From: Milkias Berhanu (fwd@dehai.org)
Date: Wed Nov 04 2009 - 07:33:50 EST
Addendum to Brian Stewart
Princes shall come out of Egypt;
Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.
(The Bible, Psalm 68:31)
This is a song of praise and thanksgiving for God's mighty deeds of victory and the impression which they produce on the peoples of the earth. Over the years, however, this song has been used by the African renaissance and African nationalists as a prophecy of the rehabilitation of Africans and blacks. The biblical Ethiopia thus has become the symbol of Africa.
There is however, an earthly political entity in the north-eastern Africa that has usurped this biblical name. This country (formerly Abyssinia), in its not more than a century old existance, has defied any of the asthetic qualities of the biblical Ethiopia. Infact, to our dismay, it is far removed from in time (as a recent creation) and qualities from the biblical Ethiopia. Indeed, not only it has disparaged whatever hope we Africans are left with for redemtion; worse it has become our trade-mark of shame. The grim reality is:
While the biblical Ethiopiastretches out her hands unto God;
this earthly ethiopia stretches out her hands unto Donors.
A piece by Brian Stewart, special to CBC News (Ethiopia revisited- A country you can never stop worrying about October 10, 2009) says it all. Brian wrote, Ethiopia is a place where the word "crisis" is not exaggerated. He even laments in desparation that Ethiopia is one country that I can never stop worrying about. Nor can the world.
Brian is well placed to give such observations for he was one of the journalists that covered the horors of the 1984-85 ethiopia famine that claimed the lives of well over one million innocent people, which BBC newsreader Michael Buerk gave moving commentary of the tragedy on 23 October 1984, described it as a "biblical famine".
Brian revisited ethiopia not to commorate the dark jublee of that ethiopian famine of cataclysmic proportions but to review if any progress has been made in the last 25 years. Unfortunately, the ethiopia he new back then has not changed a bit in food security. He was strock dumb, probably angered and in utter amusement he wrote:
Back when I was covering the famine in 1984,
I never imagined or perhaps let myself fear that Ethiopia
would be such a difficult problem for the world to fix.
A quarter of a century since that devastating famine, which triggered the biggest charity drive in world history, famine stalks Ethiopia once again. This year the threat is very severe; in some areas harvests have fallen by 70 per cent and a tenth of its population are tattering at the brink of starvation.
In fact, the picture, as many in the aid business are warning, is disheartening even looks uglier than the 1984-85 famine. Ethiopia that remains as the 12th poorest nation on Earth whose population has doubled since the famine, will not simply be able to fully feed itself for many years, likely a generation at least, according to some estimates.
Here we go again!
Aid agencies have started beating their drums in tune with the begging gestures of the shamless ethiopian polititians, who in many was have outsourced the developmental and social security of their people to out side agencies. Yet, the world seems to be very much fade up, excepting the United States of America, which provides 70% of the food aid as a payment for ethiopias deservice to the Horn region as a culprit of American interest, has led to cynicism and donor fatigue. The problem simply put is: the recurrent drought and the traditional farming that depends on erratic rainfall and lack of long term government political commitment and strategy for food security. This is lacking because:
While the people of ethiopia pray to God for rain;
their consecutive regimes beg to donors for alms.
Milkias Berhanu
Canada
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