school. From the mid-1950s, Protestant primary schools represented the first step into the national space for hundreds of rural Wolaita youth. In many ways, this change in attitude towards school from indifference or hostility to tactical engagement reflects a transformation in the relationship with the central government and its official language.

## 4.2. *The rural population goes to school*

As soon as they arrived in 1928, the missionaries set about translating the passages from the Bible that needed to be known for conversion purposes into the Wolaita language. This led to the publication in 1933 of a pamphlet titled *Tosay Yotis* (God has spoken), which contained 140 quotations from the Bible (Balisky 2009, 113). In the early 1940s, 900 gospels translated into the vernacular and 100 translated into Amharic were distributed in Wolaita (Fargher 1996, 171, 272–73). The missionaries taught the leaders of the converted communities a rudimentary level of literacy that was sufficient to enable them to read a biblical text and transmit it orally. Although literacy was not a prerequisite for baptism (Fargher 1996, 113), Protestantism led to an unprecedented spread of the written word in the Wolaita countryside. Hundreds of texts circulated and gave rise to collective readings, and tens of thousands of people were in direct or mediated contact with the written word. This time, however, it was no longer the instrument of an external power but the vector of an intimate conversion and collective reconstruction.

Evangelisation in vernacular languages had been authorised by the central government before the Italian occupation, but it was banned after liberation because of the official policy of Amharisation (Abebe 1998, 170). From the 1940s, only Amharic was tolerated, and from then on, converts were literate in the national language. Familiarisation with Amharic in its written form had effects that went beyond its strictly religious use. It led to a broadening of the political imagination by opening up the national space, although the extremely limited distribution of national media in the provinces, and even more so in the countryside, suggests that this phenomenon should not be exaggerated. While knowledge of the official language may not have been enough to enter the national imagination with a single step, it did confer a cultural capital that made it possible to be less powerless when moving into the place of the dominant. Also, because of the material constraints that hampered the construction of the school system, Haile Selassie's government decided to make use of missionary societies, and as early as 1944, an official decree established a ministerial committee to oversee the educational activities of foreign missions (UNESCO 1971, 425). Permits to establish missions were made contingent on the construction of primary schools that had to follow the official curricula of the Ministry of Education while being financed by the churches. Although they were reluctant to engage in a task that was not directly related to
evangelism, the missionaries were obliged to comply with these conditions. The policy began to bear fruit at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1960s, “Government schools [...] were limited to certain small towns and urban centres. But these church schools are available here and there at that time.”<fnref n="30" /> Until the 1974 revolution, primary education was shared between government schools and missionary schools: in the cities, it was government schools that taught the children of families close to the government, and in rural areas, the church schools were responsible for educating rural youth. However, it was not enough for schools to be available in order for them to be automatically populated with pupils; families also had to decide to engage with them, and the birth of rural school dynamics was gradual. In the 1940s, the literacy courses in Amharic organised by missionaries and converts had no official character. Institutionalisation arrived with the creation of the Soddo Bible School in 1947 (Elias 1987, 45). At that time, literate people were content with the rudiments of Bible reading. As Talemos Mana, a student at Protestant schools between 1967 and 1975, recalls:

> Being educated is beneficial for reading the Bible and becoming a leader in [the] local church area. So, with this in mind [...] our fathers, tried to, at least, attend up to grade 2, until they were able to read the Bible [...]. Their goal was mainly to be able to read the Bible, in Amharic, to interpret the Word, to preach the Word, to read the Word. So it did not go beyond that; most of them just quit their education from grade 3, grade 4.<fnref n="31" />

It was members of the next generation, first and foremost the children of these first literates, who were educated in the SIM schools. The process was therefore completed over two generations. The first learned to read and write for two years or just a little longer. Biblical mediators acquired a local reputation in the newly-structured communities around the Protestant churches as an alternative to that of the central government. From this newly-acquired social position, strengthened by the prospects opened up by familiarisation with the school concept and knowledge of Amharic, they pushed their children to attend school:

> The older people, [...] our fathers were highly oriented towards the advantages of modern education. [...] So later on, our fathers, our [...] grandfathers encouraged us [to] create awareness, to attend class and to go further, until we completed primary education, and so on. Some of them [the students] are from educated families, I mean... when I say “educated” it is relative. I said earlier that most of them have been educated up to grade 3 or grade 4 [...]. So some are from educated families and some from non-educated families. But most of the students

<footnote n="30">³⁰Talemos Mana (teacher and school administrator), interview, Soddo, 9 November 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="31">³¹Ibid.</footnote>
who have been attending class were from an educated family. For instance, my father attended up to grade 4 at the Christian Academy here. During their time, there was not even grade 1 or grade 2 in the local areas. Then he came to Soddo, the Ottona Christian Academy, and attended from grade 1 up to grade 4 in Ottona. So that is why you see, he motivated me, pushed me to go to school.<fnref n="32" />

Fathers and grandfathers were able to become aware of what school made possible, and to measure the possibilities offered by the acquisition of educational capital. The prospect of being able to escape dependency on the peasant condition through access to wages meant emancipation from domination; after a spiritual liberation through the adoption of Protestantism came material liberation through school. Abebe Fola, who entered a Protestant school in 1956, gives two reasons to explain why his father sent him to school: firstly, he came from a Protestant church family, and secondly, his father said that those who knew how to read had become their oppressors.<fnref n="33" /> Since the conquerors dominated because they knew how to read and write, his son had to do the same. Abebe Fola generalised his situation to cover the whole of Wolaita:

> Why did our people become more conscious about education? The ruling class that came from the Shawa government to administer or govern the Wolaita people knew how to read and write. That was a miracle for our people. And everybody became eager to write. They could easily understand Amharic without writing or reading, and they spoke it. But they couldn't write or read. Because the Amhara were reading and writing, our people became angry, and wanted to educate their children, and everybody wanted to send their children.<fnref n="34" />

This generalisation seems excessive: not everyone understood or spoke Amharic, and not everyone wanted to read and write. But Abebe Fola undoubtedly points to a key argument about mastering the official language in its written form as a resource and a way of obtaining a stake in power for oneself. Speaking Amharic was one of the indispensable criteria for “becoming Ethiopian,” with complete assimilation being characterised by the simultaneous adoption of an Amharic first name and membership of the national church. Although rural children who attended school had “Amhara” first names whether they wanted them or not, they did not adopt the official religion. They entered the nation in their own way, without fully complying with the conditions of the conqueror. Protestantism as an alternative endowed them with a strong, regenerated collective identity that gave them the confidence and foundation they needed to advance within the political and

<footnote n="32">³²Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">³³Abebe Fola, interview, November 2009.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴Ibid.</footnote>
cultural framework that had been imposed on them without feeling lost. Paradoxically, it seems that the schools that were run jointly with missionaries were not perceived as being foreign: the missionaries were seen as allies in a context in which the direct dominant power was the Ethiopian central government.

On the path from villages to the town's secondary school and on to obtaining paid employment in the service of the state, Protestant schools represented an intermediate place. Because the curriculum was the same, it was easy to move from one school to another.<fnref n="35" /> The only difference was moral education, which was based on Ethiopian Christianity in government schools and was taught by priests from the national church, whereas in missionary schools it was the morality of Protestant fundamentalism that was taught.<fnref n="36" /> The missionary schools also had other specific attributes, however. Although they were officially controlled by the government, they still enjoyed a high degree of autonomy. They were jointly financed by the local, regional and national churches, but had limited means, which meant that they had to use all available resources. Thus, as was the case in the literacy centres set up by Germame Neway, the teaching staff was made up of young people who, after completing the early grades in towns, had to interrupt their studies to go back to teach in the villages for a while. It took Abebe Fola nine years to complete grade 6: six years of study interspersed with three years of teaching.<fnref n="37" />

**5. Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold: education, planning, integration**

Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold has become a true local personality, and he is a complex character. A tireless and authoritarian worker with an almost total devotion to both the regime and the people, and convinced of the merits of uncompromising assimilation and the need for top-down reforms, he has worked hard to provide Wolaita with new infrastructure. In his recent detailed testimony in a collective book edited by Shiferaw Bekele, the former governor explains that the emperor entrusted him with the task of “making the Wolaita Ethiopians” (Wolde-Semaet 2013, 421). He places particular emphasis on the notions of unity, prosperity, security and justice. The policy he implemented to achieve these objectives can be summarised under three headings: rationalisation, centralisation and mobilisation, all used as levers for authoritarian development.

Before taking office, Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold visited Wolaita anony-
mously, observing and interviewing the population so that he would be able to

<footnote n="35">³⁵Paolos Sorsa (civil servant at the Ministry of Justice), interview, Addis Ababa, 21 December 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="36">³⁶Talemos Mana, interview, November 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="37">³⁷Abebe Fola, notes taken during a conversation, Soddo, 2 November 2010.</footnote>
develop an action plan. Once in office, he had a map of the area drawn up with the support of the national mapping body, the Central Mapping Authority, and conducted a statistical survey to find out the number of households living in Wolaita. In the same spirit of rationalisation, he imposed an orderly administrative culture. As soon as he arrived, he had the administration offices reorganised so that everything could be archived. Civil servants were required to put everything in writing, otherwise they would have to pay fines. Convinced that centralisation and development went hand in hand, he established administrative centres in each canton and had roads built to connect them to Soddo. To bring Wolaita closer to Addis Ababa, he brought in the telephone and improved the airstrip for aircraft. In the economic sphere, he established banking services and settled farmers on vacant land to develop cash crops (Wolde-Semaet 2013, 451–52, 458–62).

This structural work was accompanied by a great mobilisation effort. For Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold, the population had to be encouraged to participate in the reforms initiated by the government:

> They participated in kind. For example, when we built a school, they brought the timber. They worked as day labourers. In addition, each family contributed 1 ber. When they paid their taxes they also paid 1 ber as a contribution to development. Within two years, all the cantons were connected by roads. Not built by the government, but by the people themselves! When they saw a lorry pass by their house selling bananas or coffee... there was no need to go to Soddo... They were volunteers... even the children, even the women... Everyone contributed to the construction of the roads.<fnref n="38" />

The governor imposed this mobilisation and it is difficult to understand the actual level of public support for these compulsory working days. Nevertheless, Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold was driven by the idea of working for the people. Like Bogale Wallelu and Germame Neway before him, this represented a break from the practices of previous governors, who had been content to maintain order and punish the population. With him, the Wolaita discovered governmentality. Indeed, he made “a major change in the conception of power. It no longer stemmed from domination by war and the capacity to levy taxes on the dominated territories,” but rather was based “on the development of wealth through activities structured by the political authority” (Lascoumes 2004, 4).

In his recent written testimony and in an interview he gave me, he insisted on the idea that the administration must be at the service of the population, and not the other way round. He therefore wanted the population to have

<footnote n="38">³⁸Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold (Governor of Wolaita from 1963 to 1973), interview, Addis Ababa, 15 January 2011.</footnote>
confidence in the state and the administration so that they could be better integrated into the projects of power and in order to facilitate centralisation. To this end, he fought against wrongful imprisonment and took complaints by the population against representatives of the authorities seriously:

> When I arrive in a *wereda*, the first thing I do is visit the police station. I take their book, I look at it. When someone makes a complaint to the police, they file it. But sometimes they don't... they put anyone in jail. The first thing I do is go to the prison and count people, then I go back to the book and I check. Counting and checking. If there is even one person in the prison whose name is not written down, I take action immediately. And if someone comes to my office to complain to the canton governor or the village chief or the police, I immediately take him with me, and we go there and I check.<fnref n="39" />

If a police officer or member of the administration was found to be at fault, the governor would send a letter to Addis Ababa asking what action should be taken against him, and would suspend him from duty pending a reply (Wolde-Semaet 2013, 436).

He paid a great deal of attention to school education as a tool for integration and discipline. As soon as he arrived in Wolaita, he undertook the construction of schools in the new administrative centres he created in the various cantons. In order to do this, he collaborated with the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), which is very active in financing school buildings throughout Ethiopia. The SIDA's financial contribution amounted to 50%, with the rest being paid for by the population.<fnref n="40" /> Fourteen new schools were established in this way.<fnref n="41" /> On the other hand, Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold's nationalism and a desire for unity led to arm-wrestling with the Protestant schools:

> They had schools up to grade 4, to learn to read the Bible. So I said to them, ‘Teach your religion, that’s fine, you have the right, but don’t just teach reading the Bible, teach how to read and write!’ The students couldn’t even write properly. So, every year, add a grade: grade 5, grade 6 etc. or else I told them, I’ll close your schools, everywhere!<fnref n="42" />

The Protestant schools were academically limited, and were mostly too independent in the eyes of the governor. By pushing them to open higher grades, he required them to align themselves with the curriculum of the

<footnote n="39">³⁹Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹WZEO, የትምህርት ተቋማት ዝርዝር ዝርዝር ፣ መቼ እንደተሠሩ የሚግልጽ መረጃ (List of schools and dates of their construction, 2010).</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴²Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold, interview, January 2011.</footnote>
Ministry of Education, and worked to implement the official policy of the central government.

There is an evident continuity between Bogale Wallelu in the 1940s and 1950s, Germame Neway in the late 1950s and Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold between 1963 and 1973. All three embodied the advance of the state and the idea of progress through centralisation, assimilation and “enlightened authoritarianism.” All three men were promoters of Amharisation through education. Their work, together with that of the Protestant communities, provided the Wolaita with an educational seedbed that made it possible for a section of the dominated population to appropriate a legitimate culture. Rural youth completed the first two, three or four grades in their village schools before going to the school in the nearest administrative centre established by Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold or to the missionary school in Ottona, and then received their secondary education at the government school in Soddo. The school in Ottona, a familiar place because it was Protestant, is situated on the edge of the town of Soddo, and was often a link between the countryside and the town, and between the small village schools and the secondary school in the capital of Wolaita.

**6. The timid dynamics of schooling for girls**

In the 1943–44 school year, about 20 girls were enrolled in Soddo, compared with 240 boys (Demeke 1985, 6), about 10% of the total. This was roughly in line with the national average of 9.9 percent of female enrolment in 1944–45 (Teshome 1979, 68). Until the late 1950s, the number of girls in school remained negligible, and none finished primary school,<fnref n="43" /> but a new, very timid, dynamic emerged in the final decade of Haile Selassie’s regime. The first generation of girls who completed secondary school had entered primary school in the early 1960s. In 1959–60, national female enrolment was 22% in primary school and 7% in secondary school;<fnref n="44" /> in 1974, on the eve of the revolution, it was 27% and 17%, respectively.<fnref n="45" /> These figures show a relative stagnation in primary school enrolment, but indicate that more girls were attending secondary school. However, while enrolment rates show that one-quarter of secondary school students were girls, very few left with a Grade 12

<footnote n="43">⁴³Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga, interview, November 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴MOEFA, *Government, Mission, Private, Community and Church Schools 1959–60* (1961), 7.</footnote>

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵World Bank, *Education in Ethiopia: Strengthening the Foundation For Sustainable Progress* (2004), 117. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7434. The figures used by the World Bank for this period are the same as those produced by the Ethiopian government.</footnote>
diploma: in Soddo in 1974, only 4 out of the 350 students who completed twelfth grade were girls.<fnref n="46" />

In small provincial towns, the first girls to finish secondary school in the mid-1970s were part of a relatively homogenous and newly-formed social group: they were mostly daughters of teachers or civil servants from the first generation of men who had attended school in the 1940s and 1950s. These fathers were educational activists at a time when school was far from being a mainstream institution.<fnref n="47" /> The 1940s and 1950s were a period when the political socialisation taught at school that linked education to progress was functioning. But fathers did not just want to educate their daughters for specifically political reasons: they were thinking about their futures, and they subscribed to a discourse of individual emancipation that linked social promotion and the rebalancing of gender relations within the couple and the family. By acquiring a job and financial autonomy, their daughters would not be dependent on their future husbands. The development of education in the second half of the 20th century was aimed at training people to take on new functions in the tertiary sector. Within this movement, “women’s occupations” (Perrot 1987) emerged in Ethiopia, particularly teaching and nursing, which, together with secretarial work, were almost the only outlets for women graduates (Tsehai 1984, 18).

Fathers working as priests or teachers in Catholic schools also schooled their daughters. This was a condition laid down by the Capuchin missionaries so that they would be able to carry out their duties. Thus, Belaynesh Antonios and his sisters attended school although neither their mother nor their father, who was a priest and teacher in a Catholic school, were particularly in favour of it. However, Wolaita Catholic priests and teachers were few in number, and the number of girls taking classes in Catholic schools was not significantly higher than it was in government schools. Belaynesh Antonios recalls that she was the only girl in her class when she started school in the early 1960s.<fnref n="48" /> There were also very few girls in rural Protestant schools.<fnref n="49" /> The first converts, who had been summarily taught to read and transmit the word of the Bible in their communities, sent their boys to school rather than their girls. In this respect, they were no different from the rest of society, especially since the form of Protestantism conveyed by the SIM, which sought to preserve

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶Kassech Mulugeta (pupil from 1960 to 1974, teacher), interview, Soddo, 31 December 2009; Yemesrach Alula (teacher), interview, Soddo, 15 December 2009. Both were among the first four female secondary school graduates.</footnote>

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷Tsehai Zerihun (civil servant at the Ministry of Agriculture, school principal), interview, Addis Ababa, 7 January 2011.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸Belaynesh Antonios, interview, November 2009.</footnote>

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹Talemos Mana, interview, November 2010.</footnote>
and recreate “ideal” patriarchal-type structures (Cooper 2006, 22), did not particularly encourage them to send their daughters to school.

The positions taken by mothers varied: some were in favour of their daughters' education, others less so. The first argument put forward by the latter group, as we have already mentioned, was the loss of valuable help with domestic labour. This was also why girls whose fathers were teachers were able to continue their education. Although working conditions and wages deteriorated later on, the generation that began their education in the 1950s were paid good wages. As a result, their daughters were very much released, if not actually excused, from domestic chores by the presence of female servants in their families. Other mothers were outspoken in their support for their daughters' schooling. Tsehai Zerihun, for example, remembers her mother saying to her: "If you are not educated, you will be someone's wife. They will beat you and insult you, and your life will be dark."<fnref n="50" /> Mothers who had never been to school themselves supported the emancipation of their daughters from unequal gender relations within the couple and the family. They were the daughters of teachers, civil servants and willing mothers—the sociological profile of this generation of female pupils closely resembles that of the first girls who had attended school three decades earlier in French West Africa, whose trajectories have been well analysed by Pascale Barthélémy (Barthélémy 2010).

At the end of the regime, from the mid-1970s, society was slowly becoming used to girls going to school and, through the value of examples, negative prejudices were gradually fading. Women were beginning to tell young students how lucky they were to be able to go to school, so that they would not have to share their own lives later on. This is what Tsehai Zerihun says about a neighbour: "You are lucky, a lucky girl. You're successful, you go to school, at least you'll be able to defend yourself. When you grow up, when you get married, nobody will beat you. If he suits you, you'll stay together, if he doesn't suit you, you'll feed yourself, because you'll have a job, you'll be educated."<fnref n="51" />

So it seems that on the eve of the revolution, the idea that education did not make “bad girls” but less dependent wives, and therefore less vulnerable, was slowly gaining ground. But it was a timid phenomenon, and until the revolution, the schooling of girls remained extremely insignificant, and was condemned by the community.<fnref n="52" /> In 1974, schools were still a male space.

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰Tsehai Zerihun, interview, January 2011.</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="52">⁵²Yemesrach Alula, interview, January 2010.</footnote>
**Conclusion**

Between 1941 and 1974, the sociology of pupils was gradually transformed. The first to attend school were children from the towns where government schools were concentrated. Most were the children of notables, settlers or Wolaita auxiliary workers who had already been assimilated into the culture of the centre to varying degrees. Because of their connections with the government, their families were aware of the bureaucratic centralisation of the state, of which schools were a key instrument. Being from families from the north or simply having grown up in a city, these children were closer to the school culture. Their knowledge of Amharic and their inclusion in the national collective imagination gave them a sense of belonging that brought them politically, culturally and emotionally closer to school. For these children, educational capital complemented this inherited cultural capital; it consisted in learning the administrative and technical skills that had become necessary in order to maintain or develop within positions of power. For the local elites, schooling meant adapting to political transformations, to the development of the administrative state and to these written practices. Rural people began to attend school later, through the literacy centres set up in the countryside by Governor Germame Neway and the SIM schools. Because they lacked the cultural capital the urban dwellers had inherited, schooling also meant first bridging the gap (political and cultural) that separated them from school. However, although school sociology diversified in terms of social classes, it remained openly masculine, even though a new movement was beginning to emerge in the early 1970s.
Chapter 3

History, Civic Education and Literature:
Defining the Nation's Identity
and Projecting its Destiny

A study of history, civic education and literature helps us to identify, classify and prioritise the political aims of a school. School-based knowledge must be compared with curriculum requirements and the knowledge produced outside, from which a school partly differs by virtue of its pedagogical function (Chervel 1988). The aims of education as defined in the school curriculum were “to foster in children the traditional values of loyalty, unity, and devotion to emperor and country, which have sustained the nation for a thousand years”<fnref n="1" />, “to fit them to contribute as fully as possible to the spiritual, cultural, social and, economic progress of his country,” and “to participate efficiently in the productive work of the world”.<fnref n="2" /> Emphasis was placed on patriotism and a future of progress, both nationally and for humanity in general.

Making “choices of historical sequences” according to “a citizenship pro-
jected for the pupils” (De Cock 2009, 2–3) meant that the history taught
in the classroom was about teaching the nation. Civic education legitimised
power, the moral values to be adhered to and a certain type of model citizen.
Finally, the literature reflected concerns that linked moral and political issues.
Ethiopian literature of the 1940s and 1950s was produced to be used by the
minority who had passed through the school system, if not by the pupils them-
selves. It reflected the aspirations of a generation of nationalist, progressive
writers whose loyalty was to the regime (Molvaer 2008). This chapter seeks to
understand how teaching expressed moral formation with building the nation
and citizenship.

Two separate periods can be distinguished as far as textbooks are con-
cerned, whereas the same literary works were used throughout the period
between 1941 and 1974. During the 1940s and 1950s, Ethiopian textbooks
were developed to teach Amharic and Ethiopian history, and many non-
school textbooks were also used, especially Amharic novels. The authors were

<footnote n="1">¹MOEFA, *Elementary Schools Curriculum, Years I-VI* (1971), 1.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²MOEFA, *Secondary School Curriculum, Book I* (1963), vi-vii.</footnote>
Ethiopian scholars or expatriate development workers.<fnref n="3" /> Owing to lack of funds, world history courses were based on textbooks that had been brought in from England and the United States. In the 1960s and 1970s, teaching materials for all subjects were produced specifically for Ethiopia, and were written by Ethiopian or Western scholars from Addis Ababa University, reputable secondary schools or the Ministry of Education with expertise in the country.<fnref n="4" /> The authors tried to adapt knowledge to the local environment as much as possible while maintaining an international perspective.

# 1. The Semitic and Christian nation

The *Tarikenna Messale* (Stories and Fables), which were written in the early 1940s, have accompanied generations of children as they learn to read. Before discovering the short stories, poems and tales with their moral content, children opened the *Tarikenna Messale* to paragraphs that explained the official political philosophy, which was presented in the form of four definitions: country, people, flag and king. The definition of “country” emphasised the historical, linguistic, cultural and religious unity of the empire: “A country is a part of the world inhabited by a unified population, bound by history, language, religion, customs, hopes, joys and misfortunes” (አገር በታሪክ በቋንቋ በሃገማኖት በልማድ በተስፋ በደስታ በመከራ ተሳስሮ የሚኖር አንድ ወገን የሆነ ሕዝብ የሚኖርበት የዓለም ክፍል ነው).<fnref n="5" /> Implicitly, and yet clearly, the identity of all of Ethiopia was that of the Christian North, and everyone had to recognise themselves in this identity, regardless of their mother culture, region of origin or schooling.

## 1.1. *Myths of origins*

The history that was taught established the existence of a Semitic and Christian Ethiopia that was several thousand years old. It was bordered approximately

<footnote n="3">³The works of the writer Kebede Mikael were school classics. Tekle Tsadik Mekuria, a pupil at Tefari Mekonnen School before the Italian occupation, wrote books on the history of Ethiopia for use in schools in the early 1940s that were still in use in the early 1960s; MOE, *List of Books and Equipment for Academic Secondary Schools* (Addis Ababa, 1960).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴Kiros Habte Selassie and Mazengia Dina, authors of the 1969 *Short Illustrated History* textbook. Bairu Tafla, author of the grade 10 history textbook published in 1974, was one of the historians at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. To mention only a few examples of foreign authors: Roland Turenne from Quebec, author of several geography textbooks in the early 1970s, was a teacher at Tefari Mekonnen School; Patrick Gilkes, author of “Teaching Notes” for Ethiopian history courses in secondary schools, worked at the Ministry of Education; and British historian Richard Pankhurst, founder of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, was involved in the production of history and English textbooks.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵MOEFA, ታሪኽና ምሳሌ ፌኛ መጽሐፍ (*Stories and Fables, Book 1*) (1942).</footnote>
by the Red Sea to the north and east (as far as the coasts of present-day
Somaliland), the Nile to the west and the borders of present-day Kenya to the
south. In school textbooks, the term "Ethiopia" was used to describe both this
territory, which went far beyond the jurisdiction of the Ethiopian state, and
the Ethiopian state itself.

The story began with the Asian origins of the settlement. The Ethiopian people migrated from southern Arabia and Israel several thousand years before Christ. The immigrants, who were the sons of Shem, mixed with the native inhabitants, the sons of Cham, thereby giving them a superior civilisation. The second stage was the story of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. In around 1000 BC, the Queen of Sheba ruled over Ethiopia and Yemen. One day, she decided to undertake a great journey to King Solomon to be inspired by his administration and wisdom. After a lengthy stay in Israel, she returned to her kingdom pregnant with the future Menilek I, the son of Solomon and the mythical founder of the line of Ethiopian emperors. As he became a man, and shortly before inheriting the throne, the young prince decided that he wished to meet his father. He went to Jerusalem, from where he returned with the Tablets of the Law. At this ancient stage of their history, the Ethiopians were a Semitic people, a depository of divine law, governed by a dynasty descended from the wisest of the biblical kings, of which Haile Selassie was the last descendant.<fnref n="6" /> These two myths, of the sons of Shem and the Queen of Sheba, were included in the textbooks of the 1950s, as well as in those published in the early 1970s. These books were based on a mythical past that did not correspond to the academic history of the same period. This is a reflection of the nationalist function of school history, not the dissemination of a "simplified state of knowledge" to be used by children.

Ethiopia prospered under the Aksum Empire until the 6th century AD. During these centuries of greatness, it welcomed Jews fleeing Babylon and Greek traders. The former brought their religion, the latter their culture and wisdom. The kingdom attained a high level of civilisation.<fnref n="7" /> The kings and merchants of Aksum maintained diplomatic and commercial relations with the Byzantine Empire, Persia and India, and Aksum was one of the most powerful kingdoms in the world.<fnref n="8" /> It was during this period that Ethiopia officially converted to Christianity, which was introduced in the 4th century AD by two young Greek Christians, Sidracos and Frumentos, who had accompanied a merchant whose ship had been wrecked on the Ethiopian coast. Gathered at the king's court, they were committed to the education of the

<footnote n="6">⁶MOEFA, *A Modern History for Ethiopia, Grades 6–12* (1952), 7–11.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷MOEFA, የኢትዮጵያ ጥንት ታሪክ ቭቓ ከፍል (Ancient History of Ethiopia, Grade 4) (1970), 20.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸MOEFA, *History For Young Ethiopians, Grade 10, Book 4* (1974), 88.</footnote>
heir to the throne, the future king, Abrehä, to whom they taught Christianity, and so the dynasty descended from Solomon became Christian.<fnref n="9" /> With the Semitic origins of the settlement and the Solomonian descent of the emperors, Christianity placed Ethiopia definitively on the side of the Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilisations.

This system of arranging the history of the nation associated it with a prestigious past, in an international context in which the civilisation of reference was Western, and Ethiopia was among the so-called “underdeveloped” nations. In the patriotic context of the years following liberation from Italian occupation, this national history placed the only uncolonised country in Africa among the great nations of world history. It had existed since biblical times, and its past was inscribed in the prestigious Mediterranean antiquity, whose legacy Europe had captured for its sole benefit.

## 1.2. Muslims, pagans and “Galla”: repulsive figures

The definition of a specific identity implies a gesture of distinction. This meant that the history that was taught at school left out the societies that fell under the authority of the Ethiopian state at the end of the 19th century, or else represented them negatively. The Christian kingdom had survived thanks to its centuries-long resistance to aggression from its pagan and Muslim neighbours, who had been integrated by the conquests of Menilek II. In the 1940s and 1950s, pagans and Muslims were portrayed in particularly unflattering ways. The 1952 handbook referred to the “great Muslim threat,” and described Muslims as cruel people who only cared about war. The same textbook, which told of the victory of Emperor Amdä Säyon over the Sultan of Yifat in the 13th century, described the latter as a “foolish sultan.”<fnref n="10" /> The Oromo, one of the largest (albeit very diverse) populations in the country, were presented as pagan intruders, and were seen as a threat, and as repellent. The famous Ethiopian story of Tekle Tsadik Mekuria, which was recommended as a reading book for students and as a reference book for social science teachers,<fnref n="11" /> contained this passage:

> ጋሎች ሕግና ሥርዐት የላቸውም የ አንድ ወንድ እስከ ዐሥር ሴት ያገባል ኢ እነዚህም በዙ እየወለዱ ይረባሉ ። ክርስቲያኑ ግን ተመጻዳቂ ስለ ሆነ ግማሹ ድንግላይ እኩሉ ቄስና መነሶሴ ቄራቢ እየሆነ በመኖሩ አይረባምና ። ቀጥሩ እያደር ያንሳል የ በዚህም ላይ ክክርስቲያኑ ወገን ጦርነት ከሚሄደው የማይሄደው ይበልጣል ኢ ይኸውም ባላገርና ነጋዴ ቄስና ደብታራ ነው ። [...] ከሄደው ውስጥ ጓዝና ሰፈር ጠባቂ ይሆናል ። ጋሎች

<footnote n="9">⁹MOEFA, የኢትዮጵያ ጥንት ታሪካ ቱኛ ክፍል (Ancient History of Ethiopia, Grade 4) (1970), 24.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰MOEFA, *A Modern History for Ethiopia* (1952), 10.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹MOEFA, *List of Books and Equipment for Academic Secondary Schools* (1960), 2; MOEFA, *Textbooks Production Program 1956–1960* (1960), 24.</footnote>
ግን ከመካከላቸው ድንግላይ ቄስ መነሻሴ ደብታራ ባላገር ነጋዴ አልጋ ጠባቂ ጊዝ ጠባቂ የላቸውም። ሁሉም በነፍስ ወክፍ ለጦርነት ይሰለፋሉ።

The Galla lack both law and discipline. A man can marry up to ten women, resulting in multiplication through the birth of numerous children. However, the Christian community is sanctified; some members are ascetics, others are priests, monks, or communicants. They do not focus on multiplying, and the [Christian] numbers remain insufficient. Furthermore, within the Christian community, those who abstain from going to war outnumber those who participate; these include peasants, merchants, priests, and scholars. [...] Among those who engage in warfare are porters and aides-de-camp. Contrastingly, the Galla lack ascetics, priests, monks, scholars, peasants, merchants, aides-de-camp, and porters among them. All of them align themselves in battle for war.<fnref n="12" />

Tekle Tsadik Mekuria attributes these words to a high 16th century Christian dignitary. However, readers were not offered any critical distance. The Oromo were identified, as they were in all textbooks, by the derogatory term “Galla.” They were an imaginary counter-model against which Ethiopian identity was defined. They did not practice agriculture or trade. They had no priests or scholars, and so had no religion or culture. Characterised by a strong propensity to proliferate, their main concern seemed to be to wage war on the Christians so that they could take away their territories. They were described as an inferior population, a society without morals and lacking any form of social differentiation. Ultimately, their paganism and savagery stood in opposition to the religion and civilisation of Christian Ethiopia. The term “Galla” was first used to describe the Oromo, but it also applied to other more minority populations who had been incorporated by the conquests of the late 19th century. In the testimony he left of the final expedition of Menilek II’s armies against the Wolaita kingdom in 1896, the traveller Vanderheym spoke of the “Gallas of the Wolaita.”<fnref n="13" /> The name might also include the Hadiya, the Kambatta and the Sidama.

Textbooks from both the 1950s and 1970s summed up the historical role of Muslims and “heathens” as a threat. The kingdom of Aksum remained powerful until the 7th century: that is, until the birth of Islam. As the Red Sea became a Muslim lake, Aksumite trade declined, ushering in a long period of isolation and decline. It was at this time that a queen from the south, Yodit, invaded Ethiopia. She reigned for a few years, during which she burned books and destroyed churches. According to the Grade 4 textbook of 1970, she would

<footnote n="12">¹²Tekle Tsadik Mekuria, የኢትዮጵያ ታሪክ ታሪክ ከዐጭ ልብነ ድንግል ድንግል እስከ ዐጭ ቴዎሮስ (History of Ethiopia from Emperor Lebnä Dengel to Emperor Tewodros) (1964), 96.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³J. G. Vanderheym, *Une expédition avec le Negous Ménélik (vingt mois en Abyssinie)* (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1896).</footnote>
have been a “Falasha,” a term used to describe Ethiopian Jews.<fnref n="14" /> In the 1974 Grade 10 textbook, she was described as either Jewish or pagan.<fnref n="15" /> In both cases, she was an enemy of Christianity, and therefore of Ethiopia. She destroyed the cultural heritage of the kingdom of Aksum and hastened its downfall.

Although the Christian kingdom had regained its strength since the 13th century and the restoration of the Solomonian Dynasty, a new phase of decline was about to begin, once again due to Islam. In the 16th century, Imam Ahmed, who was called Ahmed Gragn ("the left-handed one") by the Christians, invaded the kingdom. Like Yodit centuries earlier, he burned churches and "killed many Christians."<fnref n="16" /> Ethiopia survived thanks to the tenacity of Emperor Gelawedewos and the help of troops sent by the King of Portugal, an episode that is told as an act of solidarity between Christians. From the second half of the 16th century, Ethiopia had to face the Oromo migrations. In the 1974 Grade 10 manual, they were described thus:

> First, they invaded the provinces of Dewaro and Fatagar. Another branch invaded Harar at about the same time. Those who invaded Dewaro and Fatagar occupied the plateau of Shoa. From this region, different groups of Galla invaders conquered Welega, Illubabor, Jimma, Wollo, Gojjam, Dembia and Tigre.<fnref n="17" />

It was then said that the emperors Sertse-Dengel and Susneyos had saved the Christian kingdom from destruction by the “Galla” by fighting them and settling them down. This vision was not unique to textbooks. The author of these quotations, Bairu Tafla, was a historian at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, where the elite of the Ethiopian academy could be found, and he was merely echoing a common opinion among historians. The point here is not to suggest that the Christian kingdom did not have to fight against the Muslim kingdoms, which were then its neighbours, or that the settlement of the Oromo people went smoothly, but rather to point out that history was taught exclusively from the point of view of the Christian kingdom, and presented entire constituent parts of the nation in an entirely negative way.

The textbooks that were produced in the 1960s and 1970s, however, offered a less caricatural view. In the Grade 7 textbook published in 1970, for example, pupils could read that Islam, like Christianity, was one of the world's major religions, and that Ethiopia had many Muslims.<fnref n="18" /> These passages suggested that they could be seen as members of the national community, and not only

<footnote n="14">¹⁴MOEFA, የኢትዮጵያ ጥንት ታሪክ ታሪክ ቩኛ ክፍል (Ancient History of Ethiopia, Grade 4) (1970), 34.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵MOEFA, *History For Young Ethiopians, Grade 10, Book 4* (1974), 91.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶Ibid., 118.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷Ibid., 120.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸MOEFA, *History for Young Ethiopians, Grade 7* (1970), 11 and 24.</footnote>
as enemies. This did not reflect a radical change in perspective, however: although the Grade 10 textbook published in 1974, in the very last year of the regime, no longer included the crude caricatures of the 1952 textbook, Muslims were still the historical enemy. In addition, some of the old textbooks in which Muslims and “Galla” were blatantly denigrated continued to be used. Ethiopian civilisation was defined in comparison with them, and the idea that Ethiopia was made in spite of them still persisted. As time went by, however, the messages became more ambiguous: they were sometimes still hostile and contemptuous, but on occasion more open. The fact remains that these “Others” were not the inhabitants of distant countries, or even neighbours. While the expansion of the borders of the empire by conquest had made them subjects of the emperor, history textbooks reduced them to second-class subjects, beyond the legitimate scope of the nation. This symbolic violence echoed that exercised by the representatives of power in the societies of the south.

Historical links with Africa were depicted as being extremely tenuous. In the Grade 4 textbook, one short line was devoted to the African provenance of the gold and ivory exported by Aksum, compared with several paragraphs and repetitions on the Semitic origins of the settlement. The ancient Semites who had crossed the Red Sea had mixed with the indigenous inhabitants to form the Ethiopian people, but the latter had played no historical role in terms of civilisation, and it was from them that the “Galla” were descended. In an empire that had become extremely multi-religious and multicultural, the history of the nation imposed a Semitic and Christian framework in which pretenders to a political and social existence had to blend in. For the pupils from the defeated populations, the school curriculum left no other choice than to deny their own culture and accept the identity of the power that had subjugated their grandfathers.

## 2. The deified emperor

### 2.1. *Solomonian legitimacy*

The mythical account that established the Solomonic descent of the emperors came from the official historiography that had been drawn up by the state and the church since the 13th century, followed by the academic history of orientalist influence. It was presented as historically proven in the first history textbook written especially for Ethiopian schools in 1952 and in the Grade 4 textbook published in 1970.<fnref n="19" /> The secondary school textbook for grades 9–12 published in 1969 offered a more nuanced view, without daring to actually question it. The authors pointed out that this story could not be proved.

<footnote n="19">¹⁹MOEFA, *A Modern History for Ethiopia, Grades 6–12* (1952), 7–11; MOEFA, የኢትዮጵያ ጥንት ታሪክ ፍኛ ከፍል (Ancient History of Ethiopia, Grade 4) (1970), 9–19.</footnote>
However, because they were not able to question the origin of the dynasty
of which Haile Selassie was the last representative, they preserved the myth
by performing a somewhat confused pirouette, writing: “The story of the
Queen of Sheba and Solomon may *well be* true but there is practically no
*historical* evidence for it. Even if the story is not true it does not mean that the
emperors were not descended from Solomon.”<fnref n="20" /> The Constitutions of 1931
and 1955 only affirmed the legitimacy of the Shewa Dynasty, which had
appropriated the myth of the Solomonian origin of the emperors for its sole
benefit. A fundamental element of the official ideology, it was recalled in civic
education classes, which especially cited Article 2 of the 1955 Constitution,
which stated: “The Imperial Dignity shall remain perpetually attached to the
line of Haile Selassie I, descendant of King Sahle Selassie, [which] descends
without interruption from the dynasty of Menilek I, son of the Queen of
Ethiopia, the Queen of Sheba, and King Solomon of Jerusalem.”<fnref n="21" />

The history that was taught at school clearly confirmed the hegemony of
the Shewa Dynasty *vis-à-vis* the other royal lineages of the northern provinces.
It was the only authentic heir of Aksum. The ambiguous approach adopted
towards the Zagwe Dynasty, which reigned in the 11th and 12th centuries,
is significant in this respect. While devoting a few lines to King Lalibela's
remarkable architectural achievements—the eleven churches cut into the
rock—the 1970 Grade 4 manual stated that the Lasta Dynasty had forcibly
removed a Solomonian Dynasty that had been weakened by Muslim encir-
clement and Yodit invasions. It also reported that these emperors came from an
indigenous population—Zagwe or Agaw—and were therefore non-Semitic.<fnref n="22" />
The Grade 10 manual published four years later attributed a more respectable
status to them, describing a pious dynasty that had left a magnificent legacy
to Ethiopia and to the Christian world in general. However, it remained
a second-rate dynasty, appearing as a parenthesis before the return of the
Solomonians in the 13th century. This return was presented as a rebirth after
the “Dark Ages” that had followed the decline of the kingdom of Aksum.
However, the author of the Grade 10 textbook, the historian Bairu Tafla, pro-
posed replacing this term with “Early Middle Age” because of the discoveries
that had been made from new sources. However, the chapter devoted to the
“Ethiopian medieval civilization” only covered the 13th and 15th centuries,
those of the restoration of the Solomonian Dynasty. It showed how power had
been strengthened through a reorganised and fortified administration, and
how religion and culture had flourished and spread through the construction

<footnote n="20">²⁰MOEFA, *Ethiopia. A Short Illustrated History, Grades 9–12* (1969), 23.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">²¹MOEFA, *History For Young Ethiopians. Part 2, Civics, Book 2, Grade 8* (1974), 139.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²²MOEFA, የኢትዮጵያ ጥንት ታሪክ ፣ ተኛ ክፍል (Ancient History of Ethiopia, Grade 4) (1970), 38.</footnote>
of numerous churches and monasteries, the translation of Arabic works and
the production of new Ethiopian works. As part of the same movement, edu-
cation had developed through enriched and codified teaching. The Ethiopian
emperors had regained an authority that enabled them to maintain respect for,
and even control, the neighbouring Muslim powers.<fnref n="23" /> Ethiopia had emerged
from its period of retreat and entered a phase of fulfilment, one that lasted
until the “Era of Princes” (1755–1855), when imperial power gave way to that
of the great regional lords, and an Oromo Dynasty, the Yajju, appointed and
dismissed the emperors.

The advent of Emperor Tewodros II in 1855 brought an end to this
period of fragmentation and ushered in what is commonly referred to as
the history of modern Ethiopia. The school curriculum characterised this
phase by three interdependent phenomena that came together in the person
of Haile Selassie: the restoration of unity through the centralisation of power,
the safeguarding of independence in the colonial context and Ethiopia’s
commitment to progress.

## 2.2. Haile Selassie: from mythical hero to enlightened monarch

The last of the definitions presented at the beginning of the *Tarikenna Messale*
reading books was titled "The king: source of power and dignity." There was
no lack of attributes and metaphors to describe and justify the nature of his
power:

የሕዝብ እረኛ፤ የፍርድ ሚዛን፤ የሃይማኖት ጠባቂ የአስተዳደር መሪ የአንድነት ማሰሪያ የጦር ሠራዊት ጠቅላይ የአገር ኩራት የታሪክ መገናኛ፤ የጀግናነትና የበጎ ሥራ ሺለሚ ንጉሥ ነው። ንጉሥ በመቀባቱ ሕዝብን ለመጠበቅ ሕግና ሥርዓትን ለማስፈጻም ከእግዚአብሔር አደራ የተቀበለ አባት ነው። [...] ንጉሥን ማክበር ማፍቀርና ትእዛዙን መፈጸም ለኢትዮጵያ ልጆች ሁሉ የተቀደስ ሥራ ነው።

The king serves as the shepherd of his people, the embodiment of justice, the
protector of religion, the leader of the administration, the source of unity, the
commander of the armies, the pride of the country, the focal point of history, and
the one who recognizes and rewards heroism and charitable acts. Endowed with
divine authority, the king acts as the father to those attached to him, entrusted
with the responsibility of enforcing law and order to safeguard the people. [...]
Respecting and loving the king, as well as carrying out his orders, is a sacred duty
for all the children of Ethiopia.<fnref n="24" />

As a political and religious leader, it was from God that the emperor
had received his appointment of political, administrative and legal power,

<footnote n="23">²³MOEFA, *History For Young Ethiopians, Grade 10, Book 4* (1974), 86–101.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">²⁴MOEFA, ታሪክና ምሳሌ ፎኛ መጽሐፍ (Stories and Fables, Book 1) (1942), first pages unnumbered.</footnote>
without which there was no community. It was therefore as much a mission
as a prerogative. The emperor was the guardian of religion as the basis of
the identity of the nation, and of the territory as a holy land. He was the
shepherd without whom the people would have been lost, the protective father
to whom obedience was owed and, in the image of God, the great retributor,
who bestowed rewards or punishments. He was the focal point of history
and the source of unity, and was the metaphor for Ethiopia, the symbol and
guarantor of its existence. Ultimately, the emperor was the cornerstone of
the entire nationalist ideological edifice. This was not a general, disembodied
theory: these functions and attributes were specifically intended for Haile
Selassie. A succession of Solomonian emperors had been the backbone of three
millennia of Ethiopian history, but Haile Selassie was its culmination, the
final outcome from which history had to be understood. Arguing pedagogical
necessities, school curricula were very clear on this subject:

The long history of Ethiopia creates the problem of giving the child an adequate picture of his country's past without burdening him with too many details, all of which are important but not possible to include. The history as outlined, therefore, begins with His Imperial Majesty and His Family before going into the remote past.<fnref n="25" />

Haile Selassie was omnipresent. At primary school level, two textbooks, የቀዳማዊ ኃይለ ሥላሴ ታሪክ (YäQädamawi Haile Selassie Tarik, History of Haile Selassie I, 1930–41) and አዲስ ዘመን ታሪክ (Addis Zäman Tarik, History of the New Era, 1941–57), were exclusively devoted to him, while just one, የኢትዮጵያ ታሪክ ከንግስት ሳባ እስከ ደግማዊ ምኒለክ YäEthiopia Tarik KäNegest Saba eskä Dagmawi Menilek (History of Ethiopia from the Queen of Sheba to Menilek II) covered three entire millennia.<fnref n="26" /> The 1952 textbook, which dealt with the whole of Ethiopian history since the Queen of Sheba, devoted 43 pages out of 75 to Haile Selassie. The narrative was organised in such a way that each reign since Emperor Tewodros II (1855–68) was a step towards his own, marking progress towards final fulfilment. It was an account of the transition from the old to the new, from feudalism to centralisation, from the traditional to the modern.

Tewodros II was the first emperor who sought to put an end to the
fragmentation of the “Era of Princes” in order to restore imperial power. He
repaired all the churches that had been destroyed by the “Gallas” and tried
to bring all the provinces under his authority to make the country powerful
again: “So Tewodros aimed at political reunification of the country under a

<footnote n="25">²⁵MOEFA, *Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools 1–8* (1947), 116; MOEFA, *Elementary School Curriculum Years I-VIII* (1958), 107.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶MOEFA, *Textbook Production Program, 1956–1960*, 22.</footnote>
strong central government. He wanted to put an end to the feudal characters
of the central government and the army, and to confer on the people the
blessings of unity, peace and safety."<fnref n="27" /> But he had to face opposition from
the princes and the church, who were firmly attached to their privileges. He
was the emperor who failed because he was ahead of his time. The reign
of Yohannes IV (1871-89) was one more step in the same direction, a more
effective period of transition from the "old" to the "new."<fnref n="28" /> Tewodros II had
revived the idea of political unity, but Yohannes IV began to realise it. Both
acted against centrifugal forces in order to strengthen national unity through
religious unity.<fnref n="29" /> By a process of unification, Yohannes IV enabled the country
to resist Egyptian attacks and the first attempts at colonisation by Italy.

It was with the pivotal figure of Menilek II (1889–1913) that Ethiopia truly entered a new phase in its history. He was both a great unifier, the saviour of independence and the initiator of “modernisation.” He first expanded Ethiopia by uniting the provinces under his authority.<fnref n="30" /> The regions that were conquered by force at the end of the 19th century were treated as provinces under the domain of the Ethiopian kings. The conquest movement was therefore presented as reunification. Menilek II was also the commander of the Ethiopian troops who defeated the Italian colonial army at the Battle of Adwa, the founding gesture of independence. Once the empire had been rebuilt and independence had been secured, “Menilek had a great desire to modernise his country. He realised that modernisation was necessary to strengthen Ethiopia and defend its independence.” By “modernisation,” the authors of the textbooks meant steps such as the creation of the first Council of Ministers in 1907—which was described as the first move towards parliamentary democracy—the construction of the first government schools and hospitals, the introduction of telephones and the first cars. Menilek II set in motion the work that bore fruit during the reign of Haile Selassie.<fnref n="31" />

Haile Selassie's accession to power was reached under the aegis of prov-
idence. In the 1952 textbook, it was in the form of a true mystic who was
concerned above all with captivating children. From an early age, the young
Teferi was destined to assume imperial office: "It is evident that he was born
to be the Emperor of Ethiopia in spite of all adverse circumstances."<fnref n="32" /> It was
he to whom the "Hand of God" had given birth at a crucial moment when

<footnote n="27">²⁷MOEFA, *A Modern History for Ethiopia* (1952), 12.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸A. C. Fernando, M. T. Chako, *Intelligent Exercises. History (World and Ethiopia). For Senior Secondary Schools, 8* (Addis Ababa: Progress Unity Friendship, MAS Co-operative Society, vol. II, date not given), 3.</footnote>

<footnote n="29">²⁹Ibid., 21.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰MOEFA, *Elementary School Curriculum Years I-VIII* (1958), 110.</footnote>

<footnote n="31">³¹A. C. Fernando, M. T. Chako, *Intelligent Exercises...* (date not given), 31.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³²MOEFA, *A Modern History for Ethiopia* (1952), 32.</footnote>
Ethiopia needed a man who would be capable of administering in peace and wisdom a territory conquered by force:

"If Menilek II was the King David of Ethiopia, then Haile Selassie I can certainly be said to be her King Solomon. When his country required a wise ruler to strengthen and reform the empire which Menilek had won with his sword, the Hand of God had raised the son of Ras Mekonnen to the ancient throne of Ethiopia."<fnref n="33" />

Haile Selassie's march to power was presented in terms of selflessness and dedication. In 1917, he had not accepted the office of Regent, as if in spite of himself, to save Ethiopia from the destruction orchestrated by Lej Iyassu, Menilek II's successor, who was sympathetic to Islam. Feeling the Hand of God guiding him, Teferi then assumed leadership of the revolt against this apostate emperor, saving the country from Islamic domination.<fnref n="34" /> Portraying the darkest possible image of Lej Iyassu to both justify the revolt of the Shewan nobility against this young man from Wällo and perfect his own image was a tried and tested practice Haile Selassie used throughout his reign.

His role as a saviour was once again highlighted in the chapter on liberation titled *The Lion of Judah Has Conquered*.<fnref n="35" /> No other protagonist was mentioned—neither the English army nor the Ethiopian resistance, whose respective actions had been decisive—except God, who sent a sign from heaven: “The rain came down this afternoon [...] to leave the capital clean for its victorious Sovereign.”<fnref n="36" /> Liberation was like the epic story of a legendary hero. The 1969 textbook presented a more realistic version of his role, attributing the regained independence to his diplomatic skills:

"Yet the emperor's decision to leave the country was certainly right. During his exile he was able to interest the British in the case of Ethiopia sufficiently to get help in 1941. [...] It was the emperor's international reputation which kept Ethiopia independent after the war."<fnref n="37" />

Now restored to his throne, the emperor had to justify his exile, and faced with the men who had remained behind to lead the struggle during the five years of occupation, he needed to take credit for his country's regained independence. A few short lines were devoted to the resistance fighters in the same book, but they remained marginal actors.

<footnote n="33">³³Ibid., 38.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴Ibid., 35.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵The Lion of Judah was the emblem of the Solomonic Monarchy.</footnote>

<footnote n="36">³⁶MOEFA, *A Modern History for Ethiopia* (1952), 55.</footnote>

<footnote n="37">³⁷MOEFA, *Ethiopia. A Short Illustrated History, Grades 9–12* (1969), 150.</footnote>
Haile Selassie was then able to turn his attention to the progress of his country and inaugurate the “New Era.”<fnref n="38" /> From a very early age, his political action had been motivated by the goal of progress. He was the representative of this ambition in the face of a powerful conservative group. From his accession to the regency to his coronation as emperor in 1931, he had to share power with Empress Zewditu, the daughter of Menilek II. But Zewditu was conservative, as was her ally, the powerful Habte Giorgis: “[They] distrusted foreign innovation because they were foreign and feared that the growth of a centralised state and civil service would lessen their feudal powers.” In contrast, “Tefari was liberal in outlook and progressive.”<fnref n="39" /> His coronation as emperor therefore meant the victory of the progressives over the conservatives, of the advocates of the future over those of the past. He was then able to bring Ethiopia definitively into the era of modernity.

This notion of progress was not presented as an imitation of Europe or the United States. Rather, the reform-minded intellectuals who participated in the production of school knowledge called for a renaissance, a restoration of the old power through the re-establishment of past links with the outside world. In his famous novel *Araya* (a first name meaning “model”), which was part of the secondary school syllabus, the writer Germachew Tekle Hawariat explained this concept:

> ጥንታዊት ኢትዮጵያ በብዙ ሺሕ ዘመን ልማዶች ታስራ ፣ ክጓደኞች ተለይታ ወደ ኋላ ቀርታ በመንገታገት ስትኖር የልማድ ሰንስለቷን ለመፍታትና ወደማይቀረው ወዳዲስ ሥልጣኔ ለመራመድ ፈቃዷን የገለጻችው በዳግማዊ ምኒልክ ዘመነ ምንግሥት ቢሆንም እርምጃዋ የታየውና አካሄዷ የተረጋገጠው በቀዳማዊ ኃይለ ሥላሴ መሪነት ነው።

The customs of ancient Ethiopia have remained steadfast for millennia. Isolated from her allies, she endured and had to contend [to survive]. Though the prospect of breaking the chains hindering her customs and advancing towards a new civilization emerged during the reign of Menilek II, her progress became evident and its momentum confirmed under the leadership of Haile Selassie.<fnref n="40" />

In both history syllabuses and the literature, the convergence of history in the person of Haile Selassie was complete: he saved Ethiopia’s thousand-year-old independence, restored its past splendour and guided it towards the future.

<footnote n="38">³⁸See the title of the textbook አዲስ ዘመን ታሪካ, 1933–1949 (History of the New Era, 1940–1957). After the liberation, the government organ, the weekly *Berhannenna Selam* was replaced by the daily *AddisZemen*, which means “New Era.”</footnote>

<footnote n="39">³⁹A. C. Fernando, M. T. Chako, *Intelligent Exercises...* (n.d.), 37.</footnote>

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰Germachew Tekle Hawariat, አርአያ (Model) (Addis Ababa; Berhannenna Selam, 1941 EC [1948]), 124.</footnote>
### 3. Rulers to admire, governed to imitate

It was possible to find some justification for Haile Selassie's authoritarianism in progressive clothing in the history of “great men.” A textbook imported from Great Britain, *The March of Time*, presented the great moments of a Eurocentric world history through their achievements. Similarly, Ethiopian books such as ታላላቅ ሰዎች (*Talallaq Säwoch*, Great Men) by Kebede Mikael, or የታላላቅ መንገድኞች ታሪክ (*Yätalallaq Mängädägnoch Tarik*, Stories of the Great Travellers) by Ma'aza Bekele, were short biographies of an edifying nature. The Ethiopian authors were inspired by a practice they had experienced as students during their studies in Europe or the United States, as well as by Ethiopian hagiographical tradition. Curriculum developers, both Ethiopians and expatriates, had clearly identified the contradictions between the use of imported textbooks and the nationalist aims of the school system. The authors of the 1947 curriculum, for example, pointed out the difficulties of teaching history with imported textbooks, because: “Most history books are written with bias, usually in favour of the country for which the history is written.”<fnref n="41" /> However, linking the great Ethiopian emperors with the “great statesmen” of world history made it possible to justify autocracy in the name of progress.

#### 3.1. *Great statesmen*

Emperor Tewodros II had a prominent place in history textbooks. A play taught in the Amharic courses was entirely devoted to him. It made him a figure of bravery, heroism and patriotism. In his 1973 study of Amharic textbooks, Asfew Melaku explained how Tewodros II was used to encourage nationalism, defend centralisation and encourage cooperation with the monarch:

> An Ethiopian student cannot help feeling genuine pride for the life and work of the emperor, his attempt to unite if the people—the chiefs, the clergy, the bishop and the masses—do not cooperate? [...] The student learns early in his life to respond to the nationalistic qualities and aspirations of Theodore [Tewodros] and these are very well presented in this book. (Asfew 1973, 38)

Among foreign heads of state, Napoleon Bonaparte featured prominently in both imported school textbooks and Ethiopian books. *The March of Time* told the story of a child born into a modest background who owed his brilliant career to his assiduous studies, hard work and military skills. Like the great soldier, the wise head of state was particularly highlighted: “He built many buildings, drew up a new code of laws, and gave all poor children the chance of a good education.” The British textbook was less complimentary about the rest of his career: blinded by his desire for power, the French emperor had spilled

<footnote n="41">⁴¹MOE, *Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools 1–8* (1947), 116.</footnote>
too much blood.<fnref n="42" /> But everywhere else it was praise that dominated. Kebede Mikael—who had studied in France—wrote a chapter on him in ታላላቅ ሰዎች (Talallaq Säwoch, Great Men), beginning with the French meaning of the word “genius” and ending with the affirmation that history would grant him eternal life. He was compared to Alexander the Great, and all his actions were portrayed as having been motivated by the common good of Europe. The author discussed the literature that was critical of him and gave him credit before refuting it: although the wars of Napoleon Bonaparte might be criticised, his legislative and legal actions placed him in the patrimony of humanity, on the same level as Moses and Solon.<fnref n="43" />

Generally speaking, the intention behind their glorification was to nurture
respect and veneration. This in turn helped perfect the image of the “mod-
ernising” Ethiopian emperors Menilek II and Haile Selassie. Could Napoleon
Bonaparte’s imperial project, which had been so highly praised by Kebede
Mikael, and that of Menilek II, the builder of the Ethiopian Empire, not
be brought together? Did Haile Selassie’s legislative and legal activity not
echo that of the French emperor? This link was directly established by Tekle
Tsadik Mekuria in his moral treatise የስው ጠባይና አብሮ የመኖር ዘዴ (YäSäw
Täbayenna Abro YäMänor Zädé, Human Behaviour and the Art of Living
Together), which was part of the secondary school curriculum. The characters
who illustrated his depiction of “great minds” (አሳበ ሰፊ, asabä säfi) were
Napoleon, Menilek II and Haile Selassie. The three statesmen were wise rulers
who sought new solutions when their countries faced new problems. Coming
to power at decisive moments and forced to face difficult situations that
required a strong spirit of initiative, they took the right decisions at the right
time, sometimes against the advice of the majority. As great administrators
and legislators, they left a strong and lasting legacy for their successors. With
political vision, they looked to the future rather than just dealing with what
they had inherited from the past.<fnref n="44" />

In his novel *Araya*, Germachew Tekle Hawariat drew another parallel, that of the reigns of Menilek II and Haile Selassie with those of Frederick William I and Frederick II of Prussia:

ፍሬዲረክ ዋልሂም የፕሩስን ምንግስት ለማጐልመስ በታላቅ ትግሥቱና በልዩ ስጦታው ያደራጀውን ጦርና ያከማቸውን ገንዘብ ቁም ነገር ለማ ሲያዝ ፍሬዲረክ ሁለተኛ (ትልቁ) ባልጋው ተተክቶ ያባቱን ሥራ ባያከናውነው ኖሮ ጀርመን የዛሬውን ደረጃዋን አታገኝም

<footnote n="42">⁴²E. C. T. Horniblow, J. J. Sullivan, *The March of Time, Book IV. Makers of Our Modern World* (London: The Grant Educational Co., 1953), 113–24.</footnote>

<footnote n="43">⁴³Kebede Mikael, ታላላቅ ሰዎች (Great Men) (Addis Ababa: Mega Printing Press, 1999 EC [1st edition 1950]), 97–126.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴Tekle Tsadik Mekuria, የሰው ጠባይና አብሮ የመኖር ዘዴ (Human Behaviour and the Art of Living Together) (Addis Ababa: Berhannenna Selam, 1959 [1951 EC]), 69–82.</footnote>
ነበር። እንዲሁም ዐፌ ምኒልክ ያቀዱትንና የወጠኑት ሥራ ሁሉ ለመከተልና ለመፈጸም ቀዳማዊ ኃይለ ሥላሴ ባይተኩ ኖሮ ኢትዮጵያ በዚህ ባለችበት እርመጃ አትገኘም ነበር። ስለዚህ ሕዝቦች የሚመሩ ሰዎች ቢሆኑም ሰዎቹን ደግሞ የሚመርጥና አሳሳቢያቸውም እግዚአብሔር ነው ለማለት የሚቻል ነው ።

To fortify the Prussian state, Frédéric-Guillaume took a significant initiative to organize the army and accumulate funds with remarkable patience and unique talent. If Frederick II (the Great), who ascended to the throne, had not continued his father's efforts, Germany would not have achieved its current level of development. Similarly, Ethiopia would not have reached its present state of progress if Haile Selassie I had not succeeded Emperor Menilek II to carry on and fulfill the work he had envisioned and initiated. Thus, it can be asserted that when there are individuals leading nations, their selection and diligence are divinely ordained.<fnref n="45" />

The “great men” owed their historical role to providence, which was the source of their genius and visionary qualities. Through these comparisons, the Ethiopian authors justified the authority of an “enlightened despot,” of whom Frederick II was the prototype. The characters they highlighted were always authoritarian and progressive. Since the 1920s, this model of head of state had been favoured by Ethiopian reformist intellectuals, and it was perfectly suited to the image Haile Selassie wanted to project of himself.

### 3.2. *Models of governance for girls and boys*

Imported and Ethiopian textbooks contained instructions on how to behave and examples to justify them. The introductory pages of the *Tarikenna Messale* explained that the existence of the nation was renewed by the common work of its members. It was based on the heritage of the past, but could only be reproduced in the present through the work of each and every one. Pupils were warned that no action could be taken without consequences for Ethiopia. Members of the nation should act for the common good and not for their own personal interests.

ሕዝብ ፣ በአንድ መንግስት በአንድ ሰንደቅ ዓላማ በአንድ ሕግ ጥላ ተሰብሰበው የሚኖሩ ሰዎች ማስት ነው። [...] በአስተዳደሩም በልዩ ልዩ ሥራ የተሳሰረ ። [...] እኛ ኢትዮጵያውያን የምንሠራው ሥራ መልካም ቢሆን አገራችን ኢትዮጵያ እንደምትከበር የምንሠራው ሥራ መጥፎ ቢሆን ግን እንደምትዋረድ አትርሳ ። [...] ብዙ ገንዘብና በዙ ርስት ከማግኘት ይልቅ ለአገሩ ትልቅ ሥራ የሠራላት ሰው ስሙ ለዘለዓለም በታሪክ ሲጠራ ይኖራል ።

The term "the people" refers to individuals united under the same government, sharing a common flag, and protected by the same laws. [...] They are also connected through a unified administration and engagement in various collective

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵Germachaw Tekle Hawariat, አርአያ (Addis Ababa: Berhannenna Selam, 1941 EC [1948]), 124.</footnote>
endeavors. [...] It is crucial to remember that the outcomes of our endeavors as Ethiopians, whether positive or negative, reflect on the glory or detriment of our country, Ethiopia. [...] History will eternally recall the name of someone who has accomplished great deeds for their nation, as opposed to someone who has amassed wealth and acquired extensive land.<fnref n="46" />

While this particular advice was imbued with an abstract morality, other textbooks gave it a concrete content, citing figures who were not statesmen but who had dedicated their lives to the common good. One of these was Robert Owen, who was presented as a model of a philanthropic employer who, contrary to the most common practices of his time, improved the lot of his workers.<fnref n="47" /> He came from a poor family, but was lucky enough to have had an education. He was very serious about his studies, and won the goodwill of the school headmaster, the priests and the town doctor, who lent him books. Forced to support himself, he found a job in a cloth shop at the age of ten. There, “Robert Owen was happy [...] for he was quick at his work and pleased his master.” In his spare time, he read. At the age of 19, he became a workshop manager in a cotton mill. This experience gave him the ambition to own machines of his own, not only to enrich himself but also to improve the lot of the workers. Indeed, “Robert Owen believed that if working people were paid better wages, had better homes and were able to send their children to school, they would not only be happier, but they would do better work.” Later, when he owned his own mill in New Lanark, he found that his first workers were “poor,” “ignorant,” “dirty,” “thieves” and “violent.” Believing that these men and women behaved badly because they were mistreated, he built houses separated by clean streets, a school and shops where workers could find quality products at honest prices. While the other spinning mill owners laughed at his experiments and predicted his ruin, the workers became happy, loved him and therefore worked as hard as they could. As a result, he became very rich and highly respected, and when he died at the age of 87, he left behind a better world than the one he had found.

The example of Robert Owen showed that seriousness in his studies, a taste for work and respect for his masters allowed him to improve his lot and even to become very rich. One had to obey one's superiors and respect one's subordinates in order to be respected and loved in return. Robert Owen was, in reality, a utopian socialist. The textbook reduces New Lanark's utopian project to a form of paternalism, which is a model of virtue.

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶MOEFA, ታሪክና ምሳሌ ፌኛ መጽሐፍ (Tarikenna Messale, book 1) (1942), first pages unnumbered.</footnote>

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷E. C. T. Horniblow and J. J. Sullivan, *The March of Time...* (1953), 146–54.</footnote>
Florence Nightingale was a second edifying example, this time aimed at girls.<fnref n="48" /> This feminist icon was presented as a model of female devotion. Born into a family of rich merchants, she had a pampered childhood. Very early on, her favourite game was playing nurse. As she grew up, she felt the need to make herself truly useful. As her father was rich, she did not need to work, but she felt it was her duty to help those who were not as fortunate as she was, so she trained as a nurse. After reading in the press that men wounded in the war in Crimea were not being properly cared for, she decided to travel there. Accompanied by thirty-four other nurses, she took charge of the military hospital, which was in a deplorable state, dirty and without resources. They immediately cleaned and equipped it before taking over the care. Thus,

> This wonderful woman brought about great changes in the hospital [...]. She went from bed to bed, tending the wounded, washing their wounds and binding them with clean bandages, at the same time soothing the pain of these poor soldiers with kind words. The men, who were suffering so much and were so far from home, came to look on her as an angel.

But Florence Nightingale had to face opposition from officers and doctors who did not appreciate her strength of character and her volunteer spirit. Ultimately, however, “they saw all the good she was doing [...]. In the end, there was nothing they would not do for Florence Nightingale.” Back in Europe, she continued to fight for clean hospitals and well-trained nurses throughout her life. This biography ended with an address to the students: “Whenever you see a bright, clean hospital, with its clever, well-trained nurses, think of ‘The Lady with the Lamp,’ who spent most of her life with the sick and the wounded and helped to make these things possible.”

Nightingale highlighted the maternal qualities of devotion to caring for and comforting one's neighbour, as well as the benefits of courage, perseverance and determination. However, as with Robert Owen, whose utopian socialism had been overlooked, nothing was said about the fact that Florence Nightingale was also a feminist figure. All that needed to be remembered was that the dedication and altruism of one individual had consequences for the society as a whole. The last chapter of the manual called on students to follow the example of these people, who were dedicated to making the world a better place:

> One day, you and all the other boys and girls like you, all over the world, will be men and women and you will then be history makers yourselves. You will want to make the world a better and happier place to live in. You can help to do this *now* by learning as much as you can of the March of Time and trying to understand how

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸Ibid., 154–61.</footnote>
our present ways of living have grown out of the past. [...] So, work as well as you can, always think of others and help them when you are able, and study carefully The March of Time in your own lifetime. Eventually you will make this world a better place to live in.<fnref n="49" />

In the end, these model lives summoned pupils to take on their future social role with a spirit of morality. It was by adopting an altruistic moral code and respecting the established order that everyone could make the world a better place. The collective destiny was placed in the hands of those in power and the good morals of graduates, with each person's role being strictly respected. It was a type of organisation of society that corresponded perfectly to the authoritarian regime that combined conservative morals and the ethics of progress desired by Haile Selassie.

### 4. Progress or capitalist industrial society

The nation united behind the emperor had to be progressive. In order to achieve this, everyone had to act in concert, and all efforts had to converge in this direction. The introductory pages of the *Tarikenna Messale* remind the reader of this:

ሌሎቹ የዓለም ንግሥታት ከደረሰበት የሥልጣኔ ደረጃ ላይ አገራችን ኢትዮጵያ በቶሎ እንደትደርስ እኛ ኢትዮጵያውያን ሁሉ ማሳብና መጣጣር ይገባናል። ድካማችንና ትጋታችንም በተለየ ለዚሁ ዐሳብ ብቻ እንዲሆን ያስፈልጋል ። [...] ማንኛውም የውጭ አገር ሰው ለተወለደባት አገሩ የሚያስብላት መልካም ዐሳብ ። የሠራላት መልካም ሥራ ሲነገር በሰማህ ። ወይም ተጽፎ ባየህ ጊዜ ። አንተም ደግሞ እንደዚሁ ይህንኑ ያህል ላገርህ ለኢትዮጵያ ልታስብላትና ልትሠራላት የሚገባህ መሆኑን ዕወቀው።

We Ethiopians need to fortify ourselves and strive to ensure that our country, Ethiopia, swiftly attains the level of progress seen in other nations worldwide. Our endeavors and persistence should be dedicated to this singular goal. [...] If you come across or read about a commendable idea or undertaking by a foreigner for their homeland, recognize that you too should contemplate and act similarly for your own country...<fnref n="50" />

Ethiopians had to be united and open to the outside world. In the face of those who feared that Ethiopia would be lost if it drew inspiration from foreign countries, schools conveyed the contrary idea that it was a necessity if the country was to regain its strength and occupy a respectable place among other nations. The Ethiopian intellectuals of the 1940s and 1950s who engaged in the production of school knowledge were both resolutely nationalistic and fascinated by Europe and the United States. For their part, American

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹Ibid., 226.</footnote>

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰MOEFA, ታሪክና ምሳሌ ፩ኛ መጽሐፍ (Stories and Fables, Book 1) (1942), first pages unnumbered.</footnote>
advisers to the Ministry of Education, who were imbued with the theories
of modernisation, were convinced of the universal character of their political,
economic and social model. In teaching, this was reflected by the idea that the
whole of humanity was converging towards a capitalist industrial society. This
was the purpose of the textbooks on "world history." In the 1940s and 1950s,
the histories of Ethiopia and the world were the subject of separate books.
From the mid-1960s onwards, however, textbooks were created that aimed
to include the history of Ethiopia in world history. As the teacher's notes in
the Grade 7 textbook published in 1970 put it:

It is appropriate, and very good training, to present the topics as part of a very long story, the story of man in many lands, and to stress interdependence and continuity in the development of history. While at work on this book, the students should occasionally be reminded of the general structure of the whole history programme. In elementary school, they have had a first initiation to the history of their own country. Later on, the Senior High School curriculum will offer them an entire programme of connected history. They will learn plenty more about their own country, about the African continent, and the world at large.<fnref n="51" /> [Italics in the original]

Pupils had to understand the history of Ethiopia in relation to the histories of Africa and the world. The secondary school textbooks of the 1960s consisted of three main chapters on the history of the Mediterranean and European worlds, the history of Ethiopia and the history of Africa. There was a corresponding period for each grade: ancient in Grade 9, early Middle Ages in Grade 10, late Middle Ages in Grade 11, and contemporary in Grade 12. Within this approach, which was based on "interdependence" and "connected history," Europe was the matrix of world history, as well as the reference point from which the history of other regions was to be read and understood. As Abebe Fisseha pointed out, "The syllabus [was designed] on the basis of the assumption that the students would understand better what happened in the rest of the world (including Ethiopia) if they learned world history by reference to major events in Europe" (Abebe 1992, 104). Ultimately, it was a question of integrating Ethiopian history into a vast convergent movement, of which Europe was the point of reference.

Europe, and by extension the United States, was the model to be followed
as a core region in world history. Industrial society was presented as the result
of the linear progress of humanity. It was endowed with a character that was
both desirable and inexorable, which made its spread natural and indisputable:

The industrial revolution *started in England* [...] After some time, *other countries*
*started to do like England*. The first countries to do so were France, and Germany,

<footnote n="51">⁵¹MOEFA, *History for Young Ethiopians*, Grade 7 (1970), 10.</footnote>
and Belgium, and the United States of America. Later on, other countries of the
world did the same. The industrial revolution has not finished spreading. There
are many countries in the world where it is just starting, for example, in Africa and
Asia.<fnref n="52" /> [Italics in the original]

The Grade 7 manual went on to describe industrialisation as a virtuous
circle. By allowing goods to be produced more quickly and in larger quantities,
it had brought about an abundance through which humans housed, dressed
and cared for themselves better, and moved and communicated more quickly.
It was also credited with the progress made in education by the production
of pens, notebooks and books. Since the Industrial Revolution, what had once
been reserved for the richest now benefitted the greatest number. Finally, no
actor seemed to be harmed, and the whole process of production, distribution
and consumption was a win-win situation:

> The countries that had the machines became rich, because they could sell a lot of finished goods to other countries. Other countries had a lot of raw materials. They sold these materials to the countries that had factories, and became rich in this way. Big merchants carried goods from one country to another, and little merchants sold them in the shops. Thousands of workmen were needed in the factories. A lot of poor people had no land in the countryside, or no jobs in the town. The new factories gave them a chance to work and earn money. And with the money they earned, they could buy some of the useful things made in factories.<fnref n="53" />

The countries producing finished products and the countries exporting raw
materials, large international traders and small local traders, industrialists and
workers, producers and consumers: each was a beneficiary. No grain of sand
seemed to disturb the circle of abundance.

A short paragraph was devoted to the negative aspects of the Industrial
Revolution, but they were a thing of the past. Its early stages had been
characterised by low wages for workers in European factories and the
countries supplying raw materials, long working hours and the employment
of women and children. But things had improved since then. Bosses had
understood the need to help the workers. Governments had passed laws to
protect them. Unions were allowed and they secured better wages, shorter
working hours and an end to child labour so that children could go to school,
and bosses paid for medical costs incurred by accidents at work. The authors
of the handbook concluded that: "In the world of today [1970], the factories
make huge amounts of useful things for people everywhere. At the same time,
the workmen who make those things lead much better lives than before."<fnref n="54" />

<footnote n="52">⁵²Ibid., 107.</footnote>

<footnote n="53">⁵³Ibid., 108.</footnote>

<footnote n="54">⁵⁴Ibid., 110–12.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_21.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7. Promoting industrialisation and mechanisation</figcaption></figure>

The Industrial Revolution was on its way to improving the lives of people all over the world. It was now reaching Ethiopia, and the four photographs in this chapter of the textbook showcased the achievements of an industrialising country: tractors working a field, a sugar factory, an oil refinery and the Koka Dam south of Addis Ababa, which was producing electricity. By enabling integration into a burgeoning global economy, this progress would improve the lives of all Ethiopians.

The manual ended with a chapter on colonisation titled *How Great Nations Became powerful in Africa and Elsewhere*.<fnref n="55" /> The author explained that powerful countries had historically always conquered or dominated others. The specific aspect of European imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries was its links with the Industrial Revolution. Europeans had to find raw materials and outlets for their products, which eventually led to colonisation, and the textbook concluded by cataloguing its good and bad sides. On the positive side of the balance sheet were the end of slavery, the end of the internecine wars and the construction of roads, railways and hospitals. The negative side included land grabs and forced labour, the violence inflicted on the colonised and the dependence of Africans, who were obliged to obey foreign masters.

But did pitting uncolonised Ethiopia against this record not solve the problem of imitating the West posed by some of Haile Selassie's detractors? Was Ethiopia not only concerned with the “good things”? It was building roads, factories, schools and hospitals—progress—while at the same time remaining in control of its own destiny.

<footnote n="55">⁵⁵Ibid., 125–33.</footnote>
Conclusion

Within the national school system, “history teaching is thought of as a tool
for building a ‘national imagination,’ with facts following a smooth, fluid
trajectory carried by the dynamics of progress” (De Cock 2009, 7). The history
taught in Ethiopian schools was organised on the basis of a dual teleology.
There was the three thousand year old history of Ethiopia, with its Semitic and
Christian identity, of which Haile Selassie was the culmination, the symbol of
continuity and the figure of eternity, and then there was the “world history”
imported from Great Britain and the United States, which postulated the
convergence of human societies towards an industrial capitalist society. What
history classes seemed to be saying was that with its prestigious past and
its independence during colonisation, Ethiopia had a solid basis for moving
forward along the path traced by the western industrialised countries without
suffering from any type of complex, all the more so as it was guided by an
enlightened monarch who was worthy of the greatest of the men who were
portrayed in imported history textbooks. In a way, the West could show the
way towards progress, but it was actually seen from a nationalist perspective,
and students were invited to be progressive and patriotic.

Finally, the teachings testify to the particularistic way in which citizen-
ship was thought about. This was far removed from what the authors of
the 1971 article "Educational Aims and Objectives" proposed. These Ethiopian
pedagogues recognised the diversity of the country's cultures and argued:
"The aims of education are to bring about such a blending of indigenous
cultures into a rich national culture" (Girma et al. 1974, 9). On the contrary,
however, the definition of nationhood that emerged from school education
was a radical process of inclusion and exclusion that rejected anything that
was not Christian and supposedly Semitic as inferior or on the side of historic
enemies. Pupils who did not meet these criteria suffered from an inferior
identity and were encouraged to transform themselves in order to achieve
full citizenship. The teachings reveal that the school was an instrument for
transforming individuals so that they would be able to adapt to a highly
restrictive definition of the nation.
<figure><img src="image_22.png" /></figure>
Chapter 4

# The State Homogenisation Project and Social Heterogeneity: The School Space in Tension

We will now attempt to understand how the encounter between the national school project and local social realities was translated into practice in the school space, and to analyse the forms of social interaction and the tensions they generated by looking as closely as possible at the actors and their school experience. School “sociability” implied power relations between teachers and pupils, males and females, urban and rural, Orthodox and Protestant Christians, and “Amhara” and “Wolaita.” These tensions lay at the heart of the contradictions in the school institution, which simultaneously assimilated and differentiated, and levelled and prioritised. In the first place, the pedagogical and disciplinary practices through which the knowledge, values and behaviours expected by the state were transmitted were put into practice by a very diverse teaching staff, whose composition changed between the 1940s and 1970s, at a time when the process of inculcation was not just at work in the classroom: school life was punctuated by rituals and animated by associative activities aimed at political socialisation. Finally, the daily coexistence of pupils from social groups that maintained adversarial relationships—the children of regional dignitaries, *melkegna* or landowners and the children of peasant farmers—was a sometimes violent source of tension.

## 1. The diversity of the teaching staff

When schools opened in 1941, Ethiopia was desperately short of teachers. While Addis Ababa was privileged, the 1940s were years of improvisation in the provinces. In the absence of trained Ethiopian teachers and teaching materials, the Ministry of Education recommended the use of all directly available resources.<fnref n="1" /> Before teacher training institutes were established in the mid-1950s, anyone who could read and write could teach at primary level: they included priests, former students of the national church schools and people educated in the few government and missionary schools that had been open before the occupation (Teshome 1979, 85). Teaching in all schools was

<footnote n="1">¹MOEFA, *Elementary Schools Curriculum, Years I-VI* (1971), 4.</footnote>
therefore dependent on the respective skills of available teachers. Secondary education, on the other hand, relied heavily on expatriate teachers, who were primarily Indians and Americans.

**1.1. Priests and people who received their education before the occupation**

The pedagogical team of the first school to open in Wolaita in 1941 consisted of Bogale Wallelu, director of the Wolaita Provincial Education Office and occasional teacher; Wanna Wagesho, school headmaster and English teacher; Telahun Welde-Berhan, mathematics teacher; Basha Dinkneh, a priest of the national church, and *Qegnazmach*<fnref n="2" /> Seyum, both of whom taught Amharic (Demeke 1985, 5). For a short time, between 1941 and 1944, girls were taught at a separate school by teacher AsKale Seyfe-Gabriel. Bogale Wallelu and Wanna Wagesho had been educated before the war in national church schools and the Menilek II government school, the latter even doing a short stint at the Swedish mission in Addis Ababa. Given the subjects they taught, it is very likely that Telahun Welde-Berhan attended a government school and *Qegnazmach* Seyum received religious training. Finally, the subjects that were taught at the girls' school—cooking, sewing, childcare and basic reading, writing and arithmetic<fnref n="3" />—suggest that AsKale Seyfe-Gabriel was a former pupil of a missionary school or of Empress Menen Girls' School, which was the only government institution offering education for girls before the war (Guidi 2016).

In addition to languages and mathematics, boys learned geography and history (Demeke 1985, 7). The latter two subjects were taught by Amharic teachers, who taught biblical history and official national myths, as evidenced by the 1947 curricula, which took note of what was being practised rather than prescribing new teaching.<fnref n="4" /> In the early 1950s, grades 1 to 4 were taught by priests, who took over teaching from the national church schools.<fnref n="5" />

**1.2. Graduates of the teacher training institutes**

Teacher training became a priority for the Ministry of Education in the mid-1950s.<fnref n="6" /> The previous decade had only seen an early stage. In 1944, an accelerated training course was set up at Menilek II School in Addis Ababa

<footnote n="2">²*Qegnazmach* is an Ethiopian military title meaning “commander of the right wing,” which has become a civilian title by extension.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³Wanna Wagesho, interview, December 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴A reading of these early official curricula shows that they were developed from available teaching materials, and not the other way round; MOEFA, *Curriculum for Ethiopian Schools 1–8* (1947), 91–110.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga, interview, November 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶MOEFA, *The Controlled Expansion of Ethiopian Education—a special report to the Long-Term Planning Committee* (1954–55), 2.</footnote>
in collaboration with the British Council. The curriculum included Amharic, religion, English, arithmetic, science, history and geography. Apparently there were no pedagogy courses. The training centre was transferred to Harar in 1952 and became a teacher training institute; a second centre was created in Kotäbä, a suburb of Addis Ababa, and a third in Debre Berhan in 1957 (Teshome 1979, 127). A four-year programme was established, with courses in child development and pedagogy being added to the academic subjects.<fnref n="7" /> After Grade 8, one year of training was required to teach up to Grade 4, and four years to teach grades 5-8.<fnref n="8" /> The first graduating class in 1947 consisted of 33 people. Ten years later, there were 4,627 graduates.<fnref n="9" /> The Ministry of Education did not consider the training of secondary school teachers a priority, preferring to leave it to expatriates; it did have a plan to gradually replace expatriates with trained Ethiopians, however, but it provided no further details.<fnref n="10" />

In 1965, the teacher education programme was reduced to two years after Grade 10. It placed special emphasis on social sciences and moral and civic education, with objectives that focused on the individual and his or her responsibilities towards fellow citizens, family, community, profession and society. Home economics courses were set up for girls. The first year was devoted to the role of the individual in the family, the role of the family in the community and the upkeep of the home. The second was devoted to “nutrition, child care, health and hygiene.”<fnref n="11" /> Primary schools were gradually staffed with trained Ethiopian teachers. In 1962, 62% were not graduates, but this figure had been reduced to 5% by 1971 (Teshome 1979, 162). The teaching force remained predominantly male until the end of the regime. The proportion of women in teacher training institutes increased from 2% to 18% between 1960 and 1970; in 1970, women made up only 10% of teachers (Teshome 1979, 164).

### 1.3. Foreign teachers: Indians and American Peace Corps volunteers

In secondary education, the Ministry of Education employed Indian and American teachers. In the 1950s, almost all teachers in grades 9 to 12 were foreigners, and in 1966 they still made up 60% of the workforce.<fnref n="12" />

<footnote n="7">⁷MOEFA, *Teacher Education in Ethiopia* (1965), 7–8.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸MOEFA, *The Controlled Expansion of Ethiopian Education*... (1954–55), 54 and 8.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹MOEFA, *Teacher Education in Ethiopia* (1965), 7.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰MOEFA, *The Controlled Expansion of Ethiopian Education*... (1954–55), 19.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹MOEFA, *Curriculum Policies and Standards. Teacher Training Institutes* (1965), 41–45.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹²MOEFA, *Report on the Current Operation of the Education System in Ethiopia* (1966), 56.</footnote>
The idea of employing Indian teachers preceded the Italian occupation. The reason behind the interest in them was twofold: they had had a Western-style education but did not come from a colonising country, and they were cheaper than European expatriates. The first initiative in this direction came from Workneh Eshete, the first bursar of Tefari Mekonnen school, who had himself been educated in India in his youth. In 1930, he hired 16 Indians for the Ethiopian government, two of whom were teachers (Bahru 2002, 40). By the 1950s, most provincial schools had Indian teachers from Grade 7 upwards, many of whom were headmasters. Between 1950 and 1960, for example, all the headmasters of the Soddo school were Indians (Demeke 1985, 62). The arrival of American Peace Corps volunteers in numbers in the 1960s reflected a change in the United States' policy on Ethiopia. The State Department was very concerned about the East-West geopolitical struggle, and pushed for the expansion of cooperation programmes. After USAID was established in 1961, thousands of volunteers went to Ethiopia to work in government, the military and education (Marcus 1995, 7). In Wolaita, the first Peace Corps volunteers arrived in 1964, when the secondary school curriculum was initiated with the first Grade 9 class. In the same year, classes began with five Ethiopians, two of whom were qualified teachers, four Peace Corps volunteers and three students from the Ethiopian University Service (Demeke 1985, 32).

1.4. *Students of the Ethiopian University Service*

The Ethiopian University Service was a project set up by Addis Ababa
University after students had repeatedly enquired how they could make
themselves useful to their country (Balsvik 2007, 21). In 1962, Mesfin Wolde-
Mariam<fnref n="13" />, Dean of the Department of Geography, submitted a proposal to
the university hierarchy for a one-year civil service period in the provinces
during which students could use their knowledge and skills to serve peasant
communities. Two years later, the final project was developed jointly by the
administration, teachers and student representatives. Between their third and
fourth years of study, all students were required to complete a compulsory
period of service, which was needed for validation of their diploma. In
principle, the aim was for students to apply the knowledge they had acquired
in their higher education to activities such as literacy, health and engineering.
The objective was to provide a response—albeit a limited and temporary
one—to the lack of graduates in rural areas, as well as to improve the
participating students’ knowledge of the country (Korten & Korten 1966, 482).
Because of the severe shortage of teachers and the high cost of employing
expatriates, the Ministry of Education soon took a keen interest in the

<footnote n="13">¹³Mesfin Wolde-Mariam (1930–2020) was a very famous intellectual and political activist in Ethiopia.</footnote>
project (Balsvik 2007, 142). Of the 134 students who left in the first year, 114 taught, most of them at grades 7 and 8 (Korten & Korten 1966, 482), with primary and secondary levels well-staffed by professional Ethiopian and expatriate teachers, respectively. The number of participants increased rapidly, reaching 685 in 1969. From then on, they were redistributed to higher grades in secondary schools due to the gradual departure of the expatriates (Peace Corps volunteers because of the United States' disengagement and Indians because better opportunities were opening up elsewhere in Africa).

In the 1960s, there was a wide range of priests, qualified and unqualified Ethiopian teachers, Indians and Americans in teaching positions. This variety of profiles meant a division among both levels and disciplines. The authors of a 1966 report commissioned by the Ministry of Education noted that a high proportion of the Ethiopians who were teaching grades 7 to 12 were being assigned to sports, morals, home economics and handicrafts, while the academic subjects were being assigned to expatriates.<fnref n="14" /> The school system became more and more Western as the curriculum progressed; proficiency in the English language assumed a central importance, and teachers and teaching became increasingly foreign to the Ethiopian world.

## 2. Teachers: social status and working conditions

The objectives of the Teacher Training Institutes Programme developed in 1965 included the encouragement to make sacrifices and to live in difficult conditions.<fnref n="15" /> The educationists on the editorial board saw teaching as a particularly difficult profession, and in the 1960s, it had deteriorated sharply in terms of salary, living conditions and social status.

According to two former students, teachers in the early 1950s were viewed as “gods,” and were respected by everyone—students, parents and notables alike. They also enjoyed good salaries. Particularly indicative of the high esteem in which they were held was a wedding song that went: “Our bride, what pride! The teacher took her [in marriage]!” (እኛ ሙሸራ ኩሪ ኩሪ ወሰዳት አስተማሪ)<fnref n="16" /> This situation deteriorated from the mid-1950s onwards, however, as an increase in teacher numbers and the rising cost of living, coupled with stagnating wages, caused a decline in teachers’ living standards. A new progressive scale based on qualification and experience was adopted in 1955, but it was too burdensome for the Ministry of Education’s budget, and was never implemented (Lipsky 1962, 95).

<footnote n="14">¹⁴MOEFA, *Report on the Current Operation of the Education System in Ethiopia* (1966), 56.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵MOEFA, *Curriculum Policies and Standards. Teacher Training Institutes* (1965), 21.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga, interview, November 2010.</footnote>
Their social status diminished greatly, especially in the case of rural teachers.
The authors of the 1966 report noted:

The widespread feeling among teachers is that they are given a low status in society. They are ignored by provincial government officials. For example, it appears that they are often not invited to official functions and public celebrations, although other civil servants are given invitations.

They were alarmed by the fact that:

Teachers in rural locations, who are few in number, feel isolated. [...] They regard service in [remote] areas as a banishment, entailing serious economic and often physical hardship, and they are disenchanted with their Ministry, which appears to have abandoned, neglected and forgotten them.<fnref n="17" />

All in all, it seems that the glory days of the teaching profession were short-lived. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the designers of the Teacher Training Institutes Programme insisted on a spirit of sacrifice as a required quality.

Germa Bekele arrived in Wolaita in 1965. He was 20, and had just finished high school. Originally from Dilla, one of the larger towns in the Sidamo region, he was sent by the Ministry of Education to Walisho, a remote canton. From the Ministry of Education to the District Education Officer, no one had informed him of where he was to go or what his future living and working conditions would be. He remembers the anguish he felt along the way, the shock of his arrival and then his despondency. This episode was still very much on his mind 45 years later, in 2010:

ሶዶ እንደመጣሁ የወላይታ አውራጃ ሥራ አስኪያጅ አቶ ዋና ዋገሾ የሚባሉ ወደ ቦዲቲ ላኩኝ ። ለቦዲቲ ትምህርት ቤት ርዕሰ መምህር ታምራዬ ሲማ የሚባል ደብዳቤ ሰጡኝ ። ደብዳቤው “ይህን አዲስ አስተማሪ ወደ ዋሊሾ ተማሪዎች እንዲፈልግ ላከው” አለው ። እኔ አገሩን ንእኳን አላውቅም የወላይታን ቋንቋ አላውቅም። አሁን ታምራዬ ሲማ “ወደ ዋሊሾ ሂድና ተማሪዎችን ፈልግ!” ብሎ አዘዘኝ ። ከዚያም ለየሹ ሚባል ልጅ “ወደ ዋሊሾ ወሰደው” አለው። በበቅሎ ወደ ዋሊሾ ሄድን። እና ልንህድ ስንል “ቅርብ ነው ከቦዲቲ 15 ደቂቃ ነው” አሉኝ። ስንሄድ ስንሄድ እንደርስም ። በመጨረሻ ዋሊሾ ስንደርስ መሸ። ወላይታ ቤት ያለው ሣር ቤት ቁጭ አልኩ አለቀስኩ ። እዛ ሕዝብ አልነበረም፣ ጫካ ብቻ፣ እባብ ብቻ ነበር።

When I arrived in Soddo, Wanna Wagesho, the school administrator of Wolaita, sent me to Boditi. He handed me a letter addressed to Tamraye Sima, the headmaster of the school in Boditi, instructing, “Send this new teacher to find pupils in Walisho.” Unfamiliar with the region and the Wolaita language, Tamraye Sima commanded me, “Go to Walisho and find students quickly.” He

<footnote n="17">¹⁷MOEFA, *Report on the Current Operation of the Education System in Ethiopia* (1966), 46 and 49.</footnote>
then said to a young man named Yeshu, “Bring him to Walisho.” We journeyed to Walisho on mules. During departure, they mentioned it was close, just 15 minutes from Boditi. However, we continued walking without reaching our destination. By the time we finally arrived, it was dark. I sat in a thatched house in Wolaita and cried. No one was there, just the forest, and the snakes.<fnref n="18" />

The next day, he travelled in the opposite direction on foot to ask to be allowed to leave, but the administration refused his request. In the early years he was seriously ill with malaria. Then, while he was desperately waiting for his transfer, he ended up getting married and settling down for good. Many of the teachers of his generation stayed for years, if not for their entire lives, in their first place of employment, without any substantial salary increase or possibility of promotion.

The situation was rather different in other branches of government, where regular increments based on experience were the norm (Mordechai 1970, 52). Under these conditions, the best-trained people taught in Addis Ababa, or chose another career. By the 1960s, when job opportunities were becoming scarcer, the teaching profession was no longer seen as a path to social success. Many embraced it as a career for lack of anything better. According to the authors of the 1966 report, it was a major reason for the limited efficiency of primary schools.<fnref n="19" /> After all, qualifications could be secondary: with experience and an interest in the job, a person who had completed seven or eight years of education could make a very good primary school teacher. Discouragement and a loss of self-esteem caused by poor living conditions and low social status were far more problematic.

The students of the Ethiopian University Service brought a breath of fresh air to this situation. A study carried out by an evaluation committee set up within the university provides insight into student attitudes towards the programme. They were given two questionnaires: one before they left for the countryside and the second a few months later, when they had completed their period of service. The first revealed a rather mixed reception (Korten & Korten 1966, 487). The initial problem was that the service was compulsory, and was a requirement for validation of their diplomas. This coercive aspect bothered them, and they viewed the long year of service as a sacrifice. In the second place, many of them only knew only Addis Ababa and the place where they had been born. They were extremely unaccustomed to travelling, and were anxious about their ability to adapt to the country's great linguistic and climatic diversity (Balsvik 1985, 141–42). Finally, those who did not want to become teachers did not see why they should serve in schools. On the other hand, the

<footnote n="18">¹⁸Germa Bekele (retired teacher), interview, Bedessa, 9 December 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹MOEFA, *Report on the Current Operation of the Education System in Ethiopia* (1966), 46 and 49.</footnote>
opportunity to gain better knowledge of the country and a first experience of leadership attracted their support (Korten & Korten 1966, 482). Finally, the proposed monthly salary of 175 ber (Balsvik 1985, 142) was a pleasant surprise, especially for students from modest backgrounds (at the time, a primary school teacher earned about 200 ber).<fnref n="20" /> In the end, the experiment proved successful, and in 1965, as the year of service was coming to an end, the second questionnaire distributed to students showed that 87% of the respondents thought the programme should be extended (Balsvik 1895, 144).

Statements collected in Wolaita from former students testify to a high level of engagement on the part of the students from Addis Ababa.<fnref n="21" /> However, it is more difficult to evaluate the level of commitment of the Indian teachers. Their working conditions in the provinces were not especially comfortable. Those who went to Wolaita stayed no longer than two years. One even interrupted his service in February, during the school year (Demeke 1985, 62). During a field trip to Lalibela in northern Ethiopia in 2007, I was told that two Indian teachers had left very soon after they arrived. They had not been able to adapt to the living conditions in this mountainous region, which was several hours' drive from the nearest urban centre.<fnref n="22" /> In 1958, 64 expatriate contract teachers left Ethiopia to work elsewhere where far better conditions were available. By 1965, expatriate salaries had not increased for 20 years. Those who remained were often forced to supplement their income with other activities.<fnref n="23" /> It is difficult to imagine much enthusiasm for teaching under these conditions.

On the other hand, it seems that the Peace Corps volunteers were energetic and conscientious in their teaching. They clearly wanted to do a good job during their two-year stay in Ethiopia. They showed an interest in their students, even outside school hours (Balsvik 1985, 198). On the whole, however, the expatriates were only passing through, and they remained out of touch with their students' real lives.

### 3. The authoritarian and martial school space

Teaching practices and discipline in Ethiopian schools were adapted to Haile Selassie's politically authoritarian and morally conservative regime. The pedagogical power that was applied was pastoralist in nature. According to Inès Dussel's definition: "Pastoral power is exercised as the rule of the shepherd over his flock. The shepherd guides the flock to salvation, which

<footnote n="20">²⁰Ibid., 48–57.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">²¹For example Wanna Dea (civil servant), interview, Soddo, 11 December 2010; Saol Akamo (civil servant), interview, Boditi (Wolaita), 15 November 2010).</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²²Tesfaw Derebe (former pupil), interview, Lalibela (Lasta), 15 February 2007.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³MOEFA, *Report on the Current Operation of the Education System in Ethiopia* (1966), 61–62.</footnote>
requires sacrifices at times, and has to watch over it all the time, looking
after each individual to guarantee that it does not follow the wrong track.”
(Dussel 2001, 218). This pastoral power was based on paternalism: in theory,
teachers were to be extensions of Haile Selassie, the father figure to whom
obedience, devotion and affection were due. Life in schools was regulated
by rituals that inculcated the cult of the sovereign’s personality, nationalism,
devotion and sacrifice. Other activities outside the classroom, such as the “pupil
police,” scouting and physical education gave the school space a disciplinary
and martial character.

3.1. *Paternalism and pastoral pedagogy*

Textbooks had a photograph or drawing of the emperor on the first page. On
the one hand, he was shown in all his majesty, in his ceremonial costume, with
his head held high, his gaze stern, turned slightly upwards and not looking at
the lens. This image expressed a figure of authority characterised by distance,
which inspired fear and respect. On the other, he also appeared as a benevolent
father, with a short beard that one might guess was slightly grey, affectionate
eyes looking at the children, a smile; an image of closeness and warmth. These
two complementary aspects were also found in the teaching method.

<figure><img src="image_23.png" /><figcaption>Figure 8. Haile Selassie in majesty and as a “benevolent father”</figcaption></figure>

The authority of the teachers was indisputable. Corporal punishment for
disobedience could be very severe, and it was inflicted with the hands or a cane.
Blows were also inflicted on students who were slow or did not study, or simply
when they made a mistake. In Wolaita, the priests who taught lower classes
used to beat pupils every time they committed an error.<fnref n="24" /> These practices were
an integral part of the pedagogy, and were socially accepted (Ayelew 1996, 199).

While the young people who passed through the teacher training institutes
from the late 1950s onwards did not avoid these practices, they probably made
less use of them. The fact that they experienced this pedagogical method and
received it as a model does not mean that they totally inherited it: they were
also exposed to other teaching practices in the course of their training. The
teacher training institutes provided instruction on respect for the integrity
of the students<fnref n="25" />, which inevitably had some impact, albeit a limited one.
While former students from the 1940s and 1950s mentioned physical violence
spontaneously, those from the generation that followed did not. There is also
reason to believe that the students from the Ethiopian University Service made
far less systematic use of corporal punishment, and that it was alien to the Peace
Corps volunteers. For these reasons, and in view of the greater generational
closeness between teachers and students, pedagogy in secondary schools was
becoming gentler.

The educational relationship based on a paternal image also had an
emotional component that was inseparable from its authoritarian aspect. Some
teachers saw their paternal role as involving helping their pupils. Voluntary
tutoring outside school hours and material help for the poorest in the form of
donations of clothes, food or supplies were not uncommon: "The teacher was
a father at that time. If a pupil had problems, he would help him, set him up
in his house, help him with his lessons, dress him" (ያኔ አስተማሪ አባት ነበር።
የተቸገረም ተማሪ ካለ ይረዳል ቤቱ አስቀምጦ ያስተምራል ያለብሳል). This help
was usually provided in exchange for services: "In addition, if the teacher ran
out of water, he would say, 'Please my children, go and get me water with a
canister.' The pupil would fetch water with the canister [...] and would come
back, the teacher would give a reward. It was a pleasure for us" (አስተማሪ ደግሞ
አንዳንድ ጊዜ ውሃ ሲያጣ እካካችሁ ልጆቼ ውሃ በበርሚል አምጡልኝ ይላል ።
ተማሪም ከዳሞታ በበርሚል ገፍቶ ውሃ ለመምህሩ ያመጣል አስተማሪውም በምትኩ
ማበረታቻ ምክር ለተማሪው ይለግሳል፣ምስጋናም ያቀርባል).<fnref n="26" /> The Indian teachers
helped the pupils from the countryside in the same way:

At that time, our biggest help, those who supported us the most, were the Indian
teachers. There were a lot of Indian teachers here. If you are an Indian teacher,
before you arrive in Soddo, we are waiting for you at the bus station and “I arrived
first and I’ll carry your suitcase and come with you and...” That’s why, you see?
“I’ll take your kitchen, you take the big house, you don’t use the kitchen, so we

<footnote n="24">²⁴Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga, interview, November 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵MOEFA, *Teacher Education in Ethiopia* (1965), 3.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga, interview, November 2010.</footnote>
live in the kitchen. If I take your kitchen, I'll call my friends, three, four, five, like this." [...] They were good friends, good teachers for us. They helped us, even by giving their kitchen away. It was a good opportunity for us.<fnref n="27" />

Children stayed with Indian teachers in exchange for multiple services that might be seen as a form of domestic help. This was consistent with the usual role of children in Ethiopian families, however, and ultimately, the relationship between teachers and students was a mixture of coercion, protection and affection, and respect, fear and a specific devotion to paternalism.

In the classroom, the transmission of knowledge was based on memorisation. In religious schools, pupils learned and then recited entire passages of the Bible in Geez, a liturgical language they did not even understand until they had reached an advanced level in their studies. Priests imported this practice into government schools. Until the end of the regime, Ethiopian pedagogues deplored memorisation, accusing it of not stimulating the imagination and suppressing children's curiosity. It was explained that the legacy of Ethiopian religious education was responsible for this pedagogical "delay." In its most rudimentary formulation, a "good" modern "education" could not flourish properly because it bore the burden of the practices inherited from the "bad" traditional "education."<fnref n="28" /> Although it might have enabled one educational system to be rehabilitated cheaply to the detriment of another, this is not a satisfactory explanation. As early as the 1960s, Germa Amare pointed out that the almost exclusive practice of memorisation in Ethiopian government schools was due to the languages of instruction. English was the language of instruction from Grade 4 until the end of the 1950s, and then from Grade 7 from the 1960s. The distance that separated Amharic and English made it difficult for young children to understand the concepts that were being taught. If they wanted to pass their examinations, therefore, they were faced with the need to memorise their lessons without understanding them (Girma 1963, 30). The barriers were even greater for students whose mother tongue was not Amharic, who had to learn two new languages. Moreover, while Ethiopian teachers who were fluent in English were able to translate the concepts that were used in Amharic, Indians and Americans were not.

The central focus on memorisation was accentuated by the examination method set up by the American experts from Addis Ababa University. In the mid-1950s, they replaced the writing exercise for the national primary school leaving examination with a multiple choice questionnaire. This was done despite opposition from Ethiopian and British educationists, who rightly

<footnote n="27">²⁷ Abebe Fola, interview, November 2009.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸ This simplistic interpretation was so tenacious that it was still to be seen in 2001 (Teklehaymanot 2001, 9–15).</footnote>
saw the intellectual impoverishment that would inevitably follow. This
type of examination left no room for self-expression or the formulation
of ideas (Paulos 2006, 81). In 1972, the authors of the Education Sector
Review—a major study commissioned by the Ethiopian government to reform
the school system—found an overemphasis on rigid examinations (Paulos
2006, 150).

3.2. *Rituals and theatre: cult of personality, patriotism, morals*

The school space was highly ritualised. Every morning, pupils stood in a row
to sing the ‘Our Father,’ an affirmation of Ethiopia’s Christian identity. This
was immediately followed by the raising of the flag, which was accompanied
by a song that exalted the model of the hero and sacrifice for the homeland:

ደሙን ያፈሰሰ ልቡ እየነደደ ባርበኝነት ታጥቆ ጠላት ያስወገደ ፣
ንጉሠን አገሩን ክብሩን የወደደ ነጻነቱን ይዞ መልካም ተራመደ ፣
ገነነው ክብራችን ስንደቅ አላማችን ያኮራሻል አርበኛነታችን

In fervent heart, blood spilled, armed with patriotism, the foe repelled.

He who cherishes his king, his land, his honor, strides with glory toward freedom's
[stand.

Our flag, a beacon of abundant glory, our pride in patriotism, the tale of our story.<fnref n="29" />

Another flag ceremony was held every evening and an hour a day was
devoted to songs that were written in their hundreds. Here is another example:

ከአምስት አመት በፊት ጠፍተህ የነበርህ እሰይ የምስራች የኛ አለም ተገኘች ፣
ፀሐይ ወጥቶልናል እልል በሉ ሰዎች ፣
ጨለማን የሚያርቅ የሚሞቅ ለደሆች ሕዝብህን ጠባቂ ተበቃይ ሌቦችን ፣
ያላንተ ማን አለን ለኛ ለሁላችን

Five years away, congratulations on your return to our land.

The sun has risen, and joy radiates across the strand.

Dispelling darkness, warming the poor, guardian of the people true,

You’ve punished those who robbed us, our gratitude to you.

Without you, who would stand? For us, for all, our heartfelt demand.<fnref n="30" />

This song evoked Haile Selassie's five years of exile during the Italian
occupation before giving him all the credit for independence, as the history
textbooks did. Other songs compared him to a father, to an apostle, to the
draylight that illuminated the country, and always to a providential figure.
They were a vehicle for a form of propaganda that appealed to the emotions,
where history and civic education programmes inculcated nationalism from

<footnote n="29">²⁹MOEFA, የፊደል መማሪያ (Writing Manual) (1956), 97.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰A song from the 1960s reported by Yitbarek Abebe (teacher and school administrator), in interview, Lalibela, 26 February 2008.</footnote>
a rational standpoint. The same power can be given them that Benedict Anderson attributes to the daily ritual of reading the national press: "a mass ceremony [...] performed in silent privacy, in the lair of the skull" (Anderson 2006 [1983], 35). When Ethiopian students sang in a group, they knew that at the same time, in every school in the country, thousands of other students were lined up like them, singing the same song. The simultaneous celebration of the rite contributed to the emergence of the nation as an imagined community.

Theatre also played an important role in schools. Plays were performed on national holidays and at end-of-year ceremonies, both inside and outside the school. At first sight, the content appeared to be less political and more moral than that of the songs. *Temherté Yä'ayné Berhan Mästawäté* (My school education: the light that illuminates my eyes) is a play written in 1957 by a teacher in Dässé, Wällo. The pupils' performance was so successful that the governor of the region immediately decided that it should be published (Em 1958, 10). The story begins in a small, isolated village that has no school. Kenfu's father, a wealthy peasant, is dying. As the whole family is illiterate, he calls on a friend to write his will. But this friend turns out to be a sad character who robs the heirs by committing forgery. The widow and her two fatherless children (Kenfu has a sister) are ruined. Kenfu's mother decides to send him to school, believing that they were victims of the fraudster because they were illiterate. Kenfu goes to the town alone and meets a policeman who decides to help him by offering him lodging. Kenfu always behaved in an exemplary fashion with everyone; he is loved by his host and held up as an example by his teachers. His academic career is brilliant and he even studies abroad. While he is at school, he finds a surrogate father in Haile Selassie, whom he did not know existed when he was in his remote village: what would have become of him without the emperor, who had schools built for the good of his people? On his return from abroad, instead of taking up the high office he had been promised, he chooses to return to his village to found a school named after the emperor. Rather than thinking about his personal career, he decides to devote himself to the well-being of his community, to bring school education, the figure of Haile Selassie and awareness of belonging to a nation to the mountains.

### 3.3. *The bodies of autocracy*

To ensure discipline outside the classroom, staff relied on the “pupil police” (Demeke 1985, 27). In the early 1940s, they were made up of groups of pupils whose most important role was to attract young people who were not working to come to school.<fnref n="31" /> They were also in charge of discipline in the schoolyard, a function they later retained. The “pupil police” were an element

<footnote n="31">³¹Wanna Wagesho, interview, December 2010.</footnote>
of the pastoral power, the surveillance of every individual at all times. By
making the schoolyard a policed area, the administration acquired a means of
increasing its ability to control. Above all, through peer-to-peer surveillance,
the “pupil police” gave adult supervisors access to a level of involvement
that was otherwise forbidden to them. It opened up spaces that children and
adolescents typically reserved for themselves and from which adults were
excluded. The breaking down of this boundary meant that no place was safe
from power, thereby instilling a political culture of control of everyone by
everyone, and of denunciation.

Scouting, which instilled obedience, discipline, respect for religion and love of country, was introduced into the Wolaita Soddo school by an Indian teacher in 1954 (Demeke 1985, 27). A flagship activity of schools in the capital since the 1940s, it spread to several provincial schools in the 1950s. According to Mesfin Wolde-Mariam, a pupil at Tefari Mekonnen school in the late 1940s, scouting was one of the ways of instilling a sense of responsibility and hard work, all in a joyful atmosphere.32 The oath to do one’s duty to God and the emperor, to help one’s neighbour at all times and to obey the Scout Law was perfectly in accord with the political and moral conduct expected by Haile Selassie’s autocratic regime. It was a question of taking responsibility, but within a precise framework: service. At the same time, the playfulness and pomp—the uniforms and the parades—were highly attractive to children. In Wolaita, it was a very popular activity with pupils, about 200 of whom were scouts in the second half of the 1950s.33 With scouting, children learned not only to obey but also to command. The future elites of the nation also developed an esprit de corps based on a sense of distinction. Scouts were in charge of the flag-raising ceremony, where they stood in front of the other pupils.34

In physical education classes, children learned to march in orderly rows,
in rhythm, with their chests out and their heads held high. In the 1940s
and 1950s, these classes were for boys only. Sports formed virile and martial
bodies, and it would have been considered shameful for girls to engage in
sporting activities in public, so they were given lessons in domestic work
instead. Physical education classes became coeducational in the 1960s, but the
nature of the classes did not change. Girls had to adopt a masculine dress code,
with shorts—at a time when showing off one’s legs was considered particularly

<footnote n="32">³²Mesfin Wolde-Mariam (pupil at Tefari Mekonnen from 1945 to 1949, geographer, celebrated academic and influential public figure in Ethiopia), interview, Addis Ababa, 11 August 2009.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">³³Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga, interview, November 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴Getachew Kassa (pupil at Tefari Mekonnen School from 1967 to 1971, teacher), interview, Addis Ababa, 8 August 2009.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_24.png" /><figcaption>Figure 9. Scouts students</figcaption></figure>

indecent—and virile bodily attitudes. The ideal of virility, which was initially associated with being masculine, ended up applying to female bodies as well.

Ultimately, schools were places with outside classroom activities with a political function. They imposed the cult of Haile Selassie's personality and the homeland, and instilled obedience and devotion. Surveillance, coercion and propaganda combined to shape individuals with the morals and political conduct developed by the authorities.

## 4. School sociabilities: the violence of assigned identities

If we examine Wolaita more closely, it becomes possible for us to understand how the objective of homogenisation also impregnated social relations within the school space. The gender and class relations that governed the social order outside were transposed within it in specific forms.

The hierarchy between Wolaita and “Amhara”—categories that were understood as metaphors of positions of power—tended to reproduce itself. The point here is not to posit a binary conflict between essentialised identities, but rather to understand how the imposition of a dominant “national” culture affected scholastic sociabilities. The definition of an exclusive Ethiopian identity in the official curricula—Semitic, Amharic-speaking and ‘orthodox’ Christian—drew a boundary line along which pupils occupied distinct positions. The precise role of the school was to fit the future elites of the nation into
ወጣት ተማሪዎች በእንድ ታላቅ የዕስፖርት ትርኢት ላይ ።

<figure><img src="image_25.png" /></figure>

ልጃገረዶች በስውነት ማጠንከሪያ ትምህርት ጊዜ ።

<caption>Figure 10. School sports ceremonies for boys and girls</caption>
this unique mould. For their part, girls, being a tiny minority, faced multiple
forms of gender oppression and had to fight for their legitimacy. The school
was therefore a place of identities in tension. From humiliation to open conflict,
these tensions were expressed in symbolic, psychological and physical violence,
but although they were restricted by these power relations, and in spite of
everything, spaces for solidarity still existed.

4.1. *The schoolgirl fighter's journey: forging oneself against the norm*

There were very few female students, and very few female teachers. In 1959–60, one-quarter of primary school students were girls, and they made up one-tenth of secondary school students.<fnref n="35" /> By 1974, on the eve of the revolution, these figures had only increased slightly (27% and 17%, respectively) (World Bank 2004, 117). In Wolaita, of the 428 students who sat for the national primary school leaving examination (Grade 8) in 1973, only 54 were girls.<fnref n="36" /> A year later, only 4 girls took the national secondary school leaving examination (Grade 12), compared with 350 boys.<fnref n="37" /> Those girls who completed their studies owed it to their willpower and the tenacity of their families. Both female students and their parents needed to be prepared to face social disapproval, and there was also no protection from gender violence inside the school.

Differences also appeared in the pedagogical relationship, with some
teachers nursing prejudices that devalued girls' intellectual abilities. They
attributed the poor results of boys to their lack of work, and of girls to their
lack of ability, without questioning the girls' added burden of domestic work,
which was not compatible with success at school. This resulted in discouraging
comments, humiliation and even insults. Tsehai Zerihun, a pupil in the 1960s,
recalls how his classmates were treated when they answered questions poorly:

The teacher said: "You girl, you are old enough to have a baby now, you are studying in grade 4 and still you don't know this!" The teacher used to talk like that. There were insults for two or three girls. I don't know why they insult them. Most of the time they insult. They were sitting at the back, because they are a bit tall, a bit older. The insult is in gender condition? I think so.<fnref n="38" />

This testimony also highlights the role of age, as it was from puberty that
the problems really started. On the one hand, it seemed incongruous that a
girl of marriageable age should be attending school. Marriage was a social
obligation, and a girl who had reached puberty no longer had a place in school.

<footnote n="35">³⁵MOEFA, *Government, Mission, Community and Church Schools* (1959–60), 7.</footnote>

<footnote n="36">³⁶*Lists of the National Examination, grade 8, 1973* (Archives of the Ligaba Beyene school, Soddo).</footnote>

<footnote n="37">³⁷Yemesrach Alula, interview, January 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸Tsehai Zerihun, interview, January 2011.</footnote>
Also, from that age, girls were subject to pressure from teachers who wanted to “get married” to them.<fnref n="39" /> Such a request, which was part of the teacher-pupil hierarchical relationship and made in a social context of male domination, obviously placed the pupil in a particularly difficult situation. How could she refuse if her success at school depended on it? How could she not fear reprisals?

Relationships were no less tense with male students. Yemesrach Alula, one of the first four girls to complete secondary school, recalls: “At that time, since very few men believed in equality, boys freely sexually assaulted girls on the way to and from school. Because of this, many girls stopped going to school.” (በዚያን ጊዜ በእኩልነት የሚያምኑ ወንዶች ጥቂት ስለነበሩ ወንዶች ልጆች ሴቶቹን በመንገድም ሆነ በትምህርት ቤት ይደበድቡቸዋል ከዚህም የተነሳ ብዙ ሴቶች ትምህርት ያቁርጡ ነበር).<fnref n="40" /> Aggressive proposals for sexual relations were frequent. Being old enough to have sex and spending their days in the company of boys, even in a classroom, made teenage girls feel very immoral. In the end, female students were routinely confronted with violence by male teachers or students. According to Yemesrach Alula, only a few particularly experienced girls would defend themselves.

This difficult school experience had a considerable impact on the construc-
tion of the individual and collective identity of women who completed the sec-
ondary school curriculum. They were led to think differently about women’s
social norms and stereotypes. Faced with the weight of social determinism
and their limited room for manoeuvre, they adopted an attitude of particular
resistance: in the face of the teachers’ low appreciation of their intellectual
abilities, they worked assiduously to be the best; and to combat their alleged
immorality, they adopted a model code of conduct and kept as far away
from boys as possible. Being in tension with the norm made them realise the
extent of its power, as well as its constructed nature. The school experience
gave them the will to influence this state of affairs from their adolescence
onwards. One of the means at their disposal was to be role models, so that other
girls would follow suit.<fnref n="41" /> They had to be strong and exemplary to complete
their schooling. Indeed, the four “pioneers” who graduated from secondary
school in 1974 were heroines to their younger sisters. Ayelech Tekle-Maryiam
remembers: “Yemesrach, Kassech, her sister and Nehasse were my models.
Seeing them gave me strength to continue. They were so strong!”<fnref n="42" /> A young
teenager’s classic admiration for “grown-ups” was reinforced by the strength
of the grown-ups’ character and their determination, which were essential
traits given the harsh studying conditions for girls.

<footnote n="39">³⁹Yemesrach Alula, interview, January 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴²Ayelech Tekle-Mariam, interview, November 2010.</footnote>
## 4.2. Putting homogenisation to the test

School was also sometimes a hostile space for pupils from the countryside. Homogenisation was achieved primarily through two practices: changing one's name and making Amharic the only language worthy of being spoken. This cultural supremacy of the north, which justified its domination over the south, was a particularly sensitive point of tension.

The adoption of “Amhara” names as a way of integrating was widespread among conquered peoples: it was partly a strategic decision and partly an obligation. Having an Oromo or Wolaita name, for example, led to discrimination. The practice began at the beginning of the 20th century among people who had adopted the “orthodox” Christian religion, and was accentuated by schooling after the Italian occupation. Wolaita pupils were required to adopt an “Amhara” first name if they wanted to go to school. Changing one’s first name was a common and valued feature of “Amhara” society, and the same person might have one first name in their family, another for friends, another at work, etc. While this may explain that this practice was used for members of the conquered peoples, in this context it nevertheless became an act of symbolic violence.

The names of the former schoolchildren who allowed me to interview them are revealing in this regard. Lemma Didana, Abebe Fola, Gebre-Mikael Kuke, Desalegn Tanga, Bogale Gesamo etc., all have “Amhara” first names followed by their father’s Wolaita first name.<fnref n="43" /> Similarly, the lists of candidates for the national exams include only “Amhara” first names,<fnref n="44" /> and Wolaita pupils are only identifiable by their surname. According to Abebe Fola, who switched from a missionary school to a government school in the early 1960s: “We have to change, we can’t come with our Wolaita name to the school, we have to change at the gate. When we give our registered name, the registrar changes it.”<fnref n="45" /> Zebdewos Chama, who started going to the government school ten years earlier, says the same thing with a mixture of resentment and humour:

> I was myself asked to change my name! My name is Zebdewos, my father was named “Chama.” “Chama” is a Wolaita name. “Chama” means “nasty,” nasty for who? For the enemy. If “Chama” is called, the enemy runs. They asked me to change my name: “Don’t say your father’s name Chama but Choma.” Choma means “fat” [the fat of animal meat in Amharic].<fnref n="46" />

<footnote n="43">⁴³There is no such thing as a “family name” in Ethiopia. People use their first name followed by their father’s first name.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴*Lists of the national examination, grade 8, 1973* (Ligaba Beyene school archives, Soddo, Wolaita).</footnote>

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵Abebe Fola, interview, November 2009.</footnote>

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶Zebdewos Chama, interview, November 2010.</footnote>
The change in meaning was humiliating. Meat fat is certainly appreciated in Ethiopia in general and in Wolaita in particular, but being a brave warrior who makes an enemy flee is far more rewarding than being a “good piece of meat.” In the vast majority of cases, however, young people adopted or were given a common “Amhara” first name.

The requirement to master the Amharic language posed two types of problems: the first was the sometimes painful learning process, and the second was passing the exams. The teacher training institutes prescribed that future teachers should develop a tolerance of different languages, religions and groups,<fnref n="47" /> but it seems that mockery and humiliation were frequent:

> The attitude of the teachers in the school... When you speak, you might not be able to pronounce the Amharic letters properly. For example, the first letter of “b” is “bä” and a Wolaita calls it “baa.” “Baaaaaa!!!” Don’t say “baa,” “baa” is the language of sheep! [...] So as soon as he comes, he points to that student and stands and says “baa,” demoralizing the students. [...] They are mocked. So that type of many thousands of words like that demoralize the people, and students sometimes hide from the teacher. [...] And hence, we were feeling shy towards “Amhara” teachers.<fnref n="48" />

Some teachers taught Amharic by reducing the language of their Wolaita students to the level of an animal, to an incomplete level of humanity. Although it is likely that not all Amharic teachers did so, even if only some of them practised this form of humiliation, the memory that remained very present in the former pupils is testimony to its traumatic nature.

Students whose mother tongue was not Amharic were further penalised by the rule that made Amharic an examination subject that might lead to disqualification: “During the reign of Haile Sialassie, in the Grade 12 National Examination, a student who failed in Amharic was not admitted to university. Even if he or she had received an A in mathematics and other subjects” (በኃይለ ሥላሴ ጊዜ የ12ኛ ክፍል ብሄራዊ ፈተና በአማርኛ ትምህርት ተማሪ ቢወድቅ ወደ ዩኒቨርስቲ አይገባም ነበር። በአንድ የትምህርት አይነት በአማርኛ ስለወደቀ ብቻ ሂሳብን ጨምሮ በሌሎቹ የትምህርት አይነቶች በ ቢኖረውም እንኳን ዩኒቨርስቲ አይገባም ነበር).<fnref n="49" /> Failure to pass the Amharic exam was a persistent problem, despite years of schooling. The authorities had imposed a sanction that reminded students that despite their efforts, they did not meet the criteria required to be fully Ethiopian. As a result, the Amharic examination was “terrifying.”<fnref n="50" /> This rule, the main objective of which was homogenisation

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷MOEFA, *Curriculum Policies and Standards. Teacher Training Institutes* (1965), 41.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸Zebdewos Chama, interview, November 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹Lemma Didana, interview, December 2009.</footnote>

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰Zebdewos Chama, interview, November 2010.</footnote>
through the official language, created a harsh hierarchy among the pupils. If it had been based on pedagogical considerations, it should have been English, which was the language of instruction at the university, that might result in possible disqualification. In many ways, for young Wolaita students from rural areas, entry into the government schools system meant entering the “other world,” one in which they were at a disadvantage.

Those whose mother tongue was not Amharic were even more heavily penalised because the school system valued students’ language skills first and foremost (Paulos 2006, 150). As a result, English had a powerful pull for Wolaita students. At the end of the 1960s, Paolos Sorsa left the government school for two years to return to the missionary school because the English classes were better:

> By then, what I thought was that the government school’s English teaching method and English teachers were not very good. [...] Two children of my uncle were learning at the Ottona missionary campus. Weekly, on Fridays, we were meeting in Bekolo Senio and visiting our family together. They were conversing in English. By then, I was not clever enough to talk in English as they talked in English. So I thought they were educated in a better education and better school, and this Ottona Missionary School was a better school. So I have to join that school just to speak English language as they speak. [...] My first intention was to speak English fluently. You know our society... recognizes one who speaks a language very fluently, Amharic or English, with no other education. If you speak the language fluently, if you write that language in a good manner, our society considers you to be an educated person. So by then my intention was that, so I started to study English.<fnref n="51" />

English was politically more neutral and enjoyed greater prestige in their eyes than Amharic, and was therefore a potential alternative. By learning English, Wolaita students gained access to a prestigious international language spoken by distant nations that did not directly dominate them.

While forms of solidarity existed with some teachers and students, Wolaita students resented receiving their education from an institution where they were constantly reminded that they remained second-class Ethiopians.

### 4.3. *The difficult transgression of social hierarchies: the dismissal of Leul-Selassie Temamo in 1953 and the brawl of 1971*

Those who wanted to help rural pupils had only limited room for manoeuvre. In 1953, in Soddo, Teacher Leul-Selassie Temamo—who was well-known for later becoming the Minister of Culture—obtained permission to set up a self-help association for pupils of modest means. The idea was to raise money

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ Paolos Sorsa, interviews, Addis Ababa, 14 and 21 December 2010.</footnote>
to distribute school clothes and supplies. As he noticed that pupils from the countryside were dropping out of school because of the long journeys and the impossibility of finding accommodation in the city, he undertook to build accommodation at the school. It did not take long to build mud houses with thatched roofs (Demeke 1985, 21). However, his initiative soon met with opposition from the city notables, who were not particularly supportive of education for the peasants' children. Leul-Selassie Temamo refused to give in, and the resulting conflict led to his dismissal. On the day he left, the students who were not children of notables abandoned their classes to gather outside the school entrance. In tears and with song, they showed their support for him and their opposition to the authorities' decision. On the one hand, this event testifies to the fact that social hierarchies must not be disobeyed. Leul-Selassie Temamo had crossed the line between charity and the promotion of peasants' children, and the call to order came immediately. On the other hand, it was the first demonstration by Wolaita pupils against the school management, and also against the power of the local aristocracy.<fnref n="52" />

Relations were particularly strained with students from neighbouring provinces who came to Soddo to complete their secondary education. They were all from “settler,” *melkegna* or landlord families; children from modest families could not afford to study away from home. One day in the second semester of 1971, a violent conflict broke out after a pupil from Gedeo insulted a Wolaita. In response, Wolaita students armed themselves with sticks and stones to attack the group from which the person who had launched the insults was found. The teachers and administration could do nothing. The fight lasted more than half an hour before being dispersed by the police. Two Wolaita students and four others were seriously injured and rushed to hospital. Tensions had risen to a level that had not been anticipated by either the school or the provincial authorities. Governor Wolde-Sama’et Gebre-Wold took the initiative to close the school for 25 days to find a solution. The same day, he contacted the governors of the provinces of Gedeo and Sidamo, and the three of them decided to convene a committee made up of students’ families. Those who had taken part in the confrontation were suspended for one year (Demeke 1985, 40–41). According to Wolde-Sama’et Gebre-Wold, it was a simple dispute that had no consequences, and was caused by banal competition between young people from different places, a “War of the Buttons” in short:

> The people who came from Sidamo and some Wolaita they were some... a little fight. [...] Sometimes you see students are envious: “Look, they come from Dilla and they study here, maybe their grade is higher.” And sometimes when the grade

<footnote n="52">⁵²Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga, interview, November 2010.</footnote>
is higher, the Wolaita students' grade is higher: "ha! Because he is Wolaita he is getting a higher grade because of this." This is all over the world.<fnref n="53" />

These kinds of opinion must be taken into account, of course, but other interviews reveal that the conflict had deeper causes than mere jealousy between students, and that they were embedded in the relations of domination specific to southern Ethiopia:

> The Soddo town “Amhara” children and also those who come from Dilla and Yirgalem [...], they said to the people here: “Wolamo.” They say it again and again. “These Wolamo became educated and they look down on us. Now they have to eat their potatoes.” The young potatoes... the young potato eaters ... they are *injera* eaters and these Wolaita were young potato eaters. So they insulted like that and then one day [...] the Wolaita students [...] talk together and [...] there happened a great struggle inside the compound of the school [...] ‘What is education for you’ they say. “You have to eat your potatoes and you have to serve the ‘Amhara,’ education is no need for you” they said.<fnref n="54" />

These insults had a powerful political dimension. “Wolamo” was the name the conquerors had given to the Wolaita after defeating them. This pejorative term was rightly perceived as an insult by those concerned: it meant subjection. The potato was considered by northerners to be a degrading type of food. It grows underground, which is the domain of the devil and worms. It symbolises animal food, whereas the *enjera*, a wafer made from *tef*, was human food.<fnref n="55" /> These insults were based on the idea that one group of humans was superior to another and on the legitimate submission of the Wolaita, hence the opposition to their being educated, which might emancipate them from servitude. The aristocracy opposed the assimilation the school system sought to achieve because homogenisation, which included a significant amount of violence, also implied a levelling off of inequalities. Pupils reproduced the discourse of the “*balabbat*, princes and aristocrats” that had been denounced by Bogale Wallelu in 1942 in his letter to the Ministry of Education, which basically said: “If the peasants are educated, who will serve us?” In 1971, as in 1942, the survival of the aristocracy as a class depended on its ability to exploit the peasants. On the contrary, the rural children who went to school showed an eagerness to study that evoked a real struggle to escape the condition of the overtaxed and exploitable peasant: living in the kitchen of an Indian teacher in a group of five, running errands in exchange for a little money or food, or enduring the humiliations experienced in school.

<footnote n="53">⁵³Wolde-Samaet Gebre-Wold, interview, January 2011.</footnote>

<footnote n="54">⁵⁴Zebdewos Chama, interview, November 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="55">⁵⁵I thank Thomas Guindeuil, specialist in food history in Ethiopia, who gave me this information.</footnote>
Conclusion

The nationalist discourse of inclusion and exclusion in education led to powerful contradictions for those pupils who were furthest away from the dominant culture. The humiliating practices used by some teachers made them feel that they were developing in an environment in which they were not welcome. There was an evident paradox between a school that defended and imposed assimilation while also reproducing practices that reanimated marginalisation outside its walls. It was the school experience of those students who were candidates for assimilation that lay at the heart of this tension.

Compared to the large, partly idealised state projects, this phenomenon bears witness to the deep-rooted involvement of schools in local power relations. The national school system claimed that it wished to assimilate the heterogeneous components of the nation into a homogeneous political community, but in Wolaita, relations of domination were based precisely on difference. The upward social levelling implied by assimilation meant that social hierarchies would eventually be disrupted, leading to tensions within the dominant group, and threatening its position. This was reflected in the tensions between pupils from the “settler” group and those from the countryside who were seeking social ascent through assimilation, as well as in the humiliation inflicted by teachers from the dominant culture on pupils born on its fringes. The heterogeneity of the components of the nation was one of the conditions for safeguarding the system.

The system created by the knowledge taught and the pedagogical practices welded the figure of the emperor and the concepts of nation and progress into one single symbolic system. However, the tensions between the state's project and the realities of practice led to distinct forms of reception, in which the workings of this system were to be dismantled and rebuilt. School discourses were reinterpreted because of the identity tensions generated by the school and because the regime promised a future of progress that appeared to students in the 1960s to be far less feasible than it had in the 1940s.
Chapter 5

The Nation's Leaders:
From Fidelity to Revolt

It is important to study the political roles played by the generations of pupils and graduates who attended school between 1941 and 1974. This involves looking at the effects of the socialisation—official and dissenting—that was underway in schools, and questioning how schoolchildren interpreted the discourses that were instilled into them there. The political attitudes of the pupils of Wolaita reveals how they understood the nation, its social hierarchies, the power practices that were played out in it and the role they were expected to have in it.

The transition from loyalty to contesting the regime at the turn of the 1960s and the radicalisation of the Addis Ababa students have been the subject of detailed studies (Balsvik 1985; 2007; Messay 2008; Bahru 2010; 2014). The most visible events leading up to the 1974 revolution took place in Addis Ababa. Because the organs of power were concentrated in the capital, the role of the provinces had been largely neglected or considered only marginally. The fact that it was students in Addis Ababa who spearheaded the revolution and gave it its first impulses and ideological weapons reduced the political experience of secondary school pupils in the provinces to a distant whisper. This faint echo gives the impression that they were just following in the footsteps of their elders. The case of Wolaita must be used as a contribution to a decentralised history of the years prior to the 1974 revolution.

In Wolaita, as in Addis Ababa, it is possible to distinguish between a loyal generation educated in the 1940s and 1950s and a dissident generation educated in the 1960s and 1970s. In the first two decades after the Second World War, schooling offered important opportunities for upward social mobility. The national space was a resource for young Wolaita who wanted to free themselves from the vagaries of subsistence farming and the violence of political domination. Those who went to school nurtured hopes for Haile Selassie's regime. From the 1960s onwards, however, it became increasingly difficult for schools to keep their promises, the political system became rigid and the unceasing progress that had been promised was desperately lacking: young people in Wolaita who were attending school saw their families in a situation of domination that seemed not to be changing. Increasingly critical students became politicised alongside the student movement at Addis Ababa
University. In 1970, Wolaita was the scene of the “eradication of thieves” campaign, which stands as a testimony to the way their political consciousness was forged both in the dissemination of dissident ideas through schools and their experience of local power structures. A focus on the ties to students in the capital makes it possible to draw comparisons in order to distinguish between the shared and specific features of the politicisation process that played out in the development of local and national spaces.

## 1. The loyal generation of the 1940s and 1950s

Following liberation, schools were made responsible for training the staff that was required at all levels of the administrative apparatus that was under construction. Until the late 1950s, graduates enjoyed unrestricted access to public employment (Markakis 1974, 183), in the capital as well as in the provinces. The emperor wished to create assimilated elites from all over the country, and so he encouraged the principals of provincial schools to send their best students to the elite schools in the capital, where they were taken in as boarders at the government's expense. Some of Soddo's first generation of students enjoyed a meteoric social rise to very senior civilian and military positions: Leul-Selassie Temamo and Zewde Gebre-Medhin at the Ministry of Education, Abate Mengeste at the Ministry of Defence, Chabude Gebre at the Bank of the Republic, Gebre Emmanuel Teka at the Ministry of Health, Agriculture, Industry and Development, and Asafa Tebebu and Antonio Worku in the army, where they rose to the rank of colonel,<fnref n="1" /> to name but a few examples.

In order to ensure the development of schools, people with only limited education were encouraged to become teachers, at a time when the profession represented a real social promotion.<fnref n="2" /> As late as the 1950s, Bogale Wallelu sent people who had completed their primary education in Wolaita to teach in the neighbouring Gamo-Goffa region, where he was the Regional Director of Education.<fnref n="3" /> He preferred to hire them rather than better-trained teachers who were sent from Addis Ababa. An anecdote that was reported in the *YeZareitu Ethiopia* newspaper provides an illustration of his concept. One day in the 1950s, three qualified teachers appointed by the Ministry of Education arrived in Gamo-Goffa. A few days later, Bogale Wallelu received the budget needed to pay their salaries. He reportedly sent a letter to the Ministry in which, after conveying his obligatory gratitude, he announced that he was dismissing the teachers but keeping the money. This enabled him to employ nine teachers

<footnote n="1">¹Wanna Wagesho, *የወላይታ ሕዝብ ታሪክ* (*History of the Wolaita People*) (Addis Ababa: Berhanenna Selam Printing Press, 2003), 161.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²Alula Anjiyo, interview, December 2009.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga, interview November 2010.</footnote>
who were less well-qualified but spoke the local language and were better suited to rural life.<fnref n="4" /> In the same decade, pupils who had performed well in the final primary school examination and wished to continue their studies were allocated to their choice between an agricultural school, a technical school or a teacher training institute. They were provided with government support and guaranteed employment upon graduation.<fnref n="5" />

School met the expectations of students and their families, which fostered confidence in the regime. Because of its proximity to the centre of government, this was even more pronounced in Addis Ababa. Comparing his generation with the next generation attending school in the 1960s, writer Tesfaye Gessesse, who first went to school in the 1940s, recalls: “Our generation of students and graduates was really not revolutionary. They had good positions, they were given responsible jobs and good salaries, and that was the end of it.”<fnref n="6" /> The school system was fulfilling its nationwide role of integration into the state apparatus at various levels of government.

Willingness to help their country was also an important motivation for students and graduates. School socialisation based on the inculcation of patriotism and dedication was an effective tool, but it must be understood in the specific context of the 1940s and 1950s, as Mesfin Wolde-Mariam reminds us:

> That was after the war, after independence. Ethiopian patriotism was very high, songs... everything was about Ethiopian patriotism, and so we were filled with that. And we... if you asked anybody, he would say: "I am going to school to help my country." It's not to make money, it is not like now, to become this or that, it was "to help my country."<fnref n="7" />

Children and adolescents were all the more receptive to the incorporation of devotion, as they were steeped in the nationalistic atmosphere that had survived the joy of liberation. Haile Selassie immediately directed this nationalistic enthusiasm towards his autocratic project. Propaganda was very intense in Addis Ababa, where there were numerous vehicles for disseminating it. The press, radio, art, literature and schools were all mobilised. In a province such as Wolaita, where the media were almost non-existent, schools were the favoured locations for propaganda, and pupils were among the first to be reached, through both teaching and school rituals. My interviews reveal that pupils harboured strong patriotic feelings and an attitude of veneration towards Haile Selassie. This same feeling was shared by a large section of

<footnote n="4">⁴YeZareitu Ethiopia, megabit 2, 1981 EC (19 March 1989).</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga, interview, November 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶Tesfaye Gessesse (student at Tefari Mekonnen School from 1948 to 1955, novelist, poet and playwright), interview, Addis Ababa, 18 August 2009.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷Mesfin Wolde-Mariam, interview, August 2009.</footnote>
the local population from all social backgrounds. He was not only the sacred
erpretor of the settlers and the faithful of the national church, but also—and
this was far less obvious—of Wolaita. According to former teacher Lemma
Didana:

በዚያን ጊዜ ንጉሱ እንደአምርክ ነው የሚታዩት። ሰው ተጣልቶ እንኳን ለማስታረቅ ሽምግልና የሚቀመጡ የወላይታ ሽማግሌዎች ለንጉሱ እረጅም እድሜ በመመኘት ነበር ስራቸውን የሚጀምሩት። ኦርቶዶክሱም ፕሮቴስታንቶችም ለእሳቸው የተለየ ክብር ነበር የሚሰጠው።

They regarded him as divine. In gatherings of elders to resolve disputes among the people, the proceedings commenced with wishes for the king's long life. Regardless of whether they were Protestant or Orthodox, they shared a belief in the king and elevated him to a divine status.<fnref n="8" />

The same witness reported that the peasants also sanctified Haile Selassie.
Obviously, the dominated Wolaita did not equate the emperor with the local
aristocracy. He was not seen as the head of a political system that presided
over coercion and the draining of resources to the capital. On the contrary,
he was seen as a just king, while the multiple forms of oppression inherent
in domination by the centre were attributed solely to the settlers and their
Wolaita allies. In-depth studies of peasant political consciousness in southern
Ethiopia would certainly add nuances to this phenomenon, which James Scott
calls “naive monarchism” (Scott 2008, 111–17); it is nevertheless confirmed in
several interviews.

The idea that Haile Selassie was the source of the benefits, while coercion
and exploitation were the work of his subordinates, was undoubtedly shared
in the school environment. Pupils and locally-trained teachers were custodians
of Bogale Wallelu's design.<fnref n="9" /> In his letter to the Ministry of Education in 1942,
he denounced the local aristocracy, portraying them as his determined enemy,
firmly opposed to educating the poor, whose upward mobility they rejected
for fear of having no one left to exploit. There are many anecdotes about his
intense efforts to make school accessible to everyone, especially the dominated.
Alula Anjiyo, who was part of the first generation of students, remembers a
morning when a child from an aristocratic family went to school accompanied
by a servant carrying his belongings. Seeing the servant leave just as his master
entered the school, Bogale Wallelu grew angry: "If the servant doesn't come
here to learn, what is the use to bring him along?" (አሽከሩ የማይማር ከሆነ እሱን
አስከትሎ መምጣት ለምን አስፈለገ?).<fnref n="10" /> He saw school as a means of promoting
the dominated section of society and levelling the top of the social hierarchy, a

<footnote n="8">⁸Lemma Didana, interview, December 2009.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹Abebe Fola, interview, November 2009.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰Alula Anjiyo, interview, December 2009.</footnote>
concept that left a powerful impression on people's minds. While school and its homogenising role might devalue their identity, the power of the centre was viewed by Wolaita pupils and graduates as emancipatory in the face of the power of the settlers and their local auxiliaries. The struggle for an Ethiopia united behind Haile Selassie was conceived to oppose the arbitrary power of the local aristocracy. The national space offered a way out, leading to a belief in assimilation and the benefits of unity. From then on, the sense of belonging to the nation was encouraged both by schools' position in local power relations and by the propaganda deployed in them. In the 1940s and 1950s, the upward mobility offered by school and a belief in the progressive nature of power combined to produce a loyal generation of graduates.

The situation gradually changed from the mid-1950s onwards. The Ministry of Education's 1954 report titled *Basic Recommendations for the Reorganization and Development of Education in Ethiopia* stated that having met the needs of reconstruction, the school system had to be reformed in order to meet the country's wider needs.<fnref n="11" /> The elites needed for reconstruction and the growth of the administration had been trained, and the focus now needed to be on the development of basic education for the greatest possible number of people. At the same time, the capacity of the state apparatus to absorb graduates was beginning to run out, while employment opportunities in other sectors were almost non-existent (Tekeste 2006, 15). The future direction of the school system was extremely unclear. A letter attached as an appendix to the *Basic Recommendations* bore witness to a certain amount of disarray among educationists in the Ministry of Education about the lack of clearly-defined policy perspectives:

> Through a nationally controlled system of education, Ethiopia can make Ethiopia any kind of Ethiopia it may want to be. [...] The problem of “what kind of Ethiopia does Ethiopia want to be?” will not be decided by educators. It will be decided by those in positions of leadership [...] who control the development of Ethiopia. [...] The educator must depend upon others to make decisions with reference to the kind of Ethiopia that is to be [...]. The Long-Term Planning Committee for Ethiopian Education is seriously handicapped by the fact that it is attempting to plan an educational program without knowing what the objectives of a total overall planning programme are.<fnref n="12" />

This situation revealed the limitations of Haile Selassie's political project. The peak of his power, which was crowned by the 1955 Constitution, was followed by a blocking of the system (Bahru 1994, 32). The consequences of

<footnote n="11">¹¹MOEFA, *Basic Recommendations...* (1954), 3.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹²Letter attached as an annex to the MOEFA report, *Basic Recommendations...* (1954). Fonds Merse-Hazen Wolde-Kirkos, 21.07, NALE.</footnote>
this political stalemate, which eventually led to the school system running
out of steam, were soon felt in Wolaita, just as rural demand for schooling
had begun to emerge in the late 1950s. By 1958–59, Germame Neway had
established literacy centres in even the most remote villages, and the Sudan
Interior Mission missionaries followed suit. At the same time, paths for
upward social mobility through schooling had emerged in the most remote
townships of Wolaita. Although it was extremely marginal, this phenomenon
was a good example. According to Abraham Worku, who lived in the rural
*wereda* of Offa: “People understand when some people in this area went to the
government school and complete it. They become higher officials.”<fnref n="13" /> School
education was slowly beginning to attract people in rural areas at the same
time as structural obstacles were appearing.

## 2. A hijacked school space: the circulation of dissident ideas

### 2.1. *The pupils: a potential political force in the heart of the city*

Germame Neway did not stay long enough for its literacy centres to become
permanent establishments. It was under the direction of Wolde Samaet Gebre-
Wold between 1963 and 1973 that government education began to take hold
more openly in Wolaita. Six new towns were founded so that each *wereda* had
an administrative centre connected to Soddo (Almaz 1984, 25) and primary
schools were established in each of them: 14 more were added to the 15 that had
existed before.<fnref n="14" /> Under his administration, the seeding of government schools
was thus distributed across the territory of Wolaita more effectively. The
primary schools that were built in the new towns attracted students from rural
missionary schools, some of whom continued their studies at the secondary
school in Soddo. As a result, enrolment there increased significantly: in 1965,
it had 1,613 pupils (Demeke 1985, 33) in a town of 10,430 inhabitants.<fnref n="15" /> In
contrast to the previous generation, when many of the pupils were children
of settlers or government workers, the newcomers were mostly from modest
social backgrounds, and from exploited and marginalised rural areas. They
were much further away from the centre, both politically and culturally.

This rapid growth of the school phenomenon from the 1960s was in itself
a source of social tension. Young people from rural areas arrived at secondary
school motivated by the hope of leaving their miserable and oppressed life
in the countryside at a time when the system's capacity for integration was
weakening. They were soon to make the bitter discovery that there was a wide
gap between the progressive discourse of power disseminated by the school
and the prospects that were actually on offer to them. In the secondary school

<footnote n="13">¹³Abraham Worku, interview, January 2011.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴WZEO, የትምህርት ተቋማት HCHC (List of Establishment of Schools) (2010).</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵CSO, *Ethiopia Statistical Abstract* (1965).</footnote>
in Soddo, which was far better connected to the national space than the rural towns, they also discovered that the emperor's aura was crumbling, and that the regime was beginning to suffer from serious disrepute. The increasing contacts with students in Addis Ababa from the mid-1960s onwards were essential to this awareness.

## 2.2. *The circulation of revolutionary ideas in the 1960s and 1970s*

In the 1960s, a student movement that was increasingly critical of the political system developed at Addis Ababa University, at a time when the circulation of dissident ideas and opposition practices was intensifying internationally. As the former activist Asfew Damte testifies, students from other African countries, notably Kenya and Nigeria, who came to study in Addis Ababa in the late 1950s brought with them the political culture of anti-colonial movements (Bahru 2010, 19–23). Ethiopian students were also sent to continue their studies in the United States and Europe. For many of them who had grown up convinced that they were living in a country that had been set on the path to progress by an enlightened emperor, their journey was a source of bitter disillusionment. In the collection of oral sources on the student movement compiled by historian Bahru Zewde in 2010, Ethiopian academic Dessalegn Rahmato recalls the shock he felt during his North American experience:

> For most of us (relatively speaking) it came as very frightening experience to realise how backward Ethiopia was. When we were in Ethiopia, we would sometimes read foreign newspapers and occasionally listen to foreign radio broadcast and watch fatuous films. This revelation, I believe, may be one source of our disillusionment. [...] [One] thing I came to realize at that time was the great amount of influence exerted on visitors from such African countries as Ethiopia when they travel abroad. Although I never analysed the concept, I had heard of imperialism and colonialism. I got a true picture of how much we were underprivileged not only in such significant areas as arms technology and the economy, but even in such rudimentary areas as thought process, [...] creation of ideas and their propagation. (There were times when I—and by extension my country—felt small). At times like this, such questions as “Where is our place on the international scale?,” “Where can we perceive our progress?” would resonate loudly in my mind. (Dessalegn, in Bahru 2010, 35)

Trips to and exchanges with foreign countries revealed the purely rhetorical aspect of the Ethiopian authorities' discourse on progress of which the school space was saturated. The integration of students into international left-wing movements began at the same time as Haile Selassie's regime entered a phase of inertia. The encounter with the literature and the great international figures of the revolution was therefore decisive, and there was no turning back. From the beginning of the 1960s, Ethiopian student associations in Europe, the USA and Addis Ababa became politicised and kept up constant exchanges.
On the Ethiopian university campus, student newspapers became more and more radical—the shift from titles such as *News and Views* to *Struggle* is sufficiently evocative of this—as did militant practices. Pan-African, anti-imperialist international solidarity and national issues were both the focus of student political activity.

Representatives were sent to the pan-African conferences in Uganda in 1957 and Sierra Leone in 1959, and to the Eighth International Student Conference in Peru in the same year (Balsvik 1985, 85). In the 1960s, a pan-African sensibility developed, and students made their voices heard against the regimes in South Africa and Rhodesia (Idem, 207–9). In 1966, students from Addis Ababa wrote to the National Union of Vietnamese Students to express their support for the “sacred struggle against U.S. imperialist aggression,” while the slogan “Yankee Go Home” appeared on banners at demonstrations in Addis Ababa (Idem: 200–201). In this movement, the students questioned the condescension of their elders towards other Africans. Nationalism based on distinction, on pride in being the only independent African country, gave way to pan-African solidarity. Within a closed country subjected to intense propaganda, the university was a place for the circulation of information and openness to the world.

Radicalisation and the break with the regime can be observed through a few milestones. The 1960 coup d'état, which took place at a time when students were just beginning to be politically active, generated enthusiastic support. The rapid crushing of the coup and Germame Neway's suicide after the execution of the 17 dignitaries he had taken hostage left them stunned. On his return from Brazil, where he had been on a diplomatic visit, the emperor, like a wounded father who still showed understanding towards his prodigal sons, forgave “his” students for their confusion. Everything temporarily returned to normal. Nevertheless, during the few days the coup had lasted, a space had been opened up for freedom of expression. Students were able to express dissatisfaction for the first time, the political and social realities of Ethiopia were brought into focus and the government was openly challenged (Idem, 100). All of this had a considerable impact on students' political consciousness. As Bahru Zewde points out: “The failure of Germame and his companions was not followed by docile submission but by even greater mistrust. Immediately after the failure of 1960, subversive leaflets sprouted like mushrooms in the capital. [...] It can be said that this new opposition set the tone for future events” (Bahru 2007, 254).

In 1965, while parliament was debating land legislation, students took to the streets to demonstrate behind the slogan “Land to the Tiller,” claiming that the land system was the source of the population's misery and the country's economic gridlock. This demonstration was a pivotal moment that initiated an intensification of criticism of the regime, which was now described as
"feudal." In May 1966, another important demonstration took place, whose call was: "Is poverty a crime?" The students wanted to draw attention to the barbed-wire fenced camps around Addis Ababa, where beggars and invalids were "picked up" from the streets on the occasion of international conferences (the Organization of African Unity had had its headquarters in Addis Ababa since its formation in 1963) and visits by foreign heads of state. Until then, the student movement had claimed the right to be an opposition integrated into the political system, increasingly critical but still loyal. Subsequently, the clear goal became to dismantle the imperial regime (Balsvik 1985, 25-27). In 1969, the assassination of the student leader Telahun Gizew by the authorities completed the rupture. The opposition then won over the students of the capital's secondary schools, who finally joined their elders from the university. Getachew Kassa, who was a student at Tefari Mekonnen School at the time, recalls: "When Telahun Gizew died, for the first time I went to the university, to oppose. It is Haile Selassie's regime which killed him. From then, the attitude of the students completely changed. We realized that he was a backward ruler."<fnref n="16" />

Addis Ababa University was pivotal in the expansion of the fight against the regime to secondary schools. It was at the centre of an international network for the development and circulation of political ideas and activist practices, which it redistributed in provincial secondary schools. From the second half of the 1960s onwards, dissident ideas circulated through the school network between the provinces, Addis Ababa and Ethiopian students abroad, with Addis Ababa University as the nerve centre. The role of the Ethiopian University Service, through which students from Addis Ababa completed a compulsory one-year period of teaching in the provinces, was essential to this process. When it was established in 1964, student politicisation was already well under way. By 1969, when students doing this service were redistributed to secondary schools on a massive scale following the departure of the Peace Corps volunteers, the movement had entered its radicalisation phase, and was armed with a powerful anti-imperialist and anti-feudal message. The student activists soon decided to use this opportunity to promote the ideas of the movement and provide information on the social realities of the country in order to feed their political discourse (Balsvik 1985, 145).

## 2.3. *The politicisation of pupils in Wolaita*

The case of Wolaita shows that pupils were particularly active, and partly belies the view that the impetus came primarily from Addis Ababa. Although they were connected to the national space, the struggle of the Wolaita pupils

<footnote n="16">¹⁶Getachew Kassa, interview, August 2009.</footnote>
was deeply rooted in local realities. The political influence of the students in the capital was essential, but so was the social experience of the Wolaita students.

In order to spread the movement throughout the country's schools, students sent from Addis Ababa as part of the Ethiopian University Service were instructed to use existing student associations, or if necessary to create new ones, as a channel for politicisation. Their position as teachers would allow them to do this without arousing the suspicions of the administration, at least initially. The first students arrived in Wolaita in 1963 and the first student association was established there at Soddo Secondary School in 1966, with the approval of the authorities. Its official powers were strictly academic. It had a president, a vice president, a secretary and six permanent elected members (Demeke 1985, 45). It seems that the school administration did not interfere in the selection and election of candidates, probably because of the presence of teacher members. This type of organisation ensured a certain degree of discretion in the dissemination of political activities. Political activities were carried out alongside the official functions of the association in informal meetings held outside the school.<fnref n="17" /> Until the first public political activities in the early 1970s, the second half of the 1960s was restricted to the dissemination of the ideas and demands of the student movement to a limited number of students:

> የተወሰኑ በእድሜ ትንሽ ከፍ ያሉ ተማሪዎች ከአዲስ አበባ ዩኒቨርስቲ ተማሪዎች ጋራ እየተመካከሩ መሬት ላራሹ ይሰጥ፣ ትምህርት ለሁሉም ይደርስ ይሉ ነበር፣ ከዚያ ደግሞ የነበረውን አስተዳደራዊ በደል ይቃወሙ ነበር ።

Slightly older students exchanged ideas with their counterparts from the university of Addis Ababa. They advocated for land to be granted to those who cultivate it, called for education to be accessible to all, and stood against administrative abuses.<fnref n="18" />

Political exchanges took place through discussion, and there were links with the university through letter-writing. Letters and writings arrived in Wolaita frequently enough to be mentioned by several witnesses:

> የአዲስ አበባ ዩኒቨርሲቲ ተማሪዎች የተቃውሞ ሰልፍ በሚያደርጉበት ጊዜ መረጃው ለእኛም እንዲደርሰ በደብዳቤ አደርገው በድብቅ ይልኩልን ነበር ። ሚስጥራዊው ደብዳቤ ወደ እዚህ በሚመጡ ሰዎች አማካኝነት ይደርሰን ነበር ።

During the opposition demonstrations they held in Addis Ababa, students would clandestinely send us letters to keep us informed. We received these covert messages through individuals who were coming to our location.<fnref n="19" />

<footnote n="17">¹⁷Saol Akamo, interview, November 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹Wanna Dea, interview, December 2010.</footnote>
The discussions focused on concrete elements rather than ideology. The main slogans were discussed in the light of the local situation and the concept of social justice.<fnref n="20" /> It was an exchange of ideas: as well as politicising the pupils, the students gathered information about the provinces and took it back to Addis Ababa. Students from rural areas were key informants.

The priority was to raise awareness of the fact that collective action was possible and to disseminate slogans to mobilise. During the 1972–73 school year, secondary school students in Soddo began to involve pupils from schools in the *wereda*. In the same year, a new students’ association was established throughout Wolaita that also brought together teachers and some of the few farmers who were parents of students (Demeke 1985, 47). During the demonstrations of the time, the pupils’ political consciousness was not based on any precise ideological knowledge. Before the 1974 revolution, students in Wolaita had not known about Marxism or the international icons of the revolution. Paolos Sorsa, who was one of the most active students, remembers the three years before the revolution:

> We were just propagating in the society, to the peasantry or all elementary schools in the nation. And the main motto at that time was just to send all the youth and the school students and teachers against the government. And, it was just to bring social transformation to the country. And we were saying socialism. Actually, at the beginning of the time when we were demonstrating in the school, our question was not socialism, we don't know about the ideology. Just the only thing what we were questioning is just we were with... we were looking to change society. The old government of the Haile Selassie regime could not administer society. The contradiction between the ruling class and the ruled was very sharp. The land tenure system in the country was... it was the main source of contradiction. Poverty was very acute, the poor were getting poorer, the rich were getting richer and richer.<fnref n="21" />

Not “knowing about the ideology” obviously did not mean that there was not an acute awareness of social realities and the political issues at stake. The slogans “Land to the tiller” and “Education for all” and the struggle against “the oppressive administration” made particular sense in view of the relations of domination in which the students had grown up, and which represented their daily lives and those of their families.

### 3. The campaign to eradicate thieves

The “campaign to eradicate thieves,” which was led in Wolaita by a hundred or so pupils between January and April 1970, is particularly enlightening in

<footnote n="20">²⁰Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">²¹Paolos Sorsa, interview, December 2010.</footnote>
this respect. Their reasons and motivations make it possible to understand the
many sources that fed their political consciousness. One day in January 1970,
a farmer returned from the market with a sum of money that would enable
his family to live for a long time: he had just sold two fat cows that had taken
him several years of work to raise. On the way, he was robbed by a gang of
thieves, among whom he recognised some people he knew to be connected by
client ties to a wealthy lawyer in Soddo. When he returned home completely
devastated, he told his relatives about his misadventure. One of them was his
son, a pupil from the secondary school in Soddo who spent Sundays with his
family in his village. As soon as he arrived at school the next morning, he told
his friends what had happened to his father. They decided to meet after school
to talk about it some more.<fnref n="22" /> That same evening, the 20 students who were
present decided to discreetly spread the information to their friends in other
schools in the province to decide jointly what to do. Eighty-four participants
from every *wereda* in Wolaita attended the next meeting, which was held a
few weeks later, in early March.<fnref n="23" /> It was then that they came up with what
they called the “Campaign to eradicate thieves”: they would take advantage
of the school holidays in April when everyone returned to their villages to
take action. Their approach was to travel around the countryside and ask
farmers to tell them which thieves to punish by “beating them severely on
their feet and hands.”<fnref n="24" /> But events took a different turn: in the space of four
days in April 1970, 12 “thieves” were killed with stones, spears and sticks, four
were severely injured and 87 houses were burned.<fnref n="25" /> Faced with the inability
of the local police to stop the movement, troops were deployed in Wolaita
on the fourth day of the campaign. More than 168 people were imprisoned,
including students and peasants who had joined them. A high court of justice
was temporarily established in Soddo. Accused of crimes and of attempting
to overthrow the government, six people were sentenced to 1 year in prison
each, three people to 5 years each and twenty-seven to 15 years each. Three
others were sentenced to death before their sentences were commuted to life
imprisonment.<fnref n="26" />

Starting with a robbery committed against a peasant, a violent movement
that brought together about a hundred people was initiated and led by pupils,
with beatings and house fires as its modes of action. The speed of their reaction,

<footnote n="22">²²Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³Saol Akamo, interview, November 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">²⁴Zebdewos Chama, unpublished manuscript. It is a history of Wolaita that has not yet been published, which he kindly allowed me to photocopy. The passage on the “campaign to eradicate thieves” is based on the minutes of the trial obtained from the Ministry of Justice, oral testimony and the author’s own recollections.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵Ministry of Justice, Case no. 1035/64, May 3 1965 EC.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶Zebdewos Chama, unpublished manuscript.</footnote>
their methods and the radical nature of the movement invite us to ask the reasons that led them to act in this way and the identity of their targets. Saol Akamo was a member of the first group of students who started the movement:

> ትልልቅ ስልጣን ላይ የነበሩ ባለስልጣናት ሌቦች ሆኑ። ከመሬት ከበርቴዎች ጋር በመሆን ተራውን ዜጋ ይዘርፉ ነበር። የድሃን ንብረት ከመቀማት አልፈው ሚስትም በጉልበት በኅይል ይደፍራሉ። የሚሰራው ስራ በጣም አስከፊ ነበር። ንብረቱን የተዘረፈ ሰው ተዘርፌለያለሁ ብሎ ከተናገረ የባሰ ይንገላታል፣ ይደበደባል ከዛም አልፎ የሳር ጎጊውም ሌቃተል ይችላል። ያ ሁሉ ያንገሻግሸው ተማሪዎች ተንቀስቅሰው። ሌባ መጥፊያ ዘመቻ እንግዲህ ትልቁ የአስተዳደር በደል ለማቃወም ነው። የአስተዳደር በደል ምንድን ነው? ዳኞች በጉቦ ስለሚሠሩ ነው። ሌቦችን እንዲሁም የሀሰት ምስክሮች መብዛትን ለመቃወም ተማሪወች ተንቀሳቅስዋል ።

The thieves held positions of significant power, some of them being high-ranking officials. They colluded with landowners to exploit and pillage citizens, not only confiscating their possessions but forcibly taking away their wives. The actions taken were deeply repugnant. When a victim of robbery dared to demand the return of their property, they faced physical violence. If the victims had thatched houses, the accused thieves would even set them ablaze. These egregious acts fueled the discontent among the students, prompting them to take action. The campaign against thieves was, in essence, a campaign against maladministration, rooted in a judiciary system tainted by bribery. The students rose up to confront not only the thieves but also the corruption embedded in the judiciary, where judges were known to operate with bribes and false witnesses were prevalent.<fnref n="27" />

Peasants were regularly robbed and assaulted by pillagers, who were the protégés of important figures among the local political elites. The thieves' impunity was guaranteed on the one hand by the fear they inspired and their political support, and on the other by the corruption of judges and false witnesses. In his history of Wolaita published in 2000, the former teacher, school headmaster and school administrator Wanna Wagesho describes the system, which one witness, Zebdewos Chama, calls “the chain of oppression”:<fnref n="28" />

> በዚህ ልማድ በመጠመድ [...] ከሰለጠኑ በኋላ ግንዘብ ማግኛ ዘዴ እየፈለጉ በጫካ የተሰማራውን ከብት እየወሰነ በሌላ ስፍራ በመሸጥና ከዚያም ወደ ሚኖሩበት ስፍራ የሌላውን ከብት አምጥተው በመሸጥ በሌብነት ተሰማሩ። በሌሊት [...] ከቤትም ከውጭም የተገኘውን በመውሰድ አንዳንድ ጊዜ ሲከሰሱ ሐሰት አልሰረቅሁት በማለት በሙግት ድል እያደረጉ በሰርቆት የተገኘውን ገንዘብ ለሹሞች ጭምር በመከፋፈል ሌብነትና ሐሳት በዚህ ምልቅ ተስፋፋ።

Having effectively exercised control, they sought ways to amass wealth. They confiscated cattle grazing in the woods, selling them or appropriating others' cattle to steal and then sell. During the night, they plundered whatever they could find, both inside and outside houses. When occasionally brought to court on accusations,

<footnote n="27">²⁷Saol Akamo, interview, November 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸Zebdewos Chama, unpublished manuscript.</footnote>
they resorted to lies, claiming innocence with assertions like “I didn’t steal.”
They profited through perjury, utilizing the ill-gotten gains to bribe officials, thus
perpetuating a cycle of theft and deceit.<fnref n="29" />

Thefts were not isolated acts and corruption was not a marginal phenomenon; they were common practices. There was an organised system of extortion that united cattle thieves and the administrative and judicial authorities.<fnref n="30" /> Paolos Sorsa recalls that corruption of judicial administration personnel was common, and practised in plain sight. It was simply the norm: “At that time, it was very easy to find the house of a judge. If you saw a line of people waiting in front of a house with sheep, honey, butter and so on, it was a judge’s house, you can’t believe it!”<fnref n="31" /> In a judicial system like this, the poorest were always the losers. The peasant world was subjected to a form of domination in which the legal and illegal spheres were intertwined. Tenant farmers were impoverished by the multiple taxes levied by the state, as well as by the *melkegna* and landowners, when they were not required to work for free for one or the other. A system of illegal but well-organised extortion combining banditry and corruption was superimposed on these official structures.

The “campaign to eradicate thieves” was as much a result of the peasant revolt as it was of the student movement. Its organisers acted as both the children of peasants and students. In addition, although it appeared at first glance to be a simple reaction against a situation of oppression, it was nourished by precise concepts shared among the students of how the political system should function. In rural areas, the memory of the political experiment conducted by Governor Germame Neway was always very present. The reform programme he had sought to implement was a central source of inspiration for the students:

> እነግርማጴ ንዋይ በ1953 ሞቱ ። የእነሱ ሐሳብ ምንድን ነው ጥሩነቱ መሬት ላራሹ፣ አስተዳደራዊ በደል ይቁም ፣ ትምህርት በየቦታው ይኑር፣ ትምህርት ለሁሉ ይደርስ። እነሱ ቢሞቱም የነሱ ታሪክ ስላልሞተ የነሱ አርአያን በመካተል ያው ስንቀሳቅስ የነበረው ግልጽ ወጣ ።

Those associated with Germame Neway perished in 1960, yet their ideas endure. Advocating for goodness, land distribution for the tiller, an end to the oppression of power, and the establishment of schools everywhere with education accessible to all. Though they may have passed away, their narrative lives on. As we embarked on our movement, it became evident that following their example was a path we should tread.<fnref n="32" />

<footnote n="29">²⁹Wanna Wagesho, የወላይታ ሕዝብ ታሪክ (History of the Wolaita People) (Addis Ababa: Berhanenna Selam Printing Press, 2003), 88–89.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰Paolos Sorsa, interview, December 2010; Zebdewos Chama, unpublished manuscript.</footnote>

<footnote n="31">³¹Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³²Saol Akamo, interview, November 2010.</footnote>
In many ways, the students wanted to use violence to break the system the young governor had wished to transform through reforms. He not only redistributed vacant government land to landless peasants, but also established literacy centres in every village. He had the villagers elect representatives who were responsible to him alone to compete with the power of the *balabbat* and the aristocracy. He also transferred cases of theft or disputes between landlords and tenants from the official judges to judges elected from among the peasants.<fnref n="33" /> His public denunciations of the corruption of judges and false witnesses in his capacity as president of the court left a lasting impression throughout Wolaita (Guidi 2013). His attempts at reform were exemplary. They had opened up a breach, a field of opportunities in the political system. The “campaign to eradicate thieves” therefore emerged from rural Wolaita for at least three reasons. First, it was organised by peasant children who had grown up in the villages and had firsthand experience of oppression. Secondly, it tackled practices that were rife in the countryside and that had reached an unbearable level for those who were subjected to them.<fnref n="34" /> Young people felt vehemently that their parents were dispossessed, abused and powerless. Finally, the “campaign to eradicate thieves” was based on the desire for emancipation that had secretly but surely been stirring in rural areas since the experience of Germame Neway<fnref n="35" />.

For other reasons, it was a students’ revolt. For them, going to school represented a way to help their families later on thanks to access to employment, which would offer a certain degree of security in an economic and political situation marked by uncertainty and vulnerability. The individual social advancement of a sibling was a family investment, sometimes a sacrifice. Wolaita former student Wanna Dea recalls that: “[Their] parents used to sell their cattle so [they] could study.”<fnref n="36" /> Pupils, who were using hard-earned money without being able to contribute to the household themselves, felt indebted to their families. How could they not react when their families’ meagre possessions were taken away? The political socialisation they received at school, whether it was anti-establishment or official, could also make them predisposed to rebel. The university students encouraged them to act as they did in Addis Ababa, and made them aware that others were taking part in social movements at the same time. Saol Akamo recalls that the pupils turned to action not only out of “disgust,” but also because of their contacts with the students, which provided them with a window to the outside world. Knowing that others were fighting elsewhere for greater justice set an example:

<footnote n="33">³³Paolos Sorsa, interview, December 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴Wanna Dea, interview, December 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵Paolos Sorsa, interview, December 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="36">³⁶Wanna Dea, interview, December 2010.</footnote>