Author: Mulugeta Gudeta
Blood Rituals (Self-published) 2019 Addis Ababa 128 Pages
In his concluding remark on the study the Ethiopian student movement, The Quest for Socialist Ethiopia, the historian, Professor Bahru Zewde asks the following poignant questions, «Did the student radicals of the 1960s and 1970s have it all wrong? Do they owe the nation an apology for the warped political path the country has taken in the past four decades?……. Could Ethiopian history have taken a different path in the 1960s and could the country have thus avoided the tribulations that it has been made to endure since the mid-1970s?’’ (P.264).
He then goes on to examine the merits and otherwise of the movement and what it left in the way of legacy, as an event that has gone down in history as having decisively and irreversibly shaped and altered the political landscape of the country, in an effort to sift the wheat from the chaff and delineate its enduring legacy.
After a dispassionate appraisal of the ideas and actions that shaped the movement, he sums up his musings by offering a chillingly realistic picture, albeit one tempered by sympathetic understanding, of what the tumult catalysed by the firebrands has brought forth. “Many sacrificed their careers and their lives in the quest for what eventually turned out to be a utopian dream…Dogmatic belief rather than seasoned debate and a spirit of compromise became the norm. …The country has come to grips with and move beyond [the most important problematic legacy of the framing of the national question and organizational culture] if is it to have any kind of redemption.’’ (P.280.)
Another scholar Professor Gebru Tareke, while not absolving the radicals from their many failings, finds it “hard to blame those young Ethiopian romantics and idealists who sincerely believed they were moving with the tide of progressive history.”
Impressed by their “uncommon, devotion, energy and dynamism,” he speaks glowingly of the extraordinary lengths they went to achieve their dreams and what they eventually were able to accomplish. “No other social group in the country fought so relentlessly and sacrificed so mightily for lofty ideas and ideals… United by a vision of a just society, a total rejection of the existing order, and an unfaltering commitment to changing it, they shaped political thought and action, ultimately giving birth to the Ethiopian political left.” (The Ethiopian Revolution P. 25-27.)
If this is what the historians say, what about fiction writers? How have the revolutionaries been portrayed in Ethiopian literature? There are a number of Amharic novels dealing with this topic and a few in English. Mulugeta Gudeta’s recent novel, Blood Ritual is a fictional account that appears to have been written with Bahru Zewde’s question in mind, though his unflattering portrayal of the main movers and shakers of the movement seems to point in the direction of an answer, ‘’Yes, they certainly do owe the nation apology.”
The narrator of the novel, Gebre, a hunchback, born to an indigent potter mother, widowed by the 1961 coup d’état, describes himself as “the product of two pregnancies-one aborted and the other successful.” At the opening chapter, we encounter him, repelled by “the sight and sound of guns and bloodshed.”, and find it repugnant to be born in such dreadful times.
Anyone with a nodding acquaintance with the history of Amharic literature cannot fail to notice the unmistakable resemblance to Abe Gubegna’s novella I refuse to be born, an indebtedness of narrative device the author duly acknowledges.
After a stay of eleven years a foetus in the womb, Gebre finally decides to be born at a time of the murder of a famous student activist Tilahun Gizaw (who appears in the novel by the name of Abel), who died on 28 December 1969, a year described by various writers, as a milestone in the history of the Ethiopian student movement. Upon his birth, we find him uttering those words, ‘Can’t they get things done without spilling blood?’ As one chosen by fate to be a witness to bloodletting and the throes the nation would pass through, he would find multiple occasions to ask this question the rest of his stay on earth.
As if to make up for his physical deformity, Gebre was endowed with preternatural ability to look into the past and the future. We are told that he could, “swing back and forth like a pendulum, seesawing between past events and future ones with some clarity, while chronicling present events with astonishing precision.” (P. 11)
While once loitering around the main campus, he happens to stumble on “those fire-spitting university students.” (p.14), who took a liking to him and befriended him. Thus, begun the fateful bond that tied his lot with the radical students, who called him “the loveable hunchback.” He harbours a strong faith in what the student leaders said…”, pinning his hope of a better life on them. Now that he is a favourite, he “spent most nights travelling from dormitory to the other, listening to their passionate speeches and slogans.”
With unfettered access this friendship afforded him, he becomes privy to the going-
Gashaw is the first student mentioned by Gebre, a leader who he looks up to, and regards almost as a saint because as an advocate of peace, he stands out as a beacon of hope in an atmosphere pervaded by animosity, lust for power, and acrimony.
The other student Gebre finds appealing is Arsema who, we are introduced to in the chapter titled, The Romantic Dreamer. The beautiful Arsema, daughter of a well-to-do family, is the only female in the novel who threw in her lot with the radical students. The revolutionary fervour that seized the campus was such that, “politics has so pervaded campus life that almost everyone was compelled to participate in order to avoid criticism and ostracism; even the children of the powerful and rich underwent ideological conversation.” (P. 25.) Such appears to be what happened to Arsema who was briefly attached to the ringleader of the movement Amha. But she soon breaks with him, finding him ‘‘self-proclaimed and arrogant revolutionary.’ (P. 30) and begins to distance herself from the firebrand, “the brightest student in the science faculty,” who wanted to bring her into the fold of “the new breed of radical students,” with a notion to produce a’’ Rosa Luxembourg out of her.’’ The committed revolutionary, however, had no real love for her, despising her for coming from a middle-class family. After a brief stay of being “benefactor of a
Out of deep distaste for bloodlust, she turns herself into a hippy figure longing for love, passion, and adventure and romance while not leaving the role of revolutionary altogether. Bidding farewell to the militants who swore by Marx, she declares, “Jesus may be my model revolutionary change…The Bible, not Marx. (P. 33). Alas, it was not long before she would be disillusioned and disclose to Gebre with a broken heart. “Jesus has no place in this crazy country,” when rosy dreams shattered.
Gebre, “the silent chronicler” observes, from the side-lines, the ways and conduct of the leaders. He finds the dealings of the militants as leaving much to be desired. He reserves his harshest criticism for Amha and Solomon, who are in a contest for president of the student council. He describes Amha (whom the reader suspects
Amha is locked in a bitter rivalry with Solomon, a voracious reader and son of a rich family, something his rival point to discredit his revolutionary credentials. For him, Solomon was a scion of wealthy exploiter s for whose ilk ‘’the revolution had no use.’’As one with more followers, Amha beats his opponent to the election and won. The exchange was not limited to verbal abuse, as Solomon was beaten up by followers of Amha, who led a successful campaign against him to make him lose the election. He would hold this as a grudge against him, biding his time to settle a score. While Arsema amuses herself by watching these “campus clowns vying for power,” Gebre decries Amha for being an insufferable person whose “response to a difference in outlook was always hatred, anger, and a sense of revenge. Deep down, he had patience only with those who shared his vision, power and privileges. (P. 42.)
By the time the Derg took power, Solomon readily lets himself be co-opted by the military government, becoming a famous agent and leader of the pollical school just opened, earning a reputation as ‘’the most fearsome of all the educated torturers the Derg regime could recruit,” (P.38). The opportune time for taking revenge on Amha comes now.
And he began a campaign to incriminate Amha by branding him as an undercover agent of the northern separatists. He had him thrown into jail, satisfying himself with, “a progressive physical and mental deterioration” of his enemy.
This enjoyment, however, was short-lived, as he himself would meet his comeuppance at the hands of the squad of the rival organisation.
Gashaw, the favourite revolutionary of the narrator, a “messenger of peace, tolerance and moderation”, was a pacifist whose plea for the tolerance was only to end up a cry in the wilderness, such was the charged and febrile atmosphere of the campus. True to his irenic orientation, he had espoused a stance called regime
Nonetheless, his embrace of compromise and toleration did not spare Gashaw from being consumed by the conflagration that followed the outbreak of the revolution. A Gandhi who chose to stick to the way of peace, who could not do anything but throw his hands in despair, watching helplessly as the two sworn rivals, Amha and Solomon leading the movement to its demise because of their implacable animosity for each other, was to join them to the grave. When Arsema broke the news to Gebre saying, “No one has been spared from the curse,” (p. 113), a great sadness overwhelms him. He just could not understand why a “soft-spoken and reasonable” person who ‘’preached reconciliation and unity” should be killed.
We also meet in the novel other influential personalities who left their mark on the student movement. Professor Kebede, who the narrator tells us was “the brain behind the radical students” (p. 44) is the only faculty member who, we are told, actively supported the cause of students. From a lengthy description of him, one can easily hazard a guess that he is none other than the late Dr. Eshetu Chole. Gebre is touched by his idealism and sincere devotion to the cause of the oppressed. Sensing he may not live long enough to see dream come true, he commiserates for him ‘’because he fought for the poor folks, like me, my mother and other miserable folks.” (p.44).
The professor is said to have edited Wuletaw’s (Walelign’s) famous article on the nationality question, an issue that much exercised the minds of the radicals. The salience of the issue is highlighted by the account are given in the novel of a student gathering an important event where a topic of considerable consequence was aired. This has gone down in the annals of history as one of the decisive moments in shaping the future course of the nation. It may be instructive here to hear what those who saw and heard it first-hand have to say about it. Bahru Zewde, for instance, recalls the effect it created on him when in attendance in the Christmas Hall of the main campus of the university. “The paper came like bolt from the blue, and as a
The other student who harangued the student body on the issue was Youssuf, a Sodo Guraghe who resented the ill-treatment his community suffered at the hands of other Christian Guraghe community. Yet he would end up deranged by his abuse of kaht, unlike the other militant by the name of Wada Dorosa, who championed of the cause Gamo people and ultimately sacrificed his life, “leading a peasant rebellion in his place of birth, during the nation-wide campaign.”
This was the end of the student radicals who paid dearly for mistakes, as the ‘’the silent chronicler ‘’ tells us, stemming from “youth, idealism and hardheartedness.” Yet, Gebre, the hunchback, though exasperated by the seemingly endless blood spilling he saw all around him, still nurses a hope, that the curse of bloodletting, as he calls it, “will end when the old generation that grew up with violence, fears and wars and hatred is replaced by a new generation that that is cured of the violence and hatred, it inherited from its forefathers. ‘’Let us hope it will.
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Can someone explain to me why Eprp members tend to write in English and not in Amharic? That is, for a wider Ethiopian audience where it really matters instead of the English speaker? Hiwot Tefera’s two books were first published in English and then translated into Amharic. And so on.
I can’t wait to read this book. Where can one find in Addis this privately published book? I support and like home grown writers such as this, not the perverted translation of foreign authors and largely the bogus curated “memoirs’ for posterity that filled the book market to the hilt.