Amanda Rivkin

Ethiopian Millennium

A Potemkin Party

Amanda Rivkin for e-politik.de

October 12, 2007

A close friend, an Ethiopian journalist, first told me last June of his country’s plans to ring in the year 2000. Until September 12, 2007, it was still 1999 in Ethiopia. One of the world’s most underdeveloped countries, a recipient of high profile Western aid efforts, was throwing a party for itself. The occasion: a unique calendar that places the country seven years behind the rest of the world.

Ethiopia, with a high infant mortality rate and prevalence of HIV/AIDS, ranks near the bottom on almost every development index. An Ethiopian physician with years of experience in the United States told me malnutrition and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, polio, and scabies, all but eradicated in the developed world, are the greatest public health problems facing the country.

Party Favors

What does it take for a country to celebrate being behind the rest of the world? When I arrived in Addis Ababa, the capital, a few weeks ahead of the millennium, there were unmistakable signs that a show was in the works. Banners draped over government buildings declared the country’s renaissance beside signs noting government efforts to weed out corruption. Meanwhile, the easiest way to get a laugh was to wish someone a happy millennium.

From the start, the September 11 millennium gala faced stiff competition on diplomatic calendars from the sixth anniversary commemoration of the World Trade Center attacks. But the Ethiopian Millennium Festival National Council Secretariat pushed on, inviting high ranking world leaders and heads of state to join them in celebration at Millennium Hall on New Year’s Eve. For weeks, rumors swirled in Addis Ababa.

A Saudi-Ethiopian national, Sheikh Al-Amoudi, known to most as simply “The Sheikh,” built Millennium Hall at a cost of an estimated $20 million, according to The Associated Press. Inside Millennium Hall, the Sheikh rang in the New Year with 22,000 of his closest friends among Ethiopia’s power brokers, diplomatic community and the elite.

The average monthly salary in Ethiopia falls well below the $150 entrance fee for the event, headlined by the American group the Black Eyed Peas. The facility barely surpassed two-thirds capacity on the occasion of the only semi-public event it was built for. A third of the reported 15,000 people in attendance received complimentary tickets.

Finding Little Gates

The government also sought to make it easier for foreign journalists to get into the country to cover the millennium festivities. The draconian array of permits and permission slips that greeted foreign correspondents and photographers at the gates made it difficult, but not impossible, to get in and generate the favorable coverage the government so desired. Competent bureaucrats faced barriers from their own bureaucracy, but the word “millennium” was a magical, door-opening buzzword.

In Ethiopia, failure to obtain proper accreditation can lead to arrest, imprisonment, and possibly expulsion from the country. Every major news organization, The New York Times, The Associated Press, Reuters, BBC has had at least one correspondent who spent weeks waiting for accreditation, waited so long they got tired of waiting, or had their correspondent arrested or evicted from the country.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was declared the official victor in the country’s last elections in 2005. Before the vote counting and ballot stuffing was over, the streets of Addis Ababa were awash with the blood of demonstrators and opposition members. Numbers do not exist in Ethiopia, my translator reminded me repeatedly. Western news agencies reported 193 demonstrators died.

For the U.S. government’s closest ally in the horn of Africa, the situation has been uncomfortable at times, but seldom has America’s friendship with Prime Minister Zenawi been inconvenient. Last December, a rising group of Islamists sought to control Somalia, the perilously broken nation on Ethiopia’s Eastern border. The last time the U.S. military overtly entered Somalia in 1993, a U.S. black hawk helicopter was shot down over the streets of Mogadishu during a doomed humanitarian effort. The plane’s charred skeleton landed in one entrepreneurial woman’s backyard. She transformed the site into a museum.

In lieu of a sequel, the U.S. government subcontracted the fight against Somalis ascending Islamist leaders to the Ethiopian military. Within days of last December’s invasion, the Ethiopian government overtook the capital Mogadishu. Then the Ethiopian military quickly withdrew from Somalia. The Ethiopian government announced they could not afford a sustained military presence in Somalia.

For their part, the Americans decided that they could not monetarily afford the cost of another lost peace. While victory came swiftly, the brief Ethiopian-Somali Proxy War of 2006 ended with everyone a loser.

Marching Bands, Balloons and a Brokedown Minibus

My translator and I began each day by placing a phone call to the bureaucracy in charge of official merriment, the Ethiopian Millennium Festival National Council Secretariat. We asked the same questions. What events were scheduled for the day? Which foreign officials would be in attendance at Millennium Hall on New Year’s Eve?

The daily phone calls to the millennium festival secretariat turned up news of events like “a clean-up campaign” in the capital and “a balloon receiving ceremony.” A few days ahead of the millennium, I covered a military marching band in downtown Addis Ababa. The band led with four female baton twirlers in knee-high white plastic boots. They pulled passed the gates of city hall. Dressed in red with train conductor-style blue caps, the band members looked like toy soldiers.

A broke-down minibus was unwillingly parked in the middle of the road. The minibus driver and his assistant, the man who shouts the stops while leaning half his body out the window, worked fast to push the blue and white bus to the side of the road. The passengers, trapped inside, pressed their hands against the windows, looking on bewildered by the passing spectacle.

On the day of millennium eve, my translator located someone in the millennium merriment secretariat who would tell us why no one would say who would be attending. Many invitees had not responded while others had cancelled. During the live broadcast from Millennium Hall on Ethiopian state television, the secretariat of millennium merriment greeted presidents and heads of state from Rwanda, Cameroon, Sudan, among a few others.

From an image-boosting standpoint for the government, eager to cleanse its name against accusations of human rights abuses and undemocratic practices, the millennium celebration was a fiasco.

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  Women huddle together under umbrellas amidst throngs of worshippers on St. Teklahaymanot Day at the Teklahaymanot Church on August 30, 2007.
  
DEBRE BIRHAN, ETHIOPIA.  A young bride and groom after their wedding ceremony at a wedding hall on September 2, 2007. As Ethiopians in the capital Addis Ababa prepare for the Coptic millennium celebrations on September 11, 2007, life in the countryside continues with little fanfare.
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  A model in local Ethiopian fashions for the Millennium Fashion Gala, an event attended by the diplomatic and political elite at the Sheraton that raises money for a girls school near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on September 4, 2007.
     
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  Runners train in Meskel Square on August 29, 2007 where "festive pigeons" and electric signs have hung for weeks announcing the millennium festivities for the Coptic new year on September 11.  (Credit: Amanda Rivkin for BBC Focus on Africa Magazine)
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  Young Ethiopians wait in line for an Amharic-language movie at the Ambassador Theater in downtown Addis Ababa on September 10, 2007 beneath portraits of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and President Girme Woldegiorgis, among the only public portraits of the country's rulers in the capital.  The 2005 elections were disrupted by mass disturbances and ended when the military fired on and killed an undisclosed number of demonstrators estimated in the hundreds.  The portraits appeared only a few days ahead of the city's Coptic millennium celebrations on September 11, 2007.
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  The Ethiopian patriarch visits the Holy Trinity Church, where former Emperor Halle Selassie's tomb rests, on the eve of the Coptic millenium, September 11, 2007.
     
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  Worshippers wait in line to receive a priest's blessing and holy water at Holy Trinity Church, where the former Emperor of Ethiopia Halle Selassie is entombed, on September 11, 2007.
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  St. George's Day at St. George's Church on August 29, 2007.  (Credit: Amanda Rivkin for BBC Focus on Africa Magazine)
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  A mental health care worker watches a special millennium program on Ethiopian state television in the recreation room of the addiction ward at the Amanuel Psychiatric Hospital, the only of its kind in Ethiopia, on the eve of the Coptic millennium celebrations on September 11, 2007. While Ethiopians in the capital prepare for the festivities to usher in the year 2000 in the Ethiopian calendar, many say they wish the goverment had devoted its energies and finances to health care, social welfare and poverty alleviation instead.  (Credit: Amanda Rivkin for e-politik.de)
     
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  Women shop for grass, an Ethiopian tradition that is placed across the ground so that dirt does not fly in the air, at an outdoor market on the eve of the Coptic millennium celebration on September 11, 2007.
  
NEAR DEBRE BIRHAN, ETHIOPIA.  A woman rides her horse down a muddy trail during the wet season five kilometers southwest of Debre Birhan, Ethiopia on September 2, 2007. As Ethiopians in the capital Addis Ababa prepare for the Coptic millennium celebrations on September 11, 2007, life in the countryside continues with little fanfare.  (Credit: Amanda Rivkin/Associated Press)
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  Men and young boys buy and sell sheep, a traditional food during the Ethiopian holidays, at one of the largest outdoor sheep markets in the capital on the eve of the Coptic millennium celebrations, September 11, 2007.  (Credit: Amanda Rivkin/Associated Press)
     
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA. A man promotes a medical school at a cultural bazaar and trade fair, organized as part of the city's Coptic millennium celebrations on September 5, 2007. As Ethiopians look forward to the coming of the Coptic millennium on September 11, 2007, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said he hoped the millennium would present "the beginning of the end of the dark ages in Ethiopia."  (Credit: Amanda Rivkin for e-politik.de)
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  The Millennium Cafe in the Piassa neighborhood was unable to light up the cafe's sign just ahead of the Coptic millennium celebration on September 10, 2007.
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  A performer at Club Duka, a popular night spot, on September 6, 2007.
     
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  The Ethiopian patriarch visits the Holy Trinity Church, where former Emperor Halle Selassie's tomb rests, on the eve of the Coptic millenium, September 11, 2007.  (Credit: Amanda Rivkin/Associated Press)
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  An altar boy during the visit of the Ethiopian patriarch at Holy Trinity Church, where former Emperor Halle Selassie's tomb rests, on the eve of the Coptic millenium, September 11, 2007.  (Credit: Amanda Rivkin/Associated Press)
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  The Orthodox bishops and priests at Saint Ragouel Church in the Merkato neighborhood celebrate the coming of the Coptic millennium on September 12, 2007. On September 11, 2007, Ethiopians ushered in the Coptic new year with fireworks and celebrations in the capital.  (Credit: Amanda Rivkin/Associated Press)
     
  
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.  Coptic worshippers at Saint Ragouel Church in the Merkato neighborhood celebrate the coming of the Coptic millennium on September 12, 2007. On September 11, 2007, Ethiopians ushered in the Coptic new year with fireworks and celebrations in the capital.  (Credit: Amanda Rivkin/Associated Press)
  
NEAR DEBRE SINA, ETHIOPIA.  Unpaved tunnel between Debre Sina and Debre Birhan, northeast of the capital Addis Ababa on September 2, 2007.  On both sides of the tunnel, the European Union financed road reconstruction projects for several miles that do not reach the expanse of Ethiopia's longest tunnel.