The surveys

This article is the latest of a series of studies which were conducted from 2002 in this rural community. Their main focus is the relationship between the peasants and the powers at large. The secondary focus is on this relationship's impact on the implementation of the rural development strategy (see Lefort Reference Lefort2005, Reference Lefort2007). These surveys are based upon interviews, three quarters of which were conducted with farmers, the others with officials, civil servants and merchants. In addition, informal discussions were held with the farmers who extended their hospitality to meals and even nights spent at their homes. The samples of farmers interviewed were not representative in a strict statistical sense, but they tried to take into account their distribution in terms of levels of income (‘rich’, ‘middle’ and ‘poor’, according to the official classification) and gender. Quotations in the next part of the article, unless referred to a specific source, are excerpts from these interviews.

Physical and human data

This community is located in the North Shoa zone in the extreme south-east of the Amhara State, bordering the Afar Regional State (see Lefort Reference Lefort2005, Reference Lefort2007). The nearest town, which is crossed by the main Addis Ababa – Wollo – Tigray road, has some basic facilities. The 6,600 inhabitants of the kebele mainly consist of about 1,200 farmers,Footnote ⁹ dispersed in small hamlets composed of a few families each, 50 merchants and small-scale traders, and 40 civil servants, all living in town, and 300 unemployed, overwhelmingly landless peasants. The community lives one to two hours' walk from the town. This area is 2,000 to 2,800 m above sea level. The average farm holding is about 0·8 ha per household. The principal crops grown are teff,Footnote ¹⁰ sorghum, barley, wheat and lentils. The cultivation of vegetables and fruits for the market has increased in the last few years. Farmers also have large and small livestock.

No NGO is active in these two communities. There is no food-for-work or cash-for-work programme. Undoubtedly, the standard of living is higher than that of the average Ethiopian rural community. Almost all inhabitants are Orthodox Christian Amhara. The Amhara ‘nation’, to use the official classification, comprises about 26% of the whole Ethiopian population (see Census 2007). The Amhara played a leading role in the gradual building of the Ethiopian polity, but lost it after the Tigrean-led takeover in 1991. The most determined opponents of the ethnic federalism instituted since then can be found among them.

Their culture includes the unshakable belief in the omnipotence of God, who dictates their whole existence and governs their entire environment. Thus, power is considered divine by essence because like everything it ultimately proceeds from Him. To obey is therefore to submit to God's will. ‘We are people to be ordered’, they generally say. Individuals are not considered as equal: social status, age and gender are also crucial criteria that establish the position of individuals in the social hierarchy.

This ‘culture of power’ also pervades the mengist, the Amharic word that designates indifferently power as such, the ruling party, the state, and all their agents or members, including of course local authorities. These, until 2005, had a strong propensity to think that the peasants must ‘carry out orders from above’ (Aspen Reference Aspen1995), and that the mass of the farmers was so ‘backward’ that it couldn't progress unless ‘instructed’ or more broadly ‘developed’ from the top. This top-down approach encompassed the day-to-day life of everybody in all fields, from access to the land (which belongs to the state, with the farmer getting only usufruct rights on his plots)Footnote ¹¹ and to the services monopolised by the state (modern agricultural inputs, credit, schools, health etc.), to heavy ‘voluntary contributions’ and harassing collective ‘social works’ aimed at ‘developing’ the kebele, as well as numerous and endless meetings. These constraints were the most unpopular burden put on the farmers' shoulders,Footnote ¹² but their only way to try to secure their survival was to obey, perpetuating their submissiveness.Footnote ¹³

Only a minority – about 10% to 15% of the population – had a very different outlook. This minority consisted mainly of the economic upper group and social leaders of the farmers and encompassed most of the so-called birokrasi, a word that derives from bureaucracy, due to the local functions this group had assumed under the Derg regime.Footnote ¹⁴ After the EPRDF took power in 1991, members of the birokrasi were dismissed from all these functions, the amount of land they cultivated was largely and arbitrarily down-scaled through the 1997 land redistribution,Footnote ¹⁵ and generally they were deeply ostracised in all possible ways. Yet this ‘traditional’ elite, usually more dynamic and better educated, was able to rapidly expand its economic assets and maintain an undeniable social ascendency. As the spearhead of the opposition its members focused on the ‘unfair punishment’ they received, the duties that prevented them from devoting their full capacities to their own farms, and the lack of basic rights. Furthermore, they began to articulate these grievances because they had a more secular outlook than most farmers, and therefore started to regard the mengist not as divine by essence but as an ordinary temporal power. By playing the role of opinion leaders during the 2005 elections, they drew enough followers to garner between 63% and 84% of the votes for the opposition in this area.Footnote ¹⁶

Bad rains and inflation

From mid 2007, both the ‘big’ summer meher rainsFootnote ¹⁷ and the ‘small’ spring belg rains were inadequate. As a result, agricultural production fell by about 40% for the meher harvest of autumn 2007 and by about 25% the following yearFootnote ¹⁸ compared with previous years, which were unanimously regarded as ‘good’. More or less simultaneously, the prices of consumer goods, fertilisers and above all food skyrocketed.Footnote ¹⁹

The 2005 elections: an unexpected blowFootnote ²⁰

On the eve of the 2005 elections, the EPRDF felt strong enough to accept ‘free and fair’ competition, mainly in view of improving its image and gaining broader foreign support. The Front postulated that despite some setbacks in the main towns, its unwavering constituency in the countryside – and first and foremost the mass of the ‘poor’/subsistence farmers –was so numerous that it would emerge largely victorious. This belief stemmed from the expected recognition of its huge commitment to rural development,Footnote ²¹ its tight control of the rural population, mainly through state land ownership and public services, and the legitimacy it expected to receive from the general population. ‘The king who rules is my king’ is a common Amhara saying. Therefore, voting for the oppositionFootnote ²² would be no less than ‘illegal’. But this sense of legitimacy played out completely differently from what the EPRDF had foreseen. The Front underestimated the discontent in large parts of the rural areas, but its crucial mistake was that it was so self-confident that it scarcely campaigned. This absence not only opened a widening space for the opposition, but was also largely interpreted as an acceptance of defeat.

Therefore, as observed in this community, the population shifted its allegiance to the force it saw as the future winner: the opposition. Only about a month before election day did the whole party-state apparatus launch an all-out counterattack based on pressures and threats. Most of the voters saw the alternative before them not as a new and welcome opportunity, but as a danger: to vote wrongly, i.e. to vote for the loser and thus to suffer the retribution of the winner, put their survival at risk. By asserting that the ruling party would be defeated at the national level, the birokrasi led a great majority to vote for the opposition candidates (see Lefort Reference Lefort2007).

The two ‘big meetings’

During the summer of 2005, the authorities appointed two people of their choice for each gott, to be in charge of selecting twelve neighbours to attend what would be known as the ‘big meetings’. About 200 people gathered in September 2005 for fourteen days. A couple of weeks later, about 100 people attended a second meeting that lasted one week. These 300 participants were informed that their main task would be boosting their production and that thus they were appointed as ‘model farmers’.Footnote ²⁵ Concurrently, on the last day they were informed they had become members of the party,Footnote ²⁶ which thus enlarged membership of its local branch five-fold.Footnote ²⁷

These two meetings broke radically with similar previous ones. First, they were much longer and participants were financially compensated.Footnote ²⁸ Second, the responsibility for making important decisions, which until then had required the participation of the whole population, was entrusted to a selected group of about a quarter of the Peasant Association's (PA) members. Of course, the sixty farmers who were party members at that time were selected. For the others, the main criterion, as the interviewees said, was to choose those who were the most dynamic, qualified and yearning for improvements, therefore often the best educated, those whom the general population usually qualifies as ‘strong farmers’. Those with ‘a lot of followers’ were prioritised too. But the official instructions also explicitly targeted those who ‘produce for the market’.Footnote ²⁹

These virtues are generally shared by the richest social group, which largely coincides with the birokrasi, plus a few young farmers who made the best use of the plots they received through the 1997 land redistribution. Therefore, after harshly and deliberately targeting the birokrasi for years by reducing its economic strength and denying it any representative or leading position, the Front suddenly brought it to the forefront again, promoting it to become the driving force of rural development and by far the most numerous component of the ruling party branch, from which it was previously excluded.

The shift in ‘revolutionary democracy’

EPRDF presents the ‘revolutionary democracy’ through which it has supposedly ruled Ethiopia since 1991 as ‘unique and different’ in two main ways from a classical ‘liberal democracy’.Footnote ³⁰ First, it aims to secure collective rights, starting with the rights of the ‘nations, nationalities and peoples’ of Ethiopia, while pushing individual rights into the background. Second, a ‘liberal’ democratic system is largely ‘representative’: ‘the political stage is occupied by a few politicians … who substitute for the public at large’, while with the revolutionary democracy, ‘the social forces of the peasants, labourers and majority city dwellers’ are ‘consciously and uninterruptedly engaged’ in the decision making process. Thus revolutionary democracy gave de facto a predominant weight to by far the largest social group: the subsistence farmers.

In each kebele, this revolutionary democracy was embodied in the Peasant Association, to which any land-holding farmer compulsorily belonged. The tiny ‘elected’ kebele Council was no more than a hollow and empty shell. In theory, all decisions were supposed to be taken in a PA meeting by consensus, requiring the collective participation of all, through discussion led by a small party vanguard. However, this community power was purely formal. In practice, the PA leadership (the chairman and his Cabinet, theoretically elected by the members), together with the other local officials, was simply in charge of carrying out the orders of the upper levels of the party-state.

These two levels of stratification – the tiny group of power holders and the mengist at the top, and the ‘broad masses’ as a huge and homogeneous entity represented by the PA members at the bottom – were replaced after 2005 by three levels. The whole population meets only three or four times a year either to debate minor questions or to be informed on the most important issues. As the local authorities stated, ‘the PA doesn't exist any more. It has been replaced by the 300 members of the kebele Council’, ‘elected’ in 2008, whose number has increased ten-fold.Footnote ³¹ Ninety-five per cent of Council members are model farmers/party members. This group, which is now permanently the voice of the whole community, constitutes the new representative structure at the local level. It differs from a classical ‘liberal’ one by the unusually large number of its members. It also differs radically not only because the party selected the Council members, as it did before 2005, but also because now virtually all members also belong to the party. Its leadership over the Council members has been institutionalised, while it was previously informal: the party was rightly considered as the real power holder. As before 1991, the birokrasi quasi-monopolised these representative functions.

‘Rent seekers’ versus ‘constructive investors’

In the economic field, the Ethiopian leadership has always asserted the patent success of its agricultural policy. In spite of this, the official rural development strategy has shifted notably since 2006.Footnote ³² The available documents do not reveal whether this shift stemmed from a tacit recognition of the agricultural policy's shortcomings or from the electoral blow of 2005. In any case, both pushed for similar reforms.

In brief, the new development policy starts by describing Ethiopia as a country that is still at a ‘tyro-capitalism’ stage, with an ‘apprentice free market’.Footnote ³³ It is thus less profitable for a ‘constructive investor’ to try to produce for the market than to be a ‘rent seeker’ or a ‘rent collector’, by holding an official position or through ‘corrupt relationships with officials’. But in the age of globalisation, ‘there is no midway’: the country can either go no further than the ‘rent collection economy’ and then ‘perish’, like most African countries, or ‘insert itself in the competitive world market’.

‘The rent collection strategy had polluted the ideology of the EPRDF’ until the eviction of the ‘leftist’ wing of the TPLF in 2001.Footnote ³⁴ Then the Front was able to enter the ‘revivalism period’ by launching a ‘decisive struggle to drain patrimonialism’ and by creating a ‘conducive environment for the private investors’. Unlike a classical ‘liberal economy’, a ‘constructive government’ must thus ‘interfere’ ‘to promote a fast developmental political economy’, notably by ‘creating governmental structures to fully support’ these investors – but only ‘to fill the deficit of the market’ as long as necessary and without encroaching upon their ‘freedom’. Finally, ‘the heavy struggle of developmental forces against rent seekers’ overlaps with ‘the struggle for democracy and good governance’ because ‘transparency and accountability must be installed at all levels to fill the vacuum for rent seeking enterprises’. For agriculture specifically, while the ‘EPRDF's development perspective focused on making the farmer and rural areas pivot points’, the farmer ‘could not escape from hand to mouth’ because until 2001 ‘the Front's goal was to ensure food security so as to detach the farmers from commercialisation’ instead of ‘focusing on market economy as the centre of rural activities’.

Previously, the ‘broad participation of the whole community’ had prioritised the majority of the peasants, the ‘poor farmers’, as the human lever of rural development.Footnote ³⁵ They were also supposed to hold the greatest agricultural potential by raising their very low productivity with new technologies supported by modern inputs and know-how. But recently Prime Minister Meles Zenawi stated: ‘subsistence farming is undergoing structural changes in order to be transformed into commercial farming’.Footnote ³⁶ If a ‘balanced’ approach must be followed, if ‘improvement of pro-poor subsistence farming still needs to take place’, the main goal is ‘to capture the private initiative of farmers’,Footnote ³⁷ so as ‘to intensify the marketable farm products’.Footnote ³⁸ In fact, it targets the main supplier of marketed surpluses: the small group of leading farmers. ‘We can't afford to give new technology to all of the 12 million rural households in Ethiopia’, a high-ranking official recently recognised.Footnote ³⁹

To this end, the farming population was divided into the ‘acha farmers’ – acha means something like ‘peer’ in Amharic – and the 300 model farmers. The latter were given privileged access to credit and state-controlled agricultural inputs, and were also the quasi-exclusive beneficiaries of the technical knowledge spread mainly by development agents. In return, this key producer group was recruited and even forcibly enrolled into the party.

‘Listen to the people’

The aim of three short meetings held at the end of 2005 was to ask the population to freely expose the ‘mistakes’ of which they accused local officials, who stood before the participants. But no significant accusations were made: repression of the opposition was still underway and fear reigned.

Then came the long story, full of twists and turns, of the setting up of the kebele provisional Council and Cabinet – the eight member executive organ of the kebele – which extended until 2008. In summary, the population refused to accept the representatives and executives whom the authorities tried to impose, and forced the latter to organise a genuine election. For the first time, the kebele population could vote in a truly ‘free and fair’ election, by expressing a personal and informed choice without pressure, even if the procedures were not formally democratic for practical reasons. Later, despite the EPRDF's total control, the Council elected in the 2008 country-wide local elections succeed in imposing the re-election of the whole Cabinet and not, as the authorities had decided, only a part of it. The former chairman, fired before 2005 but still very popular, was re-elected. Finally, in June 2008, six of the eight Cabinet members were fired and replaced by farmers chosen at the district level. The chairman remained in place. This looked like a concession to the population's wishes, but without serious consequences due to his weakened position.

So freedom of expression markedly increased. Until 2005, only some elders or farmers who were less vulnerable because of their wealth and/or social status dared to publicly challenge the authorities. After, as the interviewees affirmed, when somebody raised criticism in a meeting and even when an authority's proposal was rejected, ‘nothing happened’, which means the protesters were not punished later.

A similar space for open speech occurred during the criticism and self-criticism sessions (gim gema), when the work of each local official and civil servant is regularly evaluated. These sessions were formerly conducted only in front of their peers, but after the 2005 elections, in order to broaden good governance, they were opened to the 300 members of the Council. However, all the interviewees who participated emphasised that they were often ‘manipulated’. They admitted they had to tacitly accept it. A ‘red line’ remained impassable. Although the population was partly empowered by having its say in some local affairs, it was far from being granted its full legal rights in this regard. The mengist still had sole responsibility for global policy and its main modalities in all fields, and the power to appoint and fire anybody from what it considered key posts. This could not be and was not questioned. The fear that officials would revive their authoritarian and arbitrary conduct against anyone who crossed this line was is still strong enough to prevent any such transgression.

The ‘kebele manager’

The appointment of the ‘kebele manager’Footnote ⁴¹ was aimed at offsetting the deficiencies of the local authorities and civil servants. But its role is even more important. Its Amharic denomination, kebele sraaskiadj, means something like ‘the one who directs the work of the kebele’. The first mission of the manager was to relieve the Cabinet members from secretarial tasks, so that they could devote more time to their own farming activities.Footnote ⁴² Therefore the manager plays, as he said, the role of a ‘super-secretary’ of the Cabinet and participates in its meetings.

To ‘implement good governance’, he acts as a mediator between the people and the local officials, pushing, as he said, ‘to solve the problems of the people’ and advising the officials how to do it ‘in a lawful way’. He claimed that his capacity to play this role relied not on institutionalised direct authority, but on his duty to refer to his superiors any ‘misconduct’ he hadn't been able to correct despite having already warned the offenders. The local officials ‘cannot hide their mistakes any more’, assessed the manager. This threat was so powerful that he stated he never had to enforce it. At least a dozen people were queuing up when he opened his office, to complain and/or to submit a whole range of requests to him in order to register or speed up the solution to any minor problem, the most common being neighbourhood conflicts, but also including some connected with development activities.

His third duty also gives him a key role in this domain. As he said, he must ‘boost’ the ‘development groups’Footnote ⁴³ of each gott, mainly by encouraging, supporting and checking their work. With the kebele chairman, he co-chairs the ‘development committee’ of the kebele, which lies at the top of these groups. He ‘prepares’ the annual Kebele Plan and every three years the Kebele Strategic Plan, which sets the targets for education, health and agriculture, and includes the contributions of the development agents, health agents and teachers. He also ‘certifies’ all reports they address to a higher authority.

The kebele chairman claimed that the manager worked under his authority. The latter denied this, saying that although he was ‘accountable to the chairman for development affairs’, he was ‘accountable only to the district administrator for all administrative affairs’. In fact, this mix of functions of impulsion, management, control and even watchdog proved that the main authority in the kebele had shifted from the first to the second, from a farmer who was only a part-time official to a full-time executive, from the elected representative of the population and the symbol of a powerful local democracy, if only formally, to a middle-ranking civil servant hired by the state and, of course, by the EPRDF to which he belonged. As the chairman of the EPRDF branch of the kebele stated, ‘the double line of authority, one of the Peasants Association, one of the party, conflicted with each other, and it must be solved’. One cannot refrain from conjuring up the TPLF position of ‘political commissar’ (hifli hizbi) during the war against the Derg (Aregawi Reference Aregawi2009: 229).Footnote ⁴⁴

To ‘order’ versus to ‘advise’

The development agents who claimed they were assigned to ‘educate’, or more frankly to ‘order’, the people to use the technologies, the inputs and the methods they were instructed to spread asserted after 2005 that they could only ‘advise’ people and only upon request. The farmers rarely pointed out what they had complained about: discriminatory practices for access to the state's support services. Now, they said, anybody who could pay had access. Compulsory ‘voluntary’ contributions and ‘social work’ also ended. Each farmer could devote himself entirely to his plot as he liked. For the first time in centuries, his sole obligation to the mengist was to pay his standard taxes. The daily life of the farmers was no longer disrupted by a whole range of duties imposed from above. For the first time, the peasant, the gebar, was not a gebar any more, which literally means ‘he who is subjected to the drudgery of labour/statute labour’, first by his lord and later by the mengist. For the first time, farmers were no longer ‘the suppliers of the fruits of their toil to an all encompassing and insatiable state’ (Aspen Reference Aspen, Zewde and Pausewang2002: 61).

However, the mengist's right to act arbitrarily remained so deeply entrenched in the population's minds that for the great majority, the age-old rule dictating ‘you must obey if you want to survive’ was still internalised. For example, the official ‘advice’ to build toilets – largely regarded as useless – was widely put into practice, mostly for fear of a punishment that never seemed to be applied.

‘Model’ farmers and ‘acha’ farmers

In addition to being authoritarian, this approach was also undifferentiated in the sense that it was uniformly imposed on the whole population, i.e. any adult, male or female, member of the PA. After this reform, public development support concentrated on enhancing the entrepreneurial skills of the small group of model farmers. In addition to their own financial capacities, which were well above the average, the model farmers had a privileged if not exclusive access to the state's services, including the training given by the development agents. Their number also increased from the equivalent of two-and-a-half to five full-time agents, and an ‘expert’ was appointed at the cooperative.

In return, the model farmers were supposed to spread their know-how to the mass of the acha farmers, so as ‘to balance’ their respective progress. But since this policy was launched about three years ago, interviews found that fewer than a tenth of acha farmers benefited at least once from such advice. In the end, they were now simply left to their fate, whereas before the implementation of this policy they had been considered the lever of rural development.

In their own gotts, the model farmers were the cornerstones of the ‘development groups’. They comprised between fifteen and twenty farmers, and everybody was supposed to join one of the kebele's groups of his gott. Before 2005, any common development undertaking had generally been authoritatively decided by the kebele leadership and then managed by it, after a formal approval by an assembly of the PA. After the post-election changes, the groups were supposed to be more autonomous so as to come as close as possible to the people's needs and capacities. In fact, they still served as a driving belt to carry out occasional development activities decided by kebele officials, who also appointed their chairman and secretary. But some farmers used their groups as a tool to undertake a given collective task on their own initiative, the most common being digging wells. Usually, local authorities supported it, providing and paying for equipment, while the group's members supplied the work. But only these suppliers were then entitled to use the facilities constructed.

‘Kulaks’ and ‘proletarians’

Between half and two thirds of the peasants – including the landless – are usually net buyers of food. Their number and the quantity of food that they had to buy increased after the fall in agricultural production because of inadequate rainfall and also inflation in the price of fertilisers.Footnote ⁵⁰ But their real cash income, gained mainly as day labourers, also fell, due to inflation and lower employment opportunities. They then turned to their usual coping mechanisms. An extrapolation based on the interviewees showed that at least three quarters of the farmers were obliged to borrow to feed themselves. In one gott, 90% of the household heads were concerned.

After having exhausted the possibility of borrowing from credit institutions, neighbours or family members, at least half of the farmers had to turn to merchants and/or the richest farmers as a last resort. All the merchants interviewed claimed that they had lent without any interest on ‘humanitarian grounds’. All the farmers interviewed stated that the interest rate on these loans was between 10% and 15% per month, and for one quintal of maize or sorghum they owed they had to repay with one quintal of teff a couple of months later, which was 60% more expensive. However, after two years of bad harvests, the most vulnerable farmers were so indebted that they could not repay. Their only solution was to rent part of their land to a farmer rich enough to pay immediately in cash.Footnote ⁵¹ With even less land, these farmers entered a vicious circle. In the end, they would inevitably join the group of the young landless – about 15% of the farming populationFootnote ⁵² – and swell the ranks of a growing rural lumpen proletariat.

The ‘rich’ farmers who could sell surpluses even during ‘bad’ years took full advantage of this process. Their real purchasing power increased during those years because inflation was higher for the food they sold than for the commodities or inputs they bought. They also accumulated land with sharecropping agreements.Footnote ⁵³ In the end, some of the ‘rich’ farmers interviewed had increased the area of land they cultivated five-fold since 1997. ‘We are poorer year after year’, complained the majority. ‘We are now businessmen’, claimed a small minority, always very proud to prove they were becoming rich.Footnote ⁵⁴ In a community that was largely egalitarian between the land reform of 1975Footnote ⁵⁵ and the land redistribution of 1997, conjunctural factors – inadequate rains and inflation – stepped up the structural factors leading to its polarisation, with a rising fringe of ‘kulaks’ at the top and an accelerating proletarisation of a large part of the poorest peasants, as was unanimously confirmed by all local officials interviewed. This situation led to a paradox: the agricultural output of the kebele could increase, but so could the number of people suffering from acute food shortages.

‘In the hands of God’

When asked: ‘Has anything changed for you’ since the 2005 elections? ‘Has the mengist changed?’, at least two thirds of the interviewees at first responded ‘No.’ Their daily struggle to survive was such a priority and intense focus that they considered everything else, including the end of compulsory social work and contributions, as only negligible. When pressed for possible positive changes, they eventually mention: ‘If we go to the administration office, they rapidly solve our problems’, or: ‘Our rights are more respected’, always offering the same evidence: ‘those who are put in jail are not beaten, and are rapidly presented to a judge’. A few interviewees also mentioned an improvement in safety in the area. Two policemen were appointed to the kebele after the elections. But the overall tone remained hopeless and resigned. ‘We are poorer and poorer’, many claimed. They said that the fertility of their land has decreased, and they think inflation has been a ‘punishment’, ‘worse than being put in jail’, a result of the kebele not having ‘voted correctly’.

In response to the question about the utility of the 2005 elections, half of this group said they were ‘useless’ because they didn't bring forth ‘a better mengist’. Many respondents stated, ‘We faced the worst hunger for years, but the mengist didn't do anything.’Footnote ⁵⁶ The rest of the interviewees said they ‘didn't know’. Finally, most interviewees said they had no expectations regarding the mengist. As always, they referred to something like: ‘our future depends on the rains’, so it is only ‘in the hands of God’.

‘The proposals of the opposition are now fulfilled’

The farmer elite unanimously welcomed the end of the drudgeries and the repeated meetings. ‘At last we only work for ourselves!’ This elite highlighted their new empowerment for farming and the progress towards ‘good governance’. To sum up, they considered enrichment as the major change: they now had growing capacities to extend their land holdings, and increased state support. This upper group considered the outcome of the 2005 elections useless because it was convinced the opposition's victory ‘has been stolen’. It deplored some basic democratic rights that were still not respected. However, the elections were also ‘useful’ because, as the chairman of the local party branch stated, ‘all these good changes were the direct result of the elections’, or, as a key opponent summarised without hiding his great satisfaction, because ‘the proposals of the opposition are now fulfilled’.

A heavy legacy

This flashback entirely contradicted the post-2005 strategy, which constantly emphasised ‘the rule of law’ and ‘good governance’ as a must.Footnote ⁶¹ It also seemed completely irrational. It broke an imposed but tacitly accepted modus vivendi, resulting in a revival of the major grievances of this leading farmers' group. It also contradicted the previous aim of giving elbow room for initiative to these agricultural ‘entrepreneurs’.

It was also inexplicable from the perspective that the regime could have made these entrepreneurs its new constituency. The explanation of the dramatic change in the size of the ruling party's membership and in the profile of the newcomers cannot be based on the accessible official documents. But it is obvious that the EPRDF's traditional core constituency – the ‘poor farmers’ – largely turned away from it for the 2005 election and that the traditional rural elite decisively influenced its electoral position. This upper group was incorporated into the party, appointed as the new local representatives in the kebele Councils, and assigned as the driving force behind the new rural development strategy with the full support of the state's services. At the same time, the mass of the subsistence farmers was politically marginalised and economically left to its fate. All these facts support a highly plausible hypothesis that the EPRDF was looking to shift from its former constituency to a new one.

There are three possible explanations, which are probably far from entirely adequate, for this backlash. The first stems from the authoritarianism of the centuries-old Abyssinian culture. The full control of the population – which the EPRDF had – was not enough. A heavy yoke must also hang over everybody, as if everybody should be not only strictly controlled but also subordinated, so as to make it difficult to voice even the smallest difference of opinion. The second explanation lies in the ideological rigidity of the TPLF, inherited from its Leninist stance during its ‘liberation war’: only the leadership – the ‘vanguard’ – knows what the ‘masses’ must do for their own benefit, and is thus entitled to order it. This explanation may be a consequence of the main hidden weakness of the regime. It lacks true popular support. It probably dreads that it would quickly lose the control of even the beginning of a democratisation process. Thus, its authoritarianism is consubstantial with its durability. Third, this weakness may nurture a constant fear, which in turn leads it to over-react, with the risk of sparking off infuriated behaviour and reducing its support even more.

The struggle for the beginning of an empowerment?

The delay between these events and the last brief survey less than two months later was too short to fully assess their impact. Nevertheless, some observations may be made. First, this backlash did not change the positions of the two main farmer groups regarding the elections to be held three months later. Even before it, all the informants explained: ‘the 2005 elections taught us’, in particular the fear of being repressed in case of ‘misconduct’, and ‘whatever the people vote, the EPRDF wins’. The elected opponents in 2005 have been completely absent and unable to give the slightest support. The farmers who expressed an opinion in this regard unanimously predicted that the 2010 elections would be a non-event, because the total victory of the EPRDF already seemed certain to them.

Most subsistence farmers, obsessed by their survival, still considered that they were incompetent and not entitled to have a say in politics. They did not ‘expect anything from this mengist’, and/or were ‘against it because it doesn't help us’, but nor did they expect anything better from an alternative regime. Moreover, many of them were convinced that the community has been ‘punished for its bad voting’ in 2005.Footnote ⁶² They also believed the authorities have unknown means of tracing anybody's vote. Finally, the birokrasi would not play the role of opinion leader as it did in 2005.

The birokrasi's party membership puts it in an awkward position if it seeks to become vocal. ‘We remain strong opponents, but only in the remotest corner of our backyard.’ Their 1997 land dispossession was still felt as an unforgivable injustice. They continued to insist on basic democratic rights, but emphasised a completely new topic at the forefront: the ‘tribalism’ of the mengist or the ‘discrimination against the Amhara’, as they called it.Footnote ⁶³ This had previously very seldom surfaced, probably partly because all local officials are non-Tigrean, and mainly because the opponents had more immediate and tangible grievances to express first.

The authorities' response has not silenced these critics.Footnote ⁶⁴ The birokrasi, still at the forefront of the opposition, said it would never campaign because it was afraid of retaliation and because it thought its involvement would be completely hopeless. It was convinced that the sole registered opposition candidates would be secretly appointed by the ruling power so as to make the election look competitive.Footnote ⁶⁵ Thus, they anticipated expressing their opposition through the only remaining means: a blank or null vote.

‘We are back to pre-2005’, they repeated. It is certain that full subordination and heavy drudgeries have become the rule again. But demand of the right to be empowered, at least to cultivate one's farm and to have a say in local management, has spread in a growing number of minds. It has even started to concretise. The authorities could impose their latest decisions in December 2009, but they were forced to openly violate their own rules when they faced a public contestation to respect people's legal rights. A small group of determined farmers went so far as to self-organise alternative development activities and to attract their neighbours to work with them instead of working on the compulsory state development programmes.Footnote ⁶⁶ This was unthinkable some years ago. Is this a starting point for further empowerment, or will it end with the definite end of this interlude?