You ain’t no true Ethiopian!
PART I

__________________________________

Aklilu Abreha
Mar 05, 2006

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address. Friday, January 20, 1961

For several years now, we have been witnessing a lot of people using the term “true Ethiopian” to differentiate individuals who fit a certain categorization. I feel like, lately, the term is excessively misused to exclude people with dissenting political views. How pathetic and childish. In this article, I like to discuss the criteria one is required to meet to be considered a legal Ethiopian citizen. Once that is established, further more, I like to discuss what I believe to be a universally accepted proof of an individual’s sincerity of citizenship, and consequently, demonstrate to you the people who really deserve to be called true Ethiopians.

According to Article 6 of the Constitution of The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, the eligibility to acquire Ethiopian Nationality is stipulated as follows:

1. Any person of either sex shall be an Ethiopian national where both or either parent is Ethiopian. 2. Foreign nationals may acquire Ethiopian nationality. 3. Particulars relating to nationality shall be determined by law.

For more information on our constitution, please point your browser to http://www.ethiopar.net/English/cnstiotn/consttn.htm. Therefore, from the constitutional and legal stand point, and a particular interest to me, is that one is considered an Ethiopian citizen provided that he is born from one or both parents of Ethiopian nationals.

I think all of us; including those individuals with whom we happen to disagree, more than satisfy this legal criterion. And, as the published autobiography of Prime Minister Meles shows, he was born in Ethiopia from Ethiopian parents, and as the result, Mr. Meles is a well qualified Ethiopian citizen. And further, if need be, we can also look at the published biography of his government advisors and other responsible officials and we would find out that all of them meet or exceed the requirement and can proudly claim Ethiopian citizenship.

But that is the easy part. In my view, and I am sure most of you agree that the most important criteria are the meeting of the proof of sincerity of citizenship. Just to elaborate, in our adapted country, the United States of America, the legal requirement for citizenship is equally straight forward just like that of Ethiopia’s. Because of one reason or another, several of us have taken advantage of it and have acquired American citizenship. But very few of us have bothered to prove our sincerity be it by participating in the American political process; by serving in public office; by volunteering to community services; by enlisting in the army; by making donations; by performing or volunteering in other communally beneficial duties. Unlike us, however, there are other immigrants who proved their sincerity to America. To name a few examples, you have Arnold Schwarzenegger, the current governor of California who was born in Austria; Henry Kissinger, the 56th Secretary of State of the United States who was born in Germany; Albert Einstein who was also born in Germany became a citizen of the United States in 1940, he made many contributions to peace, and to the war effort by hand writing his 1905 paper on special relativity and putting it up for auction. It raised six million dollars, the manuscript today being in the Library of Congress. American history is full of other naturalized Americans who proved their sincerity of their citizenship and had been disposed with a much greater social, scientific, economical, and governing responsibility.

The sincere contributions, as we would like to believe, are easily quantifiable. But it becomes tricky if one exclusively basis it on his/her own life experience, political view, and frame of reference. Generally speaking, however, one who practices love and affection to all his/her people all the time; one who extends a helping hand and performs random acts of generosity to his fellow citizens; one who wishes good-will to his country is considered a sincere and a true citizen. Otherwise, for bizarre and selfish reasons, when one is selective and pretentious in practicing love and affection; when one rarely, if ever, offers a helping hand when his/her people are in need; when one wishes ill to his country to achieve a political objective; when one engages in malevolent activities that gravely compromise the unity of his country and the safety of his fellow citizens, and when one, in a nutshell, significantly lacks sincerity, one become suspect of not being a true citizen. Unfortunately, in the mindset of some circles of contemporary Ethiopian politics, going against these generally accepted proofs of sincerity, some choose to bestow the honor and call “true Ethiopian” only individuals of their liking. Not only that, they use a different label to make others fell less deserving of the Ethiopian citizenship when they fell like, mind you, that the person subscribes to a differing political thought, and regardless of the individuals sincere effort to improve the living standard of fellow Ethiopian citizens.

To the people who consider them selves to be a “true Ethiopian” and other who are considered worthy of the honor, let us, in the famous words of President Kennedy, ask the question of what these

Johnny-come-lately “true Ethiopians” have done for their country. Besides constantly bickering about what the government has not done for them, have they themselves sent medical supplies when their people are sick? Have they themselves sent donations or food supplies when their people are starving? Have they contributed to help build a school or pay a teachers salary? Have they sent books or computers to help educate their people? Have they shipped seeds and other farm supplies to help Ethiopian farmers become self sufficient? The answer, to our utter disappointment, is most of the time no, no, and a resounding no to all.

A case in point is a relief agency booth I visited during one of the North America soccer tournament. I noticed this young white American lady standing in a booth next to several Ethiopian merchandize and food vendors. I wondered what she was selling and I approached her booth to find out. To my disappointment, I found out that she was collecting donations and she was giving out her organization’s mailing addresses to people willing to help Ethiopians affected by famine and other natural maladies. My disappointment was only because I expected an Ethiopian to be on task. I engaged her in conversation, and she informed me that she was extremely disappointed at the Ethiopian community. She said, the “love” the Ethiopians were publicly displaying was pretentious and lacked substance; she said the ever plenty flags those people at the stadium were wearing and carrying did not amount to more than a colored piece of cloth. Apparently, her disappointment was as the result of her non profit agency’s high expectation to collect huge sums of donations and to register thousands of mailing addresses of Ethiopians willing to help their counterparts at home. She was saddened, because very limited people stopped by to talk to her, and even fewer people made donations or gave out their mailing addresses. She asked me if all those Ethiopians understood the suffering of Ethiopians back home and if they knew the desperate situations. I had no answer for her. These are kind of people who we like to call “true Ethiopians?” People who sympathize and empathize but choose to spend tens or hundreds of dollars for an instant gratification but never donated ten dollars to help a fellow Ethiopian at home.

Individuals who love to shed crocodile tears, and say “I had wept then till I was drenched in my tears..... Can’t we spend ten years working on one or two of the big river basins, which can more than feed the whole country? Don’t tell me that need (sic) capital and technology. Everyone knows that. Better beg for the damn technology and capital and squeeze the country’s resources once and work on both sides of the hand (sic) for ten years than become perennial and shameless beggars. Make it a policy priority and any average economic planner can tell us how to do it. Countries have dug their way out of this kind of messes.” You like to read more on it, here is a link:http://64.233.179.104/

But now, we find these same individuals working against foreign financial aid, transfer of technology and peace, all of which, I may add, are necessary preconditions to alleviate the economic condition in Ethiopia. Let alone the higher calling of building a nation, some of you neither lend a financial support to your immediate families nor bother to go and visit your homeland. Even when you go to visit, you end up staying in a luxurious hotel far away from your family’s dilapidated residence. And you are not hesitant when you call yourselves “true Ethiopians.”

And then you have the other group of “true Ethiopians” who are never miss an occasion to donate money to political Parties. I was traumatized when I saw an opposition fund raising video last week where a certain individual paid $4,000.00 for a book. Apparently, rumor has it; the oppositions are raising funds to hire lawyers to lobby American Congressmen. I wondered if this generous individual knew the hard earned money is going to a lost cause. I do not want to a bearer of bad news, but I read that the House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Human Rights removed the consideration called “the Ethiopia Consolidation Act” from the Human Rights and Democracy bill. The legislation was “temporarily withdrawn” because, as the news had it, Congressman Donald Payne felt it “requires more discussion”. I think this is politically correct code word to mean…eeehhhh…, well, you can probably give it your own interpretation. But here is a hint: Before the November off year election, the legislative priority for Congressman Payne is reauthorizing the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, childcare, retirement security, extending unemployment benefits to all of America's workers, the welfare of children, the state of American environment, and the health of the nation.

I looked at some photos taken at the fundraising gathering as well, and I noticed there were some fat cat (rich) Ethiopians at the meeting. And I was compelled to ask some questions like: how come these cats kept their hands glued in their pockets when this young and enthusiastic Ethiopian wasted, I venture to guess, what amounts to a third of her yearly income? Was it because the cats are not as committed to the cause? Or was it because they have been victims of fraudulent fundraising under similar circumstances? I think they should have been the highest bidder as they are better positioned to whether the aftermath of this kind of happy-go-lucky and swept-by-the-moment spending.

Be that as it may, but wonder with me for a moment: what if similar amounts of money were to be directed to help our people at home? Money like the sum of $4,000 ($34,720 Birr) would have purchased thousands of used college books, or more that 10 Desktop computers that could be shipped to the donator’s old high school? But, the problem is whenever you seek these generous individuals and ask them to give donation to improve the lives of Ethiopians, poof, they disappear, or if you are lucky to find them, they are quick to accuse you of conspiring with “Woyane” to destroy Ethiopia.

A case in point is what some Ethiopians continue to say about a well respected Ethiopian, and a member of the Rotary Club, who did a lot to Ethiopians through his membership, and who received world wide recognition and an award from world renowned individuals. They labeled him a “woyane.” And at the same time, these same individuals are angry when they obsessively quote to you statistics on how many industries, hospitals, and schools were built in Tigrai. They are distressed when they tell you there is a conspiracy in the making to deprive education to non-Tigrayan children designed to subjugate them to generations to come. They look horrified when they tell you there is a concerted effort to spread infectious disease and sicken Ethiopians to death. For argument sake, assuming there is such a conspiracy, if you ask how they plan to counteract it, they tell you by violently deposing the EPRDF government, not by helping build schools, and sending books and medicine. EPRDF started armed struggle 31 years ago and won after 17 years of violent and bitter struggle. How are you going to battle against it now that it is a government and has all resources necessary for war at its disposal? Even if defeat is possible, we must realize that we will subject our people for another 20 or 30 years of misery while we wage armed struggle.

My friends, our unwavering assumption of political leadership as “the solution” and our ruthless obsession to acquire it at any cost is completely misdirected. Political power is a means -not the means- to an end; it is a means to bring about better living conditions to all or a segment of a society; it is not an end in-and-of-it-self. But most of us Ethiopians waste valuable resources erroneously believing it to be an end, and mistakenly consider their selves to be true Ethiopians for working towards achieving it at the exclusion of other more important worthy causes. The superior criteria for us to meet and proudly claim to be a true Ethiopian nationality should be based on what we did for our country; what we are doing for our country; what we are planning to do for our country, the sum total of which, in the final analysis, improves the living standard of our fellow Ethiopians.

To that end, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia and his government will run anyone for his money. They are more Ethiopians that anyone of us out here in the hinterland. Unless you are a “Mehal Sefari” and concerned only about exclusive development of Addis Ababa and environs at the expense of others, the EPRDF government’s policy to develop other urban and rural regions, to distribute wealth and to improve the lives of our people has bear fruits; it is encouraging and commendable. In previous administrations, and I quote “…Ethiopian Budget yearly outlay for the last forty or fifty years where almost hundred percent of Ethiopia’s wealth was expended. Over 95% of all investment in Ethiopia was invested in Addis Ababa and vicinity. Over 95% of all hospitals in Ethiopia are to be found in Addis Ababa. Almost all of the higher education institutions were concentrated in Addis Ababa. Over 90% of the budgetary expenditure was spent in Addis Ababa and vicinity.”

To be continued….

I can be reached at dnasmara1@yahoo.com

home