ETHIOPIA: Lion’s Share

Emperor Haile Selassie last week celebrated a great day in a career that has known many ups & downs. With golden scissors, Ethiopia’s King of Kings, Lion of Judah snipped a ribbon and then drove triumphantly across a frontier to add to his domain the former Italian colony of Eritrea, which the Italians had carved out of old Ethiopia in the late 19th century.

In Eritrea’s capital, Asmara, from which Mussolini launched his 1935 attack on Haile Selassie, red, yellow and green striped Ethiopian flags broke out. Barelegged, open-sandaled Ethiopian troops swung smartly up the broad Corso Italia, replacing the departed British Tommies, who had held the land in trust for eleven years.

The Helpful Bolivian. A share of the popular acclaim went to U.N. Commissioner Eduardo Anze Matienzo. the genial Bolivian who prepared the way for federation. Anze Matienzo arrived in Asmara 20 months ago in the wake of bloody riots between Eritrea’s Moslems and its Christian Copts. He went into every corner of the land seeking to allay religious distrust. His success was shown by the peaceful nature of Eritrea’s first national elections, held earlier this year, which sent 34 Copts and 34 Moslems to an assembly that ratified a constitution acceptable to both sects.

Under federation, Ethiopia (pop. 15 million) will have the dominant voice in defense, foreign affairs, currency, taxation and customs, communications and ports. Eritrea (pop. 1,000,000) will manage its own internal affairs through its elected assembly and a chief executive.

The Powerful Ethiopian. Since Ethiopia has neither general elections nor a free press, many Eritreans fear that they may lose their new freedom. No monarch in the world today (except perhaps Saudi Arabia’s Ibn Saud) wields greater power over his country’s affairs than does Haile Selassie. Selassie personally opens all diplomatic pouches from his missions abroad, keeps in personal touch with embassies and legations by letter, appoints and dismisses every one of twelve provincial governors, handpicks his two houses of Parliament, assigns lands and sets rents for houses, keeps careful tabs on his Imperial Guardsmen fighting in Korea, holds open house one day each week to hear the petty gripes of his lowliest subjects.

The country does not have a single native graduate engineer, architect, chemist or agricultural expert; in all Ethiopia there is only one native physician. Selassie must rely on foreign help to bolster his ministries. Americans, who predominate among his advisers, govern the national bank, edit the official newspaper, run the nationalized airline, and direct highway construction. A Swedish military mission trains the Imperial Guard and a fledgling air force.

Described, not unkindly, as “a Bolivian concept of a Swiss federation adapted to an African absolute monarchy,” the partnership of Ethiopia and Eritrea should have practical advantages. Landlocked Ethiopia has the resources of soil and climate to become East Africa’s breadbasket. Eritrea has better-trained labor and coastal ports on the Red Sea. The federation’s success, said departing Commissioner Anze Matienzo pointedly, depends on Ethiopia’s “respect for Eritrea’s constitutional progress and autonomy.”