‘Dear friend, of course I remember. Wasn’t it just yesterday? Yesterday, but a century ago. In this city, but on a planet that is now far away. How all these things get confused: times, places, the world broken in pieces, not to be glued back together. Only the memory…’
(T.K.-B., a former courtier in the palace of the Emperor Haile Selassie, quoted on page 12 of The Emperor)
In September 1974 the very long-serving emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, whose reign had started in 1930, was overthrown by junior officers in his own army in a military coup. Soon afterwards intrepid Polish foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapuściński travelled to Ethiopia to interview members of the emperor’s court and eye-witnesses to these stirring events. The result is another of his relatively short (164 pages) but beautifully written, semi-literary accounts, which mixes historic events and journalism with philosophical reflections. His narrative pays lots of attentions to the quirks of Selassie’s court but also aspires to the timeless depiction of human nature.
The key and central fact is that over half of the text is not Kapuściński as such, but the direct speech of the people he interviews. It’s a sequence of short, page-long, first-hand testimonies from people who worked at the emperor’s court. Since a Marxist military coup has just taken place, some of these people are in hiding, most of them are laying low, and so Kapuściński describes the process of tracking them down; more accurately, working through contacts and recommendations.
In the evenings I listened to those who had known the Emperor’s court. Once they had been people of the Palace or had enjoyed the right of admission there. Not many of them remained. Some had perished, shot by the firing squad. Some had escaped the country; others had been locked in the dungeons beneath the Palace, cast down from the chambers to the cellars. Some were hiding in the mountains or living disguised as monks in cloisters. Everyone was trying to survive in their own way. (Opening paragraph, page 4)
The former palace officials Kapuściński tracks down beg him not to include names or even the slightest physical descriptions, to make them as anonymous as possible, lest his text is used to incriminate, convict and possibly execute more of them. Which explains why he refer to them simply by initials. Thus, after a page or two of explanation in Kapuściński’s own voice, we go straight into a series of testimonies and statements by people identified only as F, L.C., Y.M., T.K-B, A.M-M, G.S-D, T.L. and so on.
Here’s the first interview snippet in the book in its entirety. It demonstrates the use of an initial. It’s a reminiscence of a Palace official and typical of the quirky, ancient ceremonial which was (apparently) enforced at Selassie’s court. It’s typical of the gently mocking humour he shows throughout. It’s typical in the way it seems pregnant with meaning, hinting at a world larger and wider than the specific anecdote. In this ability to pack great charge of meaning in a small space it reminds me of the mind-bending essays of Jorge Luis Borges. In fact (having read half the book) the tone reminds me of the short, pregnant parables of Kafka, for example the Great Wall of China.
And, finally, it demonstrates how all the speakers’ voices are very uniform; whatever the quirks of their speech or the idiosyncrasies of the Amharic or Oromo (the two most common languages used in Ethiopia), all the voices come out sounding like Kapuściński, fluent, understated, wryly humorous:
It was a small dog, a Japanese breed. His name was Lulu. He was allowed to sleep in the Emperor’s great bed. During various ceremonies, he would run away from the Emperor’s lap and pee on dignitaries’ shoes. The august gentlemen were not allowed to flinch or make the slightest gesture when they felt their feet getting wet. I had to walk among the dignitaries and wipe the urine from their shoes with a satin cloth. This was my job for ten years. (p.5)
You can’t avoid the feeling that the original testimony was probably longer and more scrappy than that. Most people talking are diffuse and unfocused or hesitant and inarticulate. In Kapuściński’s hands, they all come out sounding the same, mellifluous and clear, calm and reflective.
The short book is divided into three parts:
- The Throne – focusing on protocol at Haile Selassie’s imperial court.
- It’s Coming, It’s Coming – focuses on the attempted coup led by Germame Neway, his brother and colleagues, in December 1960, and its long-term and destructive consequences.
- The Collapse – the ultimate downfall of Selassie, the slow removal of dignitaries and courtiers by the revolutionary Derg, until the big Palace is empty except for the Emperor and one valet, living an eerie dream existence.
The text concludes with two short newspaper articles on the Emperor’s last few years of life, which show that even after he was overthrown and imprisoned, Selassie still believed himself to be the true leader of Ethiopia.
Part 1. The Throne
Testimonials
The Emperor was small and frail. He didn’t eat much and didn’t drink. He woke early and resented the time lost to sleep.
He was illiterate and had reports brought to him by word of mouth. By the same token he never signed anything. It meant he could change his mind, was free of evidence.
His decisions were recorded by the Minister of the Pen who often had to bend close to his mouth to hear ‘his scant and foggy mutterings’ (p.8). He had to interpret them, which meant that if decisions were wrong or harsh, it was the Minister who got the blame.
The Emperor took a morning walk accompanied by Solomon Kedir, head of the Palace spies, who briefed him on what had been learned overnight, about conversations and alliances. The Emperor walked to his zoo where he threw meat to the lions. Kedir is replaced by the Minister of Commerce, Makonen Habte-Wald, who has his own network of spies; and then supervisor of the political police, Asha Walde-Mikael. All these security chiefs jostle for eminence and are petrified of not reporting something one of the others does, in case he then falls under suspicion in the ‘stale air of hatred and fear’ which permeates the palace (p.11).
The Emperor was driven from his Palace to the Old Palace of the Emperor Menelik in one of his 27 cars. Throngs of petitioners pressed forward. Being poor and illiterate they went into debt to pay clerks to write down their grievances. The petitions were collected by officials.
Teferra Gebrewold
Kapuściński first visited Addis Ababa in May 1963 (60 years ago!) for a gathering of presidents of newly independent African nations who were founding the Organisation of African Unity. He finds it still a muddy, overgrown village, and quotes a passage from Evelyn Waugh’s classic account of his visit to Abyssinia to watch the coronation of the young emperor in 1930 to show how little has changed.
It was attending the grand inaugural feast and other events that Kapuściński first met the master of ceremonies, Teferra Gebrewold. They became friends. On all his subsequent visits to Addis Kapuściński contacted Gebrewold. Thus it was, 11 years later, after the coup, that Kapuściński looked up his old friend and announced his plan, of tracking down and interviewing former Palace officials.
He was surprised, but he agreed to take it on himself. Our surreptitious expeditions began. We were a couple of collectors out to recover pictures doomed to destruction: we wanted to make an exhibition of the old art of ruling. (p.23)
And so it is that Gebrewold helps Kapuściński track down 20 or more courtiers from the old Palace and acts as interpreter for him.
Kapuściński’s narrative
The Amharic worldview is pessimistic and sad, Amharas trust no-one, especially foreigners.
After the ‘revolution’ Ethiopian society became even more paranoid. Everyone suspected conspiracies or counter-revolutionary activity. As a society it’s always venerated guns. They were easy to buy. At night there would be shots and firefights; in the mornings bodies lining the streets. Kapuściński wonders where so much ‘stubbornness, hatred and aggression come from’. My answer is, they’re human beings, and that’s what we’re like.
Everyone is subject to fetasha or searches, at checkpoints everywhere in the city, at the start and end of bus journeys and mid-way, in stairs, in hallways, in shops, an explosion of intrusive searching.
More testimonials
A footman explains the importance of opening a door to the Emperor at just precisely the right moment.
The Hour of Assignments is from 9 to 10am. The Emperor was tiny and short. When he sat on grand thrones his legs dangled in mid-air. Therefore there was an official titled His Most Virtuous Highness’s Pillow Bearer who, for 26 years, had just the right pillow, just the right size and shape and colour, to hand so that as his Highness seated himself, he could slip the pillow under the dangling feet to maintain a sense of dignity.
The Emperor encouraged factions, conspiracies, disagreements, endless gossip. It allowed him to rise above it all and ensure nobody could come anywhere close. There were three main coteries: the aristocrats; the bureaucrats and the ‘personal people’ i.e. educated commoners the Emperor plucked from the provinces, appointed to high office, to act as a check on the never-ending conspiracies of the aristocrats. They owed the Emperor their position and thus gave 100% allegiance.
To some extent the Emperor actually preferred bad ministers. Then he shone. All reforms, all kindly gestures, were then attributed to High Highness alone.
A Kafkaesque passage on how, once you have been given an assignment, your head can move in only two directions: bowing low to the Emperor, or rising higher than your own subordinates. An official tells Kapuściński how a person’s entire presence changed once they’re promoted. Henceforward they can only move in a stately dignified way. They cannot turn the head but must turn the whole body. Their expression ceases to be lively and expressive but settles into a fixed expression of dignity. They cultivate an air of knowledge, suddenly knowing people, and things, that ordinary mortals don’t; and so on.
Regularly officials were expelled from the Palace: either to some remote province or out of Imperial service altogether. At which point, they revert back into lively engaging citizens like you or me.
Kafkaesque passage about the fight for the Emperor’s ear i.e. power didn’t accompany rank, as such, but access.
The Emperor’s bag keeper remembers the regular occasions when His Majesty threw small change to assembled crowds of beggars below an official platform.
Between 10 and 11am was the Hour of the Cashbox when his Majesty, assisted by his Treasurer, Aba Hanna Jema, paid debts and handed out rewards. He was always strapped for cash.
Majesty and dignity is created by the humility and service of the people. Therefore great effort went ahead of any visit by His Majesty to one of the provinces. Thus this official says the Marxist revolutionaries cited all kinds of examples of imperial extravagance, such as having a fully functional palace built in the desert of the Ogaden, with beds and bathrooms and flunkeys and so on, which he only ever visited once. But, says the official, they don’t understand the requirements of Monarchy. Dignity must be maintained at all times, at any price. This is the ‘Higher Reason’ of monarchy.
The comedy of the Palace; when the Emperor was in residence, thronged with officials, ministers, and petitioners; when he left for the provinces, suddenly empty, like a disused stage set, goats grazing on the lawns, the master of ceremonies hanging out in local bars. Then the Emperor returned and zing! everything back to decorum and dignity.
The Emperor personally signed off on any expenditure over ten dollars. Petitioners formed a line and each one whispered his requirements. The Emperor listened then whispered instructions to his Treasurer, who reached into the purse held by the purse bearer, took a sum, put it in an envelope, handed it to the petitioner who bowed and moved away backwards, never turning his back on His Highness. But the treasurer always gave short measure, less than was asked for and so was widely hated. When the Marxist revolutionaries executed him only the Emperor wept (p.44).
Giving money and offices to his senior people, to the aristocrats, to his rivals, and the threat of taking them away again, an endless economy of promising, giving, threatening, and taking, that’s how a monarch keeps their throne.
One official’s sole task was to come before the Emperor and bow to signify the hour i.e. it was 9 or 10 or 11 o’clock.
From 11am to noon was the Hour of the Ministers. These men were kept in a state of continual high tension rivalry, loitering around the Palace on the off-chance of meeting his Majesty and putting their case. They were all bitter rivals. Selassie saw them one by one and listened to their complaints and filed the knowledge away. He didn’t value effectiveness. All he valued was loyalty.
Another official refers (during the interview with Kapuściński) to the Emperor’s own autobiography, ‘My Life and Ethiopia’s Progress’, in which he lists his many reforms after coming to power in 1930. Eye-grabbing ones include ending slavery (by 1950) and abolishing the cutting off of legs and hands as punishment. He imported the first printing presses, introduced electricity (in the Palace, then selected other buildings). He abolished forced labour and imported the first cars. (According to Wikipedia, Ethiopia had between two and four million slaves in the early 20th century, out of a total population of about eleven million.)
He approved sending the children of aristocrats abroad to study. But slowly a trickle turned into a steady stream, and these graduates from Europe or America and were appalled by the poverty and medieval culture of Ethiopia. That’s when the trouble started.
From noon till 1pm was the Hour of the Supreme Court of Final Appeal. An official placed the black, floor-length cloak of justice on His Majesty’s shoulders and the Emperor stood for an hour listening to court cases and passing judgement. He promoted understanding that he was directly descended from the great and wise King Solomon in the Bible.
At one o’clock the Emperor concluded his morning’s duties and left the Old Palace to proceed to the Anniversary Palace for lunch.
Part 2. It’s Coming, It’s Coming
This 40-page section focuses on the attempted coup led by Germame Neway on December 13, 1960, and its repercussions. Given the subsequent, calamitous history of Ethiopia, does anyone care? No. Instead, impishness and a taste for Kafkaesque absurdity keep creeping in.
For example, an official tells him about the parallel system of spies and snitches put in place by an eccentric official, the Minister of Trade Makonen Habte-Wald but this is only a pretext for a Borgesian meditation on old-fashioned filing systems and the paradox that, the more loyal a person was and the fatter they became on the lavish rewards of loyalty, the thinner their file; whereas those who worked themselves hard, sweated and grew thin working against the regime, their files grew correspondingly fatter.
And a peg for more prose poetry:
Day and night he reaped and winnowed his information, sleeping little, wearing himself out until he looked like a shadow. He was a penetrating man but he penetrated quietly, like a mole, without theatricality, without rodomontade, grey, sour, hidden in the dusk, himself like the dusk. (p.63)
I don’t think anybody speaks like this. This is writing, carefully composed and crafting. It’s this kind of thing which gave rise to the accusation I heard in the 1980s that Kapuściński wasn’t really a reporter, but a creative writer, inventing half the stuff he recorded. Maybe. Hardly matters, though, does it?
This Germame Neway was sent to run the province of Sidamo. After a while local officials diffidently attend court to complain that Newy is taking bribes and using it to build schools, that he is giving land to the landless. He is a communist!. So the Emperor reassigns him to the province of Jijiga.
Germame conceives a coup. He wins over his older brother who just happens to be the head of the Imperial Guard and the head of the Imperial police and then 20 or so other senior officers. The Emperor had a long-standing plan to make a state visit to Brazil. While he was away the plotters struck, arresting all the ministers they could and the royal family. But they missed some, who organised among themselves and informed the Emperor. They coup leaders got the Emperor’s 40-year-old weak and impressionable son to announce the coup on the radio. However almost nobody had a radio so no-one noticed.
The coup had been led by the royal Guard, well educated and paid. It was put down by the army, more loyal, less educated, and its generals, many of whom were blood relatives of His Majesty. The rebels try to win over students and intellectuals but the army enters Addis. Fighting in the streets, hundreds are killed. As the army closes in on the Palace the rebels carry out a massacre of 18 family members and officials closest to the Emperor.
The rebels withdraw to woods outside the city where mobs of furious peasants and proles armed with clubs and stakes and machetes corner and kill them. Much slaughter on both sides.
Germame escapes further into the bush where, surrounded, he shoots his closest associates, then himself. These humans and the way they run their affairs. Douglas Rogers writes in his book about Zimbabwe that we humans like to think of ourselves as rational beings. Do we? Speak for yourself. The evidence is overwhelmingly the other way.
The Palace needed a lot of cleaning up. Bloodstains everywhere, smashed windows, torn curtains. Selassie shot his lions for failing to defend his Palace. Left a permanent atmosphere of fear and paranoia. Slowly the Emperor purged his closest attendants. The coup leaders had been aristocrats. Now his majesty raised more commoners to high position, because then they would owe their wealth and place to him alone i.e. buying loyalty.
A passage with an existentialist flavour describing how, if you are selected for a post at the Palace, you become real, you exist, other people know and note and obey you, so you exist. But how, if you are dismissed, you become a ghost, a non-person, all the attributes of being-in-the-world evaporate. Being…or nothingness. Somehow, the life went out of the Palace. Conversation dwindled, more and more people felt it was pointless. The ‘sweet peace’ of the empire had been lost. Court life had lost its innocence.
The Emperor realised times were changing. He had set up a university which promptly became a hotbed of dissident students. So the Emperor moved to the Hour of Development and the International Hour to his daily schedule. He appointed more ordinary people.
A mania for ‘development’: new roads, new bridges, new schools, new hospitals, new machinery, the Emperor encouraged it all (to the scepticism of many of the old aristocratic families). There’s an old saying that the most dangerous time for an autocracy is when it tries to reform. Suddenly there’s an explosion of complaint and criticism. Down with feudalism! Down with the emperor! Students marched, the police opened fire.
In the later 60s the Emperor travelled abroad almost continuously. He said he was seeking aid money and investment to develop the country. Waggish journalists asked him if he was going to visit Ethiopia one day. Kapuściński’s informants tell him the Emperor sought solace abroad. He could trust foreign presidents and prime ministers. He could go to sleep confident that he’d wake up.
Both army and police demanded better (and more regular) pay. The notion of everyone waiting on the Emperor’s whim for donations had died. Previously armies had been levied, precisely as in a feudal system, and marched to battle plundering along the way. Selassie paid the army proper wages and regularised it.
In 1968 rebellion broke out in Gojam Province. It was provoked by an increase of taxes on peasants. This itself stemmed from the imperial treasury being empty. Ethiopia lacked industry or a bourgeoisie and Selassie found himself having to pay the police, the army and increasing numbers of bureaucrats involved in his push for modernisation and ‘development’. The army surrounded the province, then went in and brutally suppressed the rebellion. But it was a straw in the wind…
More and more students got just enough education to realise how backward their society was, a prey to:
whims of power, labyrinths of Palace politics, ambiguity, darkness that no-one could penetrate. (p.102)
Part 3. The Collapse
Kapuściński’s allegorical, Kafkaesque, almost dreamlike account of the build-up to the military coup of September 1974, when the emperor was deposed by the Derg, a non-ideological committee made up of military and police officers led by Aman Andom.
Kapuściński creates a fictional comic courtier who is deliberately obtuse. He cannot understand why the BBC journalist Jonathan Dimbleby, who had previously broadcast such nice things about the Emperor, now, in 1973, suddenly makes a film about the terrible famine in the north of the country, juxtaposing shots of thousands of bodies by the roadside with footage of Selassie and his courtiers stuffing their faces at banquets. The courtier can’t explain such treachery and ingratitude! In a confidential whisper he says it would do those greedy grasping peasants the power of good to lose a bit of weight, anyway; it would be in accordance with Amaharic religion which preaches fasting.
The West insisted on sending more journalists and aid organisations with food. They discovered there was enough food but the peasants were obliged to give it to the landowners who then sold it in the markets at exorbitant prices. The courtier doesn’t understand why the international community was up in arms about this and is disgusted by their ‘disloyalty’ to His Excellency.
A student rebellion starts, the pretext is a fashion show (!) but the issues were shame at the famine in the north, disgust at the Palace for doing everything it could to cover it up, and fear of the police and army, never slow to wade in and shoot student protesters dead. Nurses went on strike.
Meanwhile his Excellency went to tour the north coast where he made himself a Grand Admiral and awarded the speculators who’d been hoarding food in the famine-stricken north distinctions. When aid shipments arrived from the West, the authorities demanded that customs duties be paid, to fill the royal treasury, of course.
When Selassie returns to the capital the crowds obeise themselves but, the court official says, not with the heartfelt feeling of the olden days. He announces that the starving in the north don’t need food aid anyway; he, the Great Emperor, is concerned for them, and that – his especial care and concern – should be enough for them.
1974, the great year of the end of the Empire and end of the Palace. In February 1974 troops capture their own general. It emerges that the generals have been giving all the pay rises intended for the army to themselves. Then soldiers mutinied in the province of Sidano because their well had dried up and the officers wouldn’t let them use their well.
The government raised the price of petrol, triggering strikes by taxi drivers, bus drivers, school students and so on (only by reading Wikipedia did I know that the price hike was a consequence of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and OPEC oil price rise). The Second Division of the army based in Tigray rebels, demanding pay rises. Then the air force rebelled. Then the Fourth Division rebelled and surrounded the capital. That evening Selassie promised pay rises and replaced the Prime Minister with a liberal.
What makes this a slyly comic and literary book is that all of this, the causes and then events of the coup, are viewed from within the mindset of court officials, who see it all as disloyalty and ingratitude to their Great Ruler and have no sense of the poverty, social tensions and injustices swirling around them. Thus the actual change in government is seen through the eyes of a minor flunky whose job it was to organise the mentions of senior officials in court publications so as to manage the endless rivalries and factions, quite oblivious of the fact that his world is coming to an end.
One of Kapuściński’s witnesses suggests that during the summer of discontent three factions develop in the Palace:
- the Jailers, fierce and inflexible who counsel repression
- the Talkers, who counsel meeting with the protesters and addressing their demands
- the Floaters who bob like corks on the restless waves of unrest
Selassie attempted to calm rumour by holding a big ceremony at which he announced his successor, a 20-year-old grandson studying at Oxford. This offended the aristocracy, dignified old men who refused to serve under a whippersnapper, and two more factions appeared, backing two rival candidates (his daughter, Princess Tenene Work, and another grandson). In the middle of this navel-gazing jockeying, the army invaded Addis and arrested all the ministers in the government.
Then the Emperor announced his latest wheeze for ‘catching up’, for increasing ‘development’, which was to spend a fortune on building dams on the Nile. The army and the students criticised this as being yet another opportunity for corruption and all the money to end up in the pockets of ministers. The informant thinks the Emperor genuinely wanted to create a lasting legacy. But by this time he was having senile spells, sleeping badly, nodding off during the day, calling for ministers and generals who were dead.
In June the army and police announced a joint commission to investigate corruption among ministers and officials who started to be arrested and disappear into prisons, leading figures, princes and senior ministers, a new one every day. The joint committee is now calling itself the Derg (Amharic for ‘council’; maybe something like the Russian ‘soviet’) and meets with the Emperor. Palace officials are appalled since the Derg includes lowly corporals and sergeants (p.134).
The Emperor’s advisers come up with the bright idea of making a grand public celebration of His Majesty’s 82nd birthday, but in the event there are no crowds. He gives a quiet speech from a balcony to a small group of Palace officials standing in the rain in the courtyard below. When some see that he is crying, they realise it really is the end.
What no-one understands is the Emperor’s passivity. He just stops ruling. One faction lecture him at length and he nods. A different faction harangue him and he smiles. The Derg demand a big meeting and he sits smiling in silence. Maybe he thought he would float above it all and survive as a figurehead. Maybe he was senile. Maybe he was just very tired.
The Derg move slowly and arrest a minister at a time. There isn’t a violent attack, but a slow drip-drip of arrests which no-one can oppose because it is the army and the police doing it. Not all the army supports the Derg, they are split among themselves. Hence their softly-softly approach throughout the year, and always claiming to act in the Emperor’s name.
The Palace becomes a slum, packed with dignitaries hoping for safety by being close to the Emperor, sleeping on the floor, wrapping themselves in curtains. But each morning the army officers drove up and read out a list of those who were to be taken away to prison and the Emperor, in a senile dream, wandered among them all, dressed in full military costume, thanking and encouraging everyone, whether ministers, court officials or army officers. In all the Derg took some 500 dignitaries and courtiers off to prison.
Incidentally, Kapuściński has no sympathy for all these officials. He says the Palace was packed with ‘mediocrities’, ‘mean and servile’ (p.153), chosen by the Emperor precisely for these qualities and therefore completely unqualified to rule a modern state. All they knew was corruption and backstabbing. And all this stemmed from the negative character of the Emperor himself:
for what was the Imperial suite but a multiplication of the Emperor’s shadow…Only they could satisfy his vanity, his self-love, his passion for the stage and the mirror, for gestures and the pedestal. (p.154)
The Palace and imperial rule were thus hollowed out from inside, like termites eating the inside of a tree until it is completely hollow. Jonathan Dimbleby, whose documentary played a role in destabilising the regime, described is as ‘a creeping coup’.
Mengistu Haile-Mariam had already emerged as a force in the Derg but, since it never published a list of its members, their make-up largely remained a mystery. Mengistu’s mother worked as a maid at the court. Therefore, he knew exactly who was who, how the whole place worked, and so how to dismantle it piece by piece. In the end, as in a fairy tale, there are just the Emperor and one servant left.
The most effective weapon of the Derg is written accounts of the corruption and greed of the court which they seize and publish. Day after day they come back and search the Palace and find more cash, hidden all over the place. They take it away to feed the starving. Beyond this, they demand the money stashed away in Swiss and British bank accounts, estimated as at least $100 million (p.158). Outside the Palace students and protesters march up and down chanting against the greed of the old regime.
When the soldiers had gone his valet led the Emperor to the chapel and read out loud from the Psalms and other consolatory parts of the Bible while His Excellency meditated, or maybe dozed.
In his own voice Kapuściński confesses himself disgusted by the grotesque greed of the ruling classes and the Emperor in particular, salting away hundreds of millions while his people died by hundreds of thousands. The Derg nationalised all the palaces, all his businesses, all his other property and belongings.
On 12 September 1974 soldiers arrived and read out the proclamation of his dethronement. The Emperor remarked that, ‘If the revolution is good for the people, then I am for the revolution’. Then they bade the Emperor follow them, made him get into a green Volkswagen. For a moment the Emperor demurred at the indignity but then did get in the back seat and was driven off to the barracks of the Fourth Division. The Palace was locked up.
Epilogue
Kapuściński’s text ends with two articles. The first is from Agence France Presse from 7 February 1975 which claimed that, 6 months later, the Emperor was alive and well, still getting up at dawn and following court protocol, then passing his days reading. Apparently, he still thought of himself as imperial ruler of his nation.
The second is barely a sentence long, a snippet from the Ethiopian Herald of 28 August 1978, announcing that the Emperor Haile Selassie had died of circulatory failure. In 1994 an Ethiopian court found three officers guilty of strangling Selassie. His body was found buried under a concrete slab.
Rastafarianism
Rastafarians give central importance to Haile Selassie; some regard him as the Second Coming of Jesus, others as a human prophet who recognised Jah (God)’s presence in every individual.
The word ‘rastafari’ derives from ‘Ras Tafari Makonnen’, Selassie’s pre-rule title. The term ‘Ras’ means a duke or prince in the Ethiopian language; ‘Tafari Makonnen’ was Selassie’s personal name, so together they mean something like Prince Tafari.
Kapuściński doesn’t mention any of this at all in his book. But I want to record the fact that when, after the fall of the Derg, Selassie’s remains were reinterred, some leading rastafarians attended the ceremony, notably Rita Marley – but that most Rastafari rejected the event and many refuse to this day to concede that Selassie – living embodiment of their faith – died at all. My point being that this magical thinking, dream thinking, surreal worldview, is the perfect epilogue to Kapuściński’s strange and dreamlike narrative.
The communist context
Kapuściński worked for most of his life under a communist regime. He worked for the Press Agency of the communist government of Poland from the early 1960s until Poland threw off Soviet rule in 1990.
The point is that this gives all his writings during that period a highly coded or ambiguous feeling. Thus when he describes how an official, once promoted by the Emperor, adopts a dignified, haughty and pompous manner, on the face of it he’s describing behaviour in a semi-medieval old African kingdom; but he can also be read as satirising the behaviour of jumped-up functionaries in the notoriously bureaucratic communist regimes.
This political ambiguity hovers over many passages and, back in the day, back when I first read them in the 1980s, gave them a delightful multi-levelled, allegorical feeling. For example, he has a passage saying that towards the end of Selassie’s rule, the police forces were expanded along with an army of informers. This forced ordinary people to develop a second language of codes and secrets to keep the real meaning of conversations from snoops.
In reality, a glance at Wikipedia shows that Ethiopia is home to not two but about 92 languages. Clearly, Kapuściński has drastically simplified the real-world situation and why? Because the idea of a society of informers where ordinary citizens develop a public language and a secret language is much more like a description of communist Poland (or East Germany or Romania) than of the much more ethnically and linguistically complex and diverse Ethiopian society.
Thoughts
As a factual history of modern Ethiopia this book is fun but useless. You’d learn more in five minutes by reading the Wikipedia article. But 1) as a vivid insight into the claustrophobic, medieval and completely out of touch world of the Imperial Palace it’s a masterpiece. Added to which 2) are the numerous teasing, thought-provoking, allegorical and philosophical asides which give the reader the pleasant impression that they are absorbing an extra level of wisdom and insight.
Americanisms
Most of the text is in a kind of plain, generic, translatorese such as you find in translations of Kafka and Italo Calvino. But just now and again a wild demotic American phrase jumps out of the text. It’s like studiously turning the dial on a shortwave radio, hearing the cricket commentary and nice bourgeois tones and then, suddenly, for a wild anarchic few seconds, coming across a loud jungle, grime or drill track:
- get an eyeload of who’s really in charge (p.96)
- getting the creeps (p.98)
- a lot of grief (p.99)
- jacking up the prices (p.115)
Population growth
As you know, I am a biological materialist, which means I begin any enquiry by establishing the material data about a place or situation, and base my analyses of social or cultural forces on a materialist, evolutionary basis. I don’t rely on culture. In my view culture is a very secondary phenomenon, an epiphenomenon produced by technological, economic and class realities.
In 1963, when Kapuściński first visited Ethiopia, its population was 23 million. In 1974 when the revolution took place, it was 31.5 million. In 1985, at the time of the Live Aid concerts, it was 40 million. Today, July 2023, it is over 120 million. It will never be a developed country because no society in human history has grown its economy at anything like that rate.
The mortarman
The book dates from the heyday of Magical realism, when whimsical surrealism was at a premium:
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 released a coloured cloud that slowly floated to the ground – coloured 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. (p.108)
Credit
The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat by Ryszard Kapuściński was published in Polish in 1978. The English translation by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand was published by Quartet books in 1983. All references are to the 1984 Picador paperback edition.
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