Cambridge Universit y Pre ss 978-0-521-39650-9 ...

TRANSFORMATION AND CONTINUITY IN REVOLUTIONARY ETHIOPIA

AFRICAN STUDIES SERIES 61

GENERAL EDITOR

J. M. Lonsdale, Lecturer in History and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge

ADVISORY EDITORS

J. D. Y. Peel, Charles Booth Professor of Sociology, University of Liverpool John Sender, Faculty of Economics and Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge

PUBLISHED IN COLLABORATION WITH

THE AFRICAN STUDIES CENTRE, CAMBRIDGE

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TRANSFORMATION AND CONTINUITY IN REVOLUTIONARY ETHIOPIA

CHRISTOPHER CLAPHAM Professor of Politics & International Relations, University of Lancaster

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE

NEW YORK PORT CHESTER MELBOURNE SYDNEY






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© Cambridge University Press 1988

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1988Reprinted 1989First paperback edition 1990Re-issued 2010

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Clapham, Christopher S.Transformation and continuity in revolutionary Ethiopia / p. cm. - (African studies series: 61)Bibliography.Includes index.ISBN 0 521 33441 1I. Ethiopia - Politics and government - 1974- I. Title.II. Series.JQ3752.C55 1988963.07 - dc 19 88-2622

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In memory of Tibebu Deribe 1961-1987






Contents

List of tables page x Preface and acknowledgements xi List of acronyms xiv Glossary of Amharic words xvi Map of administrative regions of Ethiopia xviii

1 Revolutions 1 The conditions for revolution 2 The construction of a revolutionary political order 6 The analysis of revolution 12

2 Monarchical modernisation and the origins of revolution 19 The bases of state and nation 20 The rise of a modernising autocracy 26 The origins of revolution 32 The debacle 38

3 The mobilisation phase, i97~1978 41 The revolutionary option , February-November 1974 41 The great reforms, December 1974-July 1975 45 The control of the towns, 1975-1978 51 The conflict for the periphery, 1975-1978 57

4 The formation of the party, 197~1987 65 The origins of party formation 65 COPWE 70 The Workers' Party of Ethiopia 77 The People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia 92

vii






Contents

5 The Ethiopian state: structures of extraction and control 101 The old regime 101 The impact of revolution 105 The structures of control 108 The structure of production 114 The external economy 119 Surplus extraction and government spending 123 The structures of distribution 125

6 The control of the towns 129 The kebelle 130 The mass organisations 136 Housing and the control of residence 141 Socialist distribution 145 Industry, employment and the urban economy 148 Education and literacy 150 The reaction from control 153

7 Rural transformation and the crisis of agricultural production 157 The peasants' associations 157 Land reform: its implementation and effects 161 Agricultural marketing 168 Agricultural producers' cooperatives 171 Villagisation 174 The state farms 179 The export sector: coffee, sesame and chat 182 The origins of famine 186 The domestic politics of famine relief 189

8 The national question 195 Ethnicity and revolution 195 Representation and control in regional administration 201 Regional opposition: the north 204 Regional opposition: the south 214

9 The external politics of revolution 220 The structure of foreign relations 220 Revolution and the reversal of alliances 223 The foreign policy of proletarian internationalism 228 The Western response 236

10 Conclusion 241

viii






Postscript to the paperback edition Notes Bibliography Index

Contents

ix

244 259 278 292






1 2

Tables

Composition of the Central Committee of the WPE WPE militants attending the Founding Congress

x

page 85 88






Preface and acknowledgements

This book was conceived during a visit to Addis Ababa in November and December 1984, to participate in the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies. I was then struck both by the enormous changes which had taken place in Ethiopia since the revolution, and by the framework of continuity within which many of these changes seemed to me to have occurred. The main fieldwork was carried out during a seven-month stay in Ethiopia, from September 1985 to April 1986, when I served as Visiting Professor at Addis Ababa University. While I am most grateful to the University for allowing me this opportunity, and to the University of Lancaster for giving me paid leave to enable me to take it up, I must make it more than usually clear that neither university, nor any section or individual within it, bears the slightest responsibility for the views that I have expressed. Following completion of the initial draft early in 1987, I revisited Ethiopia for four weeks in May 1987 to check and update it, and completed the final text in September 1987 - a date which conveniently coincided with the formal declaration of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.

Anyone who has undertaken research in Ethiopia will be aware of its peculiar rewards and difficulties, and especially of the secrecy which surrounds even the most apparently innocuous information, the multiple and contradictory accounts of any political event, and the extraordinary persistence even of myths which can clearly be shown to be fictitious. To take just one example, it is often claimed that at the beginning of this century, some 40% of Ethiopia was forested, a percentage reduced in recent times to less than a tenth of that amount. This figure is confidently asserted even in such authoritative documents as the UNDP/World Bank energy assessment report, l while a map published by the Ethiopian government shows almost all land over 1,500 metres as having been forested in the recent past.2 Since the northern highlands have been under plough agriculture for about a thousand years, this seems unlikely, and early nineteenth-century prints show the highland areas of present-day Tigray and Eritrea as carrying only occasional scattered trees - though certainly more than now remain.3 There is, indeed, convincing biological evidence that most of the Ethiopian high-

xi







lands have never been forested. They contain, for example, no fewer than twenty-one endemic species of montane non-forest birds, found nowhere else in the world, which can only have evolved over many millennia; Ethiopia is by contrast exceptionally poor in montane forest birds. 4 Deforestation may of course make an important contribution to erosion, environmental degradation, and agricultural decline in some parts of Ethiopia; but the very convenience of the deforestation argument has served to perpetuate myths which examination of the evidence shows to be unfounded .

Only the most foolhardy scholar would assert that his own work was free from similar misconceptions. The most I can claim is that I have examined the available (and often fragmentary) evidence as dispassionately as possible, and have tried to be both accurate and fair. This has inevitably meant using figures which may (especially under revolutionary conditions) be subject both to deliberate bias and to an understandable temptation to dream up a number where none exists. I can only say that I have done what I can, and that I apologise for any faults that remain. I should add that so far as I can judge, most Ethiopian official statistics on a wide range of topics seem to me to be generally honest and accurate.

When I first started to study Ethiopian politics, a quarter of a century ago, I could feel that I was venturing into almost untrodden territory. That is true no longer, and my most important academic debt is to those social scientists, a very high proportion of whom are Ethiopians, who have continued to work in revolutionary Ethiopia, often under very difficult conditions, and who have done by far the greater part of the research on which this volume rests . Individual sources are acknowledged in the notes and bibliography; but no work of this scope could possibly have been completed without the availability of a great deal of basic research, and at some points I am all too aware that I have done little more than take other people's findings, and apply them to my own concerns. I have cited sources wherever possible, even when these may not be readily accessible, but must emphasise that none of these authors bears any responsibility for the use which I have made of their work. I have also relied on information given me by a wide range of informants in Ethiopia, who must perforce remain anonymous, and am particularly grateful to those who have read all or part of this book in draft, and corrected some of my mistakes. I have not always accepted their advice, however, and responsibility for a final text which has often had to rely heavily on personal judgement remains mine alone.

I am grateful to the Nuffield Foundation of London, for meeting the costs of travel, subsistence and research materials, and hope that they will feel, at a time when pressure on research funding is intense, that the result repays their confidence. I wish to make it clear that this research was not funded by any government body (whether British, Ethiopian or otber), or by any international organisation.

My greatest debt, finally, is to two families - one in Lancaster who allowed me to abandon them for eight months, and one in Addis Ababa who looked

xii







after me when I got there. It is such that any further comment would be inadequate.

Tibebu Deribe, to whose memory this book is dedicated, was a third-year student in statistics at Addis Ababa University, who died of rheumatoid arthritis in May 1987.

Lancaster, September 1987 CHRISTOPHER CLAPHAM

xiii






Acronyms

AEPA AETU AMC ANLM CELU COPWE

CPSC CPSU DPRK EDDC EDU EH ELF EPA EPDM EPLF EPRP ETU GDR NG NRDC OLF ONCCP PADEP PDRE PDRY PMAC PMGSE PNDR POMOA REWA

xiv

All Ethiopia Peasants' Association All Ethiopia Trade Union Agricultural Marketing Corporation Afar National Liberation Movement Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions Commission for Organising the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia Central Planning Supreme Council Communist Party of the Soviet Union Democratic and Popular Republic of Korea (North Korea) Ethiopian Domestic Distribution Corporation Ethiopian Democratic Union The Ethiopian Herald Eritrean Liberation Front Ethiopia Peasants' Association (formerly AEPA) Ethiopia People's Democratic Movement Eritrean People's Liberation Front Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party Ethiopia Trade Union (formerly AETU) German Democratic Republic Negarit Gazeta (Ethiopian government official gazette) National Revolutionary Development Campaign Oromo Liberation Front Office of the National Council for Central Planning Peasant Agricultural Development Extension Programme People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (Aden) Provisional Military Administrative Council Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia Programme of the National Democratic Revolution Provisional Office of Mass Organizational Affairs Revolutionary Ethiopia Women's Association






REYA RRC SIDA TPLF UDA WPE WSLF

Revolutionary Ethiopia Youth Association Relief and Rehabilitation Commission Swedish International Development Authority Tigray People's Liberation Front Urban Dwellers' Association Workers' Party of Ethiopia Western Somali Liberation Front

Acronyms

xv






Glossary of Amharic words

Abyotawit Seded see Seded awraja birr chat chikashum Derg Echaat Emaledih

Emalered

enset

idir ltyopya tikdem kebelle keftenya kiflehager malba Meison neftenya riSI

Seded shengo teff Wazleague weiand welba

xvi

province; the second level of local administration Ethiopian monetary unit ($1 = 2.07 birr) a narcotic leaf, widely chewed in the Red Sea region village headman under the imperial regime the military committee formed in June 1974 Ethiopia Oppressed Masses Unity Struggle, 1975-78 Union of Ethiopian Marxist Leninist Organisations, 1977-79 Ethiopian Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Organisation, 1976-78 false banana; a plant which provides the staple food of parts of southern Ethiopia a cooperative association in Ethiopian towns 'Ethiopia first' , the revolutionary motto local urban dwellers' association higher urban dwellers' association region; the highest level of local administration simplest form of agricultural producers' cooperative All Ethiopia Socialist Movement, 1975-78 northern settler in southern Ethiopia system of land inheritance in highland Ethiopia before 1975 Revolutionary Flame, 1975-79 parliament or soviet, 1987 a food grain widely grown in highland Ethiopia LabourLeague,1975-79 highest form of agricultural producers' cooperative intermediate form of agricultural producers' cooperative






woreda zemecha

Glossary of Amharic words

district; the lowest level of local administration campaign; especially, the National Development Campaign, 1974-75

xvii






SUD A N

r' "","A • .i

~ ... ' Nakfa. ( I

i ERITREA i

~ Barent~ J /" ... '.. ... _ _ J \"', _/' __ ......... TIYO r.- ,./ / .Adwa ......... \Humera, Axum· • ~-L", TIGRAY

) , i G 0 N 0 E R '> ·Makale

I-\. .l.. ,.'-./ .

/' Gonder (\.J '- __ "\- _____ ,.1'---

~ .Lalibela l ,-~-, ~~l " WO L LO

NORTH YEMEN (YARI

< ... .....-..J L \. Awsa. { Bahr Dar·, " De . • r ' ' C ss,e \ /

( I GOJJAM '-< • r-----< . . ".~ . . \,,0, Debra ~ ,---1 ._., t ( /' __ !v1ao:os {..--_/ j c:..

I· ·Aso~""-'''' \.., ,/- '. \ r S HOA t OireOawa " SOMALI REPUBLIC

WE LEG A I I· '"

) Addis (r' Harar· JiJlga " Nekempte. . .Ababa " ~ r\ _,\-; /~waSh

r-'v ....... , (", __ 1"':) -t:l \, Nazret.,..J \ ! Gambele...... -Gore) <'; //\~ \ "' .......... ,

Io"."\,. ILLUBABOR' { .' ·Asela.J'r '.., .... " Ji.«ma I , A R S I J \

~ i\ .... _ .... // (" ) _/'............. " •. t.," K A F FA A:.;~~'(<;/ .Goba )

....

HARARGHE ..... .....

...... . -. /

/ • _ • ' (Ogaden '. ,...,,-" .. ""-- ........ , Yirgalem \ /

\ I . I " B ALE ""'-, . " Arba M,n~hf" L,,_ I

5 U 0 AN" c ... ~m',kl I '1... ,-, '-"';' "'°1; /.', J \,..-.......... \ \'. ( , < v 5 IDA M 0' .... , , .' I -, • .-.-._ • .::, •

..----'- - _l._ ......... , Borana \ j' " . . """. .....)".,. . .-. , .'" 1..._., . ,. ... ....... . -.1'. KENYA

I

~?=~b=~==~Ir=~==~5gokm o 'JOOmiles

• Capitals Other towns mentioned in the text

SOMALI REPUBLIC

Administrative regions of Ethiopia, 1974-1987

xviii






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