In Ethiopia it seems the country has suffered from a syndrome that has subjected generations into an inter-generational tyranny over the ages. By the latter we mean that throughout history problems have a tendency to pile up rather than being solved in Ethiopia. What a generation inherits is not opportunities but compounded problems that have been left unsolved by successive generations. Unsolved problems naturally remain as problems yet to be solved being always transmitted from generation to generation throughout the ages. Politicians seem to bring more new problems than solving old and transmitted problems from earlier generations. For example, had Ethiopia had turned into a republic after world war II as some of the anti-fascist patriotic resistance fighters thought at the time, then the problems to solve today would have been different. Even when in 1974 a transition came from the monarchy to the military, the country moved from one problem to inherit a violent military turn. And when in 1991 the transition to ethnic based government came, again a problem gave rise to another problem of ethnic division and the split of the country into two hostile states whose long term consequence is very hard to predict to the very existence of the country. What clearly emerges is that those who leave and those who come- each in its own way leaves behind a hybrid combination of old and new problems for others to come to solve. That has been the pattern. There is not yet a new model of politics where such compounding of new problems on and with old problems is not recurrent.
This inter-generational tyranny is a reality that threatens to stay with us unless society and people learn to build social capital to know how to relate with each other to bring cooperative action in order to solve problems and not transmit them selfishly to the yet unborn generation to try to solve and pay for it in life, limb and resources. Such oppressive legacies of failure to solve the problems and challenges, threats and dangers from the past must be ameliorated and the work to challenge inter–generational tyranny and convert it into inter-generational liberty must be unyielding. Those who enter into politics must be people with the moral stature and intelligence to solve the twin problems of hunger and governance, and who take seriously their responsibility and believe that to pass on these problems on to the yet unborn to solve is very unjust and unfair. Those who come to power to compound problems for this and next generations must be rejected as liars, cheaters, arrogant, selfish and self- centred and vain persons, money and power seekers. People and society must wake up and scrutinise these power seekers and demand what is it that they offer in practice and not just in words: inter-generational tyranny or liberty? This is an important yardstick to identify, criticise and institutionalise a political system with a constitutive world view that works to transform and stabilise the country at the same time.
4. We Must Learn to Build Social Capital for Ethiopia to Survive!
If there is one critical matter that we Ethiopians must learn to do that seems woefully in dearth in the country is for all of us to strive very hard and create, build and sustain social capital. What is social capital? Social capital is the intangible, invisible glue that is also the productive value constituting relationships amongst people. Social capital deals with intangibles such as: for example, what brings social or membership gluing, bonding, linking and bridging various divides by creating cooperative connections, networks, norms and social trust to generate opportunities for better organisational coordination and cooperative action that promotes all those engaged in a particular social activity from the individuals, families, groups to political parties and governments. Active cooperative action that benefits is often a consequence of connections that are anchored with networks of trust, mutual understanding, sympathy, norms of reciprocity sharing values to bind the interaction of members in any network willing and engaged to make a difference in the missions they care to pursue and advance…