Weyane’s Malicious Practices and Bantustanization of Ethiopia

Weyane Police Force attacking football spectators in Addis Ababa

Weyane’s Malicious Practices and Bantustanization of Ethiopia

By Bereket Kidane,

It was revealed last month that not only does Weyane jam satellite broadcasts of its neighbors in a deliberate act of vandalism causing great outage and disruptions to African and Middle Eastern television audiences, the minority regime has also hired and trained internet bloggers to harass and troll Eritrean websites as well as Ethiopian ones that are opposed to its rule. If you have ever wondered why there has been a recent explosion of obnoxious Tigrayans posing as Eritreans and writing a lot of nonsense about Eritrea and its government, there is your answer. These trolls Weyane hired hang around Eritrean websites around the clock to defame, harass and blacken Eritrea’s image on the web.

We have come to expect such kind of obnoxious behavior from Weyane but it must know that it isn’t going to help it change its predicament or the fact that it is sitting on barrel of dynamite, ready to explode at any moment.  Its invasion of Eritrea under the pretext of a border war and impossible dream of setting-up “Greater Tigray” having failed, Weyane and Tigrayans are truly in a pickle these days. Hated both in Ethiopia and Eritrea, one can say that they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.  Not a good place to be.

The bantustanization and ethnic federalism it cynically and maliciously introduced to the Ethiopian polity to help it divide-and-rule the country has now come full circle to bite it in the rear-end.  A recent city expansion plan this summer touched off a wave of violence lasting days among the Oromos because it was seen as encroaching on their “Kilil.” There is now a generation of Ethiopians who grew-up thinking of themselves in ethnic terms – not as Ethiopians but as Sidamas, Welaytas, Hadiyas, Kemabatas, Oromos, Somalis…etc. The bantustanization of Ethiopia under TPLF is now complete but it will not necessarily accrue to Weyane’s or Tigrayans’ benefit in the long-term.

Weyane tries to hoodwink the public and international media by claiming that it is presiding a growing economy.  This too is a fallacy.  Regional administrators of the ethnic kilils had recently spoken about how they are routinely pressured to falsify growth rates in their kilils and report exaggerated figures to the authorities in Addis.  There is a lot of aid money flowing into Ethiopia as Ethiopia has always been a poster child for “International aid” but much of it lines up the pockets of Weyane officials and rarely trickles down to the average Ethiopian to improve his or her lot in life.

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