Mabati houses, war, and Museveni’s small problem

Author, Mr Charles Onyango-Obbo. PHOTO/COURTESY. 

What you need to know:

  • Mr Charles Onyango Obbo says: Some people will be very angry if they have a grass thatched hut...

President Museveni got himself in a spot of bother Monday after he met Ethiopia’s Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen Hassen in Gulu.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed dispatched Demeke around East Africa to brief leaders on the on-going conflict between the federal government in Addis Ababa and the Tigray regional authority. 

On his social media pages, Museveni said of the meeting, that “a war in Ethiopia would give the entire continent a bad image”.

Secondly, he recommended negotiations between the two sides.

Thirdly, reflecting a long-held view, he knocked Ethiopia’s tribally-based federal system, saying he “totally disagree[s] with politics that focuses on ethnic federalism”.  

Of these, three, the first two proved a pain and were soon deleted or edited out. Anyone can see why, coming from Museveni, they were a problem.

His criticism of the country’s ethnic federalism, joined many voices that have always seen it as a ticking bomb. Among them is our own Prof  Mahmood Mamdani, who in an opinion piece in The New York Times in January titled “The Trouble With Ethiopia’s Ethnic Federalism”, did warn that it could push the country toward an interethnic conflict – as we are witnessing. 

Mamdani’s position was criticised by an equally large army who hold that the “modern” states have failed in Africa, and we need to build new ones based on those panned ethnic formations.

Briefly, how did an African success story walk into this conflict? Recently, Prime Minister Abiy announced a military offensive after Tigrayan forces allegedly attacked and seized a federal government military base in the Tigray capital Mekelle.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), was the dominant element in the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the federalist coalition that ruled Ethiopia largely as a one-party state with the charismatic and steely-fisted Meles Zenawi at the head of it from 1991, after the ouster of the Mengistu Haile Mariam military junta.

When Meles died in August 2012, he was replaced by the milder Hailemariam Desalegn. However, the opposition to EPRDF proved insurmountable, and he did the un-African thing and resigned in early 2018.  

In came the reformist Abiy. Entrenched in the economy and politics, the Tigrayans started complaining that they were being targeted in the anti-corruption purge, and “sidelined”.

Abiy then decided to reconstitute the EPRDF, and make it less of an alliance of tribes, into the Prosperity Party (PP). The TPLF opposed the move and refused to join.  
When Covid-19 struck, the Abiy government postponed elections.

A defiant Tigray provincial government refused to go along with that too, and held elections in September – in which no PP candidate stood. Then the alleged attack on the military base, and Abiy let the dogs out.

It’s an oversimplification, but it allows us move to the fundamental causes of the conflict and the solution. 

One of the best insights on situations on this was offered to me by one of those smart officers in the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), who keep their heads low, and stay clear of the madness that often rages in the political-military system in Uganda.

Speaking of the war in the north then, he said the “cause is grass-thatched houses, and the solution is mabati or tiles”.

In other words, where people are poor and can only afford grass-thatched houses, it is fertile ground for civil war. Where they are better off and can afford tin and tile roof houses, they are either contended, or if they are angry, they are unlikely to resort to armed conflict because they selfishly want to protect their homes and property.

Ethiopia is still blighted by poverty, but is still a much richer country today than it was 30 years ago. 

A story is told is that Abiy made peace with Eritrea, after nearly 20 years Eritreans were able to visit Ethiopia. They were shocked when they crossed the border and came to Mekelle and found it was real.

They had been told by effective Eritrean government propaganda that the photographs they were seeing of Mekelle were photoshopped.  

It is not a grass-thatched city, yet the political class in Mekelle are putting it on the line. It’s because the Tigray flare up, really, is not unique.

We’ve seen it in Uganda, other in Africa, the Middle East (particularly Iraq), and Asia. When a ruling party or a dominant elite loses power, the backlash is often a war, especially if they feel hard done by in the new order.

Some people will be very angry if they have a grass-thatched hut and can’t get a mabati house. But sometimes, they will be angrier if they have one, but can’t get a second – or have two, and think you want to take away one of them.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, 
writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3