The Emperor

Downfall of an Autocrat

Ryszard Kapuscinski

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Year: 1983
• ISBN:
  9780547539218
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

This account of the rise and fall of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie is "an unforgettable, fiercely comic, and finally compassionate book" (Salman Rushdie, Man Booker Prize–winning author). After Haile Selassie was deposed in 1974, Ryszard Kapu?ci?ski—Poland's top foreign correspondent—went to Ethiopia to piece together a firsthand account of how the emperor governed his country, and why he finally fell from power. At great risk to himself, Kapu?ci?ski interviewed members of the imperial circle who had gone into hiding. The result is this remarkable book, in which Selassie's servants and closest associates share accounts—humorous, frightening, sad, grotesque—of a man living amidst nearly unimaginable pomp and luxury while his people teetered between hunger and starvation. It is a classic portrait of authoritarianism, and a fascinating story of a forty-four-year reign that ended with a coup d'état in 1974.

The Collapse

It is an amazing thing, the extraordinary feeling of security in which all those tenants of the highest and middle stories of the social edifice were living when the revolution broke out. In all naïveté of spirit they were discoursing on the people’s virtues, greatness, and loyalty, of their innocent joys, when the year ’93 was hanging over them : a comic and terrible sight.

(de Tocqueville, The Ancien Régime and the Revolution)

And something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within.

(Conrad, Lord Jim)

On the other hand, the courtiers of Justinian who stayed at his side in the palace until the late hours had the impression that, instead of him, they saw a strange phantom. One of them claimed that the Emperor would spring suddenly from the throne and start pacing up and down the chamber (indeed, he could no longer stay in one place); all of a sudden Justinian’s head would disappear, but the body would go on pacing. The courtier, thinking his eyesight had betrayed him, stood for a long while helpless and confused. Afterward, however, when the head returned to its place on the torso, he found himself amazed to see what had not been there a moment ago.

(Procopius, The Secret History)

Next I ask myself the question, Where is it all now? Smoke, ashes, fable. Or perhaps it is no longer even a fable.

(Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)

Nobody’s candle keeps burning until the very dawn.

(Ivo Andric, The Consuls of Their Imperial Highnesses)

M. S.

For many years I served as mortarman to His Most Extraordinary Highness. I used to set up the mortar near the place where the kindly monarch gave feasts for the poor, who craved food. As the banquet was ending, I would fire a series of projectiles. When they burst, these projectiles re-leased a colored cloud that slowly floated to the ground—colored handkerchiefs bearing the likeness of the Emperor. The people crowded, pushing each other, stretching out their hands, everyone wanting to return home with a picture of His Highness that had miraculously dropped from the sky.

A. A.:

Nobody, but nobody, my friend, had any foreboding that the end was drawing near. Or rather, one did sense something, something haunting, but so vague, so indistinct, that it was not like a presentiment of the extraordinary. For a long time there had been a valet de chambre who floated around the Palace, turning off lights here and there. But one’s eyes got used to the dimness, and there followed a comfortable inner resignation to the fact that everything had to be turned off, extinguished, obscured. What’s more, shameful disorder crept into the Empire, disorder that caused annoyance to the whole Palace, but most of all to our Minister of Information, Mr. Tesfaye Gebre-Egzy, later shot by the rebels who rule today.

This is how it began. In 1973, in the summer, a certain Jonathan Dimbleby, a journalist from London television, came to our country. He had visited the Empire before and made commendable films about His Supreme Majesty, and so it occurred to no one that such a journalist, who had earlier praised, would dare to criticize later. But such is obviously the dastardly nature of people without dignity or faith. Anyway, this time, instead of showing how His Highness attends to development and cares for the prosperity of the little ones, Dimbleby went up north, from where he supposedly returned perturbed and shaken. Right away he left for England. A month hadn’t passed when a report came from our embassy there that Mr. Dimbleby had shown a film entitled Ethiopia: The Unknown Famine on London TV, in which this unprincipled calumniator pulled the demagogic trick of showing thousands of people dying of hunger, and next to that His Venerable Highness feasting with dignitaries. Then he showed roads on which scores of poor, famished skeletons were lying, and immediately afterward our airplanes bringing champagne and caviar from Europe. Here, whole fields of dying scrags; there, His Highness serving meat to his dogs from a silver platter. This, then that: splendor—misery, riches—despair, corruption—death. In addition, Mr. Dimbleby announced that hunger had already caused the death of a hundred thousand people, perhaps even two hundred thousand, and that twice that number might share their fate in the very near future. The report from the embassy said that after the film was shown, a great scandal broke out in London. There were appeals to Parliament, the newspapers raised alarms, His Royal Highness was condemned.

Here you can see, my friend, the irresponsibility of the foreign press, which like Mr. Dimbleby praised our monarch for years and then suddenly, without any rhyme or reason, condemned him. Why? Why such treason and immorality? The embassy reports that a whole airplaneload of European journalists is taking off from London, to come see death from hunger, to know our reality, and to determine where the money goes that their governments have given to His August Majesty for development, catching up, and surpassing. Bluntly speaking, interference in the internal affairs of the Empire! In the Palace, commotion and indignation, but His Most Singular Highness counsels calm and discretion. Now we await the highest decisions. Right away voices sound for recalling the ambassador, who sent such unpleasant and alarming reports and brought so much unrest into the Palace. However, the Minister of Foreign Affairs argues that such a recall will put fear into the remaining ambassadors and make them stop reporting, and yet His Venerable Highness needs to know what is said about him in various parts of the world. Next the members of the Crown Council speak up, demanding that the airplane carrying the journalists be turned back and that none of the blasphemous rabble be let into the Empire. But how, asks the Minister of Information, can we not let them in? They’ll raise hell and condemn His Gracious Majesty more than ever.

After much deliberation they decide to offer His Benevolent Highness the following solution: let them in, but deny the hunger. Keep them in Addis Ababa, show them the development, and let them write only what can be read in our newspapers. And I’ll go so far, my friend, as to say that we had a loyal press—yes, loyal in an exemplary way. To tell the truth, there wasn’t much of it, because for over thirty million subjects twenty-five thousand copies were printed daily, but His Highness worked on the assumption that even the most loyal press should not be given in abundance, because that might create a habit of reading, and from there it is only a single step to the habit of thinking, and it is well known what inconveniences, vexations, troubles, and worries thinking causes. For even what is written loyally can be read disloyally. Someone will start to read a loyal text, then he will want a disloyal one, and so he will follow the road that leads him away from the throne, away from development, and straight toward the malcontents. No, no, His Majesty could not allow such demoralization to happen, such straying, and that’s why in general he wasn’t an enthusiast of excessive reading.

Soon afterward we suffered a real invasion of foreign correspondents. A press conference took place immediately after their arrival. “What,” they ask, “does the problem of death from hunger, which decimates the population, look like?” “I know nothing of any such matter,” answers the Minister of Information, and I must tell you, friend, that he wasn’t far from the truth. First of all, death from hunger had existed in our Empire for hundreds of years, an everyday, natural thing, and it never occurred to anyone to make any noise about it. Drought would come and the earth would dry up, the cattle would drop dead, the peasants would starve. Ordinary, in accordance with the laws of nature and the eternal order of things. Since this was eternal and normal, none of the dignitaries would dare to bother His Most Exalted Highness with the news that in such and such a province a given person had died of hunger. Of course, His Benevolent Highness visited the provinces himself, but it was not his custom to stop in poor regions where there was hunger, and anyway how much can one see during official visits? Palace people didn’t spend much time in the provinces either, because it was enough for a man to leave the Palace and they would gossip about him, report on him, so that when he came back he would find that his enemies had moved him closer to the street. So how were we to know that there was unusual hunger up north?

“Can we,” ask the correspondents, “go north?” “No, you can’t,” explains the minister, “because the roads are full of bandits.” Again, I must remark, he wasn’t far from the truth, because increased incidents of armed disloyalty near highways all over the Empire had been much reported of late. And then the minister took them for an excursion around the capital, showing them factories and praising the development. But with that gang, forget it! They don’t want development, they demand hunger and that’s all there is to it. “Well,” says the minister, “you won’t get hunger. How can there be hunger if there is development?”

But here, my friend, there was a new development. Our rebellious students sent their delegates north, and they came back with photographs and terrible stories about how the nation is dying—and all this they passed along to the correspondents on the sly. So a scandal broke out. You could no longer say that there was no hunger. And once more the correspondents attack, they wave the pictures, they ask what the government has done about hunger. “His Most Supreme Majesty,” the minister answers, “has attached the utmost importance to this matter.” “But specifically! Specifically what?” this devilish rabble cries disrespectfully. “His Majesty,” the minister says calmly, “will announce in due time his intended royal decisions, assignments, and directions, because it is not fitting for ministers to do so.” Finally the correspondents flew away, without seeing hunger close up. And this whole affair, conducted so smoothly and in such a dignified manner, the minister considered a success and our press called a victory, which was fine, but we feared that if the minister were to disappear tomorrow we would have nothing but sorrow. And that was exactly what happened later, when the rebels put him against the wall.

Consider also, my dear friend, that—between you and me—it is not bad for national order and a sense of national humility that the subjects be rendered skinnier, thinned down a bit. Our religion ordains a strict fast for half of all the days in the year, and our commandments say that whoever breaks the fast commits a deadly sin and begins to stink all over of hellish sulfur. During a fast day one cannot eat more than once, and then only a piece of unleavened bread with spices for seasoning. Why did our fathers impose such strict rules on us, recommending that mortification of the flesh be practiced unceasingly? It is because man is by nature a bad creature who takes damning pleasure out of giving in to temptations, especially the temptations of disobedience, possessiveness, and licentiousness. Two lusts breed in the soul of man: the lust for aggression, and the lust for telling lies. If one will not allow himself to wrong others, he will wrong himself. If he doesn’t come across anyone to lie to, he will lie to himself in his own thoughts. Sweet to man is the bread of untruths, says the Book of Proverbs, and then with sand his mouth is filled up.

How, then, is one to confront this threatening creature that man seems to be, that we all are? How to tame him and daunt him? How to know that beast, how to master it? There is only one way, my friend: by weakening him. Yes, by depriving him of his vitality, because without it he will be incapable of wrong. And to weaken is exactly what fasting does. Such is our Amharic philosophy, and this is what our fathers teach us. Experience confirms it. A man starved all his life will never rebel. Up north there was no rebellion. No one raised his voice or his hand there. But just let the subject start to eat his fill and then try to take the bowl away, and immediately he rises in rebellion. The usefulness of going hungry is that a hungry man thinks only of bread. He’s all wrapped up in the thought of food. He loses the remains of his vitality in that thought, and he no longer has either the desire or the will to seek pleasure through the temptation of disobedience. Just think: Who destroyed our Empire? Who reduced it to ruin? Neither those who had too much, nor those who had nothing, but those who had a bit. Yes, one should always beware of those who have a bit, because they are the worst, they are the greediest, it is they who push upward.

Z. S.-K.:

Great discontent, even condemnation and indignation, reigned in the Palace because of the disloyalty of European governments, which allowed Mr. Dimbleby and his ilk to raise such a din on the subject of starvation. Some of the dignitaries wanted to keep on denying, but that was no longer possible since the minister himself had told the correspondents that His Most Sovereign Highness attached the greatest importance to hunger. So we eagerly entered on the new road and asked the foreign benefactors for help. We ourselves do not have, so let others give what they can. Not much time had passed before good news came. Airplanes loaded with wheat landed, ships full of flour and sugar sailed in. Physicians and missionaries came, people from philanthropic organizations, students from foreign colleges, and also correspondents disguised as male nurses. The whole crowd marched north to the provinces of Tigre and Welo, and also east to Ogaden, where, they say, whole tribes had perished of hunger.

International traffic in the Empire! I’ll say right off that there wasn’t much joy about it in the Palace. It’s never good to let so many foreigners in, since they are amazed at everything and they criticize everything. You can imagine, Mr. Richard, that our notables were not disappointed in their fears. When these missionaries, physicians, and so-called nurses reached the north, they saw a thing most amazing to them, namely, thousands dying of hunger right next door to markets and stores full of food. There is food, they say, only there was a bad harvest and the peasants had to give it all to the landowners and that’s why they’ve got nothing left and the speculators took advantage and raised the prices so high that hardly anyone could buy wheat and that’s where the misery comes from. An unpleasant affair, Mr. Richard, since it was our notables who were the speculators, and how can one call by such a name the official representatives of His Well-Beloved Highness? Official and speculator? No, no, one can’t say that at all!

That’s why, when the shouts of these missionaries and nurses reached the capital, voices were immediately raised demanding that these benefactors and philosophers be expelled from the Empire. But how, say the others, can we expel? We cannot possibly stop the action against hunger, since His Benevolent Majesty has attached the greatest importance to it! So once again no one knows what to do: expel—wrong; keep—also wrong. A sort of vacillation and vagueness develops, when suddenly a new thunderbolt strikes. Now the nurses and missionaries are raising hell, saying that the transports of flour and sugar are not reaching those who are starving. Something is happening, say the benefactors, so that the aid is disappearing along the way, and somebody should find out where it is getting lost. They start to poke about, to interfere, to nose around. Once more it turns out that the speculators are packing whole shipments into their warehouses, jacking up the prices, and stuffing their pockets. How this was discovered, it is difficult to say. There must have been some leaks. Things were set up so that the Empire would accept the aid and take care of distribution itself, and no one was to try to figure out where the flour and sugar were going—that would be interference. Now our students get ready for action. They shout in the streets, denounce the corrupt, mount cries for indictments. “Shame!” they scream, proclaiming the death of the Empire. The police club them, arrest them. Upheaval, seething, commotion.

During this period, Mr. Richard, my son Hailu was a rare guest in our home. The university was already engaged in open war with the Palace. This time it started with a completely trivial affair, with a small, insignificant event, so small that nobody would have noticed, nobody would have thought—and yet obviously there come such moments when the smallest event, just a trifle, any bit of nonsense, will provoke a revolution and unleash a war. That is why our police commander, General Yilma Shibeshi, was right when he ordered that no stone be left unturned, that there be no lying around but rather diligent searching with a fine-tooth comb, and that the principle never be forgotten that if a seed starts to sprout, immediately, without waiting for it to grow into something, the plant should be cut down. The general himself looked, and yet, obviously, he found nothing. The trivial event that set things off was a fashion show at the university, organized by the American Peace Corps even though all gatherings and meetings were forbidden. But His Distinguished Majesty could not forbid the Americans a show, could he? And so the students took advantage of this cheerful and carefree event to gather in an enormous crowd and set off for the Palace. And from that moment on they never again let themselves be driven back to their homes. They held meetings, they stormed implacably and vehemently, they did not yield again. And General Shibeshi was tearing his hair out, because not even to him had it occurred that a revolution could start at a fashion show.

But that is exactly how it looked to us. “Father,” says Hailu, “this is the beginning of the end for all of you. We cannot live like this any longer. This death up north and the lies of the court have covered us with shame. The country is drowning in corruption, people are dying of hunger, ignorance, and barbarity everywhere. We feel ashamed of this country. And yet we have no other country, we have to dig it out of the mud ourselves. Your Palace has compromised us before the world, and such a Palace can no longer exist. We know that there is unrest in the army and unrest in the city, and now we cannot back down.” Yes, Mr. Richard, among these noble but very irresponsible people one was struck by the deep feelings of shame about the state of the fatherland. For them there existed only the twentieth century, or perhaps even this twenty-first century everyone is waiting for, in which blessed justice will reign. Nothing else suited them anymore, everything else irritated them. They didn’t see what they wanted to see, and so, apparently, they decided to arrange the world so that they would be able to look at it with contentment. Oh well, Mr. Richard, young people, very young people!

T. L.:

Amid all the people starving, missionaries and nurses clamoring, students rioting, and police cracking heads, His Serene Majesty went to Eritrea, where he was received by his grandson, Fleet Commander Eskinder Desta, with whom he intended to make an official cruise on the flagship Ethiopia. They could only manage to start one engine, however, and the cruise had to be called off. His Highness then moved on to the French ship Protet, where he was received on board for dinner by Hiele, the well-known admiral from Marseille. The next day, in the port of Massawa, His Most Ineffable Highness raised himself for the occasion to the rank of Grand Admiral of the Imperial Fleet, and made seven cadets officers, thereby increasing our naval power. Also he summoned the wretched notables from the north who had been accused by the missionaries and nurses of speculation and stealing from the starving, and he conferred high distinctions on them to prove that they were innocent and to curb the foreign gossip and slander.

Everything seemed to be moving along well, developing favorably and successfully and most loyally; the Empire was growing and even, as His Supreme Highness stressed, blossoming—when suddenly reports came in that those overseas benefactors who had taken upon themselves the trouble of feeding our ever-insatiable people had rebelled and were suspending shipments because our Finance Minister, Mr. Yelma Deresa, wanting to enrich the Imperial treasury, had ordered the benefactors to pay high customs fees on the aid. “You want to help?” the minister asked. “Please do, but you must pay.” And they said, “What do you mean, pay? We give help! And we’re supposed to pay?” “Yes,” says the minister, “those are the regulations. Do you want to help in such a way that our Empire gains nothing by it?” And here, together with the minister, our press raises its voice to denounce the rebellious benefactors, saying that by suspending aid they condemn our nation to the cruelties of poverty and starvation. They oppose the Emperor and interfere in internal affairs. It was rumored, my friend, that half a million people had died of hunger, which our newspapers blamed on these shameful, infamous missionaries and nurses. ...