Moderniser and anti-fascist icon who never touched the land order that finally undid his dynasty
In 1936 he told the League of Nations, 'God and history will remember your judgment.'
Descended from the Solomonic dynasty, Haile Selassie I was the 20th-century emperor who modernised Ethiopia and, with his 1936 speech to the League of Nations, became a global symbol of anti-fascism. From his regency he drove reform through the 1931 constitution and the abolition of slavery, and after exile under Italian occupation he returned with British forces in 1941 to restore the throne. But his modernisation, which left the northern rist and gult tenures and the southern land-grant system intact through compromise with the nobility and clergy, never freed the peasantry from tenancy, and the 1972 Wollo famine turned opinion against him. Deposed by the Derg in September 1974, he was strangled on the junta's orders the following August, months after the proclamation that nationalised the land system his reign had preserved.
Career timeline
- 1916Regent Plenipotentiary and heir apparent, de facto ruler
- 1917Crowned Le'ul-Ras (duke)
- 1928Crowned Negus (king)
- 1930Crowned Emperor (Negusa Nagast)
- 1936–1941Exiled in Britain during the Italian occupation
- 1941Returned and restored the imperial throne
- 1963Presided over the OAU's founding, first chairman
- 1974Deposed by the Derg in September
Early chairman of the Derg
In July 1975 he proposed a united front of 'all the forces that rejected the ancient regime, built from the base'; Mengistu and his supporters opposed this strategy.
An Ethiopian officer who became Derg chairman in late 1974. He served as head of state during nationalization of land and major industries but could not contain the internal military struggle. He was killed in February 1977, after which Mengistu consolidated predominance.
Career timeline
- 1941Joined the Ethiopian Army
- 1967Military attaché in Washington, D.C.
- 1974Brigadier general, 4th Division
- 1974–1977Chairman of the Derg (PMAC) and head of state
The Derg's last independent leader
On 3 February 1977 he was outside the capital presenting a flag to a militia unit, which observers thought saved his life. Arrested at Derg headquarters on 11 November, he was shot the next day.
An Ethiopian officer of the founding generation of the Derg, the military committee that deposed the emperor in 1974. A major in the Fourth Division, he was elected its vice-chairman and became a lieutenant colonel after April 1975. In 1976 he directed the recruitment of tens of thousands of peasants for a militia bound for the Eritrean front, and was seen as symbolizing a conservative, nationalistic and religious outlook. He survived the 3 February 1977 shootout to become first vice-chairman, only to be executed on Mengistu's orders on 12 November 1977.
Career timeline
- 1974Helped organize the Derg; elected vice-chairman (Fourth Division representative)
- 1975Promoted to lieutenant colonel
- 1974–1977Deputy chairman of the Derg and second vice-chairman of the PMAC under Tafari Benti
- 1976Organizer of the peasants' militia (Operation Raza)
- 1977First vice-chairman of the Derg, February 1977
Consolidation of Derg rule
At a Derg meeting he vowed of the aristocrats who called dark-skinned, kinky-haired people slave "Barias": "I shall soon make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!"
A leader of Ethiopia’s Derg, the military committee emerging from the 1974 revolution. He consolidated predominance after the 1977 power struggle and led military and party-state institutions. Land reform and state-led development proceeded amid political repression and prolonged war.
Career timeline
- 1957Graduated Holetta Military Academy, commissioned second lieutenant
- 1974Derg member (Third Division representative)
- 1974–1977Deputy chairman of the Derg
- 1977–1987Chairman of the Derg, head of the military regime
- 1984–1991General Secretary, Workers' Party of Ethiopia
- 1987–1991President, People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
- 1991Fled into exile in Zimbabwe
Ethiopian Marxist leader of MEISON and drafter of the Derg's national-democratic program
His August 1977 arrest and subsequent disappearance mark the Derg's turn from the EPRP onto its own former MEISON collaborators. His death around 1979 is reported by several sources but unconfirmed in date and circumstance.
Ethiopian Marxist politician who led and chaired the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement (MEISON). Born in Arjo, Welega (Oromia); he studied in France in the early 1960s, taking a Marxism closer to the Soviet model, and after the revolution began he returned and co-founded the Progressive Book Store with Negede Gobeze. In December 1975 the Derg secretly created the Provisional Office for Mass Organizational Affairs (POMOA) and made him chairman; he drafted the Program for the National Democratic Revolution, announced by Mengistu on 20 April 1976. He was captured outside Addis Ababa on 26 August 1977 and held in the Old Gebbi, and Human Rights Watch records that he disappeared after several months in prison. His reported death around 1979 remains unconfirmed in date and circumstance. Also known as Haile Fida Kuma, he is remembered as the 'Father of Qubee Afaan Oromo'.
Career timeline
- 1968Helped found MEISON at the 8th ESUE congress and organized and led the Oromo students' study group in Europe
- 1973Published the Oromo grammar Hirmaata Dubbi Afaan Oromoo in Paris, written in qubee
- 1974–1975Returned to Ethiopia and co-founded the Progressive Book Store with Negede Gobeze
- 1975.12Appointed chairman of the Derg's secretly created Provisional Office for Mass Organizational Affairs (POMOA)
- 1976.04Drafted the Program of National Democratic Revolution, whose adoption Mengistu announced on 20 April
- 1977.08Went underground with the MEISON leadership, was captured on 26 August and detained in the Old Gebbi
Historian of modern Ethiopia
Against the loose figure of 120 Derg members, he wrote that in actual fact their number was less than 110, that senior officers were deliberately excluded, and that no new members were ever admitted.
Historian and author of modern Ethiopian history, and emeritus professor at Addis Ababa University. He studied history at Haile Selassie I University and African history at the University of London, and served as Head of the History Department and Director of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. He wrote the standard synthetic text on modern Ethiopia, 1855 to 1991, and was a founding member of the Forum for Social Studies.
Career timeline
- 1947Born in Addis Ababa
- 1970BA in history with distinction, Haile Selassie I University
- 1976PhD in African history, University of London
- 1991Published A History of Modern Ethiopia 1855–1991
- 1998–2004Chair, Forum for Social Studies board
