Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2014 23:41:34 +0200
Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi: Legacies, memories, histories
Distorted rhetoric and commemorative acts seek to obfuscate the true
dictatorial legacy of Ethiopia's late leader.
Last updated: 05 Sep 2014 14:46
Awol K Allo
<http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/profile/awol-k-allo-.html> Awol K
Allo
Awol K. Allo is a Fellow in Human Rights at the London School of Economics
and Political Science.
Talk to Jazeera - Meles Zenawi - 18 Mar 07 - Part 2
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf1ATz_wwlw
<tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf1ATz_wwlw%0d%07>
<tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf1ATz_wwlw%0d%07> Talk to Jazeera - Meles
Zenawi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S83SVAumsQ
Ethiopia's long-term Prime Minister Meles Zenawi died on August 20, 2012
[EPA]
August 20 marked the <http://www.mfa.gov.et/news/more.php?newsid=3407>
second anniversary of the death of Ethiopia's long-time leader, Meles
Zenawi. Two years on, the Zenawi phenomenon is still as divisive as it is
unsettling. For his supporters, Zenawi is a statesman and a visionary leader
that represents not only the hopes and aspirations of "the new Ethiopia" but
also "the African renaissance". For those who were excluded and marginalised
under his rule, Zenawi is the symbolic personification of a tyrannical
system that violently quashed their desire for freedom and justice. Still
for others, he is a complex figure that condenses within himself the
qualities of a political genius and a seasoned dictator. In the words of
<http://www.economist.com/node/21560904> The Economist: "the man who tried
to make dictatorship acceptable."
Two years on, the spectre of Zenawi hangs over the Ethiopian state. His
name, his policies, and his visions still provide the cement that keeps
together the ideological edifices of the Ethiopian state. His successors
elevate him to a pure symbol, take pride in and identify with his legacies.
The constant invocation of Zenawi by regime officials gives the impression
that the entire social and political order of the state is predicated on the
image and imagery of a single man. The "Meles Legacy" has become a
<http://www.au.int/en/content/inauguration-meles-zenawi-memorial-foundation>
grand memory work - an archive that condenses within it a great many
different things for a great many different people.
Legacy and the politics of archives
Zenawi now belongs to the archives. But archives are pivotal - "great
historical watchtowers" or "observation posts" from which we can access and
observe the past. In archives, we see the random elements and the minute
details of our identity. Archives are not just about remembering and
understanding the past. In fact, at stake in every recounting of the past is
not the past as such; it is the future. In his seminal essay, "Archive
Fever", French philosopher Jacques Derrida
<http://beforebefore.net/149a/w11/media/Derrida-Archive_Fever_A_Freudian_Imp
ression.pdf> observes , the question of the archive is "a question of the
future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a
promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow. The archive: if we want to
know what that will have meant, we will only know in times to come." To
speak about Zenawi's archives, then, is not to speak about the past: It is
about the future.
But archives are contested spaces: They not only conserve but also produce
and reproduce. Far from being neutral voids in which facts and events are
placed, archives are active agents that participate in the production and
reproduction of meaning. For every archive, there are counter-archives. For
every narrative, there are counter-narratives. It is precisely for this
reason that Zenawi's legacy has become such an important site of political
struggle in Ethiopia today.
Zenawi's archives
As a man who played the single most important role in Ethiopia's history of
the last two decades, Zenawi is a giant in that archive. When asked by
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf1ATz_wwlw&feature=relmfu> Al Jazeera's
Andrew Simmons about the legacy he leaves behind, Zenawi said, "I would like
to be remembered as someone who got Ethiopia off to a good track, democratic
one, [.] where Ethiopia's proverbial poverty begins to be tackled in an
effective way; I would like to be remembered as someone who has started the
process."
During his funeral ceremony two years ago, his successor, Hailemariam
Desalegn <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_eR_2AWrL8> called him a "
visionary", an "intellectual", and a "technocrat" who has been " working for
the renaissance Ethiopia and Africa". Jacob Zuma of South Africa called him
" <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZXg1u_mmT8> one of the greatest sons of
the continent" while Paul Kagame of Rwanda recognised his unreserved support
in the fight to end the Rwandan genocide and praised his
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTjzYHtETEI> "humble", "simple" but
"meaningful life " . The most notable eulogy was delivered by then US
Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, who depicted a rather erudite
and progressive image of Zenawi. Rice spoke of
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxTejpFp0fA> "his world-class mind" : " he
wasn't just brilliant. He wasn't just a relentless negotiator and a
formidable debater. He wasn't just a thirsty consumer of knowledge. He was
uncommonly wise." In many ways, he has built international reputation for
himself as "the voice of Africa", and the West's key ally on "the war on
terror".
Whatever the truth of these eulogies, Zenawi's domestic
<http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/ethiopia0310webwcover.pdf>
credentials are absolutely dismal . For the last two decades, Ethiopia
consistently ranked as one of
<http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/ethiopia#.VACsUTKwLMo
> the most repressive states in the world. Susan Rice's own
<http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/220323.pdf> State Department
chronicled a consistent pattern of grave violations of human rights
including torture, arbitrary killings, restrictions on freedom of the press
and expression, denial of religious freedoms, and the politicised use of its
notorious anti-terrorism legislation. Contradicting her own government's
documented practices of torture and other grave human rights violations,
Rice's eulogies slips into an agonising denial that flies in the face of the
facts .
Rice exploits the grandeur of US power and its enunciating force to rework
the history of repression and torture. This reworking, as the Philosopher
<http://rebels-library.org/files/foucault_society_must_be_defended.pdf>
Michel Foucault says , functions to "ensure that the greatness of the events
or men of the past could guarantee the value of the present". However,
history cannot remain reworked. As
<http://www.sfu.ca/%7Eandrewf/CONCEPT2.html> Walter Benjamin's messianic but
sublime insight reveals: " The past carries with it a temporal index by
which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past
generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth."
Zenawi's counter-archives
Zenawi was a paradoxical figure who embodied the traits of a brutal dictator
and a politico-economic genius, both unified in one. Just before the 2010
election in which Zenawi won 99.6 percent of the seats,
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S83SVAumsQ> Andrew Simmons sought an
explanation for these two faces: "There are . . . those who say that you
have two faces, you have a face for Davos, charming, a progressive and you
have another face, which is totalitarian and repressive; how do you respond
to that?" Zenawi's answer was misleadingly simple: "As far as I am
concerned, what you see is what you get. No two faces, just one."
Those who are deprived of the means of narrative production by Zenawi see
him as a man who used his omnipotent power and his knowledge of the
politico-military complex to
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/a-declaration-in-defense-_
b_819399.html> eliminate the very conditions under which alternative ideas
and competent political operators could emerge. It is not simply that he
built a system around himself, but deliberately established himself as the
only leader able to supply the cement necessary to hold together the
nation's internal ruptures. He might have helped Ethiopia achieve rocketing
economic progress but this progress came at a cost of two decades of terror
and repression.
The relentless memorialisation of Zenawi's legacy conceals, misrecognises,
misrepresents, de-historicises, and ultimately erases the fundamental
relationships of domination and inequality instituted by the order minted by
Zenawi. Theses obsessive <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19463563>
commemorative practices , i.e. events, parks, monuments, and institutions
built up to remember and commemorate Zenawi have the purpose and effect of
transforming everything about Zenawi into "a dazzling action" that can be
appropriated by the order he founded and the sovereignty he left behind. It
has the goal of transcribing his deeds into a discourse that ensures the
sedimentation of these utterances into common-sense knowledge, into that
which remains when everything is forgotten. This, then, is what is at stake
in the struggle over the legacy of Meles Zenawi.
No doubt the darling of the West who outmanoeuvred his adversaries, Zenawi's
domestic reputation is radically at odds with his international stature. In
the eyes of his people, Zenawi was irredeemably authoritarian.
Awol Kassim Allo is Fellow in Human Rights at the London School of Economics
and Political Science.
Follow him on Twitter: <https://twitter.com/awol_allo> _at_ awol_allo
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