In the first instalment of a two-part interview held in mid-April, Gérard Prunier graciously shared memories and insights about the circumstances of his first arrival in Ethiopia towards the end of Emperor Haile Selassie’s reign in 1973, travelling overland from Tanzania, crisscrossing Kenya to Moyale and then to Addis Ababa. A political struggle was raging when he arrived in Ethiopia, he would all the same continue his reconnoitring journey to northern Ethiopia, passing through Gondar, Axum and then Asmara. There he was trying to understand the Eritrean issue, contacting some members of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, at a time when the military regime, that came to control the state was intensifying its repression.
Click here to read the first part of the interview.
The interview was conducted in French and this is a translation.
At the start, there was some sympathy for the Derg, wasn’t there?
No, not really. We should not forget that the group of officers, using the name of Derg had an agenda that was a continuation of the Amhara administration under Haile Selassie. Mengistu Hailemariam himself was the illegitimate son of an Amhara nobleman, even though his mother belonged to a minority tribe. That made him a social misfit and a very vindictive person. The group were the continuation of the regime, but worse, more brutal, less educated, less capable and also more repressive. Not to say the 1974 riot was not a revolution. It was. It was a revolution that had much in common in its structure with revolutions against the feudal systems in Russia and China. Because Emperor Haile Selassie’s system was an old worn-out monarchy that could no longer cope with the actual problems of the period. And was caught in the Cold War which re-ordered all priorities worldwide. Meanwhile the Emperor was unable to solve the many protests happening in various regions. First the Woyane rebellion, then the Gojam rebellion, then the Sidamo rebellion, most of his reign were rebellions after rebellions. But as long as he remained a close ally of the United States these rebellions never reached a level of international importance
Of course, one of his biggest failures was also to deal with the Eritrean question. The Emperor should have considered a special status, a sort of confederation. The Eritreans had been colonized by the Italians, which gave them completely different destiny. After 50 years of colony, there was a big rift. But that was what the Emperor did not want to address. For him, it was the same insurgency as the 1960 one. Like he dealt with Mengistu Neway by hanging in him. He never considered an uprising as a social event, only as a feudal revolt.
Excuse me, if I interrupt you, before you let me know your reflection about the Ethiopian politics, may we talk a little bit about you, after your first visit to Ethiopia and those countries you mentioned, where did you go next?
Then I went to France and joined my wife. We returned to Canada. We led the adventure of a hippy life, farming in the Canadian Rocky Mountains (1976-1979) in a back-to-the-land social alternative project, Construction by hand of my own house in the Slocan Valley forest. I read books from time to time but I lead the live of real back-to-the lander. We were determined not to employ a machine for things that we were capable of doing by hand. I was capable of disassembling my car. Same thing with a washing machine, when it broke down, I dismantled it and repaired it, just reading the instructions. We wanted to be people who are master of what we did, including technology in the same sense as becoming master of domestic animals. Because we were fascinated by the political and social protest movements, not a kind anarchist who was about to throw a bomb in the café, but creating a situation of hyper regulated democracy, which means elections were not meant to install dictatorial parliaments. Like we see today, in America, France. Democracy would go farther than voting in an election. Refusal of misery and marginalization, creating an organic society, the final goal is not human competition. How can you put democracy when you’re destroying the planet? I lived like that that for ten years.
After since I was the only child and my father was terminally ill, and my mother told me that this was the time to remake our relationship, as she felt I did not like him, I returned to see him. He did not die. He stayed another ten years more. My mom was not in a position to take care of him, I stuck there, good bye Rocky Mountains. That was when I joined the socialist party and I was assigned with the Africa Section of its International Secretariat, dealing with Eastern Africa. They did not know much about the part of Africa that was not Francophone. I had my own office in the 6th arrondissement, Solférino that I shared with others. At the same time, I had also a little section in the Élysée under Guy Penne, adviser for African Affairs and Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the son of Mitterrand who was an assistant there. I sustained collaboration with the Presidential Africa Unit before resigning in February 1994 following two years of growing disagreement with Mitterrand’s policy toward Rwanda.
Your connection with East Africa and Ethiopia continued when you were recruited by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in 1984?
Yes, CNRS is a large French governmental multidisciplinary scientific research organization, doing research in all fields from marine biology to archeology and from sociology to nuclear physics. I belonged to Section 33 which dealt with the non-Western world (Africa sub-section). In this capacity I worked teaching and doing research on Eastern and Central Africa for twenty-five years, spending a minimum of two to six months each year on the continent, travelling and working in Egypt , the Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia , Rwanda , Burundi and the Kinshasa Congo. Between 2001 and 2006 I was detached to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to run the Centre Français des Etudes Ethiopiennes (CFEE) based in Addis Ababa. I stayed five years more in Addis Ababa, teaching for a little while at the Addis Ababa University History’s department. Upon being retired from CNRS in September 2009 (the French University system is a state system where retirement is mandatory at a fixed age), I merged into an independent career path, doing consultations, teaching, lecturing and writing.
In the seminal book that you co-edited, Understanding Contemporary Ethiopia, Monarchy, Revolution and the Legacy of Meles Zenawi, one of the issues was the legacy of Emperor Haile Selassie. What was the Emperor’s vison for the country?
His vision was the need for modernization. His model was Japan from the Meiji era [1867 to 1912]. He was aware that he reigned in an extremely archaic system, aware of the pressure of European colonialism on the African continent. So for him, modernization was an absolute imperative. Things, which today seem to us in themselves not extraordinary, but he had to start from the scratch building the legal, political, constitutional structure of the country. He followed centralizing system, imposing the Amharic language. He strived to transform the army but did not manage to resist the Italian conquest in 1935. So after the Second World War, his vision would play mainly on the diplomatic register.
In your long relationship with Ethiopia, you have known many notable Ethiopians, such as the late noted historian Berhanou Abebe. What was he like?
He was a great friend to me and his other friends. I knew him long before I went to live in Ethiopia. He came from a small Catholic family. In the culture of Habesha, you have also the worry for honour, prestige, domination. He was remarkably intelligent person. He tried always to be valued, to sell himself. But I don’t mind about that. He was kind and intelligent.
Have you interacted with Meles Zenawi, the late Prime Minister of Ethiopia?
No, not personally. He struck me as an intelligent person. But he was a power monger, capable of doing anything to keep his power. The reason of state in Ethiopia prevails with a brutality and a cruelty that we have known for example across Europe during the revolution periods, wars of religion. Or similar happening in China after the Opium war of 1844 and till Deng Hsiao Ping.
You have sympathised with some other officials of the EPRDF regime. Right?
I have known Berhane Gebre-Chritsos. He was Ethiopia’s ambassador to the US, later to Brussels. He was well connected to the TPLF and with Meles personally. In fact, he was by Meles’ side when he died in 2012. Many people don’t know this but actually Meles moved him to Brussels after he knew that he was critically ill with cancer. Meles has chosen the Belgian capital for his hospital treatment. He chose Belgium because he felt he would not be the object of imperialist physician. He excluded china, Russia, US. He has considered Swiss or Belgium. It was at this moment that he called Berhane and told him that he should leave his post in Washington DC and he would move to Brussels. You will organize a system of health for me. That was how worked for eight years. Meles was going to Belgium often, in two or three months’ time. He was courageous all the same. Knowing that his cancer was fatal, he continued working with determination.
Despite the optimism in the direction the country is taking with the arrival of Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia has still lots of problems. What do you think is the basic problem the country is facing? Is it power sharing or something else?
The problem in Ethiopia is the transformation of a multinational empire, whose starting point was in the Gondarian period, had marked in the reign of Menelik II, which became more and more heterogeneous, a little like many great empires, Roman empire, Russian empire, Turkish empire. There is a French political scientist who is called Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, who wrote a prophetic book, Tout empire périra. (All empires will perish). All empires with heterogenous population cannot function in the industrial period. The German Empires ethnically homogenous destroyed in the First World War, the Russian empire perished in the First World War, the Japanese empire perished in the Second World War. They all collapsed. The last surviving multi-national empires were Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Ethiopia. An assembly of territory with different people. Another one is Iran that might also perish at some point. There are only 50 % Persian, the real Iranians. The rest are Baluchis, Arabs, Kurds, Azeri. It is difficult to maintain a structure like this at the beginning of the 21st century. Plus, globalization creates a competitor. Because in the past there were nation states like France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan but now the nation states are breaking up. Not only from geographical point of view, but look the Catalonians who wish to separate from Spain but don’t want to leave Europe. Because they want to have a direct relation with Europe. Brussels will be there. This is to say this is not excluded to Ethiopia in which an archaic structure cannot not hold together, dealing it in a coherent relationship. Before, you had a time when the Emperor eliminated those who stood on his way. Worse things happened under the Derg. If it does not work it would be like Zemene mesafinit, a period when the country began to break up into a series of states.
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