Ethiopia's Nobel Peace Prize-winning leader in SA to strengthen relations and engage with Ethiopia's diaspora

Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is in electioneering mode on his official visit to South Africa this weekend – the first by an Ethiopian prime minister since South Africa became a democracy in 1994.

Abiy, who won the world’s most prestigious peace prize last year for patching up a decades-old quarrel with Ethiopia’s neighbour Eritrea and for liberalising Ethiopia’s own politics, was expected to meet President Cyril Ramaphosa officially at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Sunday, 12 January. They were to discuss boosting economic and political ties between the two countries as well as cooperating in the work of the African Union (AU) which is based in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Ramaphosa will take over the rotating chair of the AU there at the organisation’s annual summit early next month.

It is likely that Abiy will also want to discuss the plight of the large Ethiopian community living in South Africa which has occasionally been targeted in the many outbursts of xenophobic violence in this country, including a few last year.

“We also salute the current leaders, and President Cyril Ramaphosa, for keeping strong the democratic and progressive vision that Madiba produced. I have no doubt that under the leadership of the ANC, South Africa will continue to be a more equitable, wealthier, healthier, and more tolerant and hopeful nation that inspires the rest of Africa,” he said.

He recalled Nelson Mandela travelling to Ethiopia for three months in 1962 to undergo military training, using an Ethiopian passport in the name of David Motsamayi.

“In his autobiography, Madiba speaks fondly about Ethiopia as a country that inspired him to continue his struggle against apartheid,” the African News Agency (ANA) reported Abiy as saying.

He added that Mandela relinquishing the South African presidency after one term in office was “so rare” in Africa that it served as an example to the current crop of the continent’s leaders.

Ramaphosa said in announcing Abiy’s visit that the two leaders would discuss mutual national development, regional and continental issues, and international developments.

“The visit will also explore potential areas of trade and investment for the benefit of both countries in industries such as telecommunications, road infrastructure, mining, agro-processing and manufacturing,” the statement read.

It also noted that the AU’s theme for 2020 while South Africa will be chairing the organisation, will be: “Silencing the Guns, Creating Conducive Conditions for Africa’s Development.”

This theme would provide an opportunity for the two leaders to discuss peace, security and development.

“The leaders will also explore ways to advance the AU’s visionary and developmental Agenda 2063 and to enhance the two countries’ strategic cooperation in campaigning for the reform of the multilateral institutions.”

Ethiopia’s ambassador to South Africa, Shiferaw Menbacho told journalists on Friday, 10 January that the main purpose of Abiy’s visit was to cement a strategic partnership between the two countries, according to the Daily News. Menbacho said Ethiopia and South Africa wanted to send a message to Africa that it must invest in peace-building.

Abiy won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize in part for his peace mediation efforts in Sudan, and he and Ramaphosa are expected to join forces to tackle some of the still-festering conflicts on the continent.

Menbacho also said a lot more needed to be done to boost trade between Ethiopia and South Africa, which currently stood at only $250-million a year both ways. He said 28 South Africans companies were already invested in Ethiopia while another 58 had applied to invest.

He also suggested the potential for increasing tourism between the two countries was large as Ethiopian Airways already has three flights a day to Johannesburg and one to Cape Town, the Daily News reported.

However, South African officials believe one of Abiy’s main aims in visiting South Africa is to drum up political support from the large Ethiopian diaspora here to help him win a new mandate from his country’s electorate in elections this year, widely expected to take place in May.

The Ethiopian embassy has hired Johannesburg’s Wanders Stadium – which can accommodate 34,000 people – for Abiy’s “private” meeting with his compatriots on 12 January, so the embassy is clearly expecting a big crowd to meet the charismatic leader. Pretoria does not know the size of the Ethiopian community in South Africa – “because so many of them are undocumented” – but believes it recently jumped to the third largest diaspora in the world after Germany and the US.

Pretoria is clearly not buying into any sort of hero-worship though. Official sources told Daily Maverick that the Ethiopian government had asked for Ramaphosa to address Abiy’s rally and also for Ramaphosa to meet him at the airport when he arrived. Ramaphosa declined both requests “as he never joins foreign leaders in addressing their diasporas in South Africa. Nor does he personally meet visiting heads of state at the airport”, one official said.

Pretoria believes the Ethiopian government hoped that a joint appearance at the rally with the South African president would have provided a great photo opportunity for Abiy on the election trail – as would Ramaphosa personally greeting him at the airport.

Abiy certainly needs all the help he can get in his election campaign. Though his peace initiatives in his region and his liberal reforms at home have won him many plaudits internationally, and also many at home, they have also caused major problems for him in Ethiopia. Releasing scores of political prisoners, unbanning political parties and otherwise freeing up political activity, has also unleashed long-suppressed nationalist tendencies among the country’s many ethnic groups.

These have led to many clashes between groups and also with the government, including the assassination of the governor of Amhara federal state by the head of the state’s security services and of the chief of the national defence force on the same day last year.

Ethiopia has been governed for 29 years by the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Party (EPRDF), a coalition of parties each representing one of the country’s main ethnic groups, which former prime minister Meles Zenawi established to topple Hailemariam Mengistu’s brutal Marxist dictatorship in 1991. Meles also created an ethnic federation in which the different ethnic groups governed their own semi-autonomous ethnic regions, while together running the federal state from Addis Ababa.

Though the EPRDF served the country quite well for over two decades, it has begun to come apart as the interests of its component ethnic nationalities diverge. Last year, Abiy established a new party, the Prosperity Party in an effort to go beyond ethnic nationalism and to weld Ethiopia into a more unitary state.

In doing so, he is taking a gamble that he can win support from across all ethnic groups because many of even his own Omoro people are unhappy with him for denying them their turn at the trough of power and patronage, while other ethnicities are suspicious that he will do precisely that. Meles’ Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front, which dominated Ethiopia’s politics for most years of the EPRDF’s rule, is particularly upset about losing that dominance recently and refused to join Abiy’s Prosperity Party.

Pretoria also believes that the Ethiopian diaspora in South Africa – as elsewhere – is important to the Ethiopian government because of the large sums of money it remits to Ethiopia. There are even suspicions that the Addis Ababa government deliberately encourages its citizens to go abroad so as to be able to provide such remittances.

Some South African officials hope that if Abiy does bring up the awkward subject of xenophobia, Ramaphosa will suggest to him that their two governments should work together more closely to stem the flow of illegal Ethiopians immigrants to South Africa. They believe many Ethiopians are being illegally smuggled into South Africa by criminal networks. DM