I appreciate your notions. ” BIHONIM BETAM YITASEB”.

If Woyanne falls, one of the Woyanne army generals will take the leadership. In other words, anyone who is in command of the army will be the leader, and I don’t believe anyone without armed soldiers will be the leader of Ethiopia; neither UDJ nor Ginbot 7 has the army, and Ethiopia may still fall to a third dictator. We just have to pray to God to give us a good leader. Your question is a valid one.

The answer is WE ARE NOT YET READY.

Can someone tell me if Wayanne falls who is ready to take the leadership whom we most of us agree on?

Meles has been strong and is getting stronger except some global challenge and those challenges are being handled to the best of his ability.

Keep in mind that it is not you and your like who are challenging Meles. For him, you are just like a fly and him the lion.

It is you and your like who are always falling down, without the luck to see yourself standing on two feet.

I wonder how you can handle the global challenge Meles is facing now while you can not even handle the “ye buna mahber” challenge like ……..showel…..birtukan……berhanu……..

If leaders uphold such a losfty vision, real change would be within a reach. Every wonder in this world had at one point started as a set of good thoughts and ideas, just like the ones you reflected. And these good ideas become a reality if committed folks pursue them. Keep the good work up!

Great!

Ethiopia has too many ethnicities, too many religions, too many languages, and too many destitute people, and with all these diversities, it has survived many wars, famine, and political persecutions until the breakaway of Eritrea from Ethiopia.

More breakaways may follow, I’m afraid, unless those various Ethiopian political leaders come up and work together with a pure love of a country that has nothing to do with the love of one’s own ethnicity, locality, religion, language, culture, and political affiliation – all these are impediments to the future growth of democracy in Ethiopia.

Indeed, it is too hard to avoid one’s own personal interest in one’s own region, in one’s own hometown, in one’s own religion and history; for example, the Amhara people may say that they have been the rulers of Ethiopia for many, many years, and that they have a long history that qualify them to rule Ethiopia for another century. The Oromo people may say that they are the majority, and that alone would qualify them to rule the country. On the other hand, the Tigryans would say that they have been the cradle of the Ethiopian civilization so that they are the only legitimate rulers of Ethiopia.

How can one then bring together all Ethiopians who have different faiths, ethnicities, histories, expectations, and admirations into one faith, one ethnicity, one history, one expectation and one admiration under one leadership crafted skillfully and which appeals to every Ethiopians?

Is it possible to teach the Ethiopians that they have only one God, one country, one history, one language, one culture, one origin, and one expectation – to be a democratic country?

If we all need the unity and prosperity of our country, each one of us must give up something for the sake and love of his/her country; for example, we Ethiopians are Muslims, Christians, Jews, and other religions, and each one of us loves his/her religion, but for the sake of unity, we have to completely exclude religion from politics; each person can worship God in his own way and pay tithes to his own church according to his/her own will and conviction and preference of time and place.

As far as language is concerned, Amharic should remain an official language of the entire country since most Ethiopians speak this language fluently. One region in Ethiopia may be richer in history than the other regions, but still the history of that particular region belongs to the other regions too. For example, the Tigray people should not say Axum is their own; they should rather say that Axum belongs to all the Ethiopian people. The rivers – for example, Tekezie River, Omo River, Abay River, and many other rivers in Ethiopia – belong to all Ethiopians, and the same thing is true with the mountains, the valleys, the wild animals, the birds – they all belong to all Ethiopians. In short, as this one Ethiopian flag belongs to all Ethiopians, in the same way, we all Ethiopians, despite our differences, ethnicities, histories, localities, and religions, are one Ethiopians, not two.

Thus when all Ethiopians feel they belong to one country and all the wealth of the country belongs to them, and then they will never think good things for themselves alone but for the welfare of all other Ethiopians, too.

The future leaders of Ethiopia must be equipped with all the necessary talents, wisdom, humility, and complete servitude to the Ethiopian people before they put their names for an election. They must know ahead of time that they are running for an election to be leaders of the Ethiopian people to serve the people, not to be served, to help the people, not to be helped, to guide the people, not be guided, and to enlighten the people and share their burdens.

These future leaders of Ethiopia must also admit the power of reasonable defeat gracefully if the lose the election, and they should not overjoyed over their victory as the American presidential candidate, Howard Din once did and lost the election. They must control their emotions over defeat and victory during an election time.

We have thousands of young educated Ethiopians to run as candidates to serve Ethiopia, but are they sincere in their candidacy for this awesome job as they try to lead such a proud nation with a long history of its own? I’m sure, they can run the country if they avoid these impediments that hinder any educated person from becoming an effective leader: ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, personal wealth, personal history, such as he or she is yebalabat Lij, so a good leader must not always vaunt of his/her social status.

I wish I could speculate that way.

TPLF’s colapse may not come that simple, because of its internal solidarity within. By within, I mean, Tigrean nationals would resuscitate TPLF through its staggering stages for perhaps 30 t0 50 years to come. One need to understand the Tigrean inner works and phobias to predict accurately what moves they take next. Its not Zenawi we are against, but the philosophy per say. Mr Zenawi’s fall from grace does not bring the total colapse of the said ugly philosophy the TPLF brought to our neighbore-hoods. Infact it may be revived by affiliates within TPLF inner circles to another 20 years, then another figuere, to 50 some years. By then Oban and many of us are not arround to even witness true democracy, peace and stability.

The cultural bravado, within nepotist Tribal frame works within Mr. Zenawi cements his fate of philosophy for the years I predicted above, for one.

The second, issue is these sleeze bugs, have no shame, nor humility to care for anyone on this plannet. If Bush shut them out or Washington closes its business with them, they never to hesitate to buddy with Iraq or even Al quadas. This is their true nature they change by the minutes to supplement for their deficits from unsuspected spots of the world.
How do I know all these? I know the Tigrean nepotism from personal expriences, also look they loot and build mega million personal estates from the money they loot both from donors and citizens at home. If these personalities won’t replace aite Meles with another brutal, barberous killer meles?

Third, there is no armed resistance that would stand up and annalliate them at this second, even farmers from Tigray can carry gun and overrun Ethiopia at spare of a moment.

I don’t think, people of bush can colapse because of economic strains. They are used to their filthy lifestyles, they can live and pose threats from anywhere.

Please post this article on the main page.

Thanks.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

The education policy of ethnic segregation and spiraling crises inside Ethiopia’s classrooms

In this article, I will focus on drawing some comparison between the Bantustan education policy under the apartheid government in South Africa and the current ethnic-based policy of educational segregation against the Oromo, Sidama, Affar, Gambella, Somali and Southern Nations and Nationalities in Ethiopia. This is to show the existence of a clear double-standard in Ethiopian education system. I will base this analysis on my observation of Ethiopia’s higher learning institutions for a decade now both as a student and as an academic.

This kind of topic requires a detailed empirical research at post-graduate level. Given the current restriction on academic freedom in Ethiopia, it is unlikely that a student or a professor in Ethiopia will be allowed to research such as sensitive, controversial but real topic, which can have the implications of severe punishment: imprisonment, torture or death included. The debates about separate development on Ethiopia’s education policy needs to go beyond conversations and rumors between close circles of friends, relatives and family and needs to attain prominence at least amongst the academics in Diaspora, who have the freedom to engage in such a generation-saving endeavor.

Bantustan Education Policy at a glimpse

In South Africa, the Commission on Native Education, 1949-1951, came up with a report that powerfully influenced the content of the Bantu Education Act of 1953. The report described the key nexus between state education policy and political and economic control of the African population (Badat & Harvey, 2002: 50). The African population included Black South Africans, Indians, Colored (some Asian ethnic groups especially the Chinese were also considered Colored). The African population was isolated and forced into enrolling in under- resourced and understaffed learning institutions that were few in number. Badat and Harvey (2002) further say that besides issues of poor resource and staff, the Boer-government made sure that the curricula of the African schools and universities reflected the dominance of the ideology of white rule and superiority. In effect, African children were forced to learn all subjects in the Afrikaner medium. African education was then placed under the direct control of the Department of Native Affairs.

The act clearly defined what native education meant and what principles it had to follow:
Native education should be based on the principles of trusteeship, non-equality and and segregation; its aims should be to inculcate the white man’s view of life, especially that of the Boer, which is the senior trustee (Brook and Brickhill 1980: 13).

In this way South Africa implemented its notorious and racist policy for a harsh 51 years until the end of apartheid. This and other repressions became one of the factors that led to the famous Soweto uprising of 19 76. The riot was a series of clashes between African youth and South African authorities. The policy surely has had debilitating effects on the skills-shortage on the part of the African population even in post-Mandella South Africa.

The unwritten ‘Bantustan or Oromotustan’ Act in current Ethiopian education policy
I argue that there are real similarities between forms of education policy of the minority-led apartheid South Africa and the minority-led Ethiopia. At primary school level grades 1-8 in all the 9 regional states except Tigray and Addis Ababa, children are taught in their first languages. This is a written policy. I still believe that using first languages in primary education, grade one through six, is a good idea.

The unwritten policy, however, is that students in Tigray region and Addis Ababa ( Finfinnee ) region as opposed to other regions study all subjects in English ,starting at their seventh grade. This gives Tigray and Addis Ababa students better performance because they have two years advantage over students from other regions as they study all subjects in the English language. In high schools and universities the medium of instruction is English in Ethiopia. Students from the 7 other regional sates also want to start their education in English as early as grade 7, but the government has systematically denied them this opportunity.

At their tenth grade students from other regions, Tigray and Addis Ababa sit for the same national examination that set in English in order to pass to preparatory and vocational streams. This is where the policy of segregations deals a below failures to thousands very, very immature children both in terms of their verbal and mathematical skills.

A solid background in English is critical in secondary and university education as textbooks are generally available only in English, which is the official medium of instruction. That is the reason students who are deficient in English skills will not be able to keep up. Besides, the major advantage of speaking English is to use it as a neutral lingua franca to do business and to create wealth across state lines and internationally. However, from the view point of the extremist dictatorship economic growth is not as much a benefit as keeping the population from communicating with one another for political reasons. Also, only the ruling tribes will be able to communicate effectively on a global level.

The model of adopting English as lingua franca is successful in most Anglophone countries in Africa. My Nigerian friend, whom I met in South Africa, told me that Nigeria has over 3000 dialects. He added, “If we were not to speak English, there would be total chaos”. He admits that each tribe fiercely competes with another as they all want their own language to be the best of all. We are facing the same challenge of inter-linguistic competition for prominence in Ethiopia. If English were a successful way of keeping Nigeria together, why cannot it be in Ethiopia?

How can policy of segregation happen in the same country and why? The answer is the regime promotes the supremacy of one ethnic group in education and the economy just like the former regime in South Africa. This is why usually universities are battlegrounds between all other students and the state authorities, and university administrators, who are directly appointed by the Ethiopian Ministry of Education.

If you are a university educator in Ethiopia and do a little bit of observation as well as take a sample of your student grades and compare, the performance difference between students from the two regions advantaged by education policy and 7 others disadvantaged by it even becomes starker. Over five years, I have compared letter grades and raw scores of students from various regions and came up with an observation that in terms of performance ranking students from Addis Ababa region come first, Tigray region second, and then the rest will follow . I asked many of my colleagues informally and they witness the same phenomenon in their student performance.

There is a huge amount of quantitative and qualitative difference not only in grades of students subjected to different policies but also in terms of their class participation, motivation, involvement in tasks, group works and speaking in front the class. The vast majority of students (90 %) of the class I teach make me hopeless in their problem-solving skills and may perhaps lack the skills for leadership in the global market economy, in and outside of their country. Tigray and Addis Ababa states’ students have undoubtedly attained the level of superiority that the regimes have wished for them. Oromo students their counter parts in the 7 other regions share a bitter reality of intellectual underdevelopment and marginalization. Everyday for them is a ‘Bantustan’ experience’ and a ‘Soweto’ experience, discriminations and uprisings. The universities remain to be beleaguered by violent and bloody scenes between the armed Ethiopian authorities and the pen-and-paper-wielding students.
Forced assignments

The criteria the Ministry of Education uses for assigning students to adequately equipped and staffed universities are not clear. This deliberate opacity and vagueness in policy procedures seem to be the ways the unwritten policies of segregation are implemented behind the scenes. Nonetheless, it is clear that the vast majority of students from the repressed regions in the South are assigned to remote, under resourced, understaffed and non-equipped universities. Major universities such as Addis Ababa University and a few others are reserved for students from Tigray and Addis Ababa. Students from the other regions, more often than not, are forcefully assigned to a university and a field of study that is not of their own choice.
Staff composition and recruitment

This is the area where it can be starkly seen that the repressed majority in the country are in the minority in all public universities. It is very rare and hard to find professors from Oromo, Anuak, Gambella, Affar, Somali, Sothern Nations and Nationalities (SNNP). They become even rarer in the ranks of various university leadership positions such as presidentship, deanship, and department head-ship, which are definitely attained by political appointment. 82 % of the country’s population is under-represented in these crucial areas. This has to do with the state’s policy of segregation, mostly unwritten policies, that are easy to see at work in the real world. Many of the unwritten nature of the policies make it more difficult and systematic to question their existence. If something is spelt out, the mass can further take to the streets like Sowetan South Africans did to challenge the legitimacy of such policies. It will also become easier for the international community to condemn these policies if they were written and made publicly available. For a foreigner to see their effects, it requires to be a participant observation researcher, who is willing to stay there and observe for a few years.

Aside from famine, disease, war and all other evils we are seeing under this regime, it should worry us when ‘the thinking organs of a society’- students- are systematically crippled. It is already in question whether the current generation of students will be able to provide leadership in the disciplines they have been trained in, nationally as well as internally. The de facto TPLF/EPRF government of Ethiopia, like its deceased Afrikaner racist government in South Africa, has been promoting ethnic racism and economic supremacy and political domination by a minority. In apartheid South Africa, it was easy to distinguish the skin color of the oppressor from the oppressed; the white Afrikaner was the oppressor while the blacks and Asians were the oppressed. Although the color of the TPLF leaders is distinct from its former analogy in South Africa, the content of their character is essentially the same. The skin similarity of the oppressor and the oppressor in Ethiopia even makes it harder for international onlooker to see the difference and to intervene to stop the animosity.

While this article provides a fairly introductory and incisive insight into the current spiraling crises in Ethiopian education, it invites experts in the field of education to further look into the current malicious educational policies, which are merely there to produce and reproduce the ideological supremacy of the minority tyrant government in stead of producing knowledge that can be used in nation-building.

Qeerransoo Biyyaa
Posted by Oromia at 12:35 PM
0 comments:

God bless you and all of us.

By the way I garantee you that many of the Ethiopian people inside and out side of Ethiopia are ready, but I doubt about the so called ERPP group who are concentrated in the Diaspora retiremnet centers and hailu shawel are ready to take the next step since they objective is to destroy and keep fighting major oppostions groups esepecially led by Dr. Birhanu.
When Ethiopia liberates its victory from weyane, the EPRP hyena group lead by Eyasu will continue to cuss out Dr. Birhanu and others again for another 35 years, if they are lucky enough to alive.