Those who are deprived of the means of narrative production by Zenawi see him as a man who used his omnipotent power and his knowledge of the politico- military complex to eliminate the very conditions under which alternative ideas and competent political operators could emerge. It is not simply that he built a system around himself, but deliberately established himself as the only leader able to supply the cement necessary to hold together the nations internal ruptures. He might have helped Ethiopia achieve rocketing economic progress but this progress came at a cost of two decades of terror and repression. The relentless memorialisation of Zenawis legacy conceals, misrecognises, misrepresents, de- historicises, and ultimately erases the fundamental relationships of domination and inequality instituted by the order minted by Zenawi. Theses obsessive commemorative practices , i.e. events, parks, monuments, and institutions built up to remember and commemorate Zenawi have the purpose and effect of transforming everything about Zenawi into a dazzling action that can be appropriated by the order he founded and the sovereignty he left behind. It has the goal of transcribing his deeds into a discourse that ensures the sedimentation of these utterances into common- sense knowledge, into that which remains when everything is forgotten. This, then, is what is at stake in the struggle over the legacy of Meles Zenawi. No doubt the darling of the West who outmanoeuvred his adversaries, Zenawis domestic reputation is radically at odds with his international stature. In the eyes of his people, Zenawi was irredeemably authoritarian. Awol Kassim Allo
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 20:37:22 +0000