Author’s Note: In July 2016, I completed my tenth year of uninterrupted Monday Commentaries (and sometimes up to 4 commentaries) a week. Some have amiably characterized my commentaries as “Monday Sermons”.
My first commentary (in the form a speech), “Awakening Giant”, appeared on July 4, 2006, the 230th anniversary of the American Declaration Independence.
It has been an extraordinary decade for me. As I look back, I am proud of the struggle I waged against the users, abusers and misusers of power wherever they may be by speaking truth and hoping to keep them honest.
I have been blessed to live out a decade of Satyagraha (satya “truth”; agraha “insistence” or “holding firmly to”), a revolutionary idea of nonviolent resistance popularized by Mahatma Gandhi. To me, Satyagraha means two things: 1) personally resisting and teaching others to resist the arbitrary, unlawful and vicious actions of the powers that be, the power abusers, the powerful, and the superpower, and 2) defending the rights of the powerless, the disempowered and the overpowered.
Over the past decade, I managed to cultivate a substantial readership which follows my commentaries on a variety of websites, social media and bulk email. I thank my readers, website editors and all others on social media who read and propagate my commentaries to audiences throughout the world, and especially in Ethiopia.
Many readers have told me that they have been inspired and informed by my commentaries. They have only one question: How come I never get tired?
Does one get tired of breathing? It has something to do with “soul-force” as Gandhi would call it.
Other readers are offended, upset and exasperated by my commentaries. They believe I have relentlessly criticized the T-TPLF because of their ethnicity or some other demographic characteristic. They even complain that I should not call them a “thugtatorship” or a gang of thugs. I have no ethnic bias towards the leadership or members of the T-TPLF. But I dislike and passionately oppose their wicked ways, their crimes against humanity. I call it as I see it! If the shoe fits, the T-TPLF must wear it.
Some have complained that my commentaries are too long and I should shorten them. I am amused by such complaints. I do not write for entertainment, pleasure reading, to amuse or for self-promotion. I have tried to present a serious message to my readers on important issues every week. Suffice it to say that my commentaries are targeted specifically to those who are seriously and sincerely concerned about issues of human rights, justice, good governance, democratic principles and practices, the rule of law, accountability and transparency and so on.
The year of perseverance
I would say 2016 has been a year of perseverance for me and millions of Ethiopians.
In 2006, my “friend” Barack Obama said, “Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”
Obama was responding to exhausted volunteers who were ready to throw in the towel. They “told me they were quitting – that they had been doing this for two years and had nothing to show for it.”
Indeed, that is what my brother, the inspirational Eskinder Nega said in a letter smuggled out of prison. Unjustly sentenced to serve 18 years in prison by the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front [T-TPLF] (for nothing more than blogging online), Eskinder wrote, “I will live to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It may or may not be a long wait. Whichever way events may go, I shall persevere!”
After 10 years of weekly commentaries, whichever way events went, what do I have to show for it?
I will let the millions of readers who have been inspired and informed by my commentaries over the past decade answer that question.
I will let the T-TPLF answer that question.
I will let those infuriated, exasperated and maddened by my commentaries answer that question.
I will let future generations of Ethiopians answer that question.
My answer is simple: “I have and shall continue to persevere whichever way events may go.”
In doing my annual year in review for 2016, I have selected one commentary from each month which I believe exemplifies the virtue of perseverance.
In January, in my commentary “Fly, Ethiopia, Fly”, I tried to answer a question posed by The Economist: “What if they [Ethiopians] were really set free?” The Economist answered its own question: “If the government let people breathe, they might fly.”
That got me thinking about a whole lot of other questions? What if Ethiopia’s young people were really set free? Set to think freely? Speak freely? Write, blog and report freely? Worship freely? Assemble and participate in political parties and civic organizations freely? Petition for redress of their grievances freely? Own their own land freely, farm it, lease it or sell it freely? Live and travel anywhere in their country without feeling they are bobbing and weaving out of ethnic homelands, or told to “go back to their country”, their kililistan, the contemporary version of apartheid Bantustans?
My answer: By God! Ethiopia’s young people would fly, fly, fly, fly high in the sky like millions of butterflies. They would soar like eagles. “They will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
But how can eagles soar when they are under the claws of turkeys?
I know the caged young birds of Ethiopia sing “of things unknown/ but longed for still/ and his tune is heard/ on the distant hill/ for the caged bird/ sings of freedom.
Ethiopia’s young people still sing of freedom and have persevered!
In February, I had the extraordinary chance of meeting Reeyot Alemu and her sister Eskedar. Reeyot was arrested and imprisoned by the personal order of the late T-TPLF thugmaster Meles Zenawi in June 2011. It was a memorable meeting.
When I first laid eyes on Reeyot, I blurted out, “You are Reeyot?! I am not scared of you!” She busted out laughing. I wasn’t trying to be funny. I simply could not imagine how Meles Zenawi could be scared of this young woman. In retrospect, I have a good idea why. Meles saw Reeyot as his nemesis. Reeyot is unlike any young Ethiopian I have ever met. She is like a piece of diamond. On the outside she shines and sparkles. On the inside, she is a young woman made up of entirely steel nerves, tungsten will power and titanium determination. She has a defining and disarming attitude. She makes no secret of her life’s mission: “If I don’t stand up for freedom and democracy in Ethiopia, who else will?”
I remember fondly our few days filled with laughter. We laughed almost the entire time as we discussed the childish shenanigans of the T-TPLF, their stupidity and idiocy, their ignorant arrogance, their incompetence and cluelessness, their hate and loathing, their thuggery and buffoonery, their lies, deception and disinformation; their corruption, nepotism and cronyism. We laughed and laughed…
I have to do the second part of Reeyot’s story one of these days.
Reeyot persevered!
In March, I asked the question, “Quo Vadis Ethiopia: Where Are You (not) Going?” I attended a “Conference on the Future of Ethiopia: Transition, Democracy, and National Unity” organized by Vision Ethiopia in Washington, D.C. I argued that to find out where Ethiopia is going, follow the youth.
But that question to me was pregnant with even more questions. Where is Ethiopia going with T-TPLF? (That’s a no brainer! Ethiopia is at a dead end with the T-TPLF.) After the T-TPLF is gone? Will Ethiopia be an undiscovered country after the T-TPLF is gone? Will Ethiopians be walking over the minefields the T-TPLF has planted for the past 25 years and implode? Is Ethiopia going in the direction of a civil war?
I proposed a constitutional road map for Ethiopia. It is a road map that has only one destination: “New Ethiopia”. The road map has three “landmarks”. First, the Preamble to the Constitution of the New Ethiopia must begin with the following phrase: “We the People of Ethiopia, in order to…” None of that Stalinist-Leninist crap about “nations, nationalities and peoples”.
Second, the Constitution of the New Ethiopia should have language along the following lines: “The powers not delegated to the national Ethiopian government by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” In other words, the new national government of the New Ethiopia will function only to the extent that the national constitution grants power to it. None of that ethnic federalism crap.
Third and straight up, the new constitution of the New Ethiopia should adopt in its entirety Article 55(4) of Ghana’s Constitution: “Every political party shall have a national character, and membership shall not be based on ethnic, religious, regional or other sectional divisions.” “National character” means none of the exclusionary ethnic and sectarian crap.
Ultimately, the question of where Ethiopia is going will NOT be answered by social media muckrakers, carpetbaggers, hired hands and agent provocateurs and opportunists. Nor will it be determined by professors, lawyers, doctors and self-appointed tribal chiefs. The question of where Ethiopia is going will be answered by Ethiopia’s young women and men, Ethiopia’s Cheetah Generation, with the support of Ethiopia’s Hippo Generation of good will. It is going to be answered by the thousands of political prisoners in Ethiopia who are paying the ultimate price for our freedom.
Ethiopia shall persevere until the end of time!
In April, I remembered my brother Eskinder (“Invictus [Aybegere]”) Nega. Eskinder reminds me of Nelson Mandela. The white minority apartheid regime of South Africa sentenced Nelson Mandela to life in prison in 1964 hoping Mandela would be forgotten and erased from public memory. Mandela emerged triumphant from apartheid prison in 1990 after 27 years and saved South Africa.
There is nothing more the T-TPLF would like to see than the memory of Eskinder Nega erased and obliterated from public memory and consciousness.
Whenever I get low on inspiration and feel drained, I read Eskinder’s handwritten “Musings on the Battle of Mice” smuggled out of prison in 2015 for a quick picker-upper. (It’s more like musings on battling the bubonic plague unleashed on Ethiopia for the past 25 years.) I have never been able to understand in my own mind how a man imprisoned, maligned and vilified by the T-TPLF could be an endless source of inspiration for me and many others. I do not have the words to thank Eskinder, his wife Serkalem and Nafqot, his son, for their suffering and sacrifices in the cause of freedom, human rights and democracy in Ethiopia. All I can say is that I am proud to call Eskinder my brother and Serkalem my sister. I am deeply humbled by their sacrifices, awed by their courage, tenacity and unimpeachable integrity and inspired by their personal example.
If I could carry a tune, I would sing Michael Jackson’s “You are not Alone” to Eskinder with slight modification: But you are not alone/ We are here with you/ Though we’re far apart/ You’re always in our hearts/ But you are not alone, not alone, not alone…
We will always be with you, Eskinder!
Thus wrote Eskinder Nega: “Whichever way events may go, I shall persevere!”
In May, I protested the trumped-up “terrorism” charges against Bekele Gerba and 21 co-defendants in T-TPLF kangaroo (monkey) court.
When I call T-TPLF judicial process “kangaroo” or “monkey kourt”, some people think I am just being sarcastic and mean-spirted.
But I am telling the truth! The charges against Bekele and his co-defendants were prepared by a co-prosecutor who is an illiterate, literally. One of the prosecutors who brought charges against Bekele and his co-defendants can neither write nor read!
Associate General Prosecutor Fikadu Tsega signed the official charging document with a thumbprint while his co-prosecutor signed in script.
Only in T-TPLF’s Ethiopia is an illiterate “federal” prosecutor allowed to charge citizens with crimes against the state. How can a prosecutor sign charges that he cannot read? Only in a T-TPLF monkey kourt would criminal charges verified by an illiterate prosecutor be accepted as legitimate.
But no one should be surprised. Many of the functionally illiterate T-TPLF leaders fare no better Fikadu Tsega. There are amply documented cases in which top T-TPLF leaders have purchased fake degrees from online diploma mills to prove they are “educated”. The T-TPLF ignoramuses think they can impress people by listing acronyms after their names. Aaarrgh! The tyranny of ignoramuses!!!
The T-TPLF has long embarked on a mission of legal lynching of its opponents and critics. The T-TPLF pretrial process is perverted. The T-TPLF judicial system is the only one in the world where suspects are arrested of committing crimes after being investigated for 2 years and then the prosecution asks for endless continuances to gather additional evidence to show probable cause.
Bekele Gerba and his 21-codefendants imprisoned on trumped up charges shall persevere!
In June, I celebrated “The Greatest” of all time. Of course, as the champ said, it was all “a publicity stunt”.
But Muhammad Ali was a truth-teller: “I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.”
Muhammad Ali used courage to determine his self-destiny and bring defiant pride to all who felt crushed by a system white supremacy, white democracy, white plutocracy and white conspiracy.
Muhammad Ali lived the courage of his convictions. Every day Muhammad Ali showed courage under fire. In the boxing ring, he showed courage taking blows and stinging like a bee with his own. In the courtroom, he showed courage. In the hospital room fighting Parkinsons, he showed courage. Standing up for the downtrodden of America, he showed courage. When he said, “Look at me, ain’t I pretty”, he stood up in courage and declared Black is beautiful. Look of the definition of courage in the dictionary. You will find the picture of Muhammad Ali.
When Muhammad Ali was floating like a butterfly, he was actually standing up and stinging like a bee.
I learned something from The Greatest. All humans are born with courage. Most lose courage over their lifetimes. The vast majority are willing and eager to succumb to a life of cowardice and die in quiet desperation. A few months after being born, a baby finds the physical and spiritual strength to stop crawling and stand up. That I think is the first act of courage in the human being. The baby struggles to stand up after falling time and again, and even crying in pain. No baby will willingly keep crawling because trying to stand up may prove to be painful in the fall.
As the baby grows older and becomes an adult, it learns that crawling is better and safer than standing up and falling down.
I was that baby who became an adult in 2005 when the late Meles Zenawi massacred hundreds of innocent Ethiopians following the elections in May of that year.
Muhammad Ali is one of the few human beings who was born in courage, lived in courage, stood up in courage, fell down in courage and died in courage. He died with his boots on; better yet, with his gloves on.
The Greatest of All Time persevered!
In July, I registered my opposition to Donald Trump. I first raised my quill against Donald Trump in December 2015 in my commentary “Rise of the Trump-aryans!”
I predicted:
Trump’s strategy is to stoke the anger of white voters so that they will come out in massive numbers to vote for him and offset the demographic shifts in the United States that have handed electoral victories in the last two presidential elections. He thinks he can best accomplish that by spreading fear and loathing against Muslims and undocumented immigrants, the two most vilified and discriminated groups in America, and by promoting Islamophobia and xenophobia.
I was right!!!
I endorsed Bernie Sanders in February because I felt betrayed by Barack Obama and the Clintons and the Democratic Party. After Hillary Clinton got the Democratic nomination, I supported her wholeheartedly because the alternative was too frightening to contemplate.
Trump may be a “good” businessman, if parking a few of one’s business in bankruptcy is an indication of good entrepreneurship. Trump campaigned as the prophet of doom and gloom. He talked (twitted) about an apocalyptic America that is in the process of total self-destruction. He talked about an America in crises and decline, a dystopia ridden by crime, violence and poverty. He sought to convince Americans that America is Apocalypse Now. Trump reverberated neo-fascist propaganda in his bogus and exaggerated claims of an America humiliated on the international scene, his glorification of American imperial power and violent domination of the world, his promised crackdown on racial and ethnic minorities and immigrants and contempt for constitutional government. Trump sought to channel racial, ethnic and religious hatred into a political campaign and program in his efforts to ascend to the presidency.
I tried to “save the last great hope of humanity from “Truminsanity!”
Donald Trump persevered and became president!
In August, I wrote about the “Volcano, the Beast and the Tiger”. I applauded the people of Ethiopia fighting back T-TPLF rule by engaging in mass demonstrations and protests, acts of civil disobedience, other nonviolent actions and outright-armed resistance. The T-TPLF’s generic and typical response to peaceful demonstrations and protests has been to engage in indiscriminate shootings and massacres with impunity.
I related the message of the great American revolutionary Thomas Paine to the Ethiopian people:
Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Oppressed societies may remain dormant for decades without giving the slightest indication of the pressure and heat buildup of deep, widespread, sweeping and pervasive dissatisfaction, anger, resentment and rage. In time, these conditions fermenting and simmering deep in society begin to flare up randomly. I claim no power of prophesy in predicting the end of the T-TPLF. The T-TPLF itself has predicted its own doom long before I have. In 2015, in a secretly recorded conversation which I discussed in my commentary, “The ‘End of the Story’ for the T-TPLF in Ethiopia?”, T-TPLF hench/hatchetmen Berket Simon and “deputy prime minister” Addisu Legesse, plainly talked about the end of times — the final days, the last days — for the T-TPLF to a group of their supporters. “Looking at it from our situation, it is already getting out of our hands. There is no question about that. We can see that plainly from the way the teachers’ organizations are doing things. When 2/3 of educators are our members (of our party), and they are going out and demonstrating against us, that is the end of the story.”
The T-TPLF did NOT persevere. Instead, the T-TPLF declared a “state of emergency” to protect itself from the people of Ethiopia!
In September, I examined the disinformation campaigns of the T-TPLF through the forked-tongue of T-TPLF serpent and Chief Disinformation Officer Debretsion Gebremichael. Debretsion is T-TPLF’s “communications and information technology minster”. He came out of the T-TPLF woodwork to hector the people of Ethiopia that everything is perception. He said, “if someone calls a bright day is a dark night enough times, the bright day will be perceived as a dark night” by the people. Debretsion is reputed to be the mastermind who introduced the use of spyware (“FinSpy) purchased from the Italian cybersecurity firm The Hacking Team to conduct surveillance on T-TPLF opponents in the Ethiopian Diaspora.
Debretsion is a cunning, crafty and scheming T-TPLF political operator. He emerged from the shadows to spread propaganda about the popular uprising. He claimed: 1) the uprising against T-TPLF rule is limited only to Gonder; 2) it is the work of a few foreign agents and criminals; 3) it is triggered by the incompetence of the local leadership and administration who failed miserably in their official duties; 4) the idea of Tigrean supremacy in Ethiopian politics and society is a figment of the imagination of diabolically misguided people; 5) the T-TPLF suffers from a failure of communication in not educating the people of Ethiopia there is no Tigrean supremacy; there is a great need for a media (dis)information campaign telling the Ethiopian people how Tigreans do not practice ethnic supremacy; 6) the reality of Ethiopian politics is that each ethnic group in its own kilil (Bantustan) is supreme; 7) ethnic federalism is the ultimate safeguard against ethnic supremacy and domination (the fox advising the chickens); 8) the Ethiopian people have the wrong perception about the T-TPLF whose only mission has been to pay untold sacrifices for their well-being and 9) if the people of Ethiopia would simply stop believing their lying eyes and lying ears which render the T-TPLF as a bloodthirsty gang of criminals, they could see the kind, friendly, gentle, benevolent, loving and humane face of the T-TPLF.
But I did thank Debretsion for providing irrefutable evidence to support my claim that the T-TPLF’s ethnic federalism system is the latest and greatest version of South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Debretsion and his TPLF thugmocrats did NOT persevere. They declared a “state of emergency” to protect themselves from the people !
In October, I condemned the “T-TPLF’s Killing Fields” in Ethiopia. On October 2, 2016, troops under the command and control of the T-TPLF opened fire indiscriminately on crowds attending one of the most important cultural and spiritual events in Ethiopia, the Irreecha (Thanksgiving) Festival in the town of Bishoftu, some 45 miles southeast of the capital Addis Ababa. An estimated 500 plus people were killed and twice that number severely injured during the event.
The T-TPLF Puppet Prime Minister (PPM) [or is it Crime Minister?] Hailemariam Desalegn went on television and shed crocodile tears: “Evil forces had pre-positioned themselves (to do evil deeds) and exerted great effort to undermine the celebration and make it chaotic and disorderly. As a result of the disorder that was created, a stampede broke out and because the area has cliffs some 52 citizens have lost their lives.”
I conducted a preliminary forensic review of the video evidence from the crime (against humanity) scene and posed a series of questions in the form of interrogatories to the PPM.
I have no doubts that the PPM and his puppet masters will one day stand in the dock and answer some tough questions. I will prophesy that today!
When the Nazi Hunters captured Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi Holocaust organizer, Isser Harel told his men: “For the first time in history the Jews will judge their assassin, and for the first time the world will hear the full story of the edict of annihilation against an entire people”.
Oyez! Oyez! T-TPLF!
The T-TPLF did NOT persevere. The T-TPLF declared a “state of emergency” to protect itself from the people.
In November, I feared there will be “Darkness at Noon in AmeriKKKa” on January 20, 2017 when Donald Trump takes the Oath of Office.
Trump was elected by the same rigged system he so vociferously complained about: “I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged, I have to be honest.”
It is an understatement to say Hillary Clinton’s supporters were stunned, shocked and deeply disappointed by her defeat. She did her best and she was best qualified for the job, but she got tripped by the Electoral College system.
I read the tea leaves very early on and decided to endorse Bernie Sanders in my February 2016 commentary, “Why I am Supporting Bernie Sanders for President (and Why You Should Too)”.
During his campaign, Trump clothed his racism, sexism, chauvinism and sectarianism with “populism”. He advanced a veiled neo-fascist agenda. He propagated paranoia about an America in crises. He fed the American public a constant diet (with the active support of the mindless media) of paranoid conspiracy theories, disinformation and misinformation. He demonized Muslims, criminalized Mexicans, condemned immigrants, dehumanized women, mocked the disabled and scorned the poor. Trump’s vision of making America great is by increased militarism globally to vindicate America’s lost honor and glory and restoring American imperial power, cracking down on racial, ethnic and religious minorities and immigrants and flouting civil liberties and constitutional principles.
I gave 13 reasons why Trump will trump himself and the Republican Party in the foreseeable future.
America shall persevere as it has for the last 230 years.
In December, I wrote my 6th installment of what I called “What Do ‘WE’ Want and Do Now?” It is a series in which I sought to answer some fundamental questions about Ethiopia “gripped in a state of emergency”.
I had a few things to say not only to the T-TPLF but also the “opposition”. I urged Ethiopians to understand the true nature of the struggle against the T-TPLF, namely the fact that it is a struggle against a black apartheid regime. We must change the way “WE” think and relate to each other. “WE” are not struggling for ourselves but our children. Apartheid “Passbooks” and T-TPLF “identity cards” are the same, actually the T-TPLF’s is worse. We must build an “ETHIOPIAN CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENT”. We must fight with our minds! We must transform ethnic nationalism into civic nationalism. “WE” must know the “enemy” and ourselves. “WE” need to enter into a Covenant to preserve Ethiopia’s integrity. “WE” must speak of ourselves as “WE” are, nothing extenuate. We must be serious about working for political change, democracy, freedom or human rights in Ethiopia. I also explained why I write, teach and advocate instead of engaging in political organizing. “WE” must shed our bad habit of never missing an opportunity to miss an OPPORT-UNITY! “WE” must change ourselves before “WE” can change Ethiopia. “WE” must be independent thinkers and “non-conformists”.
“WE” persevered!
The power of perseverance
There is political power. There is economic power. There is knowledge power. Then there is the power of perseverance and endurance.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” That is perseverance and endurance.
Perseverance is not the same as being a survivor. Victims survive; those who fight back persevere.
In the verse of William E. Henley, Nelson Mandela’s favorite verse: “It matters not how strait the gate,/How charged with punishments the scroll,/I am the master of my fate,/ I am the captain of my soul.”
Nelson Mandela persevered!
The race — in politics, business, science, technology or the race track — is not won because one is the strongest, the fastest or the smartest. The race is won because one can endure and persevere till the very end.
Endurance is the flip side of perseverance.
Frederick Douglass said, “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
With perseverance and endurance, there is no mountain high enough that cannot be climbed or a valley low enough that cannot be traversed or an ocean deep enough that cannot be penetrated.
The problem I see among far too many Ethiopians in the human rights struggle is that they lack perseverance and endurance. They start the race and quit after a short run. They get discouraged and lose heart.
It is easy to start. The hard part is finishing the job. It is so easy to quit. It is so easy to make excuses. It is so easy to justify why one should not persevere and endure.
The late T-TPLF thugmaster Meles Zenawi once said words to the effect that “The Ethiopian Diaspora can start things. But they never finish.” Did he not tell the truth?
Another T-TPLF operator said of the opposition: “They can unite when it is wedding time, funeral time and party time.” Did he lie?
“WE” must be willing, able and ready to go for the long haul. Perseverance is not about winning the big race, it is about racing to chase and catch your dreams. Difficult things take a long time to achieve. There is little success that is not birthed by perseverance and endurance. The T-TPLF succeeded in grabbing power because they persevered and endured in the bush for so long.
Nelson Mandela talked about perseverance and endurance:
I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.
That is exactly the kind of perseverance it takes to walk the long road to the destination I call the “New Ethiopia”. We shall find the New Ethiopia after climbing the great hill where we will find there are more hills to climb. We take a momentary rest and keep on walking the long road to the “New Ethiopia.”
Winston Churchill once said, “If you are going through hell, keep going.”
Well, the T-TPLF has made Ethiopia hell on earth. I say persevere, endure and just keep on walking to your destination on the horizon, that shining country upon the hill called New Ethiopia.
I have persevered a full decade of struggle in the cause of human rights in Ethiopia. I am vastly more energetic and optimistic today than I was the day I wrote my first commentary. My life’s motto remains: When the going gets tough, the tough get going and keep walking the long road to freedom to reach that shining country upon the hill.
Tell me, can you see what I see? That shining country upon the hill?
Come walk with me.
Ethiopians, stay strong! Persevere and endure! It is darkest before dawn!
Happy holidays one and all!!!
Special thanks to my readers who have persevered my lengthy commentaries for a decade!
Ethiopia 2016 in Review: The Year of Perseverance!
Posted in Al Mariam's Commentaries By almariam On December 25, 2016My first commentary (in the form a speech), “Awakening Giant”, appeared on July 4, 2006, the 230th anniversary of the American Declaration Independence.
It has been an extraordinary decade for me. As I look back, I am proud of the struggle I waged against the users, abusers and misusers of power wherever they may be by speaking truth and hoping to keep them honest.
I have been blessed to live out a decade of Satyagraha (satya “truth”; agraha “insistence” or “holding firmly to”), a revolutionary idea of nonviolent resistance popularized by Mahatma Gandhi. To me, Satyagraha means two things: 1) personally resisting and teaching others to resist the arbitrary, unlawful and vicious actions of the powers that be, the power abusers, the powerful, and the superpower, and 2) defending the rights of the powerless, the disempowered and the overpowered.
Over the past decade, I managed to cultivate a substantial readership which follows my commentaries on a variety of websites, social media and bulk email. I thank my readers, website editors and all others on social media who read and propagate my commentaries to audiences throughout the world, and especially in Ethiopia.
Many readers have told me that they have been inspired and informed by my commentaries. They have only one question: How come I never get tired?
Does one get tired of breathing? It has something to do with “soul-force” as Gandhi would call it.
Other readers are offended, upset and exasperated by my commentaries. They believe I have relentlessly criticized the T-TPLF because of their ethnicity or some other demographic characteristic. They even complain that I should not call them a “thugtatorship” or a gang of thugs. I have no ethnic bias towards the leadership or members of the T-TPLF. But I dislike and passionately oppose their wicked ways, their crimes against humanity. I call it as I see it! If the shoe fits, the T-TPLF must wear it.
Some have complained that my commentaries are too long and I should shorten them. I am amused by such complaints. I do not write for entertainment, pleasure reading, to amuse or for self-promotion. I have tried to present a serious message to my readers on important issues every week. Suffice it to say that my commentaries are targeted specifically to those who are seriously and sincerely concerned about issues of human rights, justice, good governance, democratic principles and practices, the rule of law, accountability and transparency and so on.
The year of perseverance
I would say 2016 has been a year of perseverance for me and millions of Ethiopians.
In 2006, my “friend” Barack Obama said, “Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”
Obama was responding to exhausted volunteers who were ready to throw in the towel. They “told me they were quitting – that they had been doing this for two years and had nothing to show for it.”
Indeed, that is what my brother, the inspirational Eskinder Nega said in a letter smuggled out of prison. Unjustly sentenced to serve 18 years in prison by the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front [T-TPLF] (for nothing more than blogging online), Eskinder wrote, “I will live to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It may or may not be a long wait. Whichever way events may go, I shall persevere!”
After 10 years of weekly commentaries, whichever way events went, what do I have to show for it?
I will let the millions of readers who have been inspired and informed by my commentaries over the past decade answer that question.
I will let the T-TPLF answer that question.
I will let those infuriated, exasperated and maddened by my commentaries answer that question.
I will let future generations of Ethiopians answer that question.
My answer is simple: “I have and shall continue to persevere whichever way events may go.”
In doing my annual year in review for 2016, I have selected one commentary from each month which I believe exemplifies the virtue of perseverance.
That got me thinking about a whole lot of other questions? What if Ethiopia’s young people were really set free? Set to think freely? Speak freely? Write, blog and report freely? Worship freely? Assemble and participate in political parties and civic organizations freely? Petition for redress of their grievances freely? Own their own land freely, farm it, lease it or sell it freely? Live and travel anywhere in their country without feeling they are bobbing and weaving out of ethnic homelands, or told to “go back to their country”, their kililistan, the contemporary version of apartheid Bantustans?
My answer: By God! Ethiopia’s young people would fly, fly, fly, fly high in the sky like millions of butterflies. They would soar like eagles. “They will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
But how can eagles soar when they are under the claws of turkeys?
I know the caged young birds of Ethiopia sing “of things unknown/ but longed for still/ and his tune is heard/ on the distant hill/ for the caged bird/ sings of freedom.
Ethiopia’s young people still sing of freedom and have persevered!
When I first laid eyes on Reeyot, I blurted out, “You are Reeyot?! I am not scared of you!” She busted out laughing. I wasn’t trying to be funny. I simply could not imagine how Meles Zenawi could be scared of this young woman. In retrospect, I have a good idea why. Meles saw Reeyot as his nemesis. Reeyot is unlike any young Ethiopian I have ever met. She is like a piece of diamond. On the outside she shines and sparkles. On the inside, she is a young woman made up of entirely steel nerves, tungsten will power and titanium determination. She has a defining and disarming attitude. She makes no secret of her life’s mission: “If I don’t stand up for freedom and democracy in Ethiopia, who else will?”
I remember fondly our few days filled with laughter. We laughed almost the entire time as we discussed the childish shenanigans of the T-TPLF, their stupidity and idiocy, their ignorant arrogance, their incompetence and cluelessness, their hate and loathing, their thuggery and buffoonery, their lies, deception and disinformation; their corruption, nepotism and cronyism. We laughed and laughed…
I have to do the second part of Reeyot’s story one of these days.
Reeyot persevered!
But that question to me was pregnant with even more questions. Where is Ethiopia going with T-TPLF? (That’s a no brainer! Ethiopia is at a dead end with the T-TPLF.) After the T-TPLF is gone? Will Ethiopia be an undiscovered country after the T-TPLF is gone? Will Ethiopians be walking over the minefields the T-TPLF has planted for the past 25 years and implode? Is Ethiopia going in the direction of a civil war?
I proposed a constitutional road map for Ethiopia. It is a road map that has only one destination: “New Ethiopia”. The road map has three “landmarks”. First, the Preamble to the Constitution of the New Ethiopia must begin with the following phrase: “We the People of Ethiopia, in order to…” None of that Stalinist-Leninist crap about “nations, nationalities and peoples”.
Second, the Constitution of the New Ethiopia should have language along the following lines: “The powers not delegated to the national Ethiopian government by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” In other words, the new national government of the New Ethiopia will function only to the extent that the national constitution grants power to it. None of that ethnic federalism crap.
Third and straight up, the new constitution of the New Ethiopia should adopt in its entirety Article 55(4) of Ghana’s Constitution: “Every political party shall have a national character, and membership shall not be based on ethnic, religious, regional or other sectional divisions.” “National character” means none of the exclusionary ethnic and sectarian crap.
Ultimately, the question of where Ethiopia is going will NOT be answered by social media muckrakers, carpetbaggers, hired hands and agent provocateurs and opportunists. Nor will it be determined by professors, lawyers, doctors and self-appointed tribal chiefs. The question of where Ethiopia is going will be answered by Ethiopia’s young women and men, Ethiopia’s Cheetah Generation, with the support of Ethiopia’s Hippo Generation of good will. It is going to be answered by the thousands of political prisoners in Ethiopia who are paying the ultimate price for our freedom.
Ethiopia shall persevere until the end of time!
There is nothing more the T-TPLF would like to see than the memory of Eskinder Nega erased and obliterated from public memory and consciousness.
Whenever I get low on inspiration and feel drained, I read Eskinder’s handwritten “Musings on the Battle of Mice” smuggled out of prison in 2015 for a quick picker-upper. (It’s more like musings on battling the bubonic plague unleashed on Ethiopia for the past 25 years.) I have never been able to understand in my own mind how a man imprisoned, maligned and vilified by the T-TPLF could be an endless source of inspiration for me and many others. I do not have the words to thank Eskinder, his wife Serkalem and Nafqot, his son, for their suffering and sacrifices in the cause of freedom, human rights and democracy in Ethiopia. All I can say is that I am proud to call Eskinder my brother and Serkalem my sister. I am deeply humbled by their sacrifices, awed by their courage, tenacity and unimpeachable integrity and inspired by their personal example.
If I could carry a tune, I would sing Michael Jackson’s “You are not Alone” to Eskinder with slight modification: But you are not alone/ We are here with you/ Though we’re far apart/ You’re always in our hearts/ But you are not alone, not alone, not alone…
We will always be with you, Eskinder!
Thus wrote Eskinder Nega: “Whichever way events may go, I shall persevere!”
When I call T-TPLF judicial process “kangaroo” or “monkey kourt”, some people think I am just being sarcastic and mean-spirted.
But I am telling the truth! The charges against Bekele and his co-defendants were prepared by a co-prosecutor who is an illiterate, literally. One of the prosecutors who brought charges against Bekele and his co-defendants can neither write nor read!
Associate General Prosecutor Fikadu Tsega signed the official charging document with a thumbprint while his co-prosecutor signed in script.
Only in T-TPLF’s Ethiopia is an illiterate “federal” prosecutor allowed to charge citizens with crimes against the state. How can a prosecutor sign charges that he cannot read? Only in a T-TPLF monkey kourt would criminal charges verified by an illiterate prosecutor be accepted as legitimate.
But no one should be surprised. Many of the functionally illiterate T-TPLF leaders fare no better Fikadu Tsega. There are amply documented cases in which top T-TPLF leaders have purchased fake degrees from online diploma mills to prove they are “educated”. The T-TPLF ignoramuses think they can impress people by listing acronyms after their names. Aaarrgh! The tyranny of ignoramuses!!!
The T-TPLF has long embarked on a mission of legal lynching of its opponents and critics. The T-TPLF pretrial process is perverted. The T-TPLF judicial system is the only one in the world where suspects are arrested of committing crimes after being investigated for 2 years and then the prosecution asks for endless continuances to gather additional evidence to show probable cause.
Bekele Gerba and his 21-codefendants imprisoned on trumped up charges shall persevere!
But Muhammad Ali was a truth-teller: “I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.”
Muhammad Ali used courage to determine his self-destiny and bring defiant pride to all who felt crushed by a system white supremacy, white democracy, white plutocracy and white conspiracy.
Muhammad Ali lived the courage of his convictions. Every day Muhammad Ali showed courage under fire. In the boxing ring, he showed courage taking blows and stinging like a bee with his own. In the courtroom, he showed courage. In the hospital room fighting Parkinsons, he showed courage. Standing up for the downtrodden of America, he showed courage. When he said, “Look at me, ain’t I pretty”, he stood up in courage and declared Black is beautiful. Look of the definition of courage in the dictionary. You will find the picture of Muhammad Ali.
When Muhammad Ali was floating like a butterfly, he was actually standing up and stinging like a bee.
I learned something from The Greatest. All humans are born with courage. Most lose courage over their lifetimes. The vast majority are willing and eager to succumb to a life of cowardice and die in quiet desperation. A few months after being born, a baby finds the physical and spiritual strength to stop crawling and stand up. That I think is the first act of courage in the human being. The baby struggles to stand up after falling time and again, and even crying in pain. No baby will willingly keep crawling because trying to stand up may prove to be painful in the fall.
As the baby grows older and becomes an adult, it learns that crawling is better and safer than standing up and falling down.
I was that baby who became an adult in 2005 when the late Meles Zenawi massacred hundreds of innocent Ethiopians following the elections in May of that year.
Muhammad Ali is one of the few human beings who was born in courage, lived in courage, stood up in courage, fell down in courage and died in courage. He died with his boots on; better yet, with his gloves on.
The Greatest of All Time persevered!
I predicted:
I was right!!!
I endorsed Bernie Sanders in February because I felt betrayed by Barack Obama and the Clintons and the Democratic Party. After Hillary Clinton got the Democratic nomination, I supported her wholeheartedly because the alternative was too frightening to contemplate.
Trump may be a “good” businessman, if parking a few of one’s business in bankruptcy is an indication of good entrepreneurship. Trump campaigned as the prophet of doom and gloom. He talked (twitted) about an apocalyptic America that is in the process of total self-destruction. He talked about an America in crises and decline, a dystopia ridden by crime, violence and poverty. He sought to convince Americans that America is Apocalypse Now. Trump reverberated neo-fascist propaganda in his bogus and exaggerated claims of an America humiliated on the international scene, his glorification of American imperial power and violent domination of the world, his promised crackdown on racial and ethnic minorities and immigrants and contempt for constitutional government. Trump sought to channel racial, ethnic and religious hatred into a political campaign and program in his efforts to ascend to the presidency.
I tried to “save the last great hope of humanity from “Truminsanity!”
Donald Trump persevered and became president!
I related the message of the great American revolutionary Thomas Paine to the Ethiopian people:
Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Oppressed societies may remain dormant for decades without giving the slightest indication of the pressure and heat buildup of deep, widespread, sweeping and pervasive dissatisfaction, anger, resentment and rage. In time, these conditions fermenting and simmering deep in society begin to flare up randomly. I claim no power of prophesy in predicting the end of the T-TPLF. The T-TPLF itself has predicted its own doom long before I have. In 2015, in a secretly recorded conversation which I discussed in my commentary, “The ‘End of the Story’ for the T-TPLF in Ethiopia?”, T-TPLF hench/hatchetmen Berket Simon and “deputy prime minister” Addisu Legesse, plainly talked about the end of times — the final days, the last days — for the T-TPLF to a group of their supporters. “Looking at it from our situation, it is already getting out of our hands. There is no question about that. We can see that plainly from the way the teachers’ organizations are doing things. When 2/3 of educators are our members (of our party), and they are going out and demonstrating against us, that is the end of the story.”
The T-TPLF did NOT persevere. Instead, the T-TPLF declared a “state of emergency” to protect itself from the people of Ethiopia!
Debretsion is a cunning, crafty and scheming T-TPLF political operator. He emerged from the shadows to spread propaganda about the popular uprising. He claimed: 1) the uprising against T-TPLF rule is limited only to Gonder; 2) it is the work of a few foreign agents and criminals; 3) it is triggered by the incompetence of the local leadership and administration who failed miserably in their official duties; 4) the idea of Tigrean supremacy in Ethiopian politics and society is a figment of the imagination of diabolically misguided people; 5) the T-TPLF suffers from a failure of communication in not educating the people of Ethiopia there is no Tigrean supremacy; there is a great need for a media (dis)information campaign telling the Ethiopian people how Tigreans do not practice ethnic supremacy; 6) the reality of Ethiopian politics is that each ethnic group in its own kilil (Bantustan) is supreme; 7) ethnic federalism is the ultimate safeguard against ethnic supremacy and domination (the fox advising the chickens); 8) the Ethiopian people have the wrong perception about the T-TPLF whose only mission has been to pay untold sacrifices for their well-being and 9) if the people of Ethiopia would simply stop believing their lying eyes and lying ears which render the T-TPLF as a bloodthirsty gang of criminals, they could see the kind, friendly, gentle, benevolent, loving and humane face of the T-TPLF.
But I did thank Debretsion for providing irrefutable evidence to support my claim that the T-TPLF’s ethnic federalism system is the latest and greatest version of South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Debretsion and his TPLF thugmocrats did NOT persevere. They declared a “state of emergency” to protect themselves from the people !
The T-TPLF Puppet Prime Minister (PPM) [or is it Crime Minister?] Hailemariam Desalegn went on television and shed crocodile tears: “Evil forces had pre-positioned themselves (to do evil deeds) and exerted great effort to undermine the celebration and make it chaotic and disorderly. As a result of the disorder that was created, a stampede broke out and because the area has cliffs some 52 citizens have lost their lives.”
I conducted a preliminary forensic review of the video evidence from the crime (against humanity) scene and posed a series of questions in the form of interrogatories to the PPM.
I have no doubts that the PPM and his puppet masters will one day stand in the dock and answer some tough questions. I will prophesy that today!
When the Nazi Hunters captured Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi Holocaust organizer, Isser Harel told his men: “For the first time in history the Jews will judge their assassin, and for the first time the world will hear the full story of the edict of annihilation against an entire people”.
Oyez! Oyez! T-TPLF!
The T-TPLF did NOT persevere. The T-TPLF declared a “state of emergency” to protect itself from the people.
Trump was elected by the same rigged system he so vociferously complained about: “I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged, I have to be honest.”
It is an understatement to say Hillary Clinton’s supporters were stunned, shocked and deeply disappointed by her defeat. She did her best and she was best qualified for the job, but she got tripped by the Electoral College system.
I read the tea leaves very early on and decided to endorse Bernie Sanders in my February 2016 commentary, “Why I am Supporting Bernie Sanders for President (and Why You Should Too)”.
During his campaign, Trump clothed his racism, sexism, chauvinism and sectarianism with “populism”. He advanced a veiled neo-fascist agenda. He propagated paranoia about an America in crises. He fed the American public a constant diet (with the active support of the mindless media) of paranoid conspiracy theories, disinformation and misinformation. He demonized Muslims, criminalized Mexicans, condemned immigrants, dehumanized women, mocked the disabled and scorned the poor. Trump’s vision of making America great is by increased militarism globally to vindicate America’s lost honor and glory and restoring American imperial power, cracking down on racial, ethnic and religious minorities and immigrants and flouting civil liberties and constitutional principles.
I gave 13 reasons why Trump will trump himself and the Republican Party in the foreseeable future.
America shall persevere as it has for the last 230 years.
I had a few things to say not only to the T-TPLF but also the “opposition”. I urged Ethiopians to understand the true nature of the struggle against the T-TPLF, namely the fact that it is a struggle against a black apartheid regime. We must change the way “WE” think and relate to each other. “WE” are not struggling for ourselves but our children. Apartheid “Passbooks” and T-TPLF “identity cards” are the same, actually the T-TPLF’s is worse. We must build an “ETHIOPIAN CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENT”. We must fight with our minds! We must transform ethnic nationalism into civic nationalism. “WE” must know the “enemy” and ourselves. “WE” need to enter into a Covenant to preserve Ethiopia’s integrity. “WE” must speak of ourselves as “WE” are, nothing extenuate. We must be serious about working for political change, democracy, freedom or human rights in Ethiopia. I also explained why I write, teach and advocate instead of engaging in political organizing. “WE” must shed our bad habit of never missing an opportunity to miss an OPPORT-UNITY! “WE” must change ourselves before “WE” can change Ethiopia. “WE” must be independent thinkers and “non-conformists”.
“WE” persevered!
The power of perseverance
There is political power. There is economic power. There is knowledge power. Then there is the power of perseverance and endurance.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” That is perseverance and endurance.
Perseverance is not the same as being a survivor. Victims survive; those who fight back persevere.
In the verse of William E. Henley, Nelson Mandela’s favorite verse: “It matters not how strait the gate,/How charged with punishments the scroll,/I am the master of my fate,/ I am the captain of my soul.”
Nelson Mandela persevered!
The race — in politics, business, science, technology or the race track — is not won because one is the strongest, the fastest or the smartest. The race is won because one can endure and persevere till the very end.
Endurance is the flip side of perseverance.
Frederick Douglass said, “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
With perseverance and endurance, there is no mountain high enough that cannot be climbed or a valley low enough that cannot be traversed or an ocean deep enough that cannot be penetrated.
The problem I see among far too many Ethiopians in the human rights struggle is that they lack perseverance and endurance. They start the race and quit after a short run. They get discouraged and lose heart.
It is easy to start. The hard part is finishing the job. It is so easy to quit. It is so easy to make excuses. It is so easy to justify why one should not persevere and endure.
The late T-TPLF thugmaster Meles Zenawi once said words to the effect that “The Ethiopian Diaspora can start things. But they never finish.” Did he not tell the truth?
Another T-TPLF operator said of the opposition: “They can unite when it is wedding time, funeral time and party time.” Did he lie?
“WE” must be willing, able and ready to go for the long haul. Perseverance is not about winning the big race, it is about racing to chase and catch your dreams. Difficult things take a long time to achieve. There is little success that is not birthed by perseverance and endurance. The T-TPLF succeeded in grabbing power because they persevered and endured in the bush for so long.
Nelson Mandela talked about perseverance and endurance:
That is exactly the kind of perseverance it takes to walk the long road to the destination I call the “New Ethiopia”. We shall find the New Ethiopia after climbing the great hill where we will find there are more hills to climb. We take a momentary rest and keep on walking the long road to the “New Ethiopia.”
Winston Churchill once said, “If you are going through hell, keep going.”
Well, the T-TPLF has made Ethiopia hell on earth. I say persevere, endure and just keep on walking to your destination on the horizon, that shining country upon the hill called New Ethiopia.
I have persevered a full decade of struggle in the cause of human rights in Ethiopia. I am vastly more energetic and optimistic today than I was the day I wrote my first commentary. My life’s motto remains: When the going gets tough, the tough get going and keep walking the long road to freedom to reach that shining country upon the hill.
Tell me, can you see what I see? That shining country upon the hill?
Come walk with me.
Ethiopians, stay strong! Persevere and endure! It is darkest before dawn!
Happy holidays one and all!!!
Special thanks to my readers who have persevered my lengthy commentaries for a decade!
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