Ethnic Politics in Ethiopia (Article 49)

Source: http://www.anyuakmedia.com/ethnews30406.html
Reprinted:

March 04, 2006 - Article 49 of the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia divides the country into states of various ethnic groups: 1) The State of Tigray 2) The State of Afar 3) The State of Amhara 4) The State of Oromia 5) The State of Somalia 6) The State of Benshangul/Gumuz 7) The State of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples 8) The State of the Gambela Peoples 9) The State of the Harari People.
Article 49 divides the geography of Ethiopia based on the ancestry of Ethiopians and, unlike religion, it does not the separate the state from ethnicity. As a result, Article 49 is the foundation for Ethnic politics in Ethiopia.
Ethnic politics is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of politics. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage- the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.
Ethnic politics claims that the content of a man’s mind is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas-or inherited knowledge - which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Ethnic politics is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between humans.
Ethnic politics invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Ethnic politics negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predisposition. Ethnic politics can lead to nothing but torrents of blood in practice. Brute force is the only avenue of action open to men who regard themselves as mindless aggregates of chemicals.
Those who implement ethnic politics have only one psychological root: their sense of inferiority. To ascribe one’s virtues to one’s ethnic origin, is to confess that one has no knowledge of the process by which virtues are acquired and, most often that one has failed to acquire them. The overwhelming majority of supporters of ethnic politics are men who have earned no sense of personal identity, who can claim no individual achievement or distinction, and who feel the illusion of a “tribal self-esteem” by alleging the inferiority of some other tribe.
In Ethnic politics, men are required by government officials to fill questionnaires about their ancestry in order to prove their belonging to a certain ethnic group. In Ethnic politics, people who belong to a certain ethnic group are penalized for the sins of their ancestors, and the whole of a certain ethnic group are charged with collective ethnic guilt for any crime committed by an individual from that ethnic group.
In Ethnic politics, men are indoctrinated with notion that the individual possesses no rights, that supremacy, moral authority and unlimited power belong to the group, and that a man has no significance outside his group – the inevitable consequence is that men began to gravitate toward some group or another, in self-protection. The simplest collective to join, the easiest one to identify, the least demanding form of belonging is: the ethnic group.
United States was the best refutation of Ethnic Politics. Men of all ethnic groups came, some from obscure, culturally undistinguished countries, and accomplished feats of productive ability which would have remained stillborn in their control-ridden native lands. Men from various ethnic groups that had been slaughtering one another for centuries, learned to live together in harmony and peaceful cooperation. America had been called “the melting pot,” with good reason. But few people realized that America did not melt men into the gray conformity of a collective: she united them by means of protecting their right to individuality.
When addressing the so called “Ethnic Question” in Ethiopia, the question that must be addressed must be not weather a group recognizable in color, features, culture or language has its rights as a group. No, the question is whether any Ethiopian individual, regardless of color, features or culture, is deprived of his rights as an Ethiopian. If the individual has all the rights and privileges due him under the laws and Constitution, we need not worry about groups and masses – those do not, in fact exist, except as figures of speech.
It is not a man’s ancestors or relatives or genes or body chemistry that counts in a free society, but only one human attribute: productive ability. It is by his own individual ability and ambition that a free society judges a man and rewards him accordingly.
My personal view is that Article 49 that was forced on the Ethiopian people by TPLF/EPRDF is the beginning of the end for Ethiopia as we new it unless the government, like religion, removes ethnicity from politics, or another government that takes Ethiopia’s interest takes its place. Mind you, the United States constitution advocates the indivisibility of the country, while that of Ethiopia is the opposite. Click here to view the Ethio-Ethnic map

Reference: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand