Coveting Apartheid!?

Coveting Apartheid!?

(Tariku Abas Etenesh)

The greatest crime in a desert is to find water and keep silent about it, reads one African proverb. And I borrow its structure to say, the greatest crime as a government is to be given the opportunity to do great and intentionally settle for the worst. 

The current government of Ethiopia, (for the past 25 years,) has been granted by historical coincidences, some great opportunities fit to truly propel the country into greatness; however, it chose to squander it for the petty act of painting the portrait of grandeur for the ruling elites. These elites, who insist on preaching hatred as a cornerstone for nation building, came to power unwilling to do away with the politics of animosity. And the prescriptive corollary of their investment in hatred is their narcissistic appetite for a singular adulation of self, by self, about self and opposing all different voices.

For the past 25 years, they had the chance to ease the intentional domination of key federal government structures by one ethnic group, but they chose to default. They had the chance to aspire development that espouses the right of the citizen at its core; but intentionally defaulted. They had the chance to aspire development that doesn’t robe the poor of its land for the benefit of the few politically connected; but they defaulted. They had the chance to not soil the name of the ethnic group they falsely claim to represent for their narrow interest of clinging to power; but they defaulted; they had the chance to not populate their prisons with citizens whose only crimes are their inalienable rights of speaking a language of the majority ethnic group, but they defaulted.    

Like all tyranny the world has seen, the Ethiopian tyrants are more than willing to point at colorfully written motto and slogans with the mix of the term development in some fashion, as the answer for the lack of rule of law and respect of the inalienable rights of the citizen. The greatest crime for this government rises out of its utter lack of respect to its own constitution. 

What historical circumstances provided them with the opportunity to bind the country; they chose festering age old wounds among people; they chose complacency with corruption, hatred, mistrust and nepotism. Most disturbing of all, they chose to create a generation of aspiring first-class citizens cuddled with a false sense entitlement to the country because of the language they speak; and created a parallel generation of broken hearts of second-class citizens, terrorized with the nightmare of imprisonment and injustice  because of the language they speak.  

The elite’s action to prolong power through divide-and-rule among the people is too slippery and bound to invite calamity to their own very shaky foundations. This calamity might not be because demonstrations are made and quelled by live fires from military, or it might not be because oppositions who sang nonviolence resistance were thrown to jails; it may not even be because bloggers, journalists, and citizens are labeled as terrorists for the crime of using their constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech; it may not even be because the frustrated oppositions took up arms and fought for change; but surly because of the very nature of the elites power base.  A power base that furnished the culture of entitlement for a minority elite’ dominance of the military, the national intelligence, the major business, the airline, the national banks, major key ministerial positions, which is worryingly growing with solid scorn to the diversity of the nation. This scorn could soon implode into an outright ethnic apartheid where the entitlement to the country reserved for the few in order to secure and maintain power, would result in a dangerous saturation point of no return.

For instance, the reason that used to be given for the selective ethnic domination of the military has changed from one that was shy to admitting it to a bold claim of entitlement. The Highest Army chief, last year has made it public that 'military is not about ethnic diversity but about ability' implying that no change would be introduced to change the statuesque. This is a cry for selective entitlement for one ethnic group. Because the statement misses the question by great margins because a country that claims to have a constitution ratified by all ethnic groups, would be against the constitution to have 99% percent of its military to official from just one ethnic group. the same entitlement of controlling and claiming why not is encroaching in various sectors pushing the country to a cliff  of intolerance. The country deserves more fro the ruling elites who want to rule with a eleventh century mentality.

However, it is never too late to cherish love, to honor reconciliation and to start healing; it is never too late to teach tolerance in place of hatred; never too late to renounce the old rhetoric that 'only we -the elite- from certain ethnicity' know what is best for the country; especially, it never too late to start building a nation where what your child speaks constitutes just diversity not adversity, constitutes beauty not a recipe for brutality.      

The greatest crime for any 'government' is to squander opportunities to do great for human solidarity but intentionally settle for the worst end of narrow ethnicity. 

.......................................................................................................................................................

TAE

I Asked February

I Asked February

........

I asked February, why take a color designation? 

And it replied: So I could de-color the rest and mine,  

Still curious, I remained;  

Thus, the month whispered:

History has optical distortion faculty, 

Where colors are kept in captivity, 

Deprived of their inherent veracity;

Through a collective myth levying visual sanction,

Forcing each hue and diction into a one-eyed vision;

and lamenting: 

The journey from cotton-to-gold-to-steel,

Was a white-hued burden, 

No red –black- brown in between;

And this, history does so, 

Eclipsing the times of creation of colors: 

When cotton needed soaking in red to became white,

And white needed baptism in black to become golden; 

And golden needed stolen sweat to harden into steel;   

Giving birth to a lavish great dream;

Espoused in the plantation spirituals,

And the slave auction stall vile transactions, 

The agony engine of the industrial revolution;

Mixed in rhyme’, 

Out of many one - E-Pluribus Unum,

Warranted me in shame. 

....................................................

For Black History  

Whisper of Life: I am Here to Stay

The silent voice of life chimes through time and space,

Whose echo like an eternal sonnet rhymes,

With terrains of doubt and dins of feat;

And reigns over oceans of meanings with nuanced isles,

Whose rules as humble maxim relate: I am here to stay;

Thus, make a wise take of yourself in my realm,

While you are here but a delicate wanderer,

For I am solemn to stay through you or without;

As I did,

Past the blaze of randomness eons passed,

Past the debris of bodies of mighty-build,

Of the mammoth and dinosaur,

I take no chance to replicate:

Through forms, types and nature- disregard,

In the air, thoughts and knacks- I reside;

In every act of seeking permanence;

In the question, doubt, answer, and conviction,

In every cave-painting, tablet, scroll, book, chip, and bio-chip,

In the whining, roaring, chirping, bleating, and growling;

In every hello, blip, and clang,

In every alas- Oh- Ouch- Yes- Halleluja- and Hurray,

I am here to stay;

As I did,

Through the sky watchers, masqueraders,

 the wailers and meditaters

The inquirers and the oracles

The wise men, the artist and scientists,

Outliving the many pursuits to see me in the eye;

Through the creation of gods by humans,

To the creation of humans by the gods,

Outliving the gods ascendance and dethronement from reverence,

Outliving their lingering shadows of fading glory

Against the judgments of time,

I am here to stay;

As I did,

Journeying through carcass of many prides, melancholy and vengeance,

Through my survival mirage tapping your grandeur illusions;

From the reed houses of Sumer,

To the colonnades of Karnack,

To the Athenian amphitheater,

To the boulders of the Incas,

To the Aksumite stale peaks,

As I did,

Through the shifting shadows of time,

When your wish-driven selective remembrance,

Seeking in zebra the camel’s perseverance,

Threaded the sands of the ancient times;

Like a child would look up for guidance but refuses to follow,

To meet your quest only to blemish it as hollow;

Taking yourself the ultimate measure;

Like in the graveyards of Mesopotamia you whined

The curse of a runaway child,

Coveting Gilgamesh’s quest to grip eternity,

Feigning the old yearning as novelty,

Echoing the breath of Amenhotep, Hannibal and Alexander,

Calling arrival your directionless blunder,

I was there,

When you took me lightly 
As if, I stood for a bygone era entity,

As if, the voice, which me: life -and your meaning of me as cousins relate;
I see you forget, 

That I - life- a forbidding permanence with singularity on BEING,

Whispering through the veins and cells of all forms and manifestation,

say renounce this simpleton’s cage of definition;

That for my sustenance your presence is implied,

is but writ of consolation in your mind;

Wise up and honor yourself through each breath in my realm,

While you are here but a delicate wanderer,

Rather taking bliss in the knowledge,

That I have labored eternities to exact your form and intellect,

But mistake it not: I am here to stay with you or without.

.........................

To all of us -humans.

(Tariku Abas Etenesh)

Dust,Volcano,Star

Dust-Volcano-Star

(Tariku Abas Etenesh)

The dust particle whispered to the volcano "looks how I lie;"

You, the volcano, no less wondrous than I,

Spurring the molten synaptic fire of planet earth,

Heralding a deep connect, disconnect, elation and sigh;

Stand might-gilded as the fervor of reality yearning for paradise,

Solid flowing in rivers of reminiscence,

Fluid hardening in neural lee-ways,

Nothingness leaping to the might of being,

Emptying a pent-up but agile drive into the unknown and mysterious,

Rippling like words of a certain messiah of the black hole,

Leaping valor of assurance thrusting cadence of time and forms,

Out of the dictates of cherished limitations guise as a civilization,

Out of the fur garbs of layered worship shielding frostbites of invention,

Out of the stability resting on perpetual chaos of inaction,

Out of the metallic brain negating an elastic cry of evolution,

Out of the currency heart beating dimes stealing pulse of human aches;

I see you rising untamed, unabashed, glorified and certain,

I see you glowing to sever phantom pains of history’s designation;

I see you rippling in wrap-unwrapping time fated ashore toward a waste,

A carcass of glory named yield and effort of a sojourn into me:

In the fire you spat, my sea of ice resides,

In the quest of your explosions, my implosion abides,

In your extinction, my rebirth is guaranteed,

In your eternal question, my answers are written,

I, the dust, levitated in cause and effect cycle,

Of fervor, fire, rock, ash, potent-rage, impotent-intent,

Tamed in alluring terrains of mutational respite,

Lying low, slow, different, and migrant,

Arresting a missed rage for attained calm,

Arresting a lost calm for hardened fate,

Arresting a dying hardness for an attained embrace of dust,

Here you lay volcano of the bygone years,

No less glorious in fate as I,

Nor less composed as the stars,

Those light-year-close cousins, as are air in the expanse,

Those light-years-distant cousins, as are the planet and meteor,

We stand as the eternal bidding of the beginning,

Sons and daughters of bliss in the universe of strife,

Letters in this delicate incident called life.

...........

Why?

A long lost song II