In Memoriam: Meles Zenawi

Learning about leaders from individuals who know them at personal level is indeed a rare opportunity. No different could the case of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi be. Although many analysts try to connect the dots and come up with their own best map of the legacies of the Ethiopian leaders, none seemed to have the benefit of personalknowledge.

Bringing such a rare wealth of relationship with Meles Zenawi is Abdul Mohammed, an Ethiopian and chief of staff for the African Union High Level Implementation Panel on Sudan, who managed to forge a closer personal relationship with him for over 30 years. In this memoriam, he details the persona of the late premier inside out. Much has been written about the late Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, since his untimely death on August 20, 2012. Almost all the obituaries, reflections and commentaries measure the man, and his political record, against standards that are not his own. Meles Zenawi was not a leader whose scorecard could be ticked off in a mechanical manner. He was a grand reformer in a global tradition of state builders. He was an original thinker, of the most sustained and systematic kind, and his theory and practice of politics and development established its own framework for measuring success. Meles’ intellectual and political framework should indeed be scrutinized critically, and his record should be rigorously examined, but to criticize or condemn Meles for failing to abide by standards that he had himself comprehensively dismantled and superseded, would be wrong. The avalanche of international writings about Meles over the last week demonstrates one thing above all other: he was a leader of consequence, who was taken seriously by admirers and critics alike. The more thoughtful articles and obituaries recognize that his leadership of Ethiopia is a challenge to conventional wisdom. The outpouring of grief among Ethiopians demonstrates something else: that Ethiopians held him in great esteem. They appreciated the fact that under his leadership, their country had regained a global stature that it had last held in the heyday of Emperor Haile Selassie. Meles’ twenty years as Prime Minister gave Ethiopians reasons to be proud, and their affection and admiration for him is clearer today than ever before. Meles himself would have felt humbled. We can speculate how Meles himself might have reviewed the obituaries and commentaries that have poured out following his untimely death. The main mantra of the commentary has been: impressive economic record, political failures centered on his authoritarianism. Meles would have dismissed many of these commentaries as unimpressively shallow, drawing on simplistic yardsticks and outdated neoliberal paradigms. He would have found them uninformed by the political realities of Ethiopia and the region, but more significantly, theoretically naïve. Credit for economic growth is not a meaningful plaudit unless one can explain whether this is superficial expansion, driven by rentier sectors such as oil exports and real estate speculation, or broad-based growth based on value creation. Criticism over authoritarian politics is similarly meaningless: does one regard it as mindless repression carried out for purposes of political survival or understand it as instrumental in pursuit of progressive political transformation? To the more thoughtful critiques, he would have responded, “time will tell.” For Meles, like other great reformers including Deng Xiaoping, Mahathir Mohamad, Lee Kuan Yew and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the one measure truly worthy of respect for any policy was success, and it was going to be another decade, at least, before the worthiness of his comprehensive development plan for Ethiopia could properly be evaluated. For sure, he readily admitted, we will make some bad mistakes. But if Ethiopia can complete its transformation in the next fifteen years, our critics will be buried. Meles was a patient man. Meles never followed any policy prescription other than his own, and never served an interest other than Ethiopia’s. Some uninformed commentators have predicted instability. The Kenyan Prime Minister is one, some American pundits are others. We can remind them how Ethiopians coped with their last, far greater, threat of internal crisis. When the EPRDF entered Addis Abeba on May 28, 1991, virtually the whole world held its breath and expected Ethiopia to go the way of Somalia four months earlier. But three days later, on time, salaries and pensions were paid, and the country’s institutions resumed their normal functioning. Today, Ethiopia is much stronger and its tradition of continuity and respect for the state is more vibrant than ever. Most Diasporas are alienated from domestic realities and prone to extremism. The Ethiopian diaspora is no exception. Their hysterical commentaries need no response: they are inconsequential. In public, Meles himself would have been contemptuously silent, or perhaps scornfully dismissive, of them. In private, he would have been amusingly sarcastic, wondering what such people might do with their pointless hatred now he has gone. The simple fact is that Meles was the most intellectually brilliant political leader of his generation. He was a unique combination of theorist and practitioner, and his actions and explanations were invariably coherent and all of a piece. When one asked him a question, he would, with just the slightest pause, respond with a full argument that began from a set of first principles apparently unrelated to the topic in hand, and proceed to develop an entirely cogent and usually persuasive account, which made one see the issue in a new and more complete light. Meles was an intellectual patriot, both in the sense that his analysis and policies always had the strategic interests of Ethiopia at heart, and in that he drew upon Ethiopian history and context to develop paradigms that were at once theoretically cogent and locally applicable. He was no imitator and he had no time for lazy thinkers who trotted out prescriptions, political or economic, that failed to deal with the specificities of the Ethiopian case. For example, one of Meles’ favorite ripostes to those who argued that he was subverting or undermining Ethiopian tradition by building an ethnic federation, was that historically, the state in Ethiopia had very modest reach. He echoed Margery Perham’s comment about the Emperor Haile Selassie being an autocrat whose power extended as far as the first roadblock outside Addis Ababa. Ethiopians have a customary reverence for the state and its ruler, but in practice that state authority and capacity was enormously limited. The Emperor might rule by a combination of guile, reverence and intermittent forcible forays into the hinterland, but his real power to shape the country was minimal. The EPRDF government was attempting two major historical transformations in governance. One was to devolve power such that all the diverse nations and communities felt equal co-owners of the country. The second was to build state institutions that, for the first time ever, reached everywhere, all the time. From his early days in the field as a cadre of the TPLF, Meles consistently identified Ethiopia’s fundamental national question as overcoming poverty. This was the hallmark of the front’s policies during the armed struggle. The deep understanding and mutual confidence between the TPLF and the peasantry was consolidated during those years. On taking power in 1991, Meles said that his priority was to feed the people. A decade later he identified the number one national security challenge as overcoming poverty. Economic development was the chosen focus for his main intellectual endeavors, including his unfinished masters’ thesis. His framework of the “democratic developmental state” is genuinely innovative. One of Meles’ earliest and most celebrated battles with international donors was his insistence that Ethiopia would not take loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank unless unacceptable conditions were lifted. The condition at issue was the IMF policy that foreign aid should not be incorporated into national budgetary planning, on the grounds that it was unpredictable, and relying on it would lead to unsustainable fiscal policies. Meles argued, with evidence, that this was false, and won. The Bretton Woods Institutions reversed their policies. Meles clearly identified the challenge of development as primarily a political one. He argued that it is necessary to master the technicalities of economics, but essential not to let them become a dogma that masters you. He identified the perils of unfettered economic and political liberalization, arguing that these would impoverish the country and leave politics as a zero-sum game, with factions competing for state power with the aim of sharing the spoils between them. A developmental state, he argued, needed to be built on a strong foundation of a developmental ethos that had been deeply internalized by the population. Once that is established, he said, then, a mature democracy can be built. The authoritarianism that stemmed from this framework was the most controversial element of Meles’ time in power. Critics point to the repression of opposition, the closing of newspapers, and imprisonment of dissenters. Meles himself would counter that human rights begin with the right to food and livelihood, and that securing these rights should not be jeopardized. In some respects, Meles’ model resembles the Chinese one: he established a de facto one-party state and was pursuing economic growth without political liberalization. But the greater significance of the rise of China for Ethiopia is that it gave Ethiopia the freedom to break away from the straitjacket of the Washington Consensus and choose its own path. There is no realistic way in which Ethiopia can come to resemble America or Sweden-its more accessible models are drawn from Asia. Meles represented a new generation of Pan-Africanists, alongside leaders such as Thabo Mbeki, who recognized that the continent needs to anchor its efforts towards political unity in the practicalities of economic integration. He consistently promoted developmental initiatives such as the New Partnership for Africa Development (NEPAD). He also recognized that Africa needs strong states, and used Ethiopia’s military capacities for the good of the region. He was actively engaged in the Sudanese peace process, providing political and military support to the AU’s efforts - for example dispatching a mechanized brigade of peacekeepers to the contentious area of Abyei on the borders between Sudan and South Sudan. All Meles’ foreign policy positions were drawn from national interest and a deep analysis of the bigger picture, not posturing or rhetoric. Ethiopia intervened in Somalia at no-one’s behest. If he were to hear the charge that he has been acting as America’s policeman, Meles would smile and say, “let them believe that.” Next year, the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Abeba, Meles was due to become President of the African Union (AU). He championed the AU. That anniversary will be an opportunity to reflect on Meles’ legacy and help redefine Pan-Africanism for the 21st century. The one critique to which Meles would undoubtedly aver is, his experiment in the developmental state is not proven yet. Ethiopia has come a long way since 1991, it is physically and economically changed, but it is only halfway to its destination as a middle-income country with a democratic political culture. Should he be able to assess his obituaries and commentaries, Meles would scrutinize the one that really counts: the opinions of the next generation of Ethiopians. Everything else is decoration. It is the young people of Ethiopia, including the emergent leaders within the EPRDF, who will determine whether Meles’ vision of a democratic developmental state becomes a reality. Meles’ two decades as the head of government will be difficult to follow. He has helped identify and promote a new generation of leadership. Certainly, their political skills will be tested. But they are beginning with a formidable legacy. By Abdul Mohammed, an Ethiopian and chief of staff for the African Union High Level Implementation Panel on Sudan