Thursday, January 15, 2015

Ethiopia; don’t forget your Archives are Africa’s too!

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Kenya and Namibia realize that as nations, historical documents are like the pearls on the neck of a people’s history glorifying and honoring a body its memory.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! 



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