Ethiopia;
don’t forget your Archives are Africa’s too!
---Tariku
Abas- Etenesh----
When you hear some actions of some Ethiopian government agencies, you feel at a loss
of context to conceptualize or understand them.
Well
let us try to understand one of such impossible-to-understand scenarios:
Think
of a scenario in an African country, deprived of its rights of access to archives
by the former colonizer yet striving to secure access. A nation that realized such
archives are not only instrumental in retelling the true cruel nature of the African
colonial past but also for taking informed, legitimate steps towards correcting
the wrongs of the past.
Think
of a nation like Kenya, where 40,000 Kenyans sued Britain for the brutality they
suffered in British colonial detention camps based on documents in colonial
archives; a nation like Namibia suing Germany for Germany’s genocide on the Herero
people Namibia based on document in archives.
Kenya
and Namibia realize that as nations, historical documents are like the pearls
on the neck of a people’s history glorifying and honoring a body its memory.
As
Africans, the most sensitive and less luxurious item, to be treated with
nothing but respect should have been historical records of our history as most
of it is already lost and distorted by colonial legacies and distortions.
NOW
think of a scenario in my country Ethiopia, that prides itself of not being colonized
and has amassed great wealth of achieves from its three thousand years of existence
suddenly deciding to SELL the documents in its national archive, (not
the copy form but the originals,) less than a dollar a kilo, for a simple and shameful
reason of creating a space for an office building.
Cry
Africa!
This
could sound impossible to believe, but it is true.
A national
that lacks clarity on how it handles and preserves its archives properly is no
better than a person with Alzheimer disease; vested on living the moment while forgetting the past.
How
could a nation conceive itself sane while selling its archives for ridiculous reasons?
Hopelessly,
I would like to say Ethiopia don’t forget your Archives are Africa’s too!
