Haile Selassie

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1992, the bones of Haile Selassie I were found beneath a concrete slab on the grounds of a palace. The man buried there had been born Tafari Makonnen. He had ruled Ethiopia as emperor from 1930 to 1974.

  How does a ruler of such rank end up under poured concrete? That question is only the last of several. How did a young regent outmaneuver the nobles around him? What did he try to change in his country, and who stood in his way? And how did his name come to be spoken in reverence by communities far beyond Ethiopia?

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• 2. Names And Inheritance

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  The boy was known as Lij Tafari Makonnen, and every part of that name carried meaning. Lij means child, and it marks a young person of noble blood. Tafari means one who is respected or feared. Custom then added his father's name, Makonnen, and his grandfather's name, Woldemikael.

  He received the name Haile Selassie at his infant baptism and took it up again as his regnal name in 1930. In the old liturgical language Ge'ez, Haile means power of, and Selassie means trinity.

  His full style in office began with the words "By the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah." It continued: "His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, King of Kings of Ethiopia, Lord of Lords, Elect of God." The wording follows dynastic tradition. Every monarch had to trace his line to Menelik I. The Kebra Nagast is a national epic from the 14th century. It names Menelik as the son of King Solomon, of the tenth century BCE, and the Queen of Sheba. The Solomonic dynasty itself traced its founding to Emperor Yekuno Amlak in 1270.

  At thirteen, on the 1st of November 1905, his father appointed him Dejazmatch of Gara Mulatta, a region some 20 miles southwest of Harar. The rank is roughly that of a count. In 1917 he was crowned Le'ul-Ras and became known as Ras Tafari Makonnen. Ras means head and is comparable to a duke. The new title Le'ul-Ras had replaced the older office of Ras Bitwoded, which made it the equal of a royal duke. When the throne finally came to him, the title was Negusa Nagast, literally King of Kings, rendered in English as Emperor.

  Ethiopians called him many other things. Janhoy means His Majesty. Talaqu Meri means Great Leader. Abba Tekel, Father of Tekel, was his horse name. Rastafari later added Jah, Jah Jah, Jah Rastafari, and HIM, short for His Imperial Majesty.

  Ejersa Goro, a village in the Hararghe province, is where he was born on the 23rd of July 1892. His mother, Woizero Yeshimebet Ali Abba Jifar, was of Oromo descent on her father's side and Silte heritage on her mother's. Her own father, Dejazmach Ali Abba Jifar, was a ruling chief from Were Ilu in Wollo.

  His father, Ras Makonnen Wolde Mikael, was Amhara through his mother, though his paternal lineage remains disputed. Makonnen served as a general in the First Italo-Ethiopian War and played a key role at the Battle of Adwa. The royal claim ran through Tafari's paternal grandmother, Woizero Tenagnework Sahle Selassie, an aunt of Emperor Menelik II. Through her, Tafari claimed direct descent from Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, and from King Solomon.

  Makonnen arranged lessons in Harar for Tafari and his first cousin, Imru Haile Selassie. Their teachers were Abba Samuel Wolde Kahin, an Ethiopian Capuchin friar, and Dr. Vitalien, a surgeon from Guadeloupe. Makonnen died at Kulibi in 1906. That year the teenager took the titular governorship of Selale, a realm of marginal importance that left him free to keep studying. In 1907 he was given charge of part of Sidamo province.

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• 3. Sharing The Throne

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  Harar came under Tafari's governance in 1910 or 1911, and on the 3rd of August 1911 he married Menen Asfaw of Ambassel. She was 22 and he was 19. Menen had already married two noblemen. Tafari had one earlier wife, Woizero Altayech, and a daughter, Princess Romanework, though the first marriage is only alleged. Menen was a niece of the heir to the throne, Lij Iyasu, so the match may have been political. The couple's family said it was freely chosen. It lasted 50 years, and Selassie called his wife a "woman without any malice whatsoever".

  Lij Iyasu was the designated but uncrowned emperor from 1913 to 1916. His scandalous behaviour and disrespect toward the court nobles of his grandfather, Menelik II, made enemies. His flirtation with Islam was treated as treason by the Orthodox Christian leadership. Conservatives such as Fitawrari Habte Giyorgis, Menelik's longtime Minister of War, joined the movement against him. They preferred Tafari because both progressives and conservatives would back him.

  Iyasu was deposed on the 27th of September 1916. Menelik's daughter became Empress Zewditu, and Tafari became heir apparent, Crown Prince, and Regent Plenipotentiary. The arrangement was simple to state. Zewditu would govern, and Tafari would administer.

  Iyasu slipped into the Ogaden Desert on the 8th of October. His father, Negus Mikael of Wollo, raised an army. On the 27th of October it met forces loyal to Zewditu under Habte Giyorgis at the Battle of Segale, where Mikael was defeated and captured. Iyasu hid for about five years. Gugsa Araya Selassie took him into custody on the 11th of January 1921.

  Zewditu was crowned in February 1917, pledging to rule justly through her regent. She was no mere figurehead. She arbitrated between rival factions, so the last word was hers. Yet Tafari carried the daily burden, and at first his hand was weak. His private army was poorly equipped and his finances thin. Over time the Empress turned to prayer and fasting, and her official duties shrank while his influence grew.

  The old order pushed back in 1928. Dejazmach Balcha Safo, governor of coffee-rich Sidamo, had been sending the capital less revenue than he earned. Tafari recalled him, and the old man arrived in Addis Ababa with a large army and paid homage to the Empress while snubbing the regent. On the 18th of February, Ras Kassa Haile Darge bought off Balcha Safo's soldiers, and Birru Wolde Gabriel replaced him. The episode emboldened Zewditu. She sought a treason trial for Tafari over his friendly dealings with Italy. These included a 20-year peace accord signed on the 2nd of August.

  In September palace reactionaries made a last attempt to remove Tafari. The source calls it tragic in its origins and comic in its end. The ringleaders took refuge in Menelik's mausoleum. Tafari's troops surrounded them, then found themselves surrounded by Zewditu's personal guard. More khaki-clad soldiers arrived, and their better arms decided the matter. The police and the public stayed with Tafari. On the 7th of October 1928 the Empress crowned him Negus, meaning King.

  That crowning outraged conservatives. Two monarchs had never ruled from one location in Ethiopian history, even with one a vassal. Tafari had been given no regional kingdom to go off to. Zewditu's husband, Ras Gugsa Welle, the governor of Begemder, raised an army in early 1930 and marched from Gondar toward Addis Ababa. Forces loyal to Tafari met him on the 31st of March 1930 at the Battle of Anchem, and Gugsa Welle was killed.

  News of the defeat had barely spread when the Empress died on the 2nd of April. Rumours said she was poisoned, or died of shock. Later research found paratyphoid fever and complications of diabetes. Orthodox clergy had imposed strict Lenten rules on her diet against her physicians' advice.

  Tafari was crowned on the 2nd of November 1930 at the Cathedral of St. George in Addis Ababa. By all accounts it was a splendid affair. Guests included the Duke of Gloucester, a son of King George V, and Marshal Louis Franchet d'Espèrey of France. The Prince of Udine represented King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. Herman Murray Jacoby came as the personal representative of US President Herbert Hoover. Envoys arrived from Egypt, Turkey, Sweden, Belgium, and Japan. The British author Evelyn Waugh wrote a report, and the American lecturer Burton Holmes made the only known film of the event. One American newspaper put the cost above $3,000,000. The Emperor even sent a gold-encased Bible to an American bishop who had prayed for him but had not attended.

  On the 16th of July 1931 Ethiopia received its first written constitution, creating a bicameral legislature. It kept power with the nobility but set democratic standards among them. The text would prevail "until the people are in a position to elect themselves." It also limited the succession to Selassie's own descendants. That shut out other princes, including those of Tigrai and his loyal cousin Ras Kassa Haile Darge. In 1932 the Sultanate of Jimma was formally absorbed into Ethiopia after the death of Sultan Abba Jifar II. In October 1935 Italian troops would cross the border.

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• 4. War And Exile

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  Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime wanted revenge. Italy had lost the First Italo-Abyssinian War, and Fascists hoped to wipe out the humiliation of Adwa. A conquest could also strengthen fascism's imperial rhetoric. Ethiopia would form a bridge between Italian Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. Membership in the League of Nations did not deter the Italians. A scandal broke when the Hoare-Laval Pact revealed that Ethiopia's supposed League allies were scheming to appease Italy.

  After the Welwel Incident of the 5th of December 1934, Selassie joined his northern armies and set up headquarters at Desse in Wollo. He ordered general mobilisation on the 3rd of October 1935. On the 19th of October he gave detailed orders to his commander-in-chief, Ras Kassa. The men were to choose hidden positions, save ammunition, and avoid conspicuous clothing for fear of air attack. The Italians fielded a modern army with a large air force. They also used chemical weapons throughout the conflict, even striking Red Cross field hospitals.

  The invasion began in early October 1935, and by November it had slowed. Selassie's northern armies launched the Christmas Offensive and pushed the Italians back in places. In early 1936 the First Battle of Tembien halted that advance. Then came the destruction of the northern armies at Amba Aradam, the Second Battle of Tembien, and Shire. Selassie led the last army on the northern front himself. He counterattacked on the 31st of March 1936 at Maychew in southern Tigray, and his army was beaten and retreated in disarray. Italian aircraft attacked the withdrawal, while Raya and Azebo tribesmen, armed and paid by the Italians, joined from the ground. Many Ethiopian troops were untrained and carried obsolete rifles.

  Before returning to the capital, Selassie made a solitary pilgrimage to the churches of Lalibela, at considerable risk of capture. A stormy council of state agreed that Addis Ababa could not be held. The government would move to the southern town of Gore. Empress Menen and the imperial family were to leave at once for French Somaliland and then Jerusalem.

  The harder question was whether the Emperor should go too. Several participants, among them the nobleman Blatta Tekle Wolde Hawariat, strenuously objected to a monarch fleeing an invader. The decision was that he would take the case of Ethiopia to the League of Nations at Geneva. He named his cousin Ras Imru Haile Selassie as Prince Regent and left for French Somaliland on the 2nd of May 1936.

  On the 5th of May Marshal Pietro Badoglio led Italian troops into Addis Ababa. Mussolini declared Ethiopia an Italian province, and Victor Emmanuel III was proclaimed its emperor. The exiles had sailed the previous day on the British cruiser HMS Enterprise. They were bound for Haifa and then Jerusalem, where the imperial family kept a residence. The choice of Jerusalem was symbolic, since the Solomonic dynasty claimed descent from the House of David. Selassie later sailed on HMS Capetown to Gibraltar, where he stayed at the Rock Hotel. There he was moved to an ordinary liner, which spared the British government the cost of a state reception.

  On the 12th of May 1936 the League allowed him to address the assembly, and Italy withdrew its delegation in response. Though fluent in French, he spoke in Amharic. He charged that Italy was using chemical weapons on military and civilian targets alike. Time magazine had just named him its "Man of the Year" for 1935, and the speech made him an icon for anti-fascists worldwide. It brought little practical help. The League agreed only to partial sanctions on Italy. In 1937 just six nations refused to recognise the occupation: China, New Zealand, the Soviet Union, the Republic of Spain, Mexico, and the United States.

  From 1936 to 1941 Selassie lived in Bath, England, at Fairfield House, which he bought. The 14-room Victorian house had high walls, and he took morning walks behind them with Kassa Haile Darge. His favourite reading was diplomatic history. In this period he began his autobiography, which ran to 90,000 words. Before Bath he had stayed briefly at Warne's Hotel in Worthing and in Parkside, Wimbledon. He also stayed at the Abbey Hotel in Malvern. There the daughters of court officials attended Clarendon School for Girls, and he worshipped at Holy Trinity Church in Link Top. A blue plaque there was unveiled on the 25th of June 2011, with a Rastafari delegation giving a short address and a drum recital. A bust of him by Hilda Seligman, which stood in Cannizaro Park, became a place of pilgrimage for London's Rastafari community. Protesters destroyed it on the 30th of June 2020.

  His work in exile was to counter Italian propaganda about the resistance and the legality of the occupation. He condemned the desecration of houses of worship and the theft of a 1,600-year-old imperial obelisk. He also condemned atrocities against Ethiopian civilians. Support stayed scarce until Italy joined the war on Germany's side in June 1940. African-American organisations, however, took up the cause. In 1937 his taxi crashed on the way to a Christmas Day radio address to the American people. He fractured his knee and broadcast anyway, linking Christianity and goodwill with the Covenant of the League of Nations.

  Personal loss followed. The Italians executed his sons-in-law, Ras Desta Damtew and Dejazmach Beyene Merid. His daughter Romanework, Beyene Merid's wife, was taken captive with her children and died in Italy in 1941. His daughter Tsehai died in childbirth soon after the restoration of 1942.

  British-led forces coordinated the liberation. Colonel Orde Wingate's Gideon Force, made up chiefly of Ethiopian-backed African and South African colonial troops, was central. On the 18th of January 1941 Selassie crossed from Sudan near the village of Um Iddla. The standard of the Lion of Judah was raised again. Two days later he joined Gideon Force inside Ethiopia. Italy fell to British, Commonwealth, Free French, Free Belgian, and Ethiopian partisan forces. On the 5th of May 1941, exactly five years after the Fascists entered, he walked into Addis Ababa. British Pathé reported it as an emperor returning in triumph to his people. He addressed the crowds and urged them not to repay the atrocities they had suffered. Back home, he gave Fairfield House to the city of Bath as a residence for the aged. In 2019 his grandson unveiled two blue plaques, one at Fairfield and one in Weston-super-Mare.

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• 5. Emperor Abroad

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  Ethiopia's admission to the League of Nations in 1923 came because Ras Tafari promised to eradicate slavery. Every emperor since Tewodros II had issued proclamations against the practice, and none had worked. An estimated 2 million slaves lived in Ethiopia in the early 1930s.

  In 1924 Ras Tafari toured Europe and the Middle East. His stops included Jerusalem, Alexandria, Paris, Luxembourg, Brussels, Amsterdam, Stockholm, London, Geneva, Gibraltar, and Athens. His main goal was access to the sea for Ethiopia. In Paris, the French Foreign Ministry made it clear that this would not happen. Instead, he and his retinue inspected schools, hospitals, factories, and churches.

  He borrowed from European models but stayed wary of European pressure. To guard against economic imperialism, he required that every enterprise have at least partial local ownership. "We need European progress only because we are surrounded by it," he remarked. "That is at once a benefit and a misfortune."

  His entourage included Ras Seyum Mangasha of western Tigray, Ras Hailu Tekle Haymanot of Gojjam, and Ras Mulugeta Yeggazu of Illubabor. Mulugeta had fought at Adwa as a young man, while Seyum and Hailu were sons of generals from that victory. Ras Makonnen Endelkachew and Blattengeta Heruy Welde Selassie also travelled. Crowds greeted the party with fascination. The press made much of its "Oriental Dignity" and "rich, picturesque court dress." The party even brought a pride of lions, which he gave away. Recipients included President Alexandre Millerand and Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré of France, King George V, and the Zoological Garden of Paris. One historian remarked that rarely has a tour inspired so many anecdotes.

  In return for two lions, the United Kingdom handed over the imperial crown of Emperor Tewodros II, for return to Empress Zewditu. General Sir Robert Napier had taken it during the 1868 expedition to Abyssinia. At Jerusalem's Armenian monastery, Tafari adopted 40 orphans who had lost their parents in the Armenian Genocide. They were called Arba Lijoch, "forty children." He arranged their musical education, and they became the imperial brass band.

  After the Second World War, Ethiopia became a charter member of the United Nations. In 1948 the Ogaden, a region disputed with both Italian and British Somaliland, was granted to Ethiopia. Selassie was an outspoken believer in collective security, and he backed that belief with troops. The elite Kagnew Battalion, under General Mulugueta Bulli, joined the American 7th Infantry Division in Korea. It fought with distinction in several major engagements, including the Battle of Pork Chop Hill. In 1960 Ethiopian troops also joined the UN peacekeeping force in the Congo. In 1956 he visited India, where he met Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. They discussed decolonisation in Asia and Africa and cooperation in the economic and education sectors.

  When Britain flooded in 1947, he sent about one thousand pounds. His own people were still recovering from war, he explained, but he had heard of the devastation. In September 1961 he attended the Belgrade summit that is considered the founding conference of the Non-Aligned Movement.

  In May 1963 Selassie was elected the first chairperson of the Organisation of African Unity. He had helped create it, and it set its headquarters in Addis Ababa. Together with Modibo Keïta of Mali, he helped negotiate the Bamako Accords, ending a border conflict between Morocco and Algeria. African socialists such as Kwame Nkrumah dreamed of a "United States of Africa" and spoke in anti-Western terms. Selassie saw that as a threat to his alliances and pushed the group toward moderation. In 1964 he himself floated the idea of a United States of Africa, which Muammar Gaddafi later revived.

  On the 4th of October 1963 he addressed the UN General Assembly. Weeks later, on the 25th of November, he went to Washington for the state funeral of the assassinated John F. Kennedy. He was the only African head of state to attend. He met Lyndon B. Johnson there, and again during an informal visit in 1967. During a 1963 visit he gave an interview to Meet the Press, condemning race-based oppression and urging Pan-African unity. NBC News later ridiculed the trip. The New York Times came to his defence, asking what "civilized purpose" such mockery served.

  His distinctions between wars were careful. He had committed troops to UN-approved operations in Korea and the Congo. Intervention in Indochina he deplored as needless suffering, and he called for the end of the Vietnam War. Still, he praised American civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1967 he opened the Ethiopian Pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal, where other leaders acclaimed him. In 1966 he spent four days in Jordan as a guest of King Hussein and visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

  As the longest-serving head of state, he was often given precedence at gatherings. That included the funerals of Kennedy and Charles de Gaulle, Non-Aligned summits, and the 1971 celebration of 2,500 years of the Persian Empire. In 1970 he visited Italy as a guest of President Giuseppe Saragat, and in Milan he met the banker Giordano Dell'Amore. He also met Pope Paul VI at Vatican City. In October 1971 he went to China. He was the first foreign head of state to meet Mao Zedong after Lin Biao, Mao's designated successor, died in a plane crash in Mongolia.

  Over two decades Ethiopia had received more than 400 million dollars in aid. Of that, 140 million went to the military and 240 million to economic assistance. While he travelled, much of the domestic government rested with Prime Minister Aklilu Habte-Wold.

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• 6. Reform And Resistance

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  On the 27th of August 1942, Selassie confirmed the legal basis for abolishing slavery, which the Italian occupiers had enacted illegally. He imposed severe penalties for slave trading, including death.

  That same year he tried to introduce a progressive tax scheme, and the nobility blocked it. Only a flat tax passed, and in 1951 he agreed to reduce even that. Ethiopia remained "semi-feudal." The nobility and clergy were eager to reclaim their postwar privileges. Where he did win new land taxes, landowners often passed the burden to the peasants.

  In 1966 he tried again, proposing a single progressive income tax that would hit nobles who had dodged most of their taxes. A revolt broke out in Gojjam. It was repressed, but the tax was abandoned. The revolt showed other landowners that defiance worked.

  The church was another front. For centuries its head, the Abuna, had been a bishop chosen by and answerable to the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. In 1942 and 1945 Selassie asked the Coptic Holy Synod to establish the independence of Ethiopian bishops. When refused, he threatened to cut ties. Pope Kyrillos VI finally elevated the Abuna to Patriarch-Catholicos in 1959, though the churches stayed affiliated. Selassie also taxed church lands and ended the clergy's privilege of being tried in their own courts for civil offences. In 1942 Islamic courts were allowed judicial power in Muslim matters.

  In November 1955, during the celebrations of his Silver Jubilee, he introduced a revised constitution. The lower house of parliament became elected, though party politics were not provided for. Critics say it reasserted "the indisputable power of the monarch" and left peasants powerless. Selassie compromised with traditionalists in the nobility and church when practical. He granted autonomy to Afar lands that were hard to control. His reforms against feudalism remained slow and weakened by the bargains he struck with the aristocracy.

  Selassie believed arts could rebuild the country. When Afewerk Tekle left for Europe to gain skills, Selassie addressed him personally, and Tekle later filled works with Ethiopian life. He created an art programme that enrolled artists such as Agegnehu Engida, and he gave a scholarship to Ale Felege Selam. He travelled to Bishoftu to see paintings by Lemma Guya, who painted Ethiopian military aircraft and later joined the Air Force with the Emperor's support. In 1935 he commissioned Ethiopia's first Hager Fikir Theater House, and in 1955 the National Theatre in Addis Ababa. He also wrote an autobiography, "My Life and Ethiopia's Progress." It is widely believed that officials assembled the second volume. The runner Abebe Bikila earned the Star of Ethiopia and the Order of Menelik II after the 1960 Olympics. Selassie also wrote personal letters to athletes such as Mamo Wolde.

  Not everyone gained. In 1948 Harari and Somali Muslims staged a significant rebellion in Harar, and the response was a violent crackdown. Hundreds were arrested and the town was placed under martial law. Many assets and estates were seized, and large numbers of Hararis left. Harar had never received the autonomy that Menelik II promised. The historians Tim Carmicheal and Roman Loimeier hold that Selassie was directly involved in the suppression. According to some sources, late in his administration the Oromo language was banned from education, public speaking, and administration. No law ever criminalised any language, however. His government also relocated many Amhara people into southern Ethiopia.

  Eritrea was a deeper wound. On the 2nd of December 1950 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 390 (V). It federated the former Italian colony with Ethiopia under its own parliament and administration. Britain, the administrator at the time, had suggested splitting Eritrea between Sudan and Ethiopia along religious lines, and the UN and Eritrean parties rejected it. Selassie rejected European attempts to draft a separate constitution and wanted his 1955 constitution to apply in both places. In 1961 the Eritrean War of Independence began, and the federation was dissolved. In 1962 Eritrea's elected parliament voted to become Ethiopia's fourteenth province. The war lasted 30 years, and the Soviet-backed junta that followed Selassie also tried to keep Eritrea by force.

  In 1963 a revolt in Bale grew from peasant anger over taxation under Prime Minister Aklilu Habte-Wold into an insurgency backed by Somalia. Ethiopia declared a state of emergency. With British and American support, the army ended it only after more than six years of fighting, and relations with Siad Barre's Somalia stayed weak.

  On the 13th of December 1960, Selassie was on a state visit to Brazil. The imperial guard staged a coup and briefly proclaimed his elder son, Asfa Wossen, as emperor. The regular army and police crushed it. The plotters lacked broad popular support, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church denounced them. Students and the educated classes backed the effort. It has been described as the moment Ethiopians first questioned the power of the king to rule without the people's consent. The coup pushed Selassie to speed up reform, including land grants to military and police officials and political groups. Student unrest was still a regular feature of Ethiopian life in the 1970s.

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• 7. The Rastafari Devotion

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  Two Time magazine articles on the coronation, one before the event and one after, carried the news to Jamaica. The faith in his divinity that followed began there. The name Rastafari comes from his pre-imperial name, Ras Tafari Makonnen. Followers see him as the messiah who will lead the peoples of Africa and the African diaspora to freedom. They read his titles and Solomonic lineage as confirmation. To them, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah and King of Kings point to the return of the messiah in the Book of Revelation.

  In 1961 the Jamaican government sent a delegation of Rastafari and non-Rastafari leaders to Ethiopia to discuss repatriation. Selassie answered them. "Tell the Brethren to be not dismayed, I personally will give my assistance in the matter of repatriation."

  On the 21st of April 1966 he visited Jamaica. About one hundred thousand Rastafari went to Palisadoes Airport in Kingston to greet him. Spliffs and chalices were smoked openly, and a haze of ganja smoke drifted through the air. The crowd rushed the tarmac, and the Emperor could not come down the steps. He withdrew into the plane. Jamaican authorities had to ask a well-known Rasta leader, Ras Mortimer Planno, to climb the steps and negotiate his descent. Scholars hold this day to be a turning point for the movement. Rastafari commemorate it as Grounation Day.

  After that day, the authorities made sure Rastafari representatives attended state functions where the Emperor appeared. Elders won a private audience, where he told them not to emigrate to Ethiopia until they had first liberated the people of Jamaica. The saying became known as "liberation before repatriation." He never rebuked them for believing he was God. He gave the elders gold medallions.

  In October 1969 Michael Manley, then a PNP leader and later Jamaica's prime minister, visited Ethiopia. The Emperor recalled the 1966 welcome with amazement and said he felt he must respect their beliefs. Manley received the Rod of Correction, also called the Rod of Joshua, a gift thought to have helped him win the 1972 election. Rita Marley converted after seeing Selassie in Jamaica, and she claimed she saw a stigmata print on his palm as he waved. Rastafari became far better known worldwide through Bob Marley, whose posthumously released song "Iron Lion Zion" may refer to Selassie.

  In a 1967 interview with Bill McNeil of the CBC, Selassie denied his alleged divinity. Many Rastafari do not read that as a denial, and according to Robert Earl Hood he neither denied nor affirmed it. Back in Ethiopia he sent Archbishop Abuna Yesehaq Mandefro to the Caribbean. By Yesehaq's account, the aim was to draw Rastafari and other West Indians to the Ethiopian church. Some sources say islanders were resentful of the services of their former colonial churches.

  A much earlier gift endures. In 1948 Selassie donated 500 hectares at Shashamane, 250 km south of Addis Ababa, to the Ethiopian World Federation Incorporated. It was for people of African descent who had supported Ethiopia during the war. Numerous Rastafari families settled there and live there as a community today. Local feeling was mixed, since the Rastas settled on traditionally Oromo land.

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• 8. Fall And Burial

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  In the summer of 1958 a famine in Tigray was already two years old, yet people in Addis Ababa knew hardly anything about it. When reports of deaths reached the Ministry of Interior in September 1959, the government disclosed the news at once and asked for contributions. The Emperor personally donated 2,000 tons of relief grain, and the United States sent 32,000 tons. About 100,000 people are estimated to have died before the crisis ended in August 1961. The causes were drought, locusts, hail, and epidemics of smallpox, typhus, measles, and malaria.

  Between 1972 and 1974 another famine, mostly in Wollo and parts of Tigray, killed an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 people. Some reports say the Emperor did not know its extent, and others say he knew well. Corrupt local officials tried to hide it from the imperial government. The Kremlin portrayed his Ethiopia as backward and inept compared with the supposed utopia of Marxism-Leninism. Military mutinies and high oil prices made it worse, as imported goods, gasoline, and food costs skyrocketed and unemployment spiked.

  By then he governed through suspicion. He was said to use as many as four spy agencies, all spying on each other as well as on civilians and the military. Freedom House gave Ethiopia a "Not Free" score for both civil liberties and political rights. Abuses included poor prison conditions and the imprisonment and torture of dissidents. Yet he pardoned hundreds of prisoners at a time, and there were reportedly no more than ten political prisoners across his whole reign. Communism took root among the intelligentsia, particularly those who had studied abroad. Conservatives at the Imperial Court, in Parliament, and in the church made his land reform proposals hard to carry out.

  In February 1974, four days of riots in Addis Ababa over sudden inflation left five dead. The Emperor announced on national television a cut in petrol prices and a freeze on basic commodities. A promised 33 percent military wage rise did not satisfy the army, which mutinied in Asmara and then across the empire. Aklilu Habte-Wold resigned as prime minister on the 27th of February 1974. Endelkachew Makonnen replaced him. In March a four-day general strike paralysed the nation. In April around 100,000 Ethiopian Muslims protested against discrimination.

  The Derg was a clique of junior officers and enlisted men, set up in June to investigate the military's demands. It deposed the 82-year-old Selassie on the 12th of September. General Aman Mikael Andom, a Protestant of Eritrean origin, became provisional head of state. Selassie was held briefly at the 4th Army Division and then under house arrest at the Grand Palace. Most of the imperial family went to Kerchele Prison, also called "Alem Bekagn."

  On the 23rd of November, 60 former high officials were summarily shot. The victims included General Aman, two former prime ministers, and Selassie's grandson, Rear Admiral Iskinder Desta. Ethiopians call the killings "Black Saturday." The Crown Prince condemned them. The Derg answered by revoking its recognition of his imperial legitimacy and announcing the end of the Solomonic dynasty.

  Money became another charge against him. In 1974 Ethiopian media claimed a net worth of 11 billion dollars, and the Derg accused him of hoarding millions in Swiss banks. Records indicate his entire net worth was £22,000 as late as 1959. The Jubilee Palace, built in 1955, had served as the official residence of the head of state until 1974.

  On the 27th of August 1975 the Derg had Selassie murdered. State media reported the next day that he had died of "respiratory failure" after a prostate examination and operation. His doctor, Asrat Woldeyes, denied there had been complications. The operation had apparently taken place months earlier, and Selassie had seemed in strong health in his final days.

  The truth waited until 1994, three years after the Derg fell. An Ethiopian court charged several former military officers with genocide and murder. It found them guilty of strangling the Emperor on his bed. The documents shown at trial included the Derg's final assassination order, with the regime's seal and signature, and several former Derg members have corroborated them.

  Opinion of him remains divided. Critics point to his suppression of rebellions among the landed aristocracy, called Mesafint, which kept opposing his changes. Others say Ethiopia modernised too slowly. Human Rights Watch has called his administration autocratic and illiberal. In the 1950s he was widely regarded as a modernising and capable leader.

  After the bones were recovered, his coffin rested for nearly a decade in Bhata Church, near the resting place of his great-uncle Menelik II. On the 5th of November 2000 the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa gave him a funeral. The government refused to call it an official imperial funeral. Rita Marley took part, but most Rastafari rejected the ceremony and denied that the bones were his. Some within the movement still debate whether he died in 1975 at all.

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