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Ethiopia's resilient prime minister
The two sides of Meles Zenawi
Aug 13th 2009 | ADDIS ABABA
From The Economist print edition
A long-lasting leader faces growing problems at home and abroad
HE HAS run Ethiopia as prime minister since 1991, but Meles
Zenawi, still only 54, has two faces. One belongs to a leader
battling poverty. In this mode he is praised by Western
governments, with Britain to the fore, for improving the miserable
conditions in the countryside, where 85% of Ethiopia’s 80m-plus
people live. Mr Meles takes credit for building new roads, clinics
and primary schools, and for an array of agricultural initiatives. He
also wins plaudits for his country’s low crime rate and for keeping
its parliamentarians more or less on the straight and narrow,
especially in terms of wealth. They get paid only about $3,240 a
year compared with the $120,000 earned by Kenya’s fat-cat MPs.
Moreover, in the past few years Ethiopia’s economy has grown
fast. Mr Meles says it will grow this year by 10%, though the IMF’s
figure is about half as big.
His mind is sharp, his memory elephantine, and he bristles with energy and vigour. In a rare interview, he
speaks for two hours without notes. With his polished English, full of arcane turns of phrase from his days
at a private English school in Addis Ababa, the capital, he captivates foreign donors. Though he avoids
mentioning famine because the spectre of it may be looming again, he uses the memory of past debacles
to prick Western consciences. Last month he suggested that the famine of 1984, which stirred Band Aid to
come to Ethiopia’s help, may have been worsened by the pollution in Europe. He says he fully expects the
West to pay $40 billion a year to Africa to compensate it for the damage caused by climate change.
But then there is the harsher side of Mr Meles, the Marxist fighter turned political strongman with a dismal
human-rights record who is intolerant of dissent. In 2005, after a disputed general election, his police shot
dead some 200 civilians. An independent inquiry ended up with several of its judges fleeing the country.
Mr Meles sprinkles spies through the universities to intimidate and control the students; he was once a
student agitator himself. He closes down independent newspapers and meddles in aid projects, banning
agencies that annoy him. Last month he suspended the activities of about 40 of them from the Somalipopulated
parts of the country.
Many of Ethiopia’s opposition leaders were imprisoned after the election of 2005 on trumped-up treason
charges; after a year or more, they were freed. But several have been rearrested. A new catch-all law that
has just been passed could make peaceful opposition liable to the charge of inciting terrorism.
In any case, the economic story is not quite as rosy as Mr Meles suggests. Ethiopia may have only a few
weeks of foreign reserves left. On the business front, the country remains very backward. Ethiopians have
one of the lowest rates of mobile-phone ownership in Africa. Banking is rudimentary at best. Farming is
still mostly for subsistence.
And famine looms once more. At that suggestion, Mr Meles narrows his eyes and growls, “That is a lie, an
absolute lie.” There is more than enough food in government warehouses to feed the people, he says. But
others say stockpiled grain has already been earmarked for handing out to people in the towns. The UN
and foreign charities are predicting a large-scale famine in Tigray, Mr Meles’s home region, by November.
At least 6m people may need food handouts unless more supplies can be found locally.
Mr Meles’s officials, most of them still working in gloomy Soviet-built offices, often sound almost paranoid
in their sensitivity to criticism. The prime minister is quick to talk up threats to his country, whether from
malcontents in the army or disgruntled ethnic groups among Ethiopia’s mosaic of peoples. Radical
Oromos, a southern group that makes up about a third of Ethiopia’s people, often fall under suspicion. A
bunch arrested earlier this year after an alleged attack on a dam under construction were paraded on
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