A statue of Nelson Mandela outside the South African embassy in Washington DC, US. Photograph by Ted Eytan.
As a founder of the ANC’s armed wing, Mandela was deeply drawn to Ethiopia, specially Oromo. His time there tells us a lot about the young leader.
ARTICLE | | BY JOSEPH HAMMOND
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia:
The death of Nelson Mandela last month elicited tributes from around the globe as the life of the man who negotiated with South Africa’s apartheid rulers to bring about majority rule. But despite the commemorations focusing on his capacity for forgiveness in the 1990s, and his ability to make peace with the regime that had imprisoned him, the Mandela of the early 1960s was a very different man. He was a guerrilla, not a peacemaker, and in 1961 had co-founded the armed-wing of the African National Congress (ANC), the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) or ‘Spear of the Nation’.
To truly understand Mandela, we must understand this earlier part of his life. And to understand this earlier part of his life, we must examine his attraction to Ethiopia where he spent time as a revolutionary. Numerous references to Ethiopia appear in his various memoirs, and a new will be based around his time there.
Since Mandela’s passing, a degree of controversy around his time in Ethiopia has also emerged, coming from an unlikely source. Shortly after his death, a story in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israel’s secret intelligence agency Mossad had clandestinely trained Mandela. As evidence, Haaretz quoted part of a letter by a member of Israeli embassy staff that describes Mandela. “He greeted our men with ‘Shalom’, was familiar with the problems of Jewry and of Israel and gave the impression of being an intellectual. The staff tried to make him into a Zionist,” it reads.
While the Nelson Mandela Foundation has questioned the authenticity of the letter, there is no doubt Mandela was indeed familiar with Jewish and Israeli issues. In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela wrote that he “read The Revolt by Menachem Begin and was encouraged by the fact that the Israeli leader had led a guerrilla force in a country with neither mountains nor forests, a situation similar to our own.”
However, while the exact role of Israel and Mossad in Mandela’s life remains under scrutiny, there is no doubt that Ethiopia − the African kingdom that successfully resisted colonialism, save for a brief Italian occupation from 1936 to 1941 − held a particular allure for Nelson Mandela and many African nationalists of the period. Until he was eclipsed by Mandela, it could be argued that Emperor Haile Selassie was Africa’s most famous politician of the 20th century. Even in the US, African American publications frequently covered Haile Selassie, and he later became the living god of the Rastafarian religion, though history has not been kind to the emperor, partly thanks to Ryszard Kapuściński’s famous The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat, with many now remembering him as the ruler who spent his time feeding the pride of lions he kept in his palace, indifferent to domestic affairs.
Meeting the Ras
Nevertheless it should not be forgotten the Selassie of the 1960s was an ardent Pan-Africanist, and it was in Addis Ababa that the Pan-African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA) was hosted in 1962. PAFMECSA was the forerunner of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was in turn the forerunner of today’s African Union.
In Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela recalls his excitement on visiting Ethiopia. He notes that the prospect of seeing Ethiopia always intrigued him more than visiting Europe or America, writing that “Ethiopia has always held a special place in my own imagination…I felt I would be visiting my own genesis, unearthing the roots of what made me an African.”
Mandela, 43 at the time, experienced a cultural shock when he boarded the Ethiopian Airlines flight from Khartoum to Addis Ababa to find an Ethiopian pilot at the controls. “How could a black man fly an airplane? But a moment later I caught myself: I had fallen into the apartheid mind-set, thinking Africans were inferior and that flying was a white man’s job. I sat back in my seat, and chided myself for such thoughts. Once we were in the air, I lost my nervousness and studied the geography of Ethiopia, thinking how guerrilla forces hid in these very forests to fight the Italian imperialists.”
Entering Addis Ababa, which he calls the Imperial City, in February 1962, Mandela’s vision of Ethiopia was, for the moment, shattered: “a few tarred streets, and more goats and sheep than cars. Apart from the Imperial Palace, the university, and the Ras Hotel, where we stayed, there were few structures that could compare with even the least impressive buildings of Johannesburg,” he writes.
Today, most roads are paved and covered in cars, especially the city’s ubiquitous shared taxis, though the city’s skyline is still somewhat spartan when compared to the skyscrapers of Johannesburg. Time though has been less kind to the Ras Hotel: in one corner stands a haggard stuffed lion while women of the night cast around the lobby for potential customers. Outside, the revolving door, touts and beggars wait to pounce on tourists under a portico next to the neighbouring book-vendor selling Amharic and a few English books including a knockoff copy of Kapuściński’s The Emperor. The Ethiopian ‘national cuisine’ served in the downstairs restaurant is, however, as good as any in the city.
Another change from when Mandela first visited the city is that a room on the Third Floor has since been turned into a veritable shrine to the man himself, albeit one that is available for hire, while the third floor is now The Mandela Floor. A larger than life image of a grey-haired Mandela greets visitors from the top of the stairs followed by a photo of Robben Island on the door to the Mandela room. The three-chambered suite is modest by today’s standards but would have seemed lavish in the early 1960s, the heyday of the hotel when it was graced by many notables.
Mandela met many of these at the 1962 PAFMECSA conference, but it was Emperor Selassie − whom Mandela asked for help raising funds, a crucial part of the ANC’s revolutionary cause − who made one of the biggest impressions. As he later recalled in Conversations with Myself: “That was an impressive fellow, man, very impressive. It was my first time to watch…a head of state going through the formalities… the motions of formality. This chap came wearing a uniform and he then came and bowed. But it was a bow which was not a bow – he stood erect, you see, but just brought down his head.”
He later observed Selassie at a military parade. At the time, Ethiopia was a US ally, and US military advisors at the occasion paid their respects to the emperor, leading Mandela to note: “to see whites going to a black monarch emperor and bowing was also very interesting.” The US was one of just six countries to never recognise the Italian occupation of Ethiopia and the two states were enjoying warm relations at the time of Mandela’s visit. In 1957, then US Vice President hailed the kingdom as “one of the United States’ most stalwart and consistent allies.”
Arming up
After the conference, Mandela left Ethiopia to continue his wide-ranging fundraising tour, visiting Egypt, Mali, Tunisia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Senegal and the UK. Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia was a particularly strong supporter, donating £5,000 (which is around $150,000 in today’s money) to Umkhonto we Sizwe for arms. En route, Mandela also received some training in guerrilla warfare from Algerian rebels in Morocco.
However, as agreed, Mandela soon returned to Ethiopia for military training. The ANC had offices in Cairo and Accra, but neither Nasser’s Egypt nor Nkrumah’s Ghana had a military versed in guerrilla warfare. However, in deciding to train in Ethiopia rather than a Warsaw Pact country or China, Mandela was openly branding the armed portion of the ANC struggle as African and moving the ANC’s position away from the Soviet Union, a policy that might have influenced him to meet with the Israelis.
Ethiopia, whose military had multiple veterans of the guerrilla war against the Italian occupation, also possibly presented Mandela with the best opportunity to learn the military skills necessary to lead Umkhonto we Sizwe. He planned to spend half a year receiving training on weaponry, tactics and leadership. ANC’s armed wing had already launched a series of sabotage attacks in South Africa so instruction on mines, sabotage and explosives was also given. Mandela’s training included live fire exercises with both Eastern bloc and American made weapons. And Mandela’s instructors were Colonel Biru Tadesse, Colonel G.E. Bekele and Lieutenant Befikadu Wondomu; Wondomu, a former fighter, led the physical training while Tadesse lectured Mandela in the philosophy of guerrilla warfare. The recently-emerged Israeli government letter implies Mandela was trained by someone referred to as “the Ethiopian”, which could mean some of Mandela’s instructors were linked to the Israelis.
Indeed, Israel was keen to cultivate good relations with the non-Arab countries in Africa at the time, though later, as African liberation movements came to be dominated by communist elements, this policy shifted slowly to an awkward security relationship with the apartheid South African government.
In 1975, Gen. Taddesse Birruu was executed having been arrested by the Derg regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who still lives in Zimbabwe.
Biniyam Mengistu, a tour guide and local historian in the southern Ethiopian city of Harrar, believes Mandela received some of his instruction in Harrar. If this is true, it was perhaps Tadesse who invited him to visit this important city in Ethiopia east. The region’s main inhabitants, the Oromo people, are Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, and Tadesse eventually launched his own guerrilla war against the state four years later in the name of Oromo nationalism. In 1975, he was executed having been arrested by the Derg government.
To this day, the time Tadesse spent with Mandela is source of pride for Oromo nationalists. A grainy photo of him in uniform standing next to Mandela can be found on many Oromo nationalist websites and the Oromo National Congress (now the Oromo Federalist Congress) originally named itself after Mandela’s African National Congress.
The way of the gun
In the end, Mandela’s time in Ethiopia only lasted a few short weeks before it was decided that he was needed in South Africa. On the orders of Haile Selassie, Tadesse gave Mandela a Bulgarian-made Makarov pistol and 200 rounds of ammunition before his trip home. He was also issued an Ethiopian passport under the name David Motsamay (“the walker”).
After arrival in South Africa, Mandela was smuggled to the Liliesleaf Farm in north Johannesburg, an important ANC safe house. But as the noose around the fugitive tightened, he decided to bury the pistol. Digging a 1.5 metre pit not far from the farm’s kitchen, he wrapped the weapon and its ammunition in foil and placed the stash, along with his military uniform, under a tin plate. Arrested days later, he never returned for the weapon.
However, Mandela did return to Ethiopia decades later in 1990 to address the OAU in Addis Ababa. This meant meeting Mariam Mengistu, Ethiopia’s brutal dictator who had ruled Ethiopia directly or indirectly since 1974. During Mengistu’s rule, more than 2 million Ethiopians were murdered or died of starvation, and with the Soviet Union on the verge of collapse, Mengistu beseeched Mandela to visit and provide him with a small propaganda victory.
Perhaps reluctantly, Mandela agreed to the short visit whilst already on a trip to Tanzania. Coarsefootage from the period shows the veteran Mengistu beaming as he honours Mandela, yet it is Mandela who appears the statelier figure. When Mengistu was overthrown the next year, he fled to Zimbabwe and even briefly visited South Africa in 1999 to receive medical treatment. Mandela’s government flirted with turning him over to international authorities but Mengistu soon returned toZimbabwe where he has kept a low profile ever since.
Old friends
Mandela’s time in Ethiopia provides insight into the man and helps place the ANC struggle in its broader African context. It further illuminates his commitment to armed struggle, making his later role as peacemaker all the more revealing. In recognition of the importance of this period in Mandela’s life, a new major film slated for release this year will focus on his African travels and guerrilla training in Ethiopia. Directed by John Irvin, the film, called Mandela’s Gun, will see Tumisho Masha play Mandela − making him the first South African to play Mandela in a major film.
Ethiopia has never forgotten its links to Nelson Mandela, and in 2011, for example, 2,300 trees were planted around Addis Ababa in his honour on the Second Annual International Nelson Mandela Day. The pistol that Mandela received in Ethiopia meanwhile has never been found. Mandela provided further information about its probable location on a visit to the farm in 2003, and in 2011 excavations began on the site to locate the lost pistol, but it has remained elusive.
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