Two Tales, or One?: On Ethiopia’s Federalism and South Africa’s Apartheid
By Tsegaye R Ararssa* 1. Introduction What is the story of the Ethiopian federal experiment? What stories does it tell? And what stories can be told about it? Feeding from and into the ever polarized and polarizing ‘debate’ on Ethiopia’s politics, Dr Taye Negussie recently argued that the Ethiopian federal arrangement is synonymous with apartheid’s ‘racial federation’. In a similar vein, Dr Asfawossen Asrate also remarked that “ethnic federalism amounts to nothing but apartheid.” [i] In this piece, I seek to explore the tales the Ethiopian federal experiment tells (and masks) with a view to shedding light on whether, by juxtaposing the two systems, there emerges a tale of two federations or two tales of two differently unjust governance systems. In what follows, I will first offer a sketchy ‘description’ of the federation in context. I will then discuss what to look for in a federal system as its fundamental features. I do this in order to determine whether the tale