says, “We have a good chance of getting in to the playoffs”, but he will have no effect on the matches, because he isn’t on the team.