From the Grand Palace the Derg ruled through force and fear. A month after the emperor passed away they declared a state of emergency and prohibited any form of opposition to the revolution, from the distribution of placards down to uttering ‘unlawful words in public or any other place’. They also embraced Marxism-Leninism, making it compulsory in schools, factories and offices. In the largely illiterate countryside, political commissars indoctrinated the villagers, forced to join collective peasant associations.10
In September 1976 Mengistu was ambushed as he returned home. The attempt on his life failed, but he seized the opportunity to eradicate his rivals. He appeared the following day at a mass rally held on the central square of the capital, renamed Revolution Square, defiantly urging ‘vigilance to safeguard the revolution’. In the following weeks, dozens of opponents were killed in ruthless sweeps organised by the army. Behind the scenes members of the Derg themselves were ambushed, with dead bodies occasionally being borne out of the Throne Hall.11
Mengistu had betrayed his erstwhile mentor, General Aman Andom. On 3 February 1977 he turned against Teferi Banti, the Derg’s figurehead, accusing him of having plotted a counter-revolutionary coup. With seven other Derg members, Teferi was placed under arrest in the Grand Palace. ‘I will see your death, but you won’t see mine,’ Mengistu told them as they were taken away to the basement of the palace. Most were shot with a muffled gun, the others strangled. From a committee of more than a hundred members, no more than sixty remained on the Derg.12
A terse and chilling announcement crackled over Radio Ethiopia. Mengistu was now the sole chairman of the Derg. The Soviet ambassador congratulated him personally the following day.13
Mengistu was the architect of the Derg. With great tact and patience, he had transformed a loose coalition of junior officers into an organised structure taking the lead in the revolution. He had spent three years working behind the scenes, carefully inflecting the balance of power in his favour. He knew how to wait, and he knew how to pounce. One of his greatest skills was his ability to hide his feelings. He was humble. He could be all smiles, his voice ringing with sincerity when required. As one of his followers put it, he was like water and fire, both lamb and tiger.14
Mengistu had other qualities. He was blessed with an unusually good memory, never forgetting a face. He had an enormous appetite for work, preparing for every meeting in meticulous detail. He was a compelling speaker who knew how to assess the mood of an audience and turn it to his own advantage. He proposed a simple but appealing vision of national revival and social revolution, mixed with crude Marxist slogans. He carried conviction, in particular among junior officers of the Derg: ‘When you see him you will start to believe in him’, one of his followers later remembered. He was also a great listener, constantly trying to know more about the power dynamics around him. He was a shrewd manipulator of people and events. Most of all he was more determined than his junior colleagues on the Derg.15
On 5 February Mengistu appeared on Revolution Square to announce that a counter-revolutionary plot had been nipped in the bud. ‘Our enemies were preparing us for lunch, but we had them for breakfast,’ he told the assembled masses. At the end of his speech he theatrically smashed a bottle filled with red ink, defiantly declaring that the blood of all those who opposed the revolution would be spilt. As the crowd cheered him on, he pledged to arm the oppressed.16
A Red Terror followed. Within weeks urban neighbourhood committees and peasant associations were given weapons. They rooted out real and imagined enemies of the Derg, mainly competing Marxist-inspired student organisations. One of these was the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party, which had initially rallied behind the junta but soon accused the Derg of having betrayed the revolution. Tensions had spilled over into open conflict.
In Addis Ababa house-by-house searches were carried out. Sometimes cameras and typewriters were treated as evidence of spying activities. Suspects were arrested in the hundreds and executed on the outskirts of the capital. They included children as young as eleven. Their bodies could be seen lying in the gutter. Others were chased down the streets and shot in broad daylight. Doctors were so afraid that they refused to treat those suspected of being ‘counter-revolutionaries’. Anyone could become an enemy, as people used the terror to settle grudges, denouncing their neighbours in the midst of the political chaos.17
Mengistu ordered state television to broadcast footage of the racked bodies of political prisoners who had been tortured to death. The gruesome images that flickered across the nation were evidence of his determination, designed to intimidate a population of thirty-two million. The worst of the terror abated after several months, but the blood continued to flow for several years, claiming tens of thousands of lives.18
Even as he cracked down at home Mengistu attempted to consolidate his power by courting the Soviet Union. In May 1977 all links with the United States were severed. In a dramatic show of alignment with the Soviet Union, Mengistu flew to Moscow a few days later, welcomed at the airport by a delegation of high-ranking generals. Atnafu Abate, the second vice-chairman of the Derg, voiced reservations about the rapprochement. He was accused of counter-revolutionary crimes and executed later that year, making Mengistu the undisputed leader.19
The Soviet Union, however, also backed Somalia, a strip of desert with three million people led by a military junta under Siad Barre. Barre, too, had a vision, hoping to create a Greater Somalia that would encompass Ogaden, a plateau of barren hills and dense shrubs to the east of Ethiopia conquered by Menelik II in the nineteenth century. Briefly, after the Second World War, the region joined Somalia, but Haile Selassie had successfully pleaded with the United Nations to obtain its return to the empire.
In July 1977, sensing weakness across the border, Siad Barre invaded Ogaden. His troops advanced rapidly in parts of the region where Somali nomads were dominant. Mengistu was forced on the defensive, hastily raising recruits to fight the war. Barre, like Mengistu, depended on the Soviet Union. Both men flew to Moscow. The Soviets tried to reconcile the enemies, but when this proved impossible they threw their weight behind Ethiopia, a country with ten times the population of Somalia. A huge airlift of military supplies, tanks, guns, rockets, artillery, mortars and missiles began arriving in Addis Ababa in December, followed by several thousand Russian and Cuban advisers. This assistance tipped the balance in favour of Ethiopia. In March 1978 the last Somali troops began to withdraw, ending the Ogaden War.
Mengistu now began polishing his image. In April 1978 he visited Cuba, where he was cheered by thousands of people lining the twenty-five-kilometre road between the airport and the main protocol house, despite a three-hour delay and sporadic rain.20
Some observers saw in this event the beginning of a cult of personality. Several weeks later, as he visited Ogaden, vast crowds welcomed Mengistu wherever he went. In Dire Dawa, a city which had held out against the Somali army, he was greeted by up to 100,000 residents, ‘singing joyously and chanting revolutionary slogans’. The newspapers were filled with photographs of Chairman Mengistu receiving bouquets from children, laying foundation stones or reviewing his troops. He was seen off by a band, a guard of honour and the entire upper crust of the regional leadership.21
Mengistu modelled himself on Fidel Castro, appearing in combat fatigues, army boots and beret, a revolver on his hip. He aligned his titles to resemble those of his Cuban counterpart, being identified in the press as ‘Commander in Chief of the Revolutionary Army’ and in addition Chairman of the Provisional Military Administrative Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers.
Most of all, he replicated imperial gestures. The Grand Palace, where his office was located, was maintained and run as if Haile Selassie were still in residence, with chained cheetahs, lion statues and liveried footmen. Mengistu’s state gifts were displayed side by side with those given to the emperor. He sat alone, on a gilded chair or a raised dais. His portraits replaced those of the emperor, sometimes i
n the old frames with a crown on top. The buildings and gardens, where lions could be heard growling, were fenced with iron grillwork, decorated with Menelik II’s initial, the Ethiopian letter M.22
Under the emperor leadership had always been highly personalised, a style that accorded much better with popular expectation than the faceless, shadowy character of the Derg in the first years of the revolution. Newspapers habitually reproduced photographs of the emperor receiving foreign visitors or lecturing groups of students in the upper left corner of the front page. Mengistu now filled the same spot.23
Much as the emperor had kept his provincial governors on their toes by travelling to the outer parts of his realm, so Mengistu toured the country. In the first months of 1979 he spent several weeks visiting the southern and western administrative regions. On every occasion local representatives tried to outdo each other in praising the Chairman. Negussie Fanta, chief administrator of Welega, hailed his ‘far-sighted and wise revolutionary leadership’; others expressed ‘heartfelt love’ for the Chairman. Like the emperor Mengistu would dispense advice, giving ‘confidential revolutionary guidance’ to local officials, hospital directors, agricultural experts and industrial plant managers alike.24
The praise was prompted by fear. Mengistu was known for visiting the front to humiliate his generals, confiscating their medals and demoting them by a rank or two in front of their soldiers. A few were executed on the spot.25
By 1979 every public visit was a well-rehearsed ritual. Attendance was mandatory for the local population, who were told to cheer their leader, shout his slogans and carry his portrait. Mengistu would descend from the skies by helicopter, as a band played revolutionary songs. When he visited a tractor factory in Gojam, some 600 kilometres away from the capital, loudspeakers announced the arrival of the ‘visionary, revolutionary and communist leader Comrade Mengistu’. Children gave flowers. Mengistu visited the factory, and then the canteen. Everywhere he saw portraits of himself. Speeches were made, hands shaken, presents given and photographs taken. Sometimes poems were read. When Mengistu visited a historical monastery in Tigray, a priest composed the following lines: ‘Here comes the black star; He glows like a sunrise and shines like a sun; Here comes the black star like a shooting star.’26
Since 1974 Mengistu had murdered dozens of Derg members. Those who survived lived in fear. He, in turn, wondered which one would turn against him. He could never be sure of their total loyalty, while they were equally apprehensive about his intentions. They all knew, through experience, that he could be their best friend in the morning only to devour them in the evening. Whether or not they genuinely admired him, they were forced to hail him in public. All were transformed into liars, which made organising a coup much more difficult.
Derg members learned not to question Mengistu’s directives, quoting from his speeches instead. A small booklet with selected quotations made the rounds. It became standard to begin a public address by invoking Mengistu’s words of wisdom. On important occasions one of Mengistu’s speech writers, Baalu Girma, was asked to provide an appropriate excerpt. A journalist with a master’s degree from Michigan State University, Baalu had previously written speeches for the emperor. He became permanent secretary of the Ministry of Information in 1977, guaranteeing that fulsome praise for the leader was diffused far and wide.27
In the early years of the revolution Mengistu had prevented the printing and hanging of portraits of Aman Andom and Teferi Banti, the two Derg figureheads. After victory in the Ogaden War his own portrait went up in every government bureau, in every community office, in every factory and enterprise, whether private or public. His picture could even be seen in restaurants and bars. This, too, was prompted by fear. Local cadres were responsible for making sure that he was everywhere, and they kept lists of establishments that failed to comply.28
Mengistu’s image, besides those of Marx, Engels and Lenin, was held at mass rallies, regularly organised from 1976 onwards. The highpoint of the revolutionary calendar was Revolution Day, also called National Day, which happened to coincide with the second day of the Ethiopian calendar, falling on either 11 or 12 September. In the past throngs of people had converged on Addis Ababa to celebrate religious holidays. Now they were mobilised by the urban neighbourhood committees, who levied fines on those who failed to turn up. Everything was carefully stage-managed, with thousands obliged to march and carry floats before the leader, who beamed from his gilded chair on a rostrum in Revolution Square. Red was the dominant colour, with stars, banners, sickles and hammers everywhere. In 1977 150,000 people participated in the event. At the end of the Chairmans’ speech, a cannon fired banners into the air, which unfurled and drifted down, attached to small parachutes. Planes flew overhead in formation.29
As in every Marxist-Leninist regime, the second most important event was May Day. But there were other occasions, prompted by the whim of the leader. Unity rallies, victory rallies, war rallies and peace rallies occurred with depressing frequency. In 1979 20,000 children were made to goose-step in front of him at the stadium in Addis Ababa to mark International Year of the Child. In his spare time Mengistu occasionally toyed with his soldiers at the Grand Palace, making them stand to attention and parade around the grounds.30
Ethiopia, by 1979, had no constitution, no parliament and no party. All power was effectively vested in Mengistu. He relied on the Derg. They, in turn, depended on an army of roughly 280,000 soldiers as well as a loose network of urban neighbourhood committees and peasant associations. But what was lacking was a disciplined and loyal organisation capable of establishing a true dictatorship of the proletariat, guiding the country in its transformation towards socialism.31
In December 1979 Mengistu established a preparatory organisation called the Commission for the Organisation of the Workers’ Party of Ethiopia, known by its acronym COPWE. Its purpose was to spread Marxism-Leninism and create from scratch a communist vanguard party, modelled on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Mengistu was responsible for determining the rules and conditions of recruitment, and personally appointed every member of the Central Committee, the Executive Committee (equivalent to a Politburo) and the Secretariat. All were his loyal supporters, and some his close confidants. None had any substantial following of their own, and a few were widely distrusted for having betrayed their colleagues during the Red Terror. As its Chairman, Mengistu mediated between the commission and the government. The commission vowed to ‘take all measures necessary to avert any situation which threatens the revolution’. One of its first acts was to prohibit all other political organisations.32
During its first years the commission built up more than 6,000 cells, carefully screening every potential candidate. Like the Central Committee the cells were dominated by members from the military and the police. There was, of course, a price to pay. Since loyalty mattered more than belief, many of the party members had no more than a smattering of Marxism-Leninism. They were sent to the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe to learn the ropes, but remained ‘largely innocent of ideology’, to quote the historian Christopher Clapham.33
The commission asserted control over every organ of authority, including the urban neighbourhood committees and the peasant associations. They established new organisations that mirrored those of the Soviet Union, from a Revolutionary Ethiopia Women’s Association to a Revolutionary Ethiopia Youth Organisation.
As the commission extended its grip over the country ever more radical programmes were carried out in the name of socialism. Mengistu did not need Marx to understand that collectivisation allowed him to extract a much greater surplus from the countryside. Within a few years some seven million households were organised into peasant associations, which were now organs of the state. These associations imposed grain quotas on the villagers, forcing them to sell their crops to the state at prices determined by the state. They taxed them relentlessly and conscripted them to work without pay on infrastructure projects far from home. They turned them into tenan
ts of the state.34
In May 1982, at long last, Das Kapital was published in Amharic. Half a year later the East Germans donated a giant block of red granite depicting Karl Marx to guard the entrance to the University of Addis Ababa. Lenin followed in 1983, mass-produced in the Soviet Union, standing seven metres tall right before the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, his gaze fixed firmly on the horizon, one leg arched forward on the path towards the future.35
After five years of preparatory work Mengistu felt ready formally to establish the Workers’ Party of Ethiopia. A new chapter in the People’s Revolution was reached in July 1984 as party branches were established in the provinces, all dutifully hailing Mengistu’s ‘vital and decisive leadership’. His portrait now hung in the middle, with Marx, Engels and Lenin to the left, a red star to his right.36
The real event was scheduled to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the revolution, falling in September 1984. Mengistu had visited Pyongyang two years earlier and was determined to emulate the scale on which the North Koreans marked their National Day. He returned from Pyongyang with a team of advisers who primped and preened the capital for the event, erecting hundreds of triumphal arches, obelisks and hoardings to extol Mengistu and Marxism. All commercial signs were removed, while huge revolutionary slogans crowned every modern building. Slum areas were blocked from view by kilometres of corrugated iron fences painted the obligatory red.37
A huge Party Congress Hall, in the socialist-realist style cherished by so many communist dictators, opened a week before the celebrations. In 1979 the commission had moved into an elegant art deco building once occupied by parliament. The outside was repainted in an earthy red shade, the iron gates refitted with a hammer and sickle. The new building, in contrast, stood as a monument to the achievements of the revolution. In the main conference room each of the 3,500 seats came equipped with the latest technology to provide simultaneous translation. Everything apart from the stone cladding on the outside of the building had been built to the highest specifications and imported from Finland. The bill was settled in cash.38
How to Be a Dictator Page 23