Revolution, Love and Growing Up: Stories from Ethiopia and the UK

Colonel Atnafu, the deputy to Colonel Mengistu, asked to meet me and we had some half a dozen meetings, over several weeks. He wanted to know whether the country would be put at risk by breaking with the USA and the USSR and wanted to know more about China. The 120 member military committee had a special assembly and made a shocking decision: to have a united front with EPRP, to solve the Eritrean war through peaceful negotiation, and appointed a new 18 member military leadership to implement this resolution led by my brother in law Captain Moges, instead of Colonel Mengistu and all its members except two were from the camp that wanted a united front with EPRP. I had pointed out that the new Dergue executive unit had hours and minutes left as the only logical outcome was for the colonel and his supporters to find a way of killing all the newly appointed officers of the Dergue and put the country under some sort of martial law so that he could undertake a massacre of the left. My escape path was blocked by some 15 people about 20 yards ahead of me. There were guns behind me and there were guns in front of me and some of them were still firing. I made an instant decision to point my pistol into the centre of the line of people ahead of me and run straight into them just like EPRA fighters would do to disorganise the fascist army (Ujim) or a good team of attackers would do to the opposition's defence in a football match. As I approached them, a miracle happened. The line parted in the middle and folded back to the edges to create a path for me to go through. The fundamental problem of the latter days of the liberation struggle was that it was encircled locally by the fascist forces in the East, west and south and the nationalist forces in the north, while at the same time it was blockaded and encircled by the Soviet Union and The US externally. What is worse is that the two types of encirclements merged eventually, and changed from passive to active mode, which made it very difficult for the movement to break out of its encirclement Of all the great revolutionary parties of the last 100 years EPRP was probably the only one that avoided having any personality Cult of its leaders, avoided being infiltrated by its enemies to any significant degree due to its high degree of vigilance and always maintained a political and military line that was built on militancy and courage and avoided opportunism. Introduction 1: The cure for the stomach pain of early mornings 2: The raging bull, the candy and the hole in the throat 3: Learning to read and write and fundraise for the local school 4: My father’s endless search for justice and the ten court of appeals 5: Retailing Naphtha and putting off the girls 6: The electricity bill collector 7: The slaughter site and the grieving of the oxen in Gondar 8: Taking risks at the school interview 9: Learning to swim in Lake Langano 10: The lion in the tent incident 11: The evil eye opposite the bus stop 12: Ethiopia: The night before the storming of the Bastille 13: Graduation and capital reading groups 14: Lent and the armed high priest of the Southern Churches 15: The famine of 1973 and the silent village in Lalibella 16: The accidental border crossing and the prison experience in Somalia 17: Transfer pricing and the compensation commission 18: The Red Terror and the bus stop checkpoint incident 19: The parish of Graria and the year of hiding 20: The Ibnat market town commotion incident 21: The stance master behind the Shemma curtains 22: Courting death by crossing the Belessa River at full flood on behalf of the party 23: The scorpion bite and the medicine women 24: The boulder on the hill side 25: The regional party conference, the vanguard party, and the role of individuals 26: Dissolution of the party and the army and exile in the Sudan 27: The general’s textile factory 28: Baptism by fire with National Front type racists 29: The case of the MPhil students at Sussex and their aspirations for progressive change 30: The temptation of the offer of two million pounds 31: Sector strategy and the economic policy group 32: Telegraph Hill: a new urban community 33: The strange case of racism in the Scottish Pub in Stuttgart 34: The magic of Wrabness foreshore and watching the children growing up. 35: Time to start dreaming again and encounter with the world of the three R’s 36: Concluding remarks 37: Biographical Notes 38: Index