While insults were hurled outside the gates, all was peaceful in Roone yesterday afternoon as Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi addressed the issue of “The Current Global Environment and its Impact in Africa” as part of Columbia University’s World Leaders Forum. Mark Hay reports on this smooth-talking politician’s calm yet controversial visit to Morningside.
Zenawi in 2008
From the protests outside, one might have expected more of a ruckus in Roone yesterday as two-decade Ethiopian leader (currently Prime Minister) Meles Zenawi prepared to take the stage. But it seems that Columbia has learned from Minutemen, head-kicking, and Ahmadinejad fever: no bags were allowed into the event, suited men ominously lined the south wall, keeping sentinel watch over the full crowd, and the question and answer segment was kept pegged to artificial pacifism.
Though docile, the crowd inside represented the staid counterpart of the protests outside—a slightly larger group who view Zenawi as the face of an independent and growing Africa, as a paragon of stability and savvy, cheering wildly at his every answer; a slightly smaller group who view the man as a dictator limiting free press, jailing and intimidating opposition parties and minorities, and manipulating his Western allies, cheering with equal vigor but less mass at every critique of the man and then grumbling to each other in Amharic. And clever man that he is (view him as the devil or, as he seemed to wish, the savior, he is a smooth operator), Zenawi did not want to stir the waters.
Zenawi’s address itself presented little of interest on the surface. He focused in on an element of Ethiopia lauded by Joseph Stiglitz in his introduction of Zenawi: economic progress via uniquely African methods. In a soft and drowsy, yet audible academic’s voice, Zenawi presented the audience with his summarization of neoliberalism’s flirtation and eventual abusive and destructive relationship with Africa. The reforms of neoliberal financial lenders “were sold as the ultimate salvation of [Africa’s] problems,” said Zenawi. “The reforms could not and did not lead to salvation,” but instead, he argued, created three consecutive lost decades for Africa.
In the past this may have been a daring assertion, to march into the universe’s financial hub and speak ill of the reigning financial order, but Zenawi knows when to tap discontent with existing institutions, to mine the discontents of the world as he accuses the larger world of mining Africa. And he knows when to play the cards of hope, ideals, and faith. For, not to fear, said Zenawi, “there is a silver lining for Africa because of the global economic crisis.” There is a chance for Africans to determine their own future, to overcome the handicaps imposed by circumstance and foreign hands, and to find salvation, utilizing itself as a source of vital resources and the site of a future manufacturing hub. It’s a happy note that jabs at America and its old financial order, but does so in a way that feels inclusive to spurned Americans and calming to those jittery with apocalyptic visions. Read more…
on 
