PATERNALIST PRINCE

Ian Buruma talks to

the liberal who could become Emperor of Ethiopia

HIS writing paper bears the royal crown of Ethiopia, last worn by Ras Tafari, or Haile Selassie, the last reigning monarch of the dynasty born of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and, so it is also believed, descended from the prophet Mohammed as well. He wears beautifully cut English suits, pin-striped, with turned-back cuffs, and lined with scarlet silk. He speaks English like a toff (and German, too), and reads The Spectator. He is mentioned in Marquis' Who's Who in the World, seventh edition, and Wer ist Wer in Deutschland, 23rd edition, and the International Directory of Distinguished Leadership, first edition. His clubs are The Travellers', London, where he was staying when I met him — and Puffin's, Edinburgh.

It is tempting to see Prince Asfa-Wossen Asserate, nephew of the last emperor, as a comic opera figure; one of the many royal personages floating around Europe search- ing for a role: on the one hand, a thorough- ly modern promoter of constitutionalism and the free market economy, on the other, a romantic symbol of the ancien regime. Until very recently, such men appeared, in their quixotic attempts to straddle both worlds, not just comic, but a little pathetic — a bit like those White Russians in Paris in the 1930s, dreaming of restoring the Tsar, even as they were reduced by unfor- tunate circumstances to guarding the doors of fashionable restaurants, selling, as it were, their aristocratic allure. Their deco- rations might be useless, but they still wore them well.

Prince Asfa-Wossen Asserate's aspira- tions are anything but ludicrous, however. His dream is to see a liberal democracy in Ethiopia: pluralist, humane, open, federal. To this end he wants to start a liberal con- servative party. It might turn out to be a quixotic dream, but it is not a reactionary one. Nor is his resolve to return to Addis Ababa, where his family was jailed and his father executed by the Dergue after the emperor's fall, in the least bit comical. It is in fact quite brave. For the Transitional Period Charter of Ethiopia, drawn up by the present government which ousted Mengistu's Afro-Stalinist regime, may look fin sorry, sorry, hut I think I've forgotten your name.'

splendid on paper, but what, in the bloody history of post-colonial Africa, does a piece of paper guarantee?

It might also prove to be very difficult. The prince was lucky enough to be out of the country during the revolution of 1974. He was a student in Frankfurt then, a con- servative Third World aristocrat debating with German progressives, who always knew what was best for the downtrodden masses of Africa and Asia. He must have looked very odd to the Europeans who showed such understanding for the fashion- able Third World tyrants, whose tortured victims were simply the poor eggs that had to be broken to make the revolutionary omelette. Last month the prince visited his country for the first time since 1974 and was shocked by the terrible state in which Mengistu and his Dergue had left it.

He agreed it might be a trifle hard living in the old country: `To be quite frank with you, Mr Buruma, it's of course true what they say about being caught in between worlds. One cannot live in Europe all these years without being affected somewhat. I am what you might call an Anglo-Ger- manophilic Ethiopian.' The prince carries a German passport. His Anglo-Germano- philia was actually a product of his child- hood. His father, the former governor of Eritrea and, before his execution, the presi- dent of the Imperial Crown Council, was a great Anglophile, educated in Bath and a sister school of Sandhurst in Khartoum. English was spoken at home, as well as Amharic. To acquire a second European language, the young prince was sent to the German school in Addis Ababa and thence to Tubingen, Cambridge and Frankfurt, where he still lives.

Given his European education and his interest in the symbolism of his aristocratic past — symbolism which, in his opinion, might still be of use to unite a very dis- parate nation — I wondered how he squared his two worlds, the world, that is, of liberal democracy, and the old world of biblical ancestry, theocracy, African tradi- tion. I asked him whether he really bel- ieved his family was descended from King Solomon.

don't see why not. Perfectly good idea, you know. As an ideology, such things can be fine. Take the Japanese emperor, peo- ple used to believe he was descended from the Sun Goddess. . .

What about the belief that the same dynasty went back to Mohammed?

`Ah, yes, that was my mother's line. Her great grandfather was Mohammed Ali, King of Wollo, later christened King Michael by Emperor John the Fourth.' One can imagine how this kind of thing would have gone down with the students at Tubingen in the summer of '68. It might never have come up. It is often the case with Western-educated Africans or Asians to reserve the native beliefs for when they return to the old countries, not always out of conviction, but because they can be useful as positical tools; or to fit back in.

In the West, it is more useful to stick to Western beliefs, such as, in the recent past, Marxism-Leninism. But it is when such ' Western creeds are applied ruthlessly at home, often in combination with native beliefs, that the most horrible bloodshed can occur. This is what happened in Cambodia. The self-appointed represen- tative of the Khmer Rouge in London during the time of mass murder was a young Cambodian who spoke impeccable Oxford English and wore his Savile Row suits well.

Prince Asfa-Wossen Asserate's liberal, free-market ideas may not work in Ethiopia, but at least they are not likely to cause carnage. They are also rather inter- esting, for his ideas are the fruit both of his aristocratic past and his European educa- tion. His politics are a synthesis of the two, an attempt, in a way, at imposing some his- torical continuity, as though he were apply- ing Burke to Ethiopia. When I asked him where the late Emperor Haile Selassie went wrong, he answered that the emperor had begun as a great revolutionary and ended as a despot. He modernised the country and educated its elite. This had mixed results, as was true everywhere in the developing world: some clever boys chose Stalinism as the ideal model to fol- low, others, like the prince, had more liber- al ideas. Those others usually ended with their backs to execution walls, or, if lucky, as exiles in the West.

The emperor himself was no Stalinist, nor, as we know, a fascist, but, like the communist modernisers, he was in favour of central control and he did break the back of feudalism. This was hailed at the time as a very progressive thing to do. But it is where the prince believes the emperor went wrong. Feudalism was an early pater- nalistic version of federalism. And federal- ism, so the prince thinks, is the only sensible way to govern a nation of such var- ied peoples. Before power was concentrat- ed in the palace of Addis Ababa 'there was more than one power. The role of the father who took care of his people, of the But to get back to my main point.' clans, and so forth, was taken over by the emperor. Haile Selassie became an abso- lute monarch.' And the subsequent regime, like similar regimes in other countries of Africa and Asia (Burma for example), con- tinued this practice in an even more ruth- less manner. The prince observed: 'Paternalism, a bad word these days, is what we lack in Ethiopia.'

The prince is a paternalist liberal. His is an aristocratic attitude, and by no means the worst one can imagine. It is not, howev- er, very democratic, in the sense of people governing themselves. But it is possible to be liberal without being very democratic. 'Reforms,' said the prince, 'can work when they are imposed from above. If they are demanded by the people, it results in revo- lution.' I was reminded of G. M. Trevelyan's famous sentence, in English Social History: If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their châteaux would never have been burnt.' If, in other words, the toffs do what is right, the people will be happy, or, as Mencius put it more crudely: 'Full bel- lies, no revolt.'

As I have said, until recently, the dispos- sessed royalty and aristocracy of revolu- tionised countries seemed tragi-comic figures. Now that the revolutions have all failed, one is not quite so sure. Like Prince Schwarzenberg in Prague, they might still have a role to play after all. Their brand of more or less liberal paternalism — noblesse oblige and all that — looks better in retrospect, after the ravages left behind by progressive attempts at radical moderni- sation. The problem in such countries as Ethiopia will be how to ensure that liberal- ism takes root. This is where members of the ancien regime, with their sense of histo- ry and tradition and despite the contradic- tion between democracy and paternalism, could be of help. Democracy cannot be imposed from the top, to be sure, but some of the conditions for people to live decently and freely can be. Basic human rights and freedom of speech, which are the main concerns of the Council for Civil Liberties in Ethiopia, founded by the prince himself, are not a bad start.

One wishes him well, the man with the English suit and the English upper-class accent, who dreams of a free and prosper- ous Ethiopia. But what about the elegant little crown on the corner of his stationery? I asked him whether the monarchy should be restored into the bargain. His answer was that that was up to the people. They should vote on it in a referendum. Then he added: `To be frank with you, Mr Buruma, peo- ple think my only aim is to become the next emperor, but all I want is democracy and the rule of law. My family always had the name of being the ones who wanted the throne. You see, our line was the male line, and the late emperor was from the female line. But you must understand, Mr Bum- ma, we were loyal until the very end.'