An Open Call by African Intellectuals for Urgent Action on Ethiopia

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Sep 2, 2021
A destroyed armored vehicle lays in one of the mains streets of Hawzen, a small town in the frontline of the war in Tigray, Ethiopia, on June 6, 2021 via VOA by Yan Boechat A destroyed armored vehicle lays in one of the mains streets of Hawzen, a small town in the frontline of the war in Tigray, Ethiopia, on June 6, 2021 via VOA by Yan Boechat

An Open Call by African Intellectuals for Urgent Action on Ethiopia

By : Jadaliyya Reports
[When the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was transformed into the African Union (AU) in the early 2000’s its Peace and Security Architecture was supposed to be guided by the principle of “non-indifference” and “the spirit of Pan-Africanism”. And yet when civil war erupted in Ethiopia in early Nov 2020, the old OAU principle of "non-interference" in the internal affairs of member states trumped all efforts the AU could have made to address the deteriorating situation in Ethiopia. Dismayed by the lack of action on the part of the AU, scores of African intellectuals are now calling for urgent dialogue and mediation.]

We write this letter as concerned African intellectuals on the continent and in the Diaspora. Many of us have dedicated our professional lives to understanding the causes and potential solutions to intra-and inter-African conflicts. We are appalled and dismayed by the steadily deteriorating situation in Ethiopia – so tragically illustrative of the continued lack of uptake of the abundant commentary produced by African intellectuals on how to resolve African conflicts.

We are deeply disturbed by the ongoing civil war in Ethiopia—which some refer to as a regionalized internal conflict, given Eritrea's role within it. We note with dismay that protagonists to the conflict no longer include just the Tigray Defence Force (TDF) and the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) together with the special forces from Amhara, but now also include the Oromo Liberation Army on one side, and on the other side, special forces from several other regions, as well as numerous conscripts. We note too, the advance of the TDF into Amhara and Afar regions, which, despite the TDF’s claims to be seeking to enable humanitarian and other supply access chains, is contributing to the expansion of the conflict across Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is of continental significance, not only for its record of successful resistance to European imperial expansionism, but also for its being the home of the African Union (AU), our inter-governmental institution whose lack of effective engagement on the situation in Ethiopia we also find deplorable. The AU, its member states—particularly Ethiopia’s neighbouring states—must not allow Ethiopia to dictate the terms of their engagement in seeking a resolution to this conflict.

We condemn the fact that the conflict is affecting ever-increasing numbers of civilians—the deaths, the sexual violence, the refugee outflows, the documented hunger and unmet medical and psychosocial needs, the reports of widespread and targeted illegal detentions (especially because of ethnicity), the enforced disappearances and torture in captivity. We also condemn the destruction of hard-earned physical and metaphysical infrastructure across Tigray, as well as other regions of Ethiopia, including institutions of higher learning, houses of worship and cultural heritage. Ethiopia and its peoples have suffered enough. Ethiopia cannot afford any further destruction.

All Ethiopians must recognize that a political rather than military solution is what is now called for, regardless of the claims and counterclaims, legitimate and otherwise, as to how Ethiopia has come to this place. Retributive justice, including the seizure and counter-seizures of contested land, and the detention of family members of recently outlawed political groups heightens tensions, leading to generational cycles of violence.

Ethiopia is on the precipice; we must take action. We, therefore, call on:

The Ethiopian government and the national regional government of Tigray to respond positively to the repeated calls for political dialogue, including with the affected and implicated groups in the Amhara and Oromia regions;

The Ethiopian government and the national regional government of Tigray to make positive use, in such dialogue, of the numerous African intellectuals who have put forward their views on pathways out of conflict;

Neighbouring countries to exercise maximum pressure on the Ethiopian government and the national regional government of Tigray to—under the framework of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the AU—submit to external mediation of this conflict; 

The IGAD and the AU to proactively take up their mandates with respect to providing mediation for the protagonists to this conflict—including providing all possible political support to the soon to be announced AU Special Envoy for the Horn;

The rest of the international community to continue to support such IGAD and AU action with the carrots and sticks needed to get the protagonists and all other stakeholders to the table, keep them there and determine a political solution leading to more broad-based national dialogue on the future of the Ethiopian state.

We urge all Ethiopian leaders and civic groups to demonstrate the magnanimity and vision needed to reconstruct a country that has suffered far too long already. We call on any negotiated political settlement to include a process of public accountability for mass atrocities committed across Ethiopia. The history of the African state attests to the efficacy of an alternate path committed to truth, peace, justice and reconciliation.

Signatories 


Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Professor of French and Philosophy
Director of the Institute of African Studies
Columbia University

Mamadou Diouf
Leitner Family Professor of African Studies
Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
Columbia University

Elleni Centime Zeleke
Assistant Professor
Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
Columbia University

Godwin Murunga
Executive Secretary
Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA)

Boubacar Boris Diop
Award winning author of Murambi, The Book of Bones and many other novels, essays and journalistic works

Achille Mbembe
Research Professor in History and Politics
Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research
University of the Witwatersrand

Jimi O Adesina
Professor and Chair in Social Policy
College of Graduate Studies
University of South Africa 

Ato Sekyi-Otu
Professor Emeritus
Department of Social Science and the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought
York University 

Felwine Sarr
Anne-Marie Bryan Distinguished Professor of Romance Studies
Duke University

Imraan Coovadia
Writer, essayist and novelist
Director of the creative writing programme
University of Cape Town 

Ebrima Sall
Director, Trust Africa

Koulsy Lamko
Chadian playwright, poet, novelist and university lecturer

Willy Mutunga
Former Chief Justice
Supreme Court of Kenya

Maina Kiai
Former Chair
Kenya National Human Rights Commission
Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association

Rashida Manjoo
Professor Emeritus
Department of Public Law,
University of Cape Town
Former UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women

Siba N Grovogui
Professor of international relations theory and law
Africana Studies and Research Centre
Cornell University

Nadia Nurhussein
Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies
Johns Hopkins University

Martha Kuwee Kumsa
Professor of Social Work
Wilfrid Laurier University

Mekonnen Firew Ayano
Associate Professor
SUNY Buffalo Law School

Dagmawi Woubshet
Ahuja Family Presidential Associate Professor of English
University of Pennsylvania

Awet T Weldemichael
Professor and Queen's National Scholar
Queen's University 

Abadir Ibrahim
Ethiopian Human Rights Activist and Lawyer

Michael Woldemariam
Associate Professor of International Relations and Political Science
Director of the African Studies Center
Boston University 

Safia Aidid
Arts and Science Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of History
University of Toronto

Abdoulaye Bathily
Professor of History
University Cheikh Anta Diop

David Ndii
Kenyan Economist

Siphokazi Magadla
Senior Lecturer in Political and International Studies
Rhodes University 

Fred Hendricks
Emeritus Professor
Faculty of Humanities
Rhodes University

Pablo Idahosa
Professor of African Studies and International Development Studies
York University

Ibrahim Abdullah
Department of History and African Studies
Fourah Bay College
University of Sierra Leone

Seye Abimbola
Senior Lecturer
School of Public Health
University of Sydney 

Makau Mutua
SUNY Distinguished Professor
SUNY Buffalo Law School

Salim Vally
Professor
Faculty of Education
University of Johannesburg
Director
Centre for Education Rights and Transformation

L. Muthoni Wanyeki
Kenya Political Scientist

Dominic Brown
Activist and Economic Justice Programme Manager
Alternative Information and Documentation Centre

Michael Neocosmos
Emeritus Professor in Humanities
Rhodes University

Zubairu Wai
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science and Department of Global Development Studies
University of Toronto

Alden Young
Assistant Professor
African American Studies
University of California 

Benjamin Talton
Professor of History
Department of History
Temple University

G Ugo Nwokeji
Associate Professor of African History and African Diaspora Studies
Department of African-American Studies
University of California

Lionel Zevounou
Associate Professor of Public Law
University of Paris Nanterre. 

Amy Niang
Professeur associé
L'Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique 

Sean Jacobs
Associate Professor of international Affairs
Julien J Studley Graduate Programmes in International Affairs
The New School
Founder and Editor of Africa is a Country

Abosede George
Associate Professor of African History
Barnard College

Dr Abdourahmane Seck
Senior Lecturer
Université Gaston Berger

Nimi Hoffmann
Lecturer
Centre for International Education
University of Sussex
Research Associate
Centre for International Teacher Education
Cape Peninsula University of Technology 

Maria Paula Meneses
Vice-Presidente
Conselho Científico do CES
Centro de Estudos Sociais
Universidade de Coimbra

Ibrahima Drame
Director of Education
Henry George School of Social Science

Cesaltina Abreu
Co-Director
Laboratory of Social Sciences and Humanities
Angolan Catholic University 

Lina Benabdallah
Assistant Professor of Politics
Wake Forest University

Oumar Ba
Assistant Professor of International Relations
Department of Government
Cornell University

Samar Al-Bulushi
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of California

Nisrin Elamin
Assistant Professor of International Studies
Bryn Mawr College 

Marie-Jolie Rwigema
Incoming Assistant Professor
Applied Human Sciences
Concordia University

Eddie Cottle
Postdoctoral Fellow
Society, Work and Politics Institute
University of the Witwatersrand

Amira Ahmed
School of Humanities and Social Science
American University of Cairo

Convenors' Forum of The C19 People’s Coalition

Ibrahim Abdullah
Department of History and African Studies
Fourah Bay College
University of Sierra Leone 

Jok Madut Jok
Professor of Anthropology
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
Syracuse University

We stand in solidarity with all Ethiopian intellectuals in-country who want to speak out against the war but feel unable to do so due to fear of retaliation.

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Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412