Two wrongs don’t make a right: Responding to the critics. My take, “Why you cannot be Oromo First and still believe in Ethiopia”, has been criticized for neglecting the experience of couples who have undergone “forced marriage”, that is to say that one of the married couples were abducted and forced into the marriage and never consented. Should this person be then blamed for searching his/her identity in the previous families? Can we even truly say there is “marriage” at all to begin with? What you have is a forced partner languishing in a prison, not home as it has been alluded to. “Let there be no talk of” marriage then as if the Ethiopian state formation went between consenting couples. A nation cannot claim sovereignty if it is based on the exploitation and violation of people’s right. That a state should be formed by the democratic choice, as we generally understand this concept today, of the people before it legitimately claims sovereignty is a ridiculously flawed argument. It is putting the cart before the horse. Perhaps with the exception of oversees colonial empires, state building has almost always involved a violent incorporation of people. People generally did not gather themselves and decide to form a state. According to Terry Eagleton, “Most political states came about through revolution, invasion, occupation, usurpation or (in the case of societies like the United States) extermination.” If Ethiopia’s unjust past blocks it from exercising sovereignty, then the same argument would end up depriving almost all nations of their sovereignty today. The truth is that most nations we regard as advanced in democracy and good governance had unjust origins. Social justice, democracy, good governance seem to require the injustice of state formation. Witness what is going on in neighboring Somalia, a nation that has failed to form a functioning central state. We have so far failed to see these people gathered in a big stadium and democratically decide to set up a state. That is because state formation usually requires a strong leader that uses military force to unite the different factions. Somalia would have probably had a state long ago if it had such a leader. The intention of these empire builders in history often could be to accumulate more wealth and power for themselves but their conquest inadvertently lays the ground for eventual advent of democracy. Only after having gone through this process of state formation can the Somalia people sensibly make demands for democracy. You cannot have democracy if you do not have a state. And you cannot have a state without a strong leader that uses violence to create an empire. It is much like the pain a woman endures before child birth. A woman cannot have a child without enduring the pain of pregnancy. To say state formation almost everywhere had involved the violent subjugation of people is not to condone the loss of lives. It is to simply state a historical fact, a sort of original sin all nations are guilty of. It is boring to say taking other’s lives and properties is wrong. Everybody seems to agree with that. And as Eaglton puts it, “Cases with which almost everyone would agree are boring, however sound they may be.” Violence lies at the genesis of most political states; a reality that we all ought to accept. C.S. Lewis says, “We have to take reality as it comes to us: there is no good jabbering about what it ought to be like or what we should have expected it to be like.” I have sometimes wondered what the fate of the people who lived in today’s south Ethiopia would be like If Minilik II did not expand his empire. Smaller and not well organized as most of them were, could these kingdoms and state-like entities have resisted European colonialists? The simple fact that these entities fell in the hands of the relatively backward army of Minilik II strongly suggest otherwise; these areas would have fallen prey to a modern European army like the British, French or Italian. But one might argue that it was possible for these small kingdoms and states to resist European colonialist powers on their own without the aid of the Abyssinians. True, this was a possibility. But this possibility must somehow, to be logically sensible, assume the presence of a strong leader that forcefully unites these numerous smaller entities into one bigger empire so they can coordinate and defend their territories. In my opinion, this person could only be different from Minilik II ethnically (not practically) for he too would have to use violence to forge his empire. The practice of Gada, which limits military leaderships in time, could have possibly made the rise of Oromo or Sidama empire builder difficult as empire builders usually needed to stay in power long enough to accumulate wealth and power to conquer territories. But all of these possible scenarios would have involved violence one way or another. That is how Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, United States, Russia, and China were all formed. Nations which have built strong states and democracies did not succeed because they had democratic origins but because they simply put their bloody origins out of public memories. Eaglton writes, “Successful states are those that have managed to wipe this bloody history from the minds of their citizens. States whose unjust origins are too recent for this to be possible—Israel and Northern Ireland, for example—are likely to be plagued with political conflict.” With this wisdom in mind, what sort of benefit does one see in building monuments that aims to constantly remind people past injustices? All these is said to prove that our unjust origin does not make us unique from countries whose democracy and economy we consider better than ours today. If we want to stay united and develop our democracy and economy, then our programs and efforts need to be geared towards these goals. The couples in my previous piece therefore need to decide whether to live together and better their marriage or go their separate ways. But as long as there is a commitment to live together, it follows that both couples MUST “leave” their fathers and mothers. If they cannot do that, their marriage is bound to suffer. In other words, the above argument of my critics, besides its obvious appeal for pity, commits what philosophers call the fallacy of “Red Herring” that is it introduces a topic that is not related to the subject at hand. The issue at hand was about couples who give primacy to their respective relatives while claiming to be committed to their own marriage. But the argument of forced marriage supposes a partner that wants to end the union and therefore betrays the trust of the analogy. It is headed to justify why the marriage should come to an end. It demands nothing less than the disintegration or annulment of the union. Here is a case for divorce not rapprochement. “Actions we freely perform often end up confronting us as alien powers”, writes Eagleton. What do you make of a person who farms the land, plants a seed and constantly waters it but insist that he does not want the tree to grow? When he is asked why he plants, farms and waters the land, he responds saying, “We were prevented from growing trees in the past.” The trouble is that seeds usually grow if they are cared for, whether one wants them to or not. Once a tree is grown, then it no longer needs care. It stands on its own and even if you want it gone, you will have trouble. If you do not want divorce, then stop prioritizing your families’ interest and be committed to your marriage. But if you continue to prioritize your family, then you undermine the marriage to the point that it can get damaged beyond repair. And those who criticize unity should do so on a sound reason. They should not oppose it just for the simple reason that it is a stand taken by the so called Amhara elites for whom they have much loathing. That is like hating doges because Hitler used to love them. I appreciate Minilik II because I value the Adwa victory and what it meant for the black race all around the world during that time. I do not appreciate Minilik II for killing Ethiopians and I don’t think his admires today do so for this reason as well. I lived in Gondar for years to witness the people’s adoration for Emperor Tewdros who also had used violence on their ancestors. When today people sing songs admonishing him, I don’t think they are actually approving the cutting of hands or legs of their ancestors. Appreciation is always context specific. One can be a brilliant surgeon and a bad husband. There is no contradiction in saying a person is a good surgeon and a bad husband. It is perhaps our misguided Marxist past experience that tends to make us take such a polarized view of people as either good or bad. Be that as it may but I generally do not believe couples need to have particular love or hatred for the person who took the trouble of building the house they live in. It is immaterial to their relationship. Does blaming the contractor who build your house ever occurred to you when your dining room is messed up, beds are not made and the dishes are unwashed? It is the couples who live in the house today that can shape their place. None of us care about the personal character of the designer of the house we are living in. I don’t even know the designer of the one I am currently living and writing this in. It has so far appeared immaterial for me. But I love my home! I believe our house, Ethiopia, has rooms that are messed up and needs to be fixed. Only we who are alive and call Ethiopia home can fix it. But we don’t need to burn the house just because the dining room is messed up or we don’t like the builders very much. As long as there is a commitment to live together in the house, couples can work to make their house comfortable for all. That involves limiting the interference of the in-laws from all sides and putting “marriage first”. You cannot be “Oromo First” and democratize Ethiopia. At last, I agree with my critics that forced marriage is wrong. But unwillingness to leave one’s father and mother in marriage is also wrong if the couples want to stay together. And two wrongs don’t make a right.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 11:55:51 +0000