Healing Lives by Sue Williams

Healing Lives by Sue Williams

Author:Sue Williams [Williams, Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-30T00:04:59+00:00


CHAPTER 21

THE END OF A DYNASTY

The whole country is in a state of shock. The population is divided. Some are horrified to see the fall of the 225th Emperor of Ethiopia, and still see Haile Selassie as a great benevolent leader who tried his best to modernise the country despite the resistance of the nobility, the rich and the clergy, and give it a place on the world stage. Others see the 82-year-old leader as a feudal relic from another age, who paid little attention to human rights and totally failed to keep up with the demands of a 20th-century democracy.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between. An African representative at the United Nations who met Haile Selassie two years before the coup is interviewed by the New York Times the day after the Emperor is deposed. ‘Haile Selassie is one of the world’s great men,’ he said. ‘He did a lot for his country, and early became a respected voice for Africa and the third world. It’s a pity he proved unable to adjust himself to the winds of change.’

Catherine is distressed to hear that he’s now a prisoner of the Derg, the anonymous group of around 100 army officers who seized power. ‘We had never been interested in politics but we believed he had been a good and benevolent ruler who cared for his people,’ Catherine says. ‘He had done a lot for his country and didn’t deserve to end up a prisoner.’

Mamitu thinks back to that time she first met him when she was a patient at the hospital. ‘He seemed a nice man,’ she says. ‘But I don’t know much about politics . . .’

Selassie’s focus often seemed to be much more on foreign affairs, and he visited over 60 countries during his reign, meeting world leaders from every corner of the globe, including US Presidents Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung. Affairs at home were often neglected and he didn’t seem to realise that his once unassailable popularity was fading not only among the starving, impoverished and famine-hit peasantry, but also the government, the church, the intelligentsia and especially the increasingly radicalised students.

When he was deposed, he waved cheerily to those chanting ‘Leba!’ or ‘Thief!’ and now, detained under house arrest by the Derg at the army HQ and then at the Grand Palace, he is apparently confused, convinced he is still the Emperor.

For Catherine, Reg and Mamitu, there is nothing for it but to keep working as inconspicuously as possible. No one quite knows what the Derg stands for. If they’re sincere in enacting much-needed reforms, they might increase spending on health, hospitals and schools as well as redistributing land and introducing more democracy into the decision-making process. It could turn out to be good for the country after all. A provisional head of state is appointed, General Aman Andom, who happens to have a house right next door to the Princess



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