Since Ethiopia mostly avoided colonization, it should be an example of how an African country can succeed on it’s own. Well they do try. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Todays stamp is a later rendering of the international United Nations stamp. It functions as a somewhat less successful rival to British Commonwealth stamp issues. I don’t say less successful in terms of the messaging of the stamps. It is just that such issues do not have a similar following to collectors. Ethiopia however has been a big part of African and indeed wider third world maters. The African Union for example is based in Abbes Ababa. To see the country embrace at least the ideal of universal human rights is heartening. This is not the African tradition, and logically Ethiopia should be a bastion of African tradition.
Todays stamp is issue A322, a one Birr stamp issued by Ethiopia on December 23rd 1998. It honors the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. It was a a four stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 75 cents mint.
Between 1932 and 2012, Ethiopia only had 3 leaders. That is not to say there was stability. All faced the threat of coup and insurrection and despite their long rules, none left office of their own accord. Hailie Selassie styled himself as an Emperor, while the 1975-91 leader Mengistu and the 1991-2012 leader Meles styled themselves President. The Emperor is best remembered and Mengistu the worst.
Mengistu took over from the Emperor in a coup and had him killed in his palace. He then gave a speech where he promised death to counterrevolutionaries. He then dramatized his point by smashing 3 bottles of blood on the ground. For the next several years child soldier age boys showed up dead in the gutter of Abbes Ababa, there bodies not even buried but gradually consumed by the wild hyenas that roamed the capital. There was also a war with Somalia and an independence movement in coastal Eritrea.
Naturally Mengistu’s economic policies of thievery with a Marxist tinge were unsuccessful. So when Soviet Bloc aid dried up, the many opposition forces closed in and Mengistu fled to friendlier areas in Zimbabwe, where he still lives. The next President Meles faced a big mess to clean up and against all odds made some progress at least economically. He was more modern though and as such put himself up regularly for elections. He always won them however dubious but it was always an excuse for foment and violence. The issue always seem to be that a small group benefit from any success and the masses don’t participate. The is true though each leaders aristocracy was different entirely from the previously privileged.
What Meles will never be forgiven for is losing Eritrea and returning Ethiopia to being landlocked. Eritrea was formally Italian and given to Ethiopia as a reward after the British expelled the Italians from East Africa during World War II. Meles was of half Eritrean decent and this was thought to play a role. Meles died in office in 2012.
Ethiopia has never fully succeeded in being the African leader it should naturally be. It remains to be seen what a truly African leadership would look like. The fear of course is the natural state of things is a despotic strongman in power while hyenas roam the crumbling streets. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.