THE MEDUSA AND THE NUDIBRANCH:

An assessment of the political life of Ethiopians

By Tecola W. Hagos

PART ONE

I. Introduction: Beneficial or Parasitic Symbiosis*

Almost twenty six years ago, I read a book by the eminent scientist, physician, and humanitarian writer Lewis Thomas titled The Medusa and the Snail (Viking, 1979).[2] That small book totally transformed my perception and understanding of the interdependency of life on Earth and my perception of virtual and real winners in the game of life. [It is a misnomer to write about life as a game, for life is anything but a game.] It is not that often an individual reads a book that truly affects the very core-belief of such a person. Such transformative effect of books has happened a few times in my own life. The book by Lewis Thomas, I am referring here in this article, is actually a collection of essays written over a period of time for a column in The New England Journal of Medicine in the 1970s. [�The Medusa and the Snail,� N Engl J Med, Vol. 296: May 12, 1977, 1103 � 1105.] I have used a similar title for this essay except that I changed the word �Snail� to �Nudibranch� for the sake of avoiding any confusion with the shelled land and fresh-water snail that incubates the dreaded Bilharzias (Schistosomiasis) larva (miracidum),  we are familiar with in our part of the world. The �Nudibranch� referred to in the title of this article is a naked sea slug (snail) often sublimely colorful with strange movements and habits, and has nothing to do with Bilharzias.

The one essay by Lewis Thomas that left deep fissure (crack of conflicted self) in my person was the description by Lewis Thomas of the life cycles of a particular type of jellyfish (the Medusa) and a snail (the Nudibranch). The two marine creatures are both found in the Bay of Naples and lead a most unusual life. It is reported by marine life biologists that the Medusa ingests the spawns of the Nudibranch just like any other marine creature would be �eating� the spawn of another for its survival. However, in the case of the Nudibranch, being ingested by the Medusa is not the end of its life, for the Nudibranch is just starting its life cycle. For some reason the Nudibranch is not digested by the Medusa, maybe because it releases some chemical that inhibits the Medusa from digesting it. However, the Nudibranch itself starts to eat from the inside the Medusa first some part of the inside of the Medusa then the tentacles and finally trimming its outer body. All the time the Nudibranch is growing in size finally the medusa ends up being a small appendage near the mouth of the Nudibranch. Under controlled experiment it was established that neither the Medusa nor the Nudibranch will spawn if they do not undergo the process of ingestion and growing. They seem to seek out each other in order to continue their bizarre life cycles.

Because the whole process of the symbiotic relationship of the Medusa and the Nudibranch is so bizarre, I was curious to learn more of such existence that I researched evermore fascinating material in the Internet and library books. I found out that there are other relationships of different forms of medusae and nudibranchs that are similar to the one popularized by Lewis Thomas. For example, at the opposite side of the World in the Gulf of Mexico and that part of the Atlantic Ocean that is designated as the Caribbean Sea there are several jellyfish and nudibranch species no less fascinating in their relationships than their counterparts in the Bay of Naples .  �Dondice parguerensis is one of the most fascinating aeolid nudibranchs found in the Caribbean . Originally described from La Parguera, Puerto Rico� and this species of Dondice lives its entire life cycle in association with the scyphozoan medusa (Cassiopea frondosa) otherwise known as the upside down jellyfish.� And there are others in the East Asian coral reefs with as much fascinating relationships, such as the one described by Lewis Thomas.

Beneficial symbiotic relationships are in abundance also in very many higher forms of life in different ecosystems like in the Savanna of Africa. For example, one of the fiercest predators, the African crocodile, has a symbiotic relationship with a little bird called the Egyptian Plover (Pluvianus aegyptius) that cleans the teeth of such a formidable creature routinely. When ever the crocodile needs some teeth clean-up, probably triggered by discomfort due to rotting meat left-over stuck in-between its rows of teeth, it lies still on banks of rivers and opens it cavernous mouth and the nearest Plover bird looking for such free invitation simply walks in to that gaping mouth with formidable rows of teeth and cleans around the teeth of the crocodile the little pieces of meat left from preys the crocodile had eaten. The crocodile gets its teeth cleaned from possible rotting meat that would have affected the health of its denture, and the bird gets free meals of meat in safety without competition from other creatures. However, such symbiotic relationship is drastically different than that of the Medusa and the Nudibranch. Even though the above mentioned relationships between creatures are beneficial symbiotic relationships there are also destructive parasitic symbiotic relationships at least to one of the creatures.

The destructive parasitic symbiotic relationships between creatures and even plants are drastically different than the ones that are beneficial to all parties given as examples herein above. In the parasitic symbiotic relationships only one of the parties to a relationship gets all of the benefits and none of the risk or labor in the struggle of the game of life. There are several examples to illustrate these forms of destructive relationships. If there is no such benefit to one of the parties that is destroyed ultimately, then the predatory parasitic creature would have exhausted its pool of prey and would have died a long time ago through natural selections. The survival of such types of parasitic creatures is a puzzle to me too. 

Why am I writing about biology in order to discuss Ethiopians and our political lives? This method of writing using animal behavior to illustrate the shortcomings of human beings is not unusual. There are numerous instances where storytellers have used animals to represent human beings. For example, the great moralist Aesop used animals as characters in almost all of his stories.  In fact, since the publication of the tale of �the medusa and the snail� by Lewis Thomas, a number of religious leaders have used the life-cycles of the �the medusa and the snail� as a lesson and admonishment of the members of their congregations about ingesting out of greed something that will destroy the individual.

I am not in any way suggesting that Ethiopians are jellyfish or sea slugs, rather I am using these unusual creatures to illustrate the types of political and social lives we Ethiopians have been leading. The great Nobel Laureates ethologists Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen had warned us against drawing parallel comparisons between the behavior of human beings and that of animals. Thus, my use of the analogy of the Medusa and the Nudibranch must be taken with precaution; nevertheless, the metaphor is useful because it is colorful and unforgettable.

Let me ask a rhetorical question whether we are really in such desperation that we want to reinstate Mengistu�s collaborators and Red Terror participants back into power. I have read several Chat postings and articles by academics and illiterate buffoons with dismal understanding of what is meant by democracy and civic responsibility. One individual posting stands out in my memory because of its callousness and raw unfettered greed for power. The individual hiding behind a made-up name stated that what happened before  twenty years ago is of no significance to what we must do to get rid of the �Woyane� government. Does this mean that the murder and torture of tens of thousands of Ethiopians by Mengistu and his collaborators is of no account if it occurred some twenty years ago? I do not fathom such form of reasoning. The reason I brought up the problem of such irresponsible Chat postings and attitudes is to point out the fact that much is yet to be done before we can speak of the opposition or anybody else as a democratic force in Ethiopian politics.

Changing individual leaders without changing the characteristics of the individuals assuming power will not bring about lasting democratic political changes. �Gulitcha belewawet wot aeyataeitm.�  For example, if we succeed in replacing the current Ethiopian leaders right away with others, there is not going to be a democratic government or society over night. It will simply be a change of masters with the old political whip still in hand no different than the ones we had had before. After all, the aspirants for political leadership in Ethiopia are all men molded in the Machiavellian and Byzantine furnace of Ethiopian bureaucracy and politics not to mention culture. I am not in anyway suggesting that Meles Zenawi and collaborators remain in power, but that when we do change leaders our expectations need be modest. Moreover, changing leaders as frequently as possible is in itself an aspect of democracy.  

II. The Ethiopianness of Ethiopians

A. The Ethiopian Family and the Individual

The family is the most important foundational unit in any society. All political philosophers from Socrates to Rawls have emphasized the importance of the family as an integral part of all political and economic structures. I am even more primordial when it comes to the role of families in Ethiopia �s political and economic life. As far as I am concerned the concept of �human rights� of the individual human being is intimately tied with the basic building block of society i.e., the family. The individual has always survived within a family structure extended or otherwise. All of the individual�s personhood and the genetic material of the species are all directly or indirectly connected at the most elementary and generic level with the family setup. When legal experts, politicians, and ordinary people speak of the human rights of individuals, I take it that they are all referring to a secondary structure erected on a foundational structure  even more basic than the individual. The individual is constructed by the family not the other way around as is often represented by human rights advocates.  It may look like I have introduced a paradox of sort.

National identity is part of the personhood of an individual. No child is born with a label of national identity. National identity is a matter of social construction. It is also the frame work whereby the rights of the individual is based or derived from custom, domestic law, and international law. All of the exercise of human rights carries with it duties as well. What is of great interest to me is how the concepts of such human rights crystallize or is involved in the intimate molding of an Ethiopian child to become an Ethiopian adult. One can argue that instinct plays a role too. I discount that particular claim because if there is any kind of instinct it must be a generic one like having affinity to parents, such as the coding for imprinting, and not a specialized affinity to becoming any one particular group. There are numerous lifelong positive and negative reinforcements carried out by the family, neighborhood, teachers, et cetera on the individual in a process that is part of the group dynamics that have the effects of solidifying or bonding the individual to a group.  However, the same process may be coercive, abusive, violent et cetera that would alienate the individual from the group and weaken his or her loyalty and bond to such group.  

Over a period of several years, I have written many articles on the subject of Ethiopian families, children, and moral development. I do not claim any special expertise in the areas of sociology and psychology that may supplant views held by such �experts� dealing with �society and the individual� as a subject. Nevertheless, views on certain groups of Ethiopians written specially by foreigners, often fulfilling academic requirements for graduate degrees in sociology, anthropology, or history et cetera, are not complete in certain aspects, especially in identifying social problems and truly appreciating the imports of observed behavior of individuals, the significance and meaning of certain culture et cetera. The seduction of exotic societies on foreigners (researchers, tourists, spies et cetera) is a fact, and is often very polarizing. Foreign observers, especially those who spent a limited number of years within the society they are studying, are enjoined from truly knowing the people they are studying due to their lack of knowledge of indigenous or local languages. Their research is done through translators�thus the cursory nature of their writings.

It is simply a matter of common sense and keen awareness of the activities of family members, neighbors, and the community at large that led me to connect our childhood with our current political behavior. My conclusion or judgment of the political activities of Ethiopians is essentially an interpretive one. I warn people to take my views as the opinion of one individual and not as some �Gospel truth.�  In other words, there is no need for anyone to get worked up to frenzy because some of my ideas are not agreeable or in accord with ideas that such individuals may hold.  I do not want people to have heart-attacks, especially the members of the bunch who hide behind made-up names in Chat discussions and insult people.

B. Personhood and Virtue

Some weeks ago, I watched on an Ethiopian local television program (Washington DC and Metropolitan area) an interview of an Ethiopian lady who was presented as an expert in child care (rearing) by the program interviewer (another lady). [I do not remember the name of the lady or the program or the exact date; I only remember that it was in the first week of May, 2006.] The discussion was focused on how to bring up children by Ethiopian parents in the Diaspora and in general. The expert identified the problems facing Ethiopian parents and suggested a number of ideas of child rearing, but to me most of the ideas suggested by the �expert� were not at all helpful in building up a healthy personhood in any child. The interviewer asked for a last remark, for a summation of the best advice on bringing up an Ethiopian child. I was hoping the lady expert would sum up her interview with some substantive suggestions, but the answer given by the lady was that a child does not care much about where he/she sleeps, what material things he/she has or does not have, et cetera and that if the child is lovingly caressed or hugged by parents at the end of the day, it will be all that is needed. And to my amazement the lady concluded the interview with a worn out clich� format, by saying, �Fiker, fiker, fiker.,� meaning �love, love, love.� No wonder that most Ethiopians I know seem to be border-line infantile neurotics, suspended in perpetual infancy.

Before anything else, no matter what ideas or methods of child-care we adopt, I must emphasize the fact that children are not pet animals like dogs and cats that we pat on the head and feed with crumbs from our table and hope things will turn out for the best. Children do have legal rights and demands on parents and society that obligate parents and society to take care of the children�s bodily and spiritual/mental developmental needs. Even for a man without children, but who grew up from being a child, I was appalled by the response of the lady expert on child care. She reduced the complex process of child rearing to the simplistic ways pet animals are treated.

The rearing of children is not a simple matter of hugging and patting on the head now and then, but involves sustained meticulous caring such as providing proper clothing, providing a secured and clean room and bed to sleep in, insuring a degree of privacy, creating a secure and loving environment, substantial schooling in appropriate social manners and personal hygiene, initiating into a profession et cetera. By respecting a child, we teach the child to respect others; by taking care of his/her body, we teach him/her to respect his/her own body and that of others; by respecting his/her privacy, we insure that he/she respects the privacy of others; by listening to a child�s stories, we teach him/her to listen to others; et cetera. A child becomes the adult human being through the constructed (through interaction) or drawn-out (from genetic code) personhood nourished by parents and society in all of his/her needs and inclinations.

My perception of the individual Ethiopian is not a simple assertion of the workings of determinism in human societies, but an acknowledgement that to a great extent the way we behave in society and toward our fellow human beings is influenced by the way our personhood was constructed or drawn-out in early childhood. I do not see any other metaphysical explanation for the diversity of the political and social lives of the peoples of the world except for the differences we can observe in the ways our personhood, individuality, and lives have been constructed or drawn-out primarily by parenting in specific social settings.

From all the children I have a chance to meet or witness at a distance, I have concluded that most Ethiopian children to be some of the most disadvantaged children in the world, and as a consequence, with no fault of theirs, are also the worst equipped children to face society�s demands or that of the world�s at large as adults. We try to cover our failure in proper child care, by reducing the entire issue of proper child behavior on a single assertion claiming that Ethiopian children are the most respectful of adults of all children in the world. The fact of the matter is that they have no choice except to act as Pavlovian dogs, for we have done �well� in totally demolishing their ego and self-worth through a lengthy torturous process of discipline by routinely withholding food and shaming them (not to mention vicious corporal punishments we inflict on their young bodies) when they do not obey our tyrannical instructions at a time when they were very helpless as young children.  The method of social conditioning by using food as a weapon of reward and punishment is a well known method of training animals in the process of breaking them and molding them to respect our commands.

In general, due to such long established child-car Ethiopian society has evolved into a parasitic society built on a particular form of interdependency and delusional splendor. The individual adult Ethiopian is often anti-social with almost psychopathic disdain of fellow Ethiopians. It is amazing to witness the hostility between Ethiopians who do not even know each other when they encounter each other for the first time. The situation is even worse when the encounter is between different genders. It is difficult to account for such hostility between Ethiopians, and a puzzle how we were able to form families and remained as a community for so long considering the corrosive relationships we have within communities as well as intra-communities. Even those that are brought up away from Ethiopia in Western communities suffer some of the psychological maladjustment of fear and shame of being from Ethiopian parentage, no less serious in its impact than the experience of poverty and deprivation back in Ethiopia .

It is a �monument� to our maladjustment as adult immigrants to this country or elsewhere in the world that we witness some of the most degrading postings in Chat Websites in the Internet by individual Ethiopians hiding behind pen-names and made-up identifications. The often claimed generalized courage of our contemporary Ethiopians is a myth. Ethiopians of our time love their lives no matter how miserable or deprived their lives are, I suppose, more than any people on Planet Earth. It seems the simple act of animal-survival has been translated as a moral imperative in the psyche of most Ethiopians. Most of my contemporary Ethiopians are cowards, only very few have courage enough to stand on their own facing adversaries. Of course, like in all generalizations there are exceptions, and in those exceptions we find truly brave and far-looking Ethiopians ready to sacrifice themselves for the good of society. But they are the extraordinary exceptions, and remain so to this day. However hurtful to me personally is my admission of our utter failure as a community, I cannot formulate a generalized perspective based on exceptions simply to bolster our moral. The survival of Ethiopia depends not only in changing fundamentally our care of children but also reassessing our role in the past and honestly designing our future in our respective communities.

The way children are brought up determines in a very significant manner how they will behave after they grow up and become men and women. I believe that the adult human being, in far deeper sense, is the child masked to a great extent by the physical grown form, but yet retaining all of the experience of the early childhood years in the world of parents and other adults. I believe our underdevelopment in several aspects of our political, economic, social lives et cetera has to do, in large part, with our childhood. In particular, our personal hygiene has a lot to do with our value system. The religious emphasis on humility has some how been corrupted in translation and has affected the lowered value we give to our well being which in turn seems to have compromised the value we give to the well being of the other members of our communities.

It seems to me that we are thorn between two extremes: gluttony or mortification. We do not seem to have middle grounds of a healthy respect or decent treatment of our bodily or spiritual needs. For example, our table manner is appalling and so is our expression of our faith. We eat with open mouth making horrible chewing noise; we use our fingers to scoop up soggy morsels of food et cetera. No culture is unchangeable; hurtful, degrading, painful, impractical et cetera cultural practices ought to be changed, We seem to have simply accepted a life of extreme deprivation as a matter of our natural state of existence; or in the opposite the amassing of tremendous fortune at the cost of our fellow members of our community as a legitimate result of competition. For most Ethiopians, our worldly possession consists of very few items of value except in some instances of tiny tracts of land and few domestic animals. As itemized in Section III below, we own very limited worldly goods which might have affected our tendency for extreme behavior. Moreover, it would be difficult under such bare-minimum circumstances to be visionary, ethical, righteous, cooperative, social et cetera. Our state of extreme deprivation has prevented us from making any headway in our political, social, and economic lives.

All of our governments are mirror images of us. If our governments are brutal and violent, as best exemplified by the governments of Mengistu and now that of Meles, they are quintessential �us� nothing more or less. Even in the gestation of future governments, we witnessed in aspirant political groups, such as the Opposition, ourselves reflected in the streak of violent organization of political programs and statements by the Opposition groups and their supporters. We are caught in a loop that simply feeds on itself in a down ward spiral of ever tightening poverty ad deprivation. Our ethical values have suffered such extreme corruption that is at a point too late for reversing such downturns of moral deterioration. The current young Ethiopian population is a truly frightening one�with no future or way out of the grinding poverty they are born into�would resort to violent means to get simple basic things for their survival. Education, hard work, and ethics would have very limited significance in such state of existence. However, the one bright spot I see has to do with very few college students both within Ethiopia and in foreign institutions. However, the number of such hopeful Ethiopians is so very few that it is as good as none extant. 

As members of the human family we all have our fundamental rights as human beings, to some extent even before actual birth. Fundamental rights on their own are simple abstractions and symbols; in short, they are mere words without social context. What gives human life meaning, content, and significance in addition to the physical fact of being human is how our �personhood� is constructed or drawn-out for each one of us as individuals since our birth. In our personhood we fully actualize not only our fundamental rights but also our political rights. The philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum in her recent outstanding book [Frontier of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership, Belknap/Harvard University Press Cambridge (2006)] speaks about the �capabilities approach� of empowerment of individuals in a society as the primary responsibility of the government of such a society.  Furthermore, she identified three unsolved social problems, wherein one of which involves the issue of extending justice to �all world citizens.� The types of political and economic problems faced by Ethiopians are also problems faced by billions of people all over the world.

III. Rationalism vs. Passion/sentiment

The question of how we develop our values and commitments to a set of democratic principles and standards is an essential question that we must answer in order to appreciate our political, social, and economic situation. Great philosophers have dealt with issues of ethics as mankind�s central questions in several of their books. For one group of philosophers such as the Stoics, Plato/Socrates, Aristotle, et cetera the connection between emotion and ethics is recognized but is also seen as a disruptive element that must be controlled and if possible totally removed from our judgments. However, for some other philosophers and theologians such as Augustine, Hume, Rousseau et cetera our morality is best enhanced through our sentiments or compassions or sympathies for the suffering of others�our moral life is shaped by our emotions. If we follow either thinking we will finally reach different conclusions not so much in some form of contradictory or irreconcilable positions but more of questions of magnitude and intensity and degree of commitment to our democratic ideals.

The literature in this area is vast, rich, and diverse. It is worth pursuing by anyone interested in the future development of Ethiopia or in pursuit of knowledge in general. Thus, my discussion of the subject of ethics is a focused one limited by necessity and the orientation of my topic under discussion. The reason I brought up the question of ethics in the first place is to help us determine which process of ideation will help us have firm commitment to abstract political goals. In other words, it is what I see as lack of commitment to democratic ideals by our political leaders in office or out of office aspirants that motivated me to include the subject of ethics in the discussion.

The literature on ethics seems to favor those who hold the view that accepts the incorporation of our passions or sentiments as part of our normative standards�the building block of our commitments to social and political ideals, as opposed to those who favor rationalism over any form of sentimentalism, especially dealing with normative questions. The distinction between these two positions or arguments is subtle and the differences not so apparent at first blush, but become obvious when we consider the issues up-close. If we derive our human rights principles from the concept of �natural law� as propounded by the Stoics, the foundation for our assertions of human rights is the dignity of human beings and the fact of our sociability. On the hand a much weaker argument for the origin of human rights is based on the myth of governments being organized through contracts with the people of each respective nation. This latter concept of the foundation of rights is known as the contractarian base of governments.

It is important that we need have clear ideas about the Ethiopian people and our recurring nightmarish lives victimized by successive Ethiopian political leaders and their dictatorial and violent governments. The way our political leaders relate to millions of Ethiopians is unrealistic; it is premised on a fallacy of perception of the reality of the disconcertingly dirt-poor Ethiopians as if we have a political and economic life.  The best way to understand the depth of our problems is if I sketch for you how poor the majority of Ethiopians are as could be drawn from statistical data gleaned from several sources. Without exaggeration, an average Ethiopian family of two parents and possibly four children would own the following goods and assets worth less than two thousand dollars:

-         One very dilapidated hut with grass roof with one large circular room with two or three alcoves around the parameter of the single circular room which serves as kitchen, living-room, bedroom with one section reserved for livestock consisting of three or four sheep, a cow with calf, two oxen, and a couple of pack animals;

-         Four dists, two mitads, a couple of coffee roasting saucepans, and coffee pots with four to five cups;

-         Several knives, wooden and metal ladles, few plates;

-         Two large ensiras, one gan for make homemade beer, two or three wotchets;

-         Two or three mesobs, two sefeds, and three or four large and small agelgeles; 

-         Three or four skirts and netela for the wife, with some umber bids, silver and brass jewelery which would include a wedding band and earrings;

-         Two or three trousers and long shirts with two netelas and one gabi, may be a silver wedding ring for the husband;

-         Trousers and shirts for the boys, and few skirts and netela for the girls;

-          Farming tools consisting of maresha  mopher and other accessories such as menshi, machid et cetera;

-         May be some weapon�a sword, an old gun,

-         Some cash not much more than three to four hundred bir in coins and worn out paper money  hidden somewhere in the hut;

Et cetera, not much by any standard.

There are no shares or trust funds owned by such families, and no other movable or immovable asset, except that for farming families maybe a leased land not much larger than a couple of acres for farming and another acre for a yard and animal grazing or feeding space. If the family is a family of traders, it would probably own a stock/inventory worth not more than two hundred bir at any one time with another two hundred bir as a revolving fund. Most Ethiopians do not have pensions or any form of government assistance. Most Ethiopians work in their old age until the day they die. There is no health support system or insurance in a country where you have a ratio of one nurse or one medical doctor to over one hundred thousand Ethiopians. In some specialties such as the treatment of eye diseases the ratio is even more dismal going up to one ophthalmologist to over one million Ethiopians. There is no piped water for millions of Ethiopians except those who live in large urban centers. Out of over twelve million school age children less than six million attend some sort of schools, even then the ratio of students to teachers is the highest in the world, over sixty pupils to a teacher.  The statistics on Ethiopia in very many other areas of economic and social items is so dismal that even recounting them here is very depressing. Ethiopians are the poorest people on Earth.

Knowing fully well the fact that the life of an average Ethiopian family is of extreme poverty, misery, hunger, disease and extreme form of deprivation and alienation, it is morally unacceptable to me for any Ethiopian to own a private car let alone a luxury one in such depravity and political oppression. It is equally criminal to waste the meager national wealth in frivolous pursuit of internationalization of such a poor country. It is in light of such stark difference between very few wealthy Ethiopians, with obscene life style, and the tens of millions of utterly poor Ethiopians that we must reevaluate our views on urbanization and Ethiopia �s political and economic future. It is in addition to all these forms of hellish existence that successive Ethiopian governments had unleashed their Twentieth Century well trained military forces, equipped with the latest weapons, on a population that is eking out a living frozen in time using stone-age technology and methodology.

If some Ethiopian Opposition leaders or supporters lash out and take extreme positions and blame by association this or that ethnic group along with the current or past political leaders, it is very understandable. Nevertheless, I will try to point out where we failed to bring about effective leadership and suggest further solutions to our monumental problems. The decision of very many Ethiopians in the Opposition to stand against an oppressive government is something to be applauded and supported. However, even the slightest hint of using ethnic difference as a political rallying tool is to be condemned and quashed in its infancy. We have learned a very expensive lesson how the current government has alleged against the Opposition leadership and supporters of promoting ethnic animosity as their tool for political opposition, and proceeded to arrest and charge them with treason and attempted genocide.          

PART TWO

IV. The EPRDF and the Opposition: Which is the Medusa? The Nudibranch?

After watching and reading all kinds of expose, interviews, articles et cetera on the current Ethiopian political, economic and social situation, I have come to a disappointing  conclusion that the Ethiopian Opposition group�s political aspiration, as represented by CUD (Kinijit), UEDF et cetera, is rapidly descending into a grand illusion. The people who seem to be intimately involved with the Opposition unwittingly substantiate in their claim that �Kinijit menfes naw� the ephemeral or insubstantial or ghostly attributes of the Opposition. The Opposition, ontologically speaking, will still exist as a formidable source of raw-power, but the goal of establishing a democratic government with justice and equality and rule of law with the present leaders will not be realized through political organizations born out of such process.

Most of the people I have observed at demonstrations organized by the Opposition, who claim to be members or supporters of the Opposition seem filled up with tremendous and debilitating hate directed at the current Ethiopian government leaders who are identified with a particular ethnic group. A number of Opposition members and supporters speak of vengeance and deportation of that particular ethnic group. With such polarized political atmosphere, it would be impossible to establish political leadership from such hate filled people, especially from those floating around in the Diaspora. [The term �Diaspora� is popularly used by several Ethiopian writers in reference to the condition of all Ethiopians living outside of Ethiopia irrespective of the diverse reasons for such existence in foreign countries. I am using the same term in that generalized meaning in this essay, which seems to me quite appropriate designation.].

If we go back to the election of 2005, we can easily discern that there was an emerging destructive orientation of the Opposition at its highest intensity around 15 May 2005 where the one unifying factor for the Opposition seems to have been manifested in an open declaration of persecution and hate for Tygreans in general and not just Meles Zenawi and his supporters in the current government. And in a bizarre logic that defies commonsense, some well known individual, who claims to be supporter of Kinijit, wrote inflammatory and utterly silly articles trying to instigate ethnic hate against Tygreans and also trying to create from material that reeks of corruption, Red Terror, opportunism et cetera a leader for Ethiopia. �Ye jib chikul quend yineksal.� There in lies the weakness of the leadership of the Opposition�lack of perspective and wisdom.   

The fact that former Mengistu�s officials and collaborators succeeded in organizing and conducting a successful political comeback was a direct consequence of the arrogance and inaptitude of Meles Zenawi and his handful of supporters who are still running the government of Ethiopia . Despite the fact that some of the members and supporters of the Opposition are individuals who are directly or indirectly linked to the �Red Terror� murder and torture of tens of thousands of Ethiopians in 1977-1980 period, they were able to mount massive opposition right under the jaundiced eyes of Meles Zenawi and his sycophantic supporters and collaborators.

The most significant failure of the leadership of the EPRDF is the fact that its oppressive government structure wiped out all possible democratic developments that would have included the emergence of independent political parties that would have constituted a healthy democratic process of alliances, elections, political debates, campaign, media involvement, et cetera in short, a healthy and dynamic political life in Ethiopia. Meles succeeded in strengthening the worst elements in Ethiopian politics and the least democratic or representative politicians to move in and fill the political vacuum created by such political manipulation. Meles Zenawi or his government did not even formally ask the Government of Zimbabwe for the extradition of the brutal Mengistu Hailemariam to be tried for numerous crimes of murder and corruption.

Fourteen years later under the new EPRDF government leaders, the people of Ethiopia have not seen any degree of honest and legal justice done for the victims of the Red Terror, to their murdered and tortured and illegally imprisoned sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters. There are lip-service convictions of a handful of criminals who committed Red Terror crimes, but the thousands of criminals, some of whom high government officials, are not even properly investigated let alone processed for just prosecutions for their crimes. The fact of the absence of timely resolution of past crimes committed by former government officials and members of the military and security forces, and the continuation of similar crimes by the current EPRDF government since 1991 has greatly contributed to the current anti-democratic political standoff. We must never forget the adage that justice delayed is justice denied.

The loyalty that I see by some Tygreans in the Diaspora to Meles Zenawi and his political party is a misplaced and a shameful one. Even if there is a pernicious hate filled campaign against Tygreans instigated by some Opposition leaders and their supporters both within Ethiopia and in the Diaspora, there was no need for such Tygreans to stand in support of Meles Zenawi and his group. Instead Tygreans with other ethnic groups should have created their own leadership to protect them from such degenerative attacks from Mengistu�s former officials and collaborators. Of course, there has been some effort to organize an independent group of Tygreans in the Diaspora such as the now defunct Solidarity and the newly formed three or more groups, but failed because of inner structural fracture of personal ambitions, divisive political agendas, and infiltrations by EPRDF and EPLF agents. Ethnicity also plays some role in the ever deepening fracture between Tygreans and Amharas and to a lesser extent with Oromos. At any rate, the trend is not helpful to anyone except to the enemies of Ethiopia that are all around us waiting and salivating and counting the days when we all are disbanded and easy picks for those vultures.

Now, we all suffer a dangerous setback of some thirty years, falling backward to a time of the brink of the �revolution of the 1970s� that turned out into a disastrous military regime. Some thirty years ago some groups of individuals started a series of bombing civilians at random and attempting to create political instability. It did not succeed, but helped bring about the military usurpers into power and unleashed the most barbaric violence ever recorded in Ethiopian history wherein hundred of thousands of innocent people were tortured, detained, and/or murdered from 1975 to 1991. The recent bombings in Addis Ababa and elsewhere in Ethiopia will simply allow Meles Zenawi and his brutal government to intensify and expand their brutal detentions, torture, even murder of very many innocent Ethiopians. I do not believe the Opposition is behind such reckless terrorism endangering the lives of the Opposition leaders already under custody. There must be something more to the bombings than what we imagine.  

The recent bickering between the Editor of the Ethiopian Review and CUD Kinijit representatives illustrates the political confusion and distrust even among those whose hate for the current Ethiopian government knows no bound.  Yemayategb injera kemitadu yastawkal. The central issue of the controversy seems to be how the miserable few hundred thousand dollars collected from supporters of the Opposition ought to be distributed among needy families of the detained opposition leaders. There is no other explanation to such destructive behavior of the individuals involved in such bickering other than the fact of lack of understanding of the virtue of negotiation and compromise rather than unnecessary confrontation. How could any sensible person fight in such public manner over material things (money) where nothing else is taken into account, not even maintaining the unity of the Opposition against a brutal regime?

Ethiopian culture is very much against random violence or guilt by association; however, we have witnessed during Mengistu�s Red Terror period that such advanced moral sentiment will change under relentless pressure of oppression. If today�s bombing is random attack on innocent Ethiopians, tomorrow�s attack will escalate to attacking officials and supporters of the current government. And when the government takes measure to protect its officials, the attack will shift to ordinary Tygreans and other targeted ethnic groups. There is no stopping of these tragic developments unless Meles Zenawi leaves office and a new government is established soon. Ethiopia is going to be plunged into a civil war that would make the Somali implosion like a kindergarten prank.

My personal feeling is that of doubt as to the future existence of an Ethiopian �government� if things escalate they way they seem to develop at this time. Any future Ethiopian �government� is going to be more like a private �club� tightly run by a vicious group of individuals, but not effective in running a viable nation. It will be lacking in the basic structures of a government, such as accountability, rule of law, transparency, national interest, et cetera. The frightening break�up of Ethiopia along ethnic lines following the current divisive structure of ethnic-federalism will be a reality. Even though most of the responsibility of such break-up could be blamed on the EPRDF and the current Ethiopian political leaders, the Opposition too would have contributed to such breakup because of its method of opposition and its thinly disguised narrow ethnic-based aspirations to recover �lost power� by a motley collection of individuals whose political past is as checkered as any other politician in the Continent itself.

What is tragic is the fact that more than ever this would have been an opportune time for the emergence of new leadership from the opposition and/or within the group in power. The reason I find the relationship between the Medusa and the Nudibranch appropriate metaphor for our current political situation is due to its uncanny historicity in the illustration of the type of relationships that Ethiopian politicians and the Ethiopian society itself have had over the centuries. It is illustrative of a particular type of parasitic and degenerative relationship that had prevailed over the years. It is not a healthy relationship at all, but a sick one that consumes the very people that made-up the political, social and economic matrix of the nation. It seems also a system that we are fated to.

I am afraid of what we will find if we take a closer look at the problem of Ethiopian leaders currently engaged in government or in the opposition political organizations. What emerges when we scrutinize our political leaders closely is more or less similar characteristics of violence, deceit, narcissism, greed, hunger for power, and contempt for the common man and woman of Ethiopia and very minimal social commitment. Sadly, there are a handful of well-meaning individuals in both camps who are caught in the crossfire. Which fact leads me to the desperate conclusion that anyone over the age of twenty is suspect and should not be in leadership position in Ethiopia . I prefer to follow a leader who errs on the side of passion because of inexperience than the vicious lingering leadership of the manipulative older Ethiopian politicians especially those who had a life as political appointees of previous governments and those who are serving the current Ethiopian government.  

Like the Medusa, Emperor Haile Selassie I ingested the spawns of Iyassu, the dissenting patriots, student leaders, peasants, common soldiers et cetera. In time, like the Nudibranch, the ingested elements of Ethiopian society ate from the inside out Haile Selassie's clumsy state body and emerged as the new leadership of the Derg. The Derg  finally reduced Haile Selassie and his legacy as an appendage, whose spawns in time grew up as resistance movements of liberation mostly led by the children of Haile Selassie�s courtiers and beneficiaries. Finally, Mengistu too was eaten from inside out by those he had in turn ingested. And the new Medusa emerged as the EPRDF in 1991 and has been ingesting in its turn the spawns of Mengstu and collaborators, a number of liberation fronts, Meison, EPRP, the OLF, et cetera. And such ingested spawns have been eating EPRDF inside for the last fourteen years, some of whom prematurely bursting through the Medusa but are caught in its tentacles and are being drawn back into its digestive organ. No matter what happens to those Opposition leaders caught in the tentacles of the Medusa, other ingested spawns are eating their way through from the inside out of the Medusa. Sooner than later we are going to enter a new cycle of the Medusa being reduced to an appendage and the spawns growing into the new Nudibranch of Ethiopian leadership. And the cycle will continue.

This seemingly eternally repetitious political and social process of Ethiopian political and social life is not as formidable as it looks. It can be breached and replaced by a democratic and dynamic system. The main purpose of this article is to point out certain directions and unrecognized factual matters that would help us change the deterministic cycle of birth-ingestion-spawn-birth as best analogized in the lives of the Medusa and Nudibranch. For example, some of the Mahel Sefaris who have been working for or with Meles�s Government for over ten years, and some of whom who were original members of the satellite tiny organizations that formed the EPRDF, do constitute such minor threads of future class-based polarizing development�namely development into an elitist exclusive and cliquish groups, specially by those children of mostly deceased officials of Haile Selassie, who have come of age now assuming very visible posts as ambassadors and representatives in international organizations.

In this regard, I may consider the appointment of the new Ethiopian Ambassador to the United States as a masterly political move, which seems on the surface that Meles has played the oldest move in Chess�the King�s Gambit, effectively neutralizing the Opposition and the Mahel Sefaris in particular in the Diaspora. By throwing such a smart move executed political-wrench in the Opposition�s political engine, Meles has divided further the Opposition by class interest.  I am not sure whether the individual in question is capable of handling the volatile situation of animosity between the non-Mahel Safari Ethiopians in the Diaspora and the representatives of the Government of Meles Zenawi in the United States . The new Ambassador might be great in bringing Ethiopia and the United States much closer at the cost of pushing � Eritrea �s� leader further adrift from the United States . President Bush seems to be positively and gleefully embracing the new Ambassador to his government; the formal picture of the occasion of credential presentation seems to confirm that fact. As far as Ethiopia is concerned, I suppose such developments are simply manifestations of the Medusa-Nudibranch parasitic life-cycle of Ethiopians once again completing a cycle and starting a new one.

I cannot emphasize enough the significance of working toward the development of moral sentiments or passion for equality, freedom, and justice in the Ethiopian population. The effort in that had failed so far because we have not prioritized the steps that ought to betaken and the types of passions that should be developed systematically in order to sustain such democratic changes. There is no way we can be a democratic society without having the moral sentiment or passion for democracy (equality, freedom, and justice) ingrained deeply within each one of us. We win for democracy if we first win for democracy within ourselves. I believe that the use of words such as �democracy�, �freedom�, �equality�, �justice� by Ethiopian politicians and Ethiopians in general have been transformed into a form of mantra�ritualized repetitive invocation of sound without representation or content.  

V. New Solutions: Ye Gelagai Yaleh!

 In order to break away from the cyclical parasitic symbiotic relationships we Ethiopians have been living with for centuries, I believe the time has come to be very imaginative and cleaver in order to free ourselves from such destructive process.  I have identified in this article three forms of both parasitic and guardedly �beneficial� symbiotic relationships that we have in varying degrees in our culture and social systems of political and economic relationships. It seems that our diverse symbiotic relationships have mutated to such an extent that the negative and destructive aspect of our symbiotic relationships have become a threat to our very survival as a viable nation/state. In this section I am supplanting with an additional layer of a structure to my suggestions of future organizations of Ethiopian political parties in a paper I submitted at a Harvard Symposium of 11 February 2006.    

I appreciate the interests and efforts of foreigners, who are friends of Ethiopia, most of whom experts in history, law, political science, sociology, et cetera sharing with us their ideas on the political and economic problems of Ethiopia. I believe such foreigners are honorable men and women, and their concern is deeply rooted due to their humanitarian impulse. This is the kind of concern that is universal, which we all have witnessed as part of the purely humane reaction of the ordinary citizens of the Western nations to the appalling human condition in all developing nations of the world. The record is absolutely clear on the generosity of foreign individuals that billions of hard currency have been collected from such citizens of the West every time there is famine and natural disaster in developing nations. Whether it is Bono, Pitt and Joli, or our own �Saint� Catherine of the Fistula Foundation (and several others, whose names are not so well known) have helped us Ethiopians and several other people in different nations in sub-Saharan Africa for years far beyond the members of the local population have done in each developing nation. We have seen pictures of foreigners on humanitarian missions distributing food and taking care of emasculated and famished Ethiopians with more caring than any Ethiopian caretaker. However, we need to keep in mind also the fact that there are destructive foreigners who have tried their very best to destroy Ethiopia .

I have witnessed in such heroic foreigners the same type of selfless concerns for the survival of Ethiopia as an independent nation too. Nevertheless, there is one enormous difference between foreigners who are friends of Ethiopia and Ethiopian politicians. These foreigners who are friends of Ethiopia do have the one important characteristic that I am looking for in future Ethiopian leaders: the passionate as well as rational commitment to democratic principles. I am more interested in the foreign friends of Ethiopia in United States or elsewhere as individuals because I have this outrageous idea to convince you all that we should induct (import) some of them as our political leaders. Think about my suggestion carefully before you start throwing darts of insults at me. We have employed teachers, professors, medical doctors, political scientists, lawyers, economists et cetera for scores of years to serve us in Ethiopia .  In general, I can claim that we have benefited from such services provided by expatriates much more than the services our own nationals have rendered to us.

My suggestion is not going to be the first time in history a nation under siege due to rivalry between destructive groups had sought leadership from outside of its borders. I have several examples in mind where the host nations of imported (invited) leaders greatly advanced their national unity, avoided disastrous civil wars, and improved the economic and social conditions of their respective citizens. I shall name a few here: 

• In 1618 Frederick of western Germany was invited by Czechs to accept the Crown of Bohemia even though the effort was aborted due to events beyond the control of the Czechs, nevertheless, the imported King battled in defense of his new people against the overwhelming forces of the Spanish and the later �Holy Roman Empire� armies, which effort down the ages resulted in the independence of several European nations from the tyrannical dominance of the Catholic Hapsburg Dynasty.

• William of Orange of The Netherlands was invited to take the Throne of England away from King James II in 1688; and there after ruled England , Scotland and Ireland till his death in 1702. His reign was referred too as the period of the �Great Revolution,� a period that brought about the preeminence of Parliament and limited the power of the aristocracy.

• We have the most dramatic of all invited (imported) leaderships that of Sweden whereby after deposing their own king, Gustav IV, in 1809 and replacing him with his childless uncle as King Charles XIII, they invited the French General Jean Baptise Bernadotte in 1810 to be their Crown Prince and eight years later in 1818 elected him as their king as Charles XIV. He reigned until his death in 1844. The present members of the Swedish Royal Family and the King of Sweden are his descendants.  

In other words, there are no known disasters due to invited or imported leaders from foreign countries, rather the opposite is true. What we see in both the English and Swedish experiences of imported leaders is the resultant national stability that lasted down to our own days.  Importing leaders does not mean subjugating a nation under the rule of the home country of such imported leaders. The fact of the matter is that such imported leaders may turn out to be far more patriotic than the locals. If truth be told, how many of you would have preferred Spencer or Levine over Mengistu, or Vestal or Clapham over Meles, or �Saint� Catherine over all of them?  I have a few names of distinguished business leaders, scholars, teachers, and experts with long outstanding record of public service for our consideration of imported leaders:

1. Prof. Cornel West, Princeton ;

2. Prof. Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Harvard;

3. Prof. David D. Cole, Georgetown ;

4. Prof. Lani Guinier, Harvard;

5. Prof. Quintin Johnstone, Yale;

6. Prof. John N. Moore, Virginia

7. Mr. Bill Gates, Microsoft

8. Mr. Ted Turner

These distinguished individuals are not cut from the same political cloth; some are conservative and others liberal democrats.

It is not that difficult to observe now in the Ethiopian political arena two enormous pathologically opposed political camps incrementally mobilizing destructive momentum and heading toward a series of inevitable monumental clashes. Of course, the demarcation line between these political and economic forces will never be clear; there will be overlaps and there will be also the usual opportunistic defections from camp to camp. The destruction will not be like a single-event occurrence, but several events over an extended period. Nevertheless, when such inevitable clashes occur, the destruction to the Ethiopian State would be far worse and permanent than the destruction of Gragn or the warring period of Zemene Mesafint combined. Ethiopia , then, had neither an independent � Eritrea � on its borders choking it by the neck, nor increasingly rich and powerful Sudan and Egypt with their Arab allies waiting to scavenge what is left over of Ethiopia .

It is in light of such looming disaster of civil war, even worse stagnation by being caught in the eternally recurring loop of oppression and poverty that we suffer, that I am suggesting this particular solution of imported leadership. I realize that it is insulting to our Ethiopian pride even to think of having foreigners leading us let alone formally suggesting it in a website for all the world to read. Beshitawon ye debeke medhanit yelowm. We have to save Ethiopia from destruction even if it means having to swallow this last bitter pill of humiliation of importing leaders. The benefit of importing leaders greatly outweighs the temporary setback of lost national pride. The imported leadership will act as a buffer between warring groups, and would give us time and guidance to organize truly democratic political parties, introduce discipline on democratic governance, and lay out traditions of democratic political process. We must also know that imported leadership is not a long-term feature for our nation, but an anomaly of short duration of a generation or two in order to give a number of young talented Ethiopians, some still in school, to mature and crystallize their democratic sentiments.

The actual establishment of a functioning imported leadership may have technical difficulties of its own, but can be solved. Diplomatic skills, singular commitment to democratic principles and standards, passionate and humane dispositions et cetera are all qualities of such imported leaders. I will not be at peace with myself until we find some good solution to our political and economic problems exasperated by corrupt and violent government leaders and amateurish leaders of opposition groups. We need to go beyond and even against orthodoxy if there is a possibility that we can free ourselves from the recurrent cycle of poverty and oppression.      

Tecola W. Hagos

Washington DC , May 22, 2006

Reference  

* Symbiosis: Mutually Beneficial Symbiotic Relationships

Animal-animal relationships

The Egyptian Plover bird and the crocodile. You might think that if a bird landed in the mouth of a crocodile, the crocodile would eat it. Well, not the Egyptian Plover bird. Egyptian Plovers and crocodiles have a unique symbiotic relationship. Because crocodiles can�t use dental floss, they get food stuck in their teeth. All that food rots their teeth and probably causes them some pain. When a crocodile feels the need for a good tooth cleaning it will sit with its mouth wide open. The Egyptian Plover bird recognizes this invitation, and if one is nearby it will fly into the mouth of the crocodile, eat the food

stuck in its teeth, and fly away. The plover gets a meal and the crocodile gets a valuable tooth cleaning: they both benefit.

Animal-plant relationships

Bees and flowers. You are all probably familiar with the idea that bees and flowers have some kind of relationship. A bee goes from flower to flower gathering nectar. While it is doing this, some of the flower�s pollen ends up sticking to the bee�s hairy body and legs. When it goes to the next flower, some of that pollen rubs off of the bee and gets into the flower. The flower needs pollen to reproduce, but since flowers can�t move to get it themselves, the bees get it for them. Without bees, some flowers would have no way of getting the pollen they need to reproduce. Without flowers, bees wouldn�t get the nectar they need to eat.

Plant�plant relationships

Lichen. The first time you see lichen, you may be surprised that it is alive! It can be flat and not very obvious; it almost looks like a discoloration on a rock. Lichen is special because it can live in places where other organisms cannot. Lichen is a partnership or symbiotic relationship between two different species. Fungi and algae combine to create lichen, because together they can live in places where alone, as just algae or fungi, they could not survive. Their relationship is mutually beneficial�both species benefit from their relationship.

Human-bacteria relationships

Your intestine and bacteria. You might wonder how you can have your very own symbiotic relationship going on right now and not know it. It�s because it happens in your intestine where you can�t see it. When you eat food, very little gets digested in your stomach. It travels through your intestine where bacteria further digest the partly digested food. The bacteria also produce vitamins. Your food gets digested, you get vitamins, and the bacteria get a meal. You have your very own partnership, without which, your body would not be as healthy!

Parasitic Symbiotic Relationships

Tapeworms

Tapeworms are long, flat parasites that live in the intestines of pigs, cows, and even humans. A tapeworm gets into its host by laying its eggs in the host�s food source. The host eats this food, and the eggs develop and grow into tapeworms, which attach themselves to the intestines of their host. Tapeworms feed off the food that the host eats, and sometimes a tapeworm has been known to live in a human for ten years without being detected! The tapeworm has a safe, warm home and a constant food source, but the host does not benefit from the relationship. In some rare cases, the tapeworm can make the host sick or even cause death.

Ticks

Ticks are pinhead-sized arachnids that form parasitic relationships with birds, reptiles, animals, and sometimes humans. Ticks attach to their host�s skin and feed off its blood. In this way it gets both food and a home. Ticks can consume enough food to grow 200 to 600 times their original body weight. In this relationship, the tick gets the benefits of a warm home and food, while the host gains nothing. The tick may even give the host a disease, which could weaken or kill it.

Mistletoe

Mistletoe is a plant that people hang above doorways at Christmas-time. Before it gets picked and hung inside it grows by living off of other plants. Mistletoe grows on woody plants, taking nutrients and moisture from them. It also �strangles� it�reducing the nutrients that the plant can take in. Mistletoe is considered a parasitic plant, because the mistletoe gets all the benefits, while the woody plant or tree has to support itself as well as the mistletoe.

[�2002, President and Fellows of Harvard College for Understandings of Consequence Project of Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA. Retrieved May 13, 2006 https://www.pz.harvard.edu/ucp/curriculum/ecosystems/s5_res_symbiosis.pdf.]