Ethiopia: Troubled Lion

Friday, June 01, 1962

Along Addis Ababa's "Mattress Street," brothels used to be marked with red crosses until the
International Red Cross complained that too many Ethiopians were wandering into first-aid
stations looking for a treat instead of a treatment.
By government edict, red lights replaced the crosses. In the past two years, the electricity bill
for Addis' red-light districts has risen as the number of cribs increased from 5,000 to 8,000.
The boom is a significant symptom of change. Its cause: the influx of foreigners into the city
for an endless series of conferences, all part of a determined attempt by His Imperial
Majesty Haile Selassie I, Conquering Lion of Judah, Elect of God, King of Kings, and
Emperor of Ethiopia, to put his land in the vanguard of African nationalism.
For centuries, Ethiopia's proud Amharaswho claim descent from a night's roistering
between King Solomon and the Queen of Shebashunned black Africans as barya (slaves).
But when the emerging black African states began getting voice in world affairs, the
Emperor started to fire off letters to nationalist politicians all over the continent,
condemning imperialism and hailing the once despised barya as "our beloved black
brothers." This week at Addis Ababa's new $3,000,000 Africa Hall, he plays host to the
U.N.'s traveling special committee on colonialism. The Emperor hopes that such hospitality
will further his campaign for African leadership. Says one Cabinet minister: "We've been
free the longest. It's our heritage and duty to lead our recently enlightened brethren into the
modern age." Poverty & Corruption. But, as TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs reports,
Ethiopia is not a likely candidate to lead any country into the modern age. Despite Haile
Selassie's tentative efforts at reform, Ethiopia is still one of the most backward nations in
Africa. Parliament rubber-stamps the Emperor's absolute rule. The press is rigidly
controlled, and informers and secret police agents are everywhere.
Hangings are held in public, and public flogging was recently authorized in lieu of jail
sentences, both to cut down the jail population and to keep dissenters in line.
Government corruption is so widespread that one-third of the taxes levied never reach the
national treasury. So large is the bureaucracy that two-thirds of the annual budget goes for
government salaries. Annual per capita income for the country's 20 million people is only
$30 ($5 if Addis Ababa is excluded), and 98% of the population are illiterate. Some 80% of

the population have parasitic diseases ranging from hookworm to elephantiasis; venereal
disease infects at least half the adult population, and infant mortality is nearly 40%. Malaria
kills 30,000 people annually, and 40% of the country's cattle are tubercular.
Most of Addis Ababa's 450,000 people live in primitive mud huts with no sanitation. Said
one visiting Senegalese: "If this is the heritage of freedom, I say 'Bring back the colonialists.'
"
At Gunpoint. Realizing the impression that Ethiopia makes on visiting Africans, Haile
Selassie has embarked on an industrial development program, is shrewdly using foreign
investment from both East and West to build dams, refineries, port facilities, factories. But
the Emperor has ignored advice on civil service and parliamentary reforms that might
curtail his absolute power, has made only token attempts to redistribute his own vast land
holdings among the poverty-stricken peasants. As a result, Ethiopia's intellectuals, who
sparked the unsuccessful revolt against the Emperor's regime 17 months ago, are again
growing restivedespite the government's attempts to buy them off with civil service
appointments or simply offering them, in lieu of a job, up to $180 a month to keep quiet.
Though plots against the government proliferate, they are mostly talk, for no one can agree
what to do and when to do it.
Much popular affection remains for the Emperor, who at 69 still seems as vigorous as the
man who 26 years ago protested before the world against the conquest of his country by the
Italians. But with his wife and four of his six children dead, he is an increasingly isolated
figure. Heir apparent Asfa Wossen, 45, is more liberal than his father, but mild and retiring.
On his succession, he will probably become a figurehead for the reform-minded officers and
intellectuals whose revolution he fronted"at the point of a gun,'' as he put itin 1960. But
if the succession is too long delayed, the gun aimed at the old order may well go off.