5 - 1969: Prelude to Revolution

Summary

Revolutionary compatriots, for every demand that the fascist dictatorship unwillingly meets, we shall create even more demands from the inexhaustible pool of grievances of the Ethiopian people.

In the history of the Ethiopian student movement, there are years that stand out as defining moments. 1962, when the royal patronage that had characterized student-palace relations unravelled following the controversy over the College Day poetry recital, was one. 1965, when students came out onto the streets with the revolutionary slogan of ‘Land to the Tiller’, was another. But, few years rival in the dizzying cascade of events and their momentous significance as 1969. With understandable exaggeration, the chronicler of the movement, Randi Balsvik, entitles the section that describes those events as ‘The Revolution that Failed’. I have chosen the relatively more modest title of ‘Prelude to Revolution’, i.e. to that of 1974. It could also be characterized with some justification as Ethiopia's 1968, for it had all the hallmarks of the global student revolution, while marking at the same time the climax of years of student agitation in Ethiopia.

“EDUCATION FOR ALL”

Student protests in Ethiopia tended to have catch phrases that encapsulated the thrust of their demands. In 1965, it was ‘Land to the Tiller’. In 1966, students queried: ‘Is Poverty a Crime?’ The 1967 protest in defence of civil liberties has sometimes been described with a penchant for contradiction as the ‘Anti-Demo Demonstration’.