Ethiopia: Troubled LionFriday, June 01, 1962

Along Addis Ababa's "Mattress Street," brothels used to be marked with red

crosses until the International Red Cross complained that too many Ethiopians

were wandering into first-aid stations looking for a treat instead of a treatment.

By government edict, red lights replaced the crosses. In the past two years, the

electricity bill for Addis' red-light districts has risen as the number of cribs

increased from 5,000 to 8,000. The boom is a significant symptom of change.

Its cause: the influx of foreigners into the city for an endless series of

conferences, all part of a determined attempt by His Imperial Majesty Haile

Selassie I, Conquering Lion of Judah, Elect of God, King of Kings, and Emperor

of Ethiopia, to put his land in the vanguard of African nationalism.

For centuries, Ethiopia's proud Amharas—who claim descent from a night's

roistering between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba—shunned black

Africans as barya (slaves). But when the emerging black African states began

getting voice in world affairs, the Emperor started to fire off letters to

nationalist politicians all over the continent, condemning imperialism and

hailing the once despised barya as "our beloved black brothers." This week at

Addis Ababa's new $3,000,000 Africa Hall, he plays host to the U.N.'s traveling

special committee on colonialism. The Emperor hopes that such hospitality will

further his campaign for African leadership. Says one Cabinet minister: "We've

been free the longest. It's our heritage and duty to lead our recently

enlightened brethren into the modern age." Poverty & Corruption. But, as

TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs reports, Ethiopia is not a likely candidate to

lead any country into the modern age. Despite Haile Selassie's tentative efforts

at reform, Ethiopia is still one of the most backward nations in Africa.

Parliament rubber-stamps the Emperor's absolute rule. The press is rigidly

controlled, and informers and secret police agents are everywhere.

Hangings are held in public, and public flogging was recently authorized in lieu

of jail sentences, both to cut down the jail population and to keep dissenters in

line.

Government corruption is so widespread that one-third of the taxes levied

never reach the national treasury. So large is the bureaucracy that two-thirds

of the annual budget goes for government salaries. Annual per capita income

for the country's 20 million people is only $30 ($5 if Addis Ababa is excluded),

and 98% of the population are illiterate. Some 80% of the population have

parasitic diseases ranging from hookworm to elephantiasis; venereal disease

infects at least half the adult population, and infant mortality is nearly 40%.

Malaria kills 30,000 people annually, and 40% of the country's cattle are

tubercular.

Most of Addis Ababa's 450,000 people live in primitive mud huts with no

sanitation. Said one visiting Senegalese: "If this is the heritage of freedom, I

say 'Bring back the colonialists.' "

At Gunpoint. Realizing the impression that Ethiopia makes on visiting Africans,

Haile Selassie has embarked on an industrial development program, is

shrewdly using foreign investment from both East and West to build dams,

refineries, port facilities, factories. But the Emperor has ignored advice on civil

service and parliamentary reforms that might curtail his absolute power, has

made only token attempts to redistribute his own vast land holdings among the

poverty-stricken peasants. As a result, Ethiopia's intellectuals, who sparked the

unsuccessful revolt against the Emperor's regime 17 months ago, are again

growing restive—despite the government's attempts to buy them off with civil

service appointments or simply offering them, in lieu of a job, up to $180 a

month to keep quiet. Though plots against the government proliferate, they are

mostly talk, for no one can agree what to do and when to do it.

Much popular affection remains for the Emperor, who at 69 still seems as

vigorous as the man who 26 years ago protested before the world against the

conquest of his country by the Italians. But with his wife and four of his six

children dead, he is an increasingly isolated figure. Heir apparent Asfa Wossen,

45, is more liberal than his father, but mild and retiring. On his succession, he

will probably become a figurehead for the reform-minded officers and

intellectuals whose revolution he fronted—"at the point of a gun,'' as he put it—

in 1960. But if the succession is too long delayed, the gun aimed at the old

order may well go off.