Seriously, we have put up with quite a bit from this dictatorship in Ethiopia! Economic stagnation. Food crisis. Uncontrollable Inflation. Political prisoners. Intellectual strangulation. Decrepit education system. But the current arrest of musician and man about town, Tewodros Kassahun, popularly known as Teddy Afro, has us at our wits end. Is nothing sacred? First they came for the politicians, then they came for the lawyers and now they are coming for our artists. Must the hot, smart boys suffer along with the rest of us mortals?
The veracity of the accusations against him is hard to swallow. After all this is the same state apparatus which not too long ago accused journalists and human rights defenders of genocide—which would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragically disrespectful to victims of genocide worldwide. The artist stands accused of a hit and run in which the victim died. His real crime however, is not genuflecting to the powers of the tyrannical regime.
Teddy Afro’s popularity among progressive pro human rights Ethiopians is well noted. The antagonism of the regime is also inevitable—they detest anything that is naturally beautiful and gravitate towards the profoundly artificial. It is therefore not surprising that on May 5, 2008, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that an Ethiopian Deputy Editor and two staff writers of the monthly Enku, were arrested in connection with the publication of a cover story on our Teddy Afro. The newspapers, with treasonous materials such as “interviews with [Teddy’s] lawyer and fans,” were confiscated by the police. The supremely important head of the Ethiopian Information Ministry (our country’s Orwellian Ministry of Truth) confirmed the right of the police to “intervene if there are any problems with “content.” Bravo to the supporters of the regime! We feel much safer and smarter knowing that the information we received has been initially culled and properly vetted by the police.
So it is from some of these junta apparatchiks that one can hear the cries for justice for the young man allegedly killed by Teddy Afro and for accountability for the accused artist. Suddenly everyone is an advocate for retribution. Oh that poor boy, they say of the victim. Yes, it is tragic as is any loss of life. Yet those who are most fervently calling for the electric chair in this case, also happen to be the most ardent supporters of the regime. One would be hard pressed to find these same people calling for justice when the government’s security forces mowed down Ethiopians in broad daylight.
Let us by all means prosecute those pesky drunk drivers! What a blight they are on our otherwise pristine existence! What? You can’t afford Teff? You don’t know how to make your meager salary stretch? Well. A government that is failing to feed its own people—that is just economics! We are somehow expected to railroad Teddy to prison for an alleged hit and run but the crimes of Meles and his henchmen against 80 million Ethiopians go unanswered.
Jaded as we are, our first instinct was to think something much more sinister was afoot! Is the Meles regime rounding up eligible young bachelors and locking them up? Do we now have to withstand our diminished wages along with the dwindling prospects of a date with a talented artist? As if life isn’t depressing enough, must they lock up the good-looking boys? Our survey regarding our theory of Teddy’s arrest proved inconclusive. It seems that although the regime has been imprisoning young men en masse for some years, it is not the intent but simply the outcome that the number of free, eligible, good-looking men has dwindled.
Our protest is not against accountability but rather against selective prosecution and implementation of laws. Our opposition is to the silencing of artists whose work is deemed contrary to the interests of the regime.
Revolutionary artists are raconteurs of a people’s suffering, their hopes and their work for change. Some have already written about Teddy and his inspiration, Bob Marley. Before he was co-opted by corporations, hipsters and those unfamiliar with history but enraptured with reggae, Marley promoted African independence through his cri de coeur against white colonial rule in his song “Zimbabwe.” He was a protest musician. South Africa’s Anti Apartheid movement was accompanied by the melodies of Miriam Makeba, Mbgeni Ngema and Vuyisile Mini. In North America, author James Baldwin penned the angst of the Black population while chanteuse Nina Simone belted out tunes of rage during the black liberation movements of the 1950’s through the 1970s. Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Erykah Badu and dead prez provide the soundtrack of the current struggle for human rights in the United States. Bards, authors and songwriters offer an essential element of movements providing visual and vocal representations of the struggle. Teddy Afro falls squarely within that tradition. He is that tradition.
So as a special homage to artists, whose who have stood and continue to stand in solidarity with movements for freedom, we offer, with profuse apologies to the incomparable Nina Simone, a play on her protest song of the black liberation movement of the 1960’s in the United States, “Mississippi Goddam!”
We have renamed it “Meles Zenawi Goddam!”
The name of this tune is Meles Zenawi Goddam
And I mean every word of it
Ogaden's gotten me so upset
Somalia made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Meles Zenawi Goddam
Ogaden's gotten me so upset
Somalia made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Meles Zenawi Goddam
Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer
Ogaden's gotten me so upset
Somalia's made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Meles Zenawi Goddam
This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet
Security forces on my trail
Political prisoners sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last
Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer
Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Free Elections
"do it slow"
Human rights struggle
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am i doing
I don't know
I don't know
Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Meles Zenawi Goddam
I bet you thought I was kiddin' didn't you
National strikes
School boy cots
They try to say it's an orange revolution plot
All I want is equality
for my cousin my brother my people and me
Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to come and vote without fear
And talking real free won't land me in jail
And I believed it all without fail
Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Freedom of Speech
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Free the prisoners
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know
You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Ogaden
Everybody knows about Somalia
Everybody knows about Meles Zenawi Goddam
That's it!
