Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2016 10:20:58 -0400
Hello Dehairs,
Can you please post the below book review in English about Martier Melake
Tekle book.
Thank you,
[image: Inline image 1]
*BOOK REVIEW *
*Author: Girmai Bokre Kahassai*
*bokrila_at_gmail.com* <bokrila_at_gmail.com>
*June 27, 2016*
The book is about the life of one of the Eritrean Liberation Front’s (ELF)
iconic figures. Melake was one of the nine-member Executive Committee (EC)
of the ELF. Elected in 1975, he served as Security Office chief until his
death in March 1982. He was murdered by the direct order of another member
of the EC, Abdella Idris, at a place called Rasai in Sudan. Rasai had been
“chosen” as the location for an organizational conference after the ELF had
been pushed out of Eritrea by the combined forces of the EPLF and TPLF a
year earlier. But Rasai was also the base camp for Abdella Idris and his
followers who had remained armed after withdrawing to Sudan.
The book deals mainly with Melake’s childhood and education. Melake was
born in 1949 in the village of Adi N’amin (TaHatai Anseba), Hamasien. He
went to the village school until the fourth grade before he moved to the
city of Asmara for his fifth to ninth grade education, attending various
schools including Itege Menen, AKria, and Arbaete-Asmara, Bet-Gergish, and
Santa Familigia. At the latter, he was one of the students who questioned
the suitability and quality of the education of School compared to others.
They demanded to be sent to the “real” university in Addis Ababa instead.
In that regard, Melake and his friends even went to the Ministry of
Education and demanded unsuccessfully to see the governor of Eritrea,
Asrate Kassa. Melake was, by all accounts, an outstanding student. After
being promoted to the tenth grade, he moved to the town of Keren to attend
the high school there, because schools in the capital were closed, due to
student demonstrations. Later, he moved back to Asmara again and attended
Luel Mekonen for his eleventh grade. His senior year was spent in the
Ethiopian capital at the new school Luul Biede-Mariam, Laboratory school of
Addis Ababa. Although the latter was considered part of the university and
the students there did not need to take the school leaving examination
(Matric), Melake and his fellow students demanded that they take the exam.
Because, apparently some of them, including Melake, had decided to join the
Eritrean struggle for independence and they wanted to have the
results/marks in hand in case they needed it in the future to continue
their education. The administrator of the school attempted to dissuade them
from taking Matric, explaining that they need not bother to take Matric
because they had already taken the entrance examination to the Laboratory
School; but to no avail. They took the exam and all of them passed it.
Melake joined the ELF in 1971. He had not told any of his university
friends. Four years later, in 1975, he was elected as one of the 41 member
National Council (NC), and then as a member of the EC. The latter led the
ELF between the regular meetings of the NC. They run one department each.
Melake was chief of the Security Office.
The book includes testimonies from those who personally knew Melake well
at every stage: in his early childhood, while he was a student in high
school and university, as well as during his ELF years.
One of the momentous events that occurred in his tenure in the ELF was the
organizational conference at Rasai that ended up in his murder at the hand
of Abdella Idris. His death also brought about the death of the ELF itself,
because the ELF splintered into many groups after Melake was murdered and
never recovered from it. The book does not deal with this momentous event
in the history of the ELF. That is unfortunate. The book identifies the
perpetrators as the “Rasai Group,” in general, not Abdella Idris, who
ordered the killing, and his collaborators. It would have been a much
greater contribution to a critical chapter in Eritrea’s history, had the
book explained who the Rasai Group were? Why Melake had become a target?
What was the situation at the time? What brought such tension? Was the
“civil war” between the EPLF/TPLF against the ELF a catalyst? Or was it
simply a power struggle between two of ELF’s powerful men?
Nevertheless, to the many fans and fellow freedom fighters of Melake Tekle
as well as the general Eritrean public, the book is still an excellent
contribution to our understanding of who Melake was and where he had come
from. He was popular with the rank and file fighters of the ELF. He had a
reputation for physical courage and a blunt speaking manner. He was
physically imposing: tall and strong. He was admired for standing up to
Abdella Idris, the chief of the military bureau, years before the ELF was
forced to retreat into Sudan.
However, Melake also had his detractors. Many considered him naïve,
politically or otherwise as a person. Some also suggested that he should
never have gone to Rasai. But what was he supposed to do? Refuse to attend
the organizational conference of the ELF while he still was one its the
leaders? But the book tells us the opposite. He was exceptionally bright.
For example, he wrote a very thoughtful piece in English in a school
newsletter when he was in tenth grade at the high school in Keren. Titled,
“How Can We Reform Our Minds?” he wrote, “Ignorance being darkness, what we
need is intellectual light. ‘”Time and tide wait for no one.”’ This proverb
expresses all that we are expected to do to satisfy the hunger of our
minds…Let us be the master of ourselves, and rule only ourselves. This can
be done simply through study, thought, and efforts to strive to reach only
the first stairs of improvement in our mind...”
But because he was a country boy, he might have been Looked at by Asmara
city kids as unsophisticated and even worse. His contemporaries however
testify to the contrary. Melake was not only courageous and very bright.
He was also kind and caring. The author remembers when he first saw Melake
five years later in Eritrea, the first thing Melake had asked him was
whether or no he had graduated. Melake had not told any of his friends at
the university when he left to join the ELF, and the author speculates that
that might have been intentional: that Melake wanted his friends to finish
their education so that they would become leaders of future, independent
Eritrea. Many civilians who encountered Melake around Asmara in the
seventies also remembered his kindness and caring for his people,
especially the youth who would be trying to join the struggle. Melake would
send them back home saying ‘not all of us needed to be in the field.’
Melake was not to see independent Eritrea. He left too early (he was only
33 years old when he was murdered). But he left behind a reputation
unmatched by many of his fellow “leaders,” for courage and dedication to
cause. His characteristic bluntness and directness may have cost him his
life, but he gained eternal adulation and good name. As our ancestors say,
“a human being does not stay, it is the name that stays behind forever.”
Thirty-four years hence a book that remembers him and celebrates his life,
dedication to cause, and service to his country and his fellow countrymen
and women, is indeed a good start.
Paulos Natnael
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