The TPLF leaders now in power too believe in such loose concepts as Ethiopia being a ‘colonial power in Eritrea’ and they too are putting at risk the very survival of Ethiopia both by the clumsiness of ethnicsing the country’s politics and by insisting Ethiopia has been a ‘colonial’ power over Eritrea until they took over the helm of state and found they have to deal with their own idiotic games on Ethiopia’s future. Such self-serving formulation has deeply hurt Ethiopia’s prospects and future. The worry that Ethiopia may be harmed by them is shared by all those who understand Ethiopians having a project of unification of the people who share a long history and fate from the Red sea to the Indian Ocean.
6. Searching for a Constuitive Foundation to unite the people in the Region
Looking back to the long duree, one sees the origin of each of the states we now call Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan is shared and similar. And if we, for example, take the origin of Ethiopia we see two myths of origin: one is Atiopik, grandson of Noah who created the Ethiopian nation and his son Aksumai who formed the Axumite civilisation. In this sense Ethiopia which included not only the states of Eritrea, Djibouti and Somali and Sudan, but also southern Egypt, Yemen east of Aden, Southern Saudi Arabia can be seen like what Scandinavia is to Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden today. The other version is Ethiopia as in the Greek term for sun- burnt faces, in this latter sense-making, Ethiopia can mean ´the whole of Africa’ today.
If we take each of the states and play back history we see the organic connections that existed amongst them throughout history until the 19th century Scramble for Africa. This brings us to an important theorem. How have we tried to understand the past? How should we understand it now? Should we derive positive possibilities from our past or condemn it? Should we dialogue with the past or reject it? Can we back-cast to look far ahead in the future and shape the future together with rules and procedures for full rights of all the grassroots whilst finding workable arrangements for living together peacefully and with security and stability? What constitutive foundation will bring the people from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean to live together in peace, stability, security and unity by doing away with the hurts, hatreds, fights and various unhealthy interventions by outsiders owing to the chronic mistrust, fragmentation and divisions amongst the people that has made it possible for such negative and destructive interventions to occur so frequently and so unnecessarily? How can we heal the divisions and create trust to go beyond the innumerable tragedies, hatreds and fights that have accumulated over years and years of wrongs and internal oppressions backed by external divisive interests?
Moreover should we look back to our past to learn from it or justify the current fragmentation? Should we look at the past to justify division rather than overcome it? Should we look at the past to set new standards rather than accept the ineffective post- colonial states that have earned the ignominy of fragile, collapsed and failed states varied status? How can we derive positive and constructive spirit and energy from the past to create a positive and constructive spirit and energy capable of generating a national direction for transforming the individual, society, and economy, polity with shared democratic systems, rule of law, human rights and governance in the region as a whole?
The 19th century division mutilated the body of our region as indeed it did mutilate the whole of Africa to use Fanon’s words. As the distinguished thinker Prof. Kwesi Prah put it: “We had nothing to do with the creation of these states (say from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean in our case).They were created for us, not with the intent of serving our interests, but rather with the object of benefiting the European powers, which carried out this carve-up, so painfully, and with ruthless determination. Ironically, while we often bemoan colonialism and the legacies of the colonialists, we appear to want to defend, most tenaciously, the most detrimental legacy of colonialism, the colonial borders.” (The Africa Nation: the State of the Nation, CASAS, Cape Town, 2006, pp.289-290). Wars have been fought between Ethiopia and Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea to defend colonial borders drawn by others for their own purposes. People have died in hundreds and thousands for something that must be rejected and not defended. Eritrea and Ethiopian ruling elites tell us they are in a ‘no war and no peace’ state situation because they are fighting over the issue of making sure one of the borders drawn by Italy that divides families and parishes must be honoured. Such is the utter bankruptcy, myopia, lack of self-respect, and criminality of the elites that rule over with crude power and putting at risk our region and not having any positive hope to offer a way out.