To some of us, the revolution that is spreading like a bushfire in North Africa and elsewhere in the Arab world including the Horn of Africa might have lost its appeal as a juicy news. Yet,to people who always maintain a sense of history, the uprisings that sparked off in Tunisia and got transmitted to Egypt after rubbing some of its flame on Algeria before it crossed to the Arabian peninsula in Yemen and Bahrain only to be back again to rock the establishment in Libya, remain an interesting phenomenon to be scrutinized. In fact, it might even stir emotional involvement and recollection of some past events in a few of us whereby it propels us to collate it with what is unfolding today. I don’t know about you but it produced that effect on me thereby prompting a series of missive about these momentous occasions taking place in our midst. Personally, the latest revolt in Benghazi, Libya provoked me to be transported back on a memory lane.
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My experience with Libyans
In the capricious global politics where alignment and realignment takes place between nations, particularly during the cold war period, the military regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam and its Libyan counter part led by Muammar Gaddafi enjoyed a brief romantic relationship in the 980s. Mengistu subjecting my country under the sphere of the Soviet influence as a “revolutionary socialist leader” also whipped us in a “proletariat discipline” within our respective association such as worker, peasant, women and youth association. Being young then, I was compelled to belong to the youth association. Worse, as I grew up in the area near the international airport called Bole where the few middle class, then known as petit bourgeois congregated, it was our unfortunate fate to receive a foreign dignitary from the “socialist and anti-imperialist or anti- Zionist camp” whenever one drops by in Addis. Read More
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