Fekade Shewakena: a specimen of coloniality

When I read the article authored by Fekade Shewakena vilifying Ato Mulugeta Asrate Kassa, I find it imperative to write this piece. Although I do not know either one of them personally, judging from the spirit of the letter it is not hard to situate their relationship within the socio-historical venue of Ethiopia. After reading the venomous letter, it becomes clear to me that the issue is neither a matter of bad taste of letter composition nor a conventional polemical literature. To the contrary the whole letter clearly underegirds the substantive political raison d’être of the CUDists; particularly their inherent colonial disposition with all the pathological subtleties. My objective here is not to defend Ato Mulugeta; he does not need my aid in that regard. Apparently, he has most ably done so in his rebuttal. My intension is to bring out the salient political dimensions that are prevalent in Ato Fekade’s discourse.    

An opportune point of entry, to the main point, would be the very last name of the aggressor. When one puts into context the meaning attributed to the name Shewakena, two syntactically incongruous connotations asserts themselves. On the one hand, Shewakena can be translated as an idiom referring to a state of mind: “Shewa is jealous or envious”. On the other hand, Shewakena can be interpreted as an expression of an exploit: “Shewa is civilized or Shewa has civilized”. However, despite the obvious dissimilarity in syntax, the substantive meanings of the two parables are not only intimately linked, but emerge from the same source. A genesis that is existentially abnormal attempting to harmonized chronic inferiority complex (envy and jealousy), with unabashed superiority complex (chivalrous chauvinism). In other words, the psychological make-up ascribed to the first definition of Shewakena, which is consumed with acute insecurity, can only take respite in chauvinistic predisposition. Conversely, the civilizing adventure associated with the second meaning of Shewakena, which is in the final analysis a bona-fide rationalization of violence, can only be manifested in self-hate and inferiority. After everything is said and done, the jealousy and the aggression are the natural manifestation of colonial relations. In the Ethiopian context, the colonial state of affair is subsumed under the maxim “Shewa”. Accordingly, Ato Fekade Shewakena, true to his name, is the quintessential embodiment of the colonial reality with all of its contradictions. After all, no entity of Ethiopia, including Amhara proper, produces names that are synonymous to Shewakena. There is no “Gonderkena”, “Gojamkena”, “Menzkena” etc. Thus Shewa, more than its formal geographical or cartographic representation, is substantively a relational (colonial that is) manifestation.   

Viewed from the vantage point of coloniality, Ato Fekade’s unwarranted assault on Ato Mulugeta is not hard to understand if not defend. Ato Fekade has a serious issue against Ato Mulugta simply because the latter represents everything that the former not only wishes to have, but to be. As a lowly agency in the colonial environment of the Imperial Order, he both hates and venerates everything that Ato Mulugeta purportedly represents. While his jealousy of Ato Mulugeta’s pedigree makes him scornful, his existential (colonizing) predicament turns him into a perpetual subaltern. After all, the DERG and Mengistu Haile Mariam are the classical case of colonial induced bipolarity. Mengistu destroyed the ruling class of the imperial order hoping to metamorphose himself into an Emperor. Along the same line, Ato Fekade, a staunch neo-Derguist (CUDist), who is liable for the murder of dignitaries whose only crime is their high status, attempts to denigrate Ato Mulugeta’s maternal pedigree based on her ostensible “low Status”. The issue here is not Ato Mulugeta and his background; it is rather Ato Fekade and his psychotic demeanor bordering schizophrenia.

In Ato Fekade’s frame of mind Ato Mulugeta is not a simple human being he is rather a deity. On the one hand, he is willing to kill him only to transubstantiate and reincarnate through him. If he is alive he is willing to drag his name into the mud only to pull him low to his level. The irony is Ato Mulugeta knows his individuality and appreciates the virtues of liberty and equality. It is Ato Fekade who refuses to neither liberate himself from nor equalize himself with others. To him liberty is antithetical to equality; he can only be liberated in inequality. Yet this same negation has its own negation. In other words, because he advocates inequality, he cannot liberate himself from his own imagined specter of Ato Mulugeta.     

To be a lowly subaltern in the colonial hierarchy is detrimental. A good example would be the observation of an Oromo. In his article titled Confession of a Mutant Oromo, Idris Shaankore with eloquent sarcasm illustrated the sorry state of affair of the petty colonial social agency. He says that he   

Recited the Dawit three times to Abba Fere Senbet and Abba Kinfe Michael, washed their feet, removed Moyale from their toes with merfe kulfe and kissed their feet before they were rewarded by my father. I was an aleka, I sat among the menses, gonderes, and welloyes and consumed their breath and fess and shared their kollo and dabo and their kunicha, niffro, kemal, and played with the cherke quass with them and mud marbles, and shared in their happiness and their grief etc.

It is indeed tragic-comic to witness the transmutation of a hard-core psychotic into a psychoanalyst. It is comical to see Fekade Shewakena psychoanalyzing Mulugeta Asrate Kassa. It is nonetheless tragic to observe his and his likes crowding the political space and discourse of Ethiopia. As much as Fekade Shewakena exposes his own psychological dissonance, he has also highlighted the inherent disposition of the so-called political opposition. To the CUDites politics is a slush and burn enterprise; nothing is off limit from their wrath and everything that they deem to be a hindrance to their quest for power is fair game. Fueled by the deadly combination of irrational hatred for all and insatiable thirst for power, there is no limit to their destructive capacity. After all, this is not just an erudite speculation; the whole world had witnessed the atrocities perpetuated by the DERG. As far as they are concerned, the end justifies the means; accordingly they are not only oblivious of the harm they inflict, they are also at peace with it. So how can one reason with these creatures?

In an ideal world they should be medicalized; in a less ideal reality they should be criminalized. In either case though, incarceration is the antidote to their mayhem.

Alem Mekuria

Marc 08, 2006

Email:
aalem@yahoo.com