I Didn't Do It for You

by Michela Wrong

  For those who did not regard a future under Ethiopian rule as paradise on earth, the atmosphere had turned stifling. Debate itself was becoming increasingly impossible: in 1954, Eritrea’s only independent newspaper closed, sued into extinction by the Crown representative. Harassed and threatened–a leading activist, Woldeab Woldemariam, was said to have survived seven attempts on his life–pro-independence campaigners fled the country. The public responded to this steady whittling away of freedoms with petitions, demonstrations and general strikes. But Ethiopia now had 3,000 troops stationed in the territory, and they did not hesitate to use live ammunition on the crowds. ‘Under the Italians you could eat but you could not speak,’ Eritreans muttered amongst themselves. ‘Under the British you could speak but not eat. Under the Ethiopians, you can neither speak nor eat.’

  Psychologically, politically and economically, the Asmara government was being made to look ridiculous. ‘The adage: “Eritrea is dying on the vine” would still seem, at least to the uninitiate, a valid description of the local situation,’ reported Matthew Looram, the US consul to Asmara, in a 1959 telegram back to Washington. ‘The Government, which in effect acts as a Quisling instrument for the Emperor, is neither trusted nor respected by the people.’ Half admiring, half appalled, he added: ‘Machiavelli could well have taken a leaf out of the Ethiopians’ book, for it seems to me that they have used extremely astute tactics to date in their gradual takeover of Eritrea.’6 As the 1950s came to a close, the tribal chiefs and aristocrats who sat on the increasingly subservient Baito agreed to formally abandon the Eritrean flag, bowed to a redefinition of the Eritrean government’s role as an ‘Eritrean administration under Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia’ and, in a particularly unpopular ruling, agreed to replace the Eritrean official languages of Tigrinya and Arabic with Ethiopia’s Amharic tongue.

  In pushing for union, Haile Selassie had enthusiastically applied the stick, while forgetting to dangle a carrot. The seeds of armed revolt were being sown. With their culture denied them and peaceful protest exposed as not only ineffective but dangerous, a group of exiled Moslems met in Cairo to announce the formation of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), committed to winning independence by military means. The first shots in what was to be Africa’s longest guerrilla war were fired in 1961 by a well-known former shifta chief, who led a band of ELF in a raid on a police unit in the western lowlands. Initially, the movement numbered only a few dozen men, armed with Syrian Kalashnikovs, who had learnt their fighting skills in the Sudanese army. But from such small beginnings, national uprisings grow.

  It was against this depressing background that Asfaha Wolde Michael, Bairu’s wily successor as chief executive, summoned the Baito members to the vaulted hall off Asmara’s central boulevard on November 14, 1962, on what would in future be dubbed ‘the day of mourning’.

  They mustered in a mood of uneasy, ominous anticipation. The previous day, Ethiopian troops had staged a show of force in Asmara’s city centre, chanting ‘a bullet for anyone who refuses’. While many of the deputies naively assumed they were being called to debate the budget, the better-informed, warned of what was coming, had tried to skip the event. Some had announced they were on vacation, a handful had actually admitted themselves to hospital, feigning sickness, in a bid to deny Asfaha a quorum. But policemen hauled them from sickbeds and homes, holding them overnight to prevent them leaving town.

  Registering that Ethiopian troops had been posted around the building in a way that seemed more intimidating than reassuring, the flustered deputies clattered up the grand staircase and filed into the hall. The doors were closed behind them: no escape now. Without more ado, Asfaha rose to his feet and read out a short statement. Declaring that the notion of a ‘federation’ had been imposed on Eritreans as ‘a weapon of disintegration’, Asfaha said it was clear that all progress would be stymied as long as two administrations divided Eritrea and Ethiopia. ‘Now therefore, we hereby unanimously resolve that the Federation with all its significance and implications, be definitely abolished from this moment, that from now on we live in a complete Union with our motherland Ethiopia.’ After a split-second of stunned silence, there was applause, but Asfaha did not push his chances by risking a vote. Blurry photographs of the event, creased with the years, show the deputies, dressed in white flowing robes and formal business suits, standing stiffly to attention. Their faces are impossible to read.

  The Assembly was swiftly declared adjourned and the dazed Baito members were invited to the viceroy’s palace to toast the day’s work, leaving the hall to its pigeons and its ghosts. Since they had just made themselves redundant, it was the last time they would ever meet together in one place. It had taken them just half an hour to abrogate an internationally-guaranteed compromise that had been to nobody’s liking, abolish the constitution they had sworn to protect and lay the groundwork for war.

  The foreign press largely ignored the event. In London, The Times, which like other newspapers had dedicated reams of print to the torturous discussions leading up to the Federation, devoted just four paragraphs–what is known in the news trade as a ‘brief’–to its sudden abrogation. Filed by ‘our own correspondent in Addis Ababa’, a euphemism for an item almost certainly taken straight from the wire agencies, the story faithfully presented the version of events Haile Selassie wanted the world to believe, repeated to this day by scholars who should know better: Eritrea’s Baito had ‘voted unanimously’ to abolish the Federation.7 The account telegrammed to Washington by Looram’s successor as US consul was more accurate. ‘The “vote by acclamation” was a shoddy comedy, barely disguising the absence of support even on the part of the government-picked Eritrean Assembly,’ he reported.8

  In Addis, Haile Selassie lost no time in ensuring that a highly dubious piece of lawmaking became set in stone. Both houses of the Ethiopian parliament were convened to pass, with indecent haste, a motion welcoming the Baito’s resolution. The 10-year-old Federation was declared terminated, Matienzo’s careful work redundant. Airbrushed out of history, Eritrea–reduced to Ethiopia’s 14th province–vanished from Africa’s atlases. November 16th was declared a national holiday in recognition of the fact that the Emperor, after so many years of striving, had achieved his heart’s desire. He had made good Menelik II’s blunder. Landlocked Ethiopia had acquired a coastline.

  Why had the Baito’s deputies caved in so meekly? Was it through cowardice, self-interest or did they simply commit the grossest of historical mistakes? Only the individuals themselves knew the answer. But my inquiries met with flummoxed expressions. ‘You’re looking for the Baito members? Many of them went abroad, you know, they weren’t very popular here. As for the rest, aren’t they dead? Some of them were already quite old when they were deputies, and that’s fifty years ago.’

  It took weeks, but in the end I tracked down the last of the ageing protagonists. Time had whittled away their numbers. Less than a handful remained and most were in no rush to discuss a role they had hoped forgotten. One octogenarian, the well-heeled owner of an Asmara petrol station, backed off from me in his office, shaking his head. ‘It was a very painful period. I’d really rather not talk about it.’ Another, sitting small and prickly behind his public notary’s desk, radiated defensiveness. ‘It’s too easy to judge things with today’s eyes. It may look like a huge mistake now, but at the time it was done in good faith,’ insisted 76-year-old Araya Hagos, who served as Asfaha’s secretary. ‘People thought union was the only way to escape a repressive colonial regime.’ As he talked, he became angry. ‘The Emperor behaved like a delinquent, in my view. He was a wicked, wicked man.’ He would not say more.

  So when I was eventually pointed in the direction of a turquoise villa a stone’s throw from the sandals monument, it felt like a breakthrough. Originally built for one of Mussolini’s sons, it belonged to Gebreyohannes Tesfamariam, former Minister of Economic Affairs in Eritrea’s federal government. Aged 90 and deaf in one ear, Gebreyohannes needed his son on h
and to serve as translator and loudspeaker. But as he held forth, gnarled hands clutching a polished cane so tightly it seemed the only thing anchoring his frail body to the floor, it became clear there was nothing wrong with his memory. Behind him in the gloom of the 1930s lounge hung a portrait of the middle-aged Gebreyohannes in full ministerial regalia of stiff white shirt and black tails. He gazed at the photographer with sad, liquid eyes.

  He’d entered politics as a student, a devoted advocate of the Unionist cause, and swiftly climbed the political rungs, eventually achieving the Ethiopian title ‘Dejasmatch’ (‘Honoured’), one notch down from ‘Ras’ (‘Duke’). But he began entertaining doubts about the merits of the Unionist cause early on, Gebreyohannes wanted me to know. As Eritrea’s post-war economic crisis deepened, Unionists in the Baito had argued ever more forcefully in favour of annexation. As long as it remained semi-independent, Eritrea would not benefit fully from Ethiopian investment, planning and jobs, they said. The logic worked with deputies who never strayed south, who had built up fantastical images of life across the border. Used to complaining about the Italians, they had failed to register how thoroughly European colonialism had transformed their country, pulling it far ahead of Ethiopia. As a minister, however, Gebreyohannes travelled far more than his colleagues, and the trips to Ethiopia opened his eyes. ‘I could see the poverty, the general backwardness and I knew about the corruption and poor administration. I came to realize that uniting with Ethiopia would not bring tangible benefits, because things in Eritrea were a lot better than in Ethiopia.’

  He passed on his doubts to Unionist deputies. But Gebreyohannes’ voice was drowned out as a formidable quartet–Asfaha, Baito vice-chairman Dimetros Gebre Mariam, police commissioner Tedla Ogbit, and the new Crown representative, General Abiyi Abebe–launched a concerted campaign to persuade the Baito to agree to dissolution. ‘There were some threats. Mostly, they tried to persuade the deputies it would be in Eritrea’s best interests if they united with Ethiopia.’ The argument of national interest lent a spurious gloss to a decision in which the all-too-human yearning for personal advancement clearly played its part. The Baito deputies, said Gebreyohannes, were promised land, property and key posts in the Ethiopian administration if they agreed to smooth the way. If they played ball, they would never want for money again, for the Emperor had agreed to pay their salaries for the rest of their lives.

  One by one, amenable deputies were called to the palace, where they put their signatures to a document agreeing to the Federation’s abrogation. ‘The whole process took about a month.’ The key November 14 meeting, at which dissolution was formally announced, was only called when 51 of the Baito’s 68 members had signed. By tackling the deputies individually, Asfaha had softened up his audience, playing on each man’s weaknesses while avoiding the dangers of open debate. The document, with its 51 signatures, allowed the chief executive to argue that, despite the failure to hold a vote, the motion had the backing of 75 per cent of Baito members–a perfect three-quarters majority.

  Once the deed was done, it did not take long for the deputies to regret their actions, said Gebreyohannes. If they received their 30 pieces of silver–‘some salaries are still being paid to this day’–that was the only aspect of the bargain Haile Selassie honoured. ‘The Ethiopians had made so many promises about building schools, dams and clinics. None of that materialized. They promised land and positions of authority, but with a very few exceptions, those promises were not kept. At that stage, I realized that these people were liars and cheats, and we had made a pact with a power that would not keep its word.’ Unionist hopes, he maintained, had died as factories were moved south, Ethiopians were sent to fill government posts in Asmara and key administrative jobs were transferred to Addis.

  Gebreyohannes went on to hold two ministerial portfolios in the Addis government. Looking back, he said, he felt he should have resigned, although it would have been no more than a gesture. ‘Politically it would have made no difference. Eritrea was already in a trap and it could not extricate itself. Nothing any individual could have done would have made any difference. But resigning would have given me some personal gratification.’ How did he judge his former colleagues, the Baito deputies? ‘I feel pity for their human weakness. They were naive. It wasn’t obvious to them what the result of their decision that fateful day would be. If the deputies had known what was going to happen, they would have acted differently. Many people make mistakes in their lives.’

  A leading Unionist who had opposed annexation, a minister with no power to influence events, a man who felt sorry but, by his own account, no sense of personal responsibility–my fragile host had clearly not wasted his time in politics when it came to learning how to sidestep blame. He had resorted to the arguments used since time immemorial by those who belatedly register their small, self-interested actions have allowed a great, overarching injustice to occur. ‘It would have happened anyway’, ‘We were just cogs in a giant machine’, ‘If I hadn’t gone along with it, I would have become another victim.’ The standard excuses of those who feel destiny, in forcing them to choose between the roles of hero or traitor, has placed too heavy a burden on the shoulders of ordinary men. Hindsight, unforgiving as a prison spotlight, had pinned him and his colleagues against a wall and exposed their weaknesses for all eternity.

  There was another reason, I came to realize, why the Baito members refused to acknowledge a sense of guilt. During the grim years of the Armed Struggle, every Eritrean family paid a price, whether measured in slaughtered sons and daughters, years in detention or blighted prospects. In later life, Gebreyohannes himself would become a passionate advocate for direct talks with the EPLF, a stance that won him a seven-year jail sentence from an Addis government that did not believe in negotiating with ‘bandits’. ‘The old guys feel they have nothing to apologize for, because they suffered so much afterwards,’ explained a historian friend. ‘They feel they paid their dues.’ Had Gebreyohannes seen his time in prison as a form of atonement, an act of expiation washing clean a sullied conscience? I would have liked to ask him, but when I next returned to Asmara, I learnt that the old man had died.

  It was an approach that held little water with the last participant in the ‘day of mourning’ I tracked down. In his legal chambers on Liberation Avenue, Dr Yohanes Berhane, a mere youngster at 73, seemed as quietly furious today as on the morning he was called as a young judge to bear witness to the historic events in the assembly hall. Wearing a silk-embroidered shirt and neatly-knotted tie, Dr Berhane belonged to a community of wizened Asmarinos who got up in the morning, put on their pin-striped suits, picked up their Borsalino hats and walked to wood-panelled offices where there was nothing for them to do. Younger partners now ran their businesses, but they were fighting the good fight, determined to keep up appearances.

  Dr Berhane had the clipped delivery of the lawman who sees no need to waste words, but emotion ran just below the surface. Despite his supposed neutrality, Dr Yohanes had been disgusted by what he had seen. Afraid to voice his feelings in front of Ethiopian troops, he had stalked off, refusing to join the others at the palace for champagne. ‘It was an abuse of power, you know, they were not supposed to betray us. They had sworn to uphold the Federation.’ From then on, he was to snub the Baito members–‘they made themselves a laughing stock’–not an easy feat to pull off in a city Asmara’s size. As for acts of expiation, he had no time for them. ‘There may be parliamentarians who regretted it afterwards, I wouldn’t know. I did not talk to them. I had a grudge against them.’

  Through fear and greed, naivety and laziness, the Baito deputies had betrayed their own. Their children would not lightly forgive them, and the rebel movement that sprang up would contain within it a strong element of youthful disgust for a generation regarded as corrupted. But Eritreans who hated the idea of union with Ethiopia clung to a last hope of rescue. They had not forgotten the stipulation Matienzo had made a decade earlier, the formal undertaking Spencer and Akl
ilou had sought in vain to have dropped from the UN Commissioner’s final report. There lay Eritrea’s guarantees, spelt out in black and white. The Federation could not be altered or abolished without the UN General Assembly first being ‘seized’ of the matter. Since the UN had brought about the Federation, only the UN could destroy it.

  There is a bitter little story that does the rounds in Eritrea. Like the ‘I didn’t do it for you, nigger’ anecdote it goes–whether true or invented–straight to the heart of the way Eritreans came to regard the outside world. When the embryonic rebel movement was engaged in its first serious firefight with Ethiopian forces on a hill outside Asmara, an old man approached the young men crouched behind their guns. ‘Just keep shooting,’ he told them. ‘If we can only keep this up for 48 hours, the UN will come in and sort everything out.’

  Unbeknown to ordinary Eritreans, the UN and its key member nations had already signalled that they took the Federation no more seriously than Haile Selassie. Writing in 1953 to the British ambassador, a Foreign Office employee was toe-curlingly frank about London’s faith in the arrangement. ‘I think I can say that we never really in our hearts expected the exact United Nations solution to last in the long run,’ he said. ‘The important thing was to have a solution with some chance of success which would release us from the task of administering indefinitely a territory whose inhabitants did not want us to rule them indefinitely. Such a solution having been reached, our concern was that there should not be an immediate breakdown for which we could be blamed.’9

  The following year, an exchange of letters between the British registrar of the UN Tribunal in Eritrea and Andrew Cordier, assistant to the UN Secretary-General, was even more revealing. The registrar, Albert Reid, comes across as a self-important busybody, puffed up by his role as head of the UN’s only remaining body in Asmara, but what he had to report was important. There was a growing rivalry, he warned, between Federal and Eritrean law courts over their respective fields of competence. The passage of time was throwing up more and more ambiguities in the constitution over where Eritrea’s autonomy ended and the Emperor’s sovereignty began. ‘I feel I should draw your attention to the growing belief…that eventually the Eritrean question will again have to come before the General Assembly,’ he said. Cordier’s irritated response suggests that if he ever bothered to read the documents forwarded to him through the years by Schmidt and Matienzo, he had certainly not retained any detail. ‘You should scrupulously avoid creating any impression whatsoever that the United Nations has any interest in the political situation within the Federation,’ he warned. ‘There now exists no basis on which the United Nations can show any interest in the political problems of Eritrea and the Union. Although the United Nations played the decisive role in the drafting of the Eritrean Constitution…that job has been completed to the satisfaction of the General Assembly, and that item has been removed from the agenda.’10