“Anything that we can say on the history of the Eritrean revolution, especially the armed struggle for independence, can only be brief, cursory and tentative. At present, Eritrea’s revolutionary history is still dominated by contesting narratives, punctuated by partisan and polemical language.” – Alemseged Tesfai, Epilogue, A Note on the History of the Armed Struggle for Independence
And therefore, I am not going to write an epilogue to cap an 840-page tour de force, a history book called “An African People’s Quest for Freedom and Justice.” That’s what Alemseged should probably have said and left his three-volume Tigrinya books combined into one volume English book, chronicling Eritrea’s history from 1941 to 1962, tell Eritrea’s story. Alas, he didn’t. He succumbed to the same temptation that many authors of a series do–to find a neat 10-page summary to place over an 830-page book. A bowtie over the gift box. A neat summary that is not neat but is in fact more of the same “partisan and polemical language” that he warned about. While his characterization of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) was cliched and unkind, his own organization, Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF)–now People’s Front for Democracy & Justice (PFDJ)–doesn’t come across as a transparent, and communicative institution, either.
1. If I am author Alemseged Tesfai, I am puzzled. I write 3 volumes of well-researched history on Eritrea, in Tigrinya, covering the periods of 1941-1962; I translate it into a one-volume 800+ page reference book in English. I even entitle it “An African People Quest for Freedom and Justice” to Pan-Africanize it. I don’t get a serious intellectual critique of any of them, after I spent decades writing them. But I write a 10-page epilogue to supplement the 800-page book and that’s all people want to talk about?
2. “Do you people even know what the purpose of an epilogue is?” he must be saying. It’s my first chance to editorialize the book, yes. But more importantly, epilogues foreshadow the future. Like a movie that tells you the fate of the characters it introduced you to as the credits are rolling by: (e.g.: “Fast Times At Ridgemont High”), epilogues also give the story closure.
3. On ELF: In the next-to-next of the last chapter of my 800-page tome, I had told you about the first two years of ELF (1961-62). Now, in my epilogue, I am following the plot line and telling you that the same unresolved internal contradictions of the founders I had told you about–the early death of Hamed Idris Awate, the Front’s animosity towards the Haraka movement, its intolerance towards other Fronts, the lack of clear ideology (“It had no defined strategy, philosophy or definite programme”)–all foreshadowed that the organization would fall apart and could never reconstitute itself.
What I foreshadowed happened.
4. On EPLF: Since my story ended in 1962, I had barely mentioned EPLF other than to tell you that it had split from ELF. Let me tell you more now: what led to its success as a liberation front was that through “party cells planted in every unit of the EPLF, the leadership was able to instill a culture of strict discipline, self-sacrifice, self-reliance and the subordination of personal values and desires to those of the collective.” It was a place where “open expressions of religion were discouraged, if not suppressed.” It was also a place where “Uniformity in thinking and conformity to the EPLF’s political and military strategy were ensured through continuous political education and criticism and self-criticism.” Finally, it was a place where the “leadership’s ability to reach out through the party’s cells to the smallest and remotest units of the front enabled it to disseminate, gather and control information as it saw fit.” What prevailed was a “culture of silence and secrecy.”
5. Without meeting the fate of another author (Berhane Abrehe, who died in prison), Alemseged is telling us the Eritrea we see now—silent, secretive, top-down hierarchy, demanding conformity, and controlling information- was foreshadowed by EPLF’s culture. Sawa students and prisoners not allowed to have holy books? All foreshadowed.
6. He, of course, doesn’t mention the extent to which the EPLF went to enforce conformity, and it wasn’t just “criticism and self-criticism.” Then, as now, there was torture and disappearance. He doesn’t mention that. A reasonable decision if living in a country where torture and disappearance is accompanied by silence. ዓሻ ድየ በራኺ!
7. The EPLF culture of demanding conformity was extreme. How extreme? I was told a story that happened during the Ethiopian offensives of the 1980s. A city boy and a village girl, both EPLF combatants, are on reconnaissance. From a distance, the girl sees a helicopter and asks her comrade: “what’s the difference between a helicopter and a fighter plane?” City boy says, “Well, a helicopter can land almost anywhere.” Back at the base, she reports what he told her, and the city boy is arrested for “deflating the revolutionary zeal of a comrade.”
8. Foreshadowing: In independent Eritrea, one of the accusations against the G-15–the author’s comrades and seniors—was “defeatism”: a crime that doesn’t exist in Eritrea’s penal code but was very much alive in the unwritten EPLF—now PFDJ— “culture.”
9. The epilogue also attempts to counter the arguments of Ethiopians and Ethiopianist (Alex de Waal, Christopher Clapham) who claim that Eritrea is an unnatural amalgamation stitched together by tenuous hold, unlikely to stay together without military force and Isaias Afwerki. His only rebuttal is : read this book and see if you have the same conclusion. I don’t know how persuasive it is when its bloodiest chapter—1980-81 Civil War—is not included, and when it hasn’t had a single day without disproportionately large army, and Isaias as its head of government since it became a country.
10. One can take or leave the epilogue (it is the editorial of the author) but Alemseged’s collection of books is essential to the Eritrean narrative.
11. Our friends Dawit Mesfin, Weldeyesus Ammar and others took strong exception to his characterization of the ELF. I believe they are right. The presentation of the founders of ELF as ideologically confused people who “rushed” to wage an armed struggle is contradicted by his own book–which shows there was at least a year between the time it was formed in Egypt (in 1960) and the time it coordinated with Hamed Idris Awate to launch the struggle, as Haraka (and its strategy of change by coup) was in it death throes and Haile Selasse was dissolving the Federal Act. It is also contradicted by Haile Selasse Woldu’s biography of Hamed Idris Awate.
As for its alleged lack of ideology, it’s contradicted by the very fact of the choice of the name: Eritrean Liberation Front, which was inspired by the Algerian Liberation Front whose ideology was nationalism, anti- colonialism, and anti-imperialism, very fitting since Ethiopia was then seen as an imperial, colonial power. Inside Eritrea, while the communism of Haraka was appealing to university students like Alemseged Tesfai, it was toxic to conservative and traditional people who were raising their gun against a country (Ethiopia) whose official religion was Christianity.
12. This caricaturing of the ELF as a bunch of aimless shooters was first recorded in Isaias Afwerki’s “Nehnan Elamanan”, the EPLF manifesto, and it’s not unreasonable for us to expect the author, in his formative years, most likely was a recipient of its ኣንቢብካ ኣሕልፍ (read and pass it on) copy. That poison pill–Nehnan Elamanan–made it look like ISIS was in Eritrea in the 1960s.
It’s curious: You won’t find a single extremist Christian character in Eritrean history books that narrate our revolution, but you will find a lot of extremist Muslims. Despite the fact that by the time it was pushed out in a joint EPLF-TPLF offensive ELF’s membership was predominantly highland Christians, ELF is always described as Arabist and Islamist in every single English language book about our revolution. But people like Isaias who exploited people’s biases and prejudices are never described as Christian extremists. Strange, huh?
13. It’s a mindset. For example, in Alemseged’s book, Eritreans are identified by their ethnicity if they are of any ethnicity but Tigrinya (“Saho tailor”, for example) but if they are Tigrinya-speakers they are just Eritreans. Like the “ethnic food” aisle in the supermarket which is for every ethnicity except European. It’s the subtle majoritarian mindset.
14. September 1, Awate’s launch of the Armed Struggle, is coming in a week and with it a commemoration of it by EPLF which was not around for it. So the prose is always the same: one paragraph dismissing those responsible for September 1 as backward reactionaries followed by 4 paragraphs of how EPLF rescued the revolution. God knows what they teach the poor kids at school.
15. Buy ayana Almseged’s books. Support our authors. And if you are not happy with the epilogue, write your own book. You can buy it everywhere including Amazon and Apple books.
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