Mr. Meles responded to President Issayas's statement by telling his listeners at VOA that his group does not suffer from feelings of inferiority. In order to drive home his point, the Prime Minister made the illogical leap by stating that inferiority complex is a form of psychological impairment unique only among colonized peoples. He also singled out the "Italian variety" of colonization as gravely [a]ffective in its negative consequences. Meles went on to say that Ethiopians, unlike Eritreans, had escaped the curses of colonialism, hence, at least, they are no less self-assured or less self-respecting.
Leaving aside the psycho-political consequences of colonization, is Mr. Meles right in saying that Ethiopia enjoyed freedom in perpetuity, or is he just expressing a denial syndrome about his country history? Wasn't Abyssinia colonized?
Meles Zenawi and other Abyssinians are always in denial to the fact that the country was colonized. Based on that mistaken belief, they have succeeded in obfuscating realities and minimizing the effects of colonization on their destitute country. I don't argue that colonization entails inferiority complex. However, if Meles believes Eritreans have inferiority complex as a result of Italian colonization, he and the Amharas need to know that Italian colonization of their country inflicted more human injury to their people than to Eritreans.
Abyssinia was colonized. The level of its colonization by Italy or Britain may have been different than that of Eritrea, Libya, or Somalia. Nonetheless, Italy colonized the country for over five years between 1935 -1941. Colonization has two features:
Once control and consolidation is achieved, the colonial society is at ease and the level of cruelty is replaced by some levels of superficial integration. This may include creating amiable atmosphere to facilitate interracial and intercultural communications. Sometimes the colonizer attempts to make the colonized as members of the home state by telling them they are "Frenchmen" or true "Subjects of the Crown". The colonized peoples knew better. They did try to live with colonization, while at the same time maintaining their identities, dignities, and standing up to the outsiders. As the colonizer's attitude becomes conciliatory and patronizing, the colonized people sharpened their sense of identity and became resentful, conspiratorial, ungovernable, and hostile against the foreigners. It is when this seamering anger of the colonized peoples reached its volcanic climax that wars of liberation used to be deadly and humiliating to the colonizers. Those wars of liberation are sources of national pride and honor for those who defeated the colonizers. Witness the Alegerians before the onset of the current civil war, the Vietnamese, the South Africans, and, last but not least, the Eritreans!
Informal Colonization:
Under informal colonization, the level of cruelty is the same. Plunder, murder, rape, discrimination, and gross violation of human rights take place. What separates informal colonization from the previous one is, that under informal colonization, the consolidation of authority, the establishment of governmental units to serve and govern, the networks for bridging, tentatively, the societal gap are not reached. There is no transition from control to consolidation and governing. Only control, abuse, destruction of home institutions, murder of innocent civilians, assassination of patriots, execution of resistance forces, and large scale colonial terrorism take place to defeat and break down the spirit of the indigenous peoples. Formal colonization is brutal; informal colonization is brutal and destructive.
Ethiopia suffered the informal type of colonization when it fell under Italian rule in 1935. The Italian Fascist regime carried out the informal type of colonization in all of its cruelties for over 5 years. In those five years, Abyssinia was declared part of the East African Italian dominion "united" with Eritrea, Libya, and Italian Somaliland. The informal variety of colonization inflicted horrendous oppression of the people. Men were executed, their women violated, their intellectuals decimated, their patriots hunted down and shot, their cultural heritage looted, their holy places desecrated, and their flag shredded and burned Italian Fascists. Mussolini's brutality against Ethiopians was so cruel that one observer described it as "the most atrocious methods known to modern civilization." Even today Italians find themselves trying to amend their past by becoming repentant, remorseful, and ashamed of what the Fascists had done to the country.
Italy remembers its colonial occupation of Abyssinia which was not consolidated to formal colonization. It is for that reason that Italy frequently tries to amend the Fascists savagery by being meek and sheepish toward each Abyssinian regime since the end of the Second World War. Today Italy's confessional attitude toward Abyssinia has become so irrational that Italy, instead of repudiating the rogue successive regimes, is willing to support the Wayanee, a provincial gang, as it did to the Derg. Both fall into a club of hoodlums who never deserved any attention from self-respecting governments or peoples.
PART II. Inferiority Complex of the Colonizer:, (to be continued)
It is difficult to attribute inferiority complex to societies. That would be a sweeping generalization. However, it is easy to see something of that order and a lack of character in a nation's leadership. This lack of character may be obvious in the ways the leadership makes choices in diplomacy, war, peace, or domestic affairs. Even the way countries choose their enemies and friends, the way they treat their ethnic or religious minorities, and the way they prioritize their goals in terms of education, health, food, and shelter give ample testimony about the psychological state of a nation's leadership. In poor countries where the people are marginalized from the centers of power, and where the level of popular mobilization and participation is weak, the behavior of the leaders in times of war and peace give a clue if the leadership suffers from defective character. Such a behavior is also apparent in dogmatic regimes. Hitler's use of the Jews as scapegoats for Germany's bellicose bent was an example of sick and corrupt character at the top of a nation's leadership. And so is the TPLF's decision to single out Eritrean blood in Ethiopian citizenship for the denial of fundamental justice. Why so in Abyssinia? It is the absence of sound character and a habit of betrayal so pervasive in its leadership and in its political culture!
At the close of the 19th Century, Ethiopia had two leaders who managed to unite the various kingdoms. They are Tewodros and Yohannis IV. Tewodros and Yohannis exhibited a sense of independence and heroic stand against outside aggression. Both were fanatics, reckless, and self-destructive, but compared to succeeding Ethiopian leaders, they showed superior sense of patriotism and honor when it came to their country. They are the only two who gave their lives fighting foreign aggression on their realm. The leaders who followed them have shown character aberrations similar to inferiority complex.
The Perfidious Menelik:
In the 1870s and 1880s, neighboring enemies and colonial powers savaged Abyssinia on all of its borders. In 1872 Menelik, who then designated himself as King of Kings of Shewa, made secret contacts with an undisclosed European country (possibly France, most likely Italy) requesting them to colonize Abyssinia with him as their vassal. He made this secrete overture in exchange for arms to undermine Emperor Yohannis. All the while, he promised Yohannis to abide by three principles in order to be recognized by Yohannis as King of Shewa. He was required 1. To show strict loyalty to Ethiopia and to Yohannis, 2. to help Yohannis defend the country against her enemies, particularly Italy, by mobilizing troops from Shewa and neighboring territories, 3. to expand Abyssinian boundaries beyond Shewa to the southern Oromo lands. In return Menelik was promised the throne after Yohannis's death.
Menelik expanded Abyssinian boundaries to the South by plundering the
Oromo kingdoms. However, when he was ordered to come and join Yohannis
in the fight against foreign invaders - the Italians, the Egyptians,
and the Mahdists - Menelik disobeyed the orders and the
Menelik quickly vested himself as Menelik II King of Kings in the face of Northern/Tigray's objection. He soon brutalized and pacified the North and signed the Wuchalle Treaty of 1883 with Italy. The Treaty was the culmination of Menelik's secrete alliances which allowed Italy to colonize Eritrea formally. Ethiopians consider Menelik II their greatest leader conveniently forgetting that he was in reality a flagrant traitor to his own country.
Even though Meles Zenawi may have been careless about his statement when he boasted that colonized peoples are apt to suffer from inferiority complex than "those of us who have not been colonized", one thing that he forgot was that Ethiopia is still a colonizing state. It still holds under its colonial grip the Oromos, Somalis, Gurages, and a host of other nations conquered by Menelik. Abyssinian colonization has been dismissed by the world, because colonial domination is considered as a prerogative reserved only for European powers. Ethiopia being a weak (inferior?), and by European standards, of less significance in global politics, it is unthinkable for the West to accept it as a colonial power on its own right. To those nations and nationalities who are oppressed by the Abyssinian state, the burden of being governed by a minority ethnic group whose legitimacy is based only on the monopoly of violence is heavy and crushing. According to James Dugan and L. Lafore, " Menelik gave his people the habit of empire. Later generations of Ethiopians were to inherit revealing conflicts with their neighbors. . . .It is due to Menelik's legacy that Ethiopia is multinational state and that many of its minorities are bitter and rebellious". Thus the implication of Meles's argument is to implicate the oppressed masses of non-Amhara and non-Tigrayan with the same degree of malice and contempt as he did to Eritreans.
Menelik, by his crude perfidy, has instilled a sense of anger and self-pity in Tigray. Their anger and self-pity is regularly misdirected against Eritreans in the way an inferiority complex makes a bullied child bully those whom he think are weaker than him only to find himself in worse predicaments.
Haile Selassie: the Fainthearted
Other acts of betrayal to the North can be observed in the reign of Haile Selassie when he fled the country in 1935. When Italian Fascists invaded Ethiopia, Haile Selassie abandoned his country and his troops to Fascist slaughter. He chose to flee into exile leaving the defense of the country in the hands of Ethiopian patriots. A good number of those patriots were Eritreans. Eritreans and Tigrayans joined hands and tormented the Fascists in the North while Haile Selassie fled his post in the South. Those Eritrean heroes sacrificed their precious lives for ungrateful Ethiopia in the most amazing self-less sacrifices. Many of the recent "uprooted" from Ethiopia were descendants and relatives of those Eritrean heroes. The TPLF, in characteristic act psychological projection, singled them out for persecution. It committed a shameless national sacrilegious by disfranchising their birthright of citizenship.
One of the significant manifestations of inferiority complex, psychologists tell us, is the desire to inflict pain on the weak and defenseless. Another indicator of this malady is the urge to become sadistic and brutal to the vulnerable and to those you think will not have protection from society or institutions. A third tale-tale of inferiority complex, as further explained by psychologists, is the impulse to be unkind, brutal, divining, cunning, and outright disloyal to your kinsfolk, your kind, your people and to those who are gracious, kind, gentle, understanding, and peaceful toward you such as your family, relatives, or ethnics. Inferiority complex may be a function of some deep-seated injury experienced in the hands of some authority figures or groups. As to whether inferiority complex is caused by a colonial experience and domination has not been substantiated.
Frantz Fanon has enumerated the mental side effects of colonialism, but he has not gone as far as to say that colonialism breeds inferiority complex. What he emphatically stated is that the colonized person gains a sense of resignation and anger enough to propel him to rise up against the colonizer and in the process, become determined to free himself from domination. He is right. We have evidence from the best stone-throwers in the world, the boys and girls of Intifadah. The sons and daughters of Palestine, with their bare hands have silenced the invincible among them! Their stones have slain the Goliath in their midst with all of his sophisticated armours, guns, torture tools, prisons, and death camps. We have evidence from the Meda Lions and Sawa Tigers in the Eritrean borders holding at bay the human flood tide by their sheer will and a sense of resolute duty to nation and country! Eritrea, their turf, their playground, their burial ground when they must die in her defense, is free from sulk, resentment, self-pity, and inferiority complex. Meles was wrong as ever.