Africa News blog

With Birtukan gone, smooth sailing for Ethiopia’s Meles

Ethiopia’s opposition UDJ party, completely wiped out at last year’s disputed election, says it is regrouping.

At a recent news conference, it announced it plans to rebuild its depleted ranks with young people, analyse the mistakes of the past and ensure that it’s never again hampered by a lack of leadership.

But that last one is going to be pretty difficult. The absence of Birtukan Mideksa, its charismatic former leader who was freed last October after a near two-year stint in jail, was all too visible to ignore.

After a visit to South Africa earlier this year, party chiefs say she is now on her way to the United States for “psychological treatment.”

The 36-year old former judge was one of dozens of opposition officials imprisoned in 2005 blamed for sparking violent protests on the streets of Addis, in which 198 opposition supporters and seven policemen were killed.

They were pardoned en mass in 2007 but Birtukan was banged into jail again in 2008 for allegedly reneging on  pardon conditions in speeches she made in Sweden and Germany.

Did politics play a role in Gebrselassie’s short-lived retirement?

By Aaron Maasho

It is not hard to notice Haile Gebrselassie’s huge popularity in Ethiopia. It emanates from pride over his illustrious career that saw him break 27 world records, as much as from who he is when not running.

With his ever-present smile and sarcastic quips, “The Emperor” — as he is affectionately known — has never shied away from charity work, as well as providing hundreds of jobs to impoverished locals in his numerous business ventures.

Having spent the vast part of his 20-year career on the track, Gebrselassie switched to the marathon and has never displayed signs of weakening, despite his 37 years.

Until this month, that is, when the wealthy athlete unexpectedly announced his retirement after a knee injury forced him to pull out of the New York marathon.

“I never thought about retirement,” he tearfully told reporters afterwards. “But for the first time, this is the day. Let me stop and do other work after this.”

Gebrselassie’s sudden announcement sent shockwaves through the athletics world and prompted criticism at home because he dropped the bombshell overseas rather than in his own country.

Ethiopia’s Birtukan free: Why now? What now?

It’s now been 15 days since Ethiopia’s most popular opposition leader, Birtukan Mideksa, was released from prison and she still hasn’t said much at all.

Sure, she was “happy”, “elated” even. Prison was “horrible, really horrible.”

But talk of her political future is “for another time.”

The former judge is leader of Ethiopia’s biggest opposition party, the Unity for Democracy and Justice. The country’s 2005 elections ended in disaster when the opposition disputed a government victory and riots killed 193 protestors and seven policemen. Birtukan and other opposition leaders were jailed accused of sparking the trouble and then pardoned in 2007.

But she was sent back to prison in December 2008 for allegedly violating that pardon with a defiant speech in Sweden, which probably explains her caution now.

Ethiopia’s chattering classes, debating her release and the contents of the new pardon that secured it, have enthusiastically filled  the vacuum created by her tight-lipped stance with their theories.

Is Eritrean policy shift just “tactical”?

Eritrea’s arms seem to have been folded in a sulk for a long time now. The Red Sea state has, for some, taken on the black sheep role in the Horn of Africa family. But President Isaias Afewerki is looking eager to get off the naughty step.

His opponents say he was put there for good reason. Eritrea became increasingly isolated in the region after a 1998 – 2000 border war with neighbouring – and much bigger – Ethiopia.

Things have been tense between the two ever since – partly fueled by the fact that Eritrea only fully ceded from Ethiopia in 1993 after rebels led by Isaias and Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi ousted a communist regime.

Eritrea has also fallen out with another neighbour, Djibouti. The two countries have been kicking each other in small but regular border clashes since 2008.

But the biggest blot on Eritrea’s copybook is its alleged backing of Somalia’s Islamist al Shabaab rebels – fast becoming an ulcer, not just for Somalia, but for the whole region. Analysts say Eritrea funds and trains Shabaab as a way of getting at Ethiopia, the West’s closest regional ally and a country that sent troops into Somalia in 2006 to run another Islamist group out of the capital.

The United Nations Security Council finally took action against Eritrea last December, imposing sanctions for its destabilising meddling in Somalia.

Is Ethiopia’s development plan too “ambitious”?

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi seemed to anticipate this week exactly what a lot people were thinking about his government’s plan to double the poor country’s GDP and wean it off food aid within just five years.

“I think that this is a very ambitious plan,” he said.

“This is indeed an extremely ambitious plan,” a few minutes later.

And, once more for luck, “We have put in place a high-case scenario which is clearly very, very ambitious.”

So far, so ambitious.

But, after those disclaimers, a man many see as Africa’s most economically literate leader didn’t shy away from saying he thought Ethiopia could get there.

Ethiopia Elections: Will the West be watching?

When you work for a news organisation in a country like Ethiopia, people  often tell you “nobody cares” about the stories you report. What they mean, of  course, is that nobody in the West cares. Most of the time, they’re right.

But with Ethiopians about to hold national elections for the first time since a 2005 poll ended with a disputed result, about 200 protestors killed in the  streets by police and soldiers and opposition leaders jailed after Prime Minister Meles Zenawi accused them of trying to stage a revolution, there’s every reason for the public in the West to take notice.

Their governments have been meddling in Ethiopia for a long time now – but quietly – and with an attitude that has angered some here. Western powers are engaged for sound foreign policy reasons, and although most in the West are unaware of it, for the people of this country it’s a constant coffee house topic.

Ethiopia is often referred to as the “key U.S. ally” in the Horn of Africa – a dodgy neighbourhood by any standards. It’s the West’s friend here because – despite its population being almost 50 percent Muslim – they are overwhelmingly moderate and the government is avowedly secular.

The U.S., Britain and others see Ethiopia, with the biggest army in East Africa, as a bulwark against the rise of Islamic extremism in the Horn. Meles, with tacit U.S. backing, entered Somalia in 2006 and routed an Islamist group who had taken control of capital Mogadishu. He now keeps a close eye over the border as militants surge against Somalia’s weak government again.

Cash, as ever, is also a factor. This country is huge – its 80 million people making it sub Saharan Africa’s second most populous nation. And most of those teeming, aspirational masses don’t yet have mobile phones or bank accounts.

What now for Ethiopia’s “Aung San Suu Kyi”?

The first time I interviewed Birtukan Mideksa I was struck by how careful she was not to say the wrong thing. It was 2007 and we were standing in the garden of a community centre in the part of Addis Ababa where she was raised. She had just been released from prison and the locals — many of whom struggle to feed themselves — had each given about a dollar to throw her the party-cum-political rally we had just attended and to buy her an old Toyota Corolla car to help her back on her feet again.

Such was her care when talking to me that, after less than five minutes, I discreetly switched off my recorder knowing the interview would never make a story, and continued the conversation only out of politeness and professional interest in Ethiopian politics.

It seems her caution was well-placed. The 36-year-old opposition leader and mother of one is back behind bars, accused by the government of speaking out of turn. It has been almost exactly one year since a group of policemen snatched her as she walked to her car with  political ally Mesfin Woldemariam. Mesfin — a large, grey-haired man in his 70s — was bitten by a police officer in a scuffle when he tried to intervene.

Now her supporters in the Horn of Africa country are calling her “Ethiopia’s Aung San Suu Kyi” in what analysts see as a move aimed at attracting international attention to her detention. Government officials often smirk when when what they see as an overblown comparison is made.

Party colleagues say she was jailed because the government feared her heading an opposition coalition in national elections set for May and rights group Amnesty International calls her a “prisoner of conscience”.

To her champions, Birtukan is the great hope for reconciliation in Ethiopia’s often bitter political landscape. To her detractors, she has been made a romantic figure by her jailing and doesn’t have the intellectual muscle or strategic nous to lead the huge country.

Some Ethiopians see sinister shading in the lack of international attention, claiming western powers are happy to see Prime Minister Meles Zenawi — in power for almost 20 years — stay on as long as he liberalises the country’s potentially huge economy and remains a loyal U.S. ally in a volatile neighbourhood that includes shambolic Somalia.

Do Ethiopia’s politicians mean it on democracy?

What can Africa expect from the G8?