A statue of Ethiopia’s Emperor Haileselassie was unveiled at the headquarters of the African Union on Sunday.
ADDIS ABABA | AP – A statue of Ethiopia’s Emperor Haileselassie has been unveiled at the headquarters of the African Union on Sunday.
The statue is the second to be erected inside the continental body’s offices in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, after one of Ghana’s first leader, Kwame Nkrumah, who championed pan-Africanism. Several African leaders at the current African Union summit and relatives of the emperor attended the statue unveiling ceremony.
Ethiopians have cheered the statue’s erection, the first on Ethiopian soil since Haileselassie was mysteriously killed at the age of 83 in 1975 when a military junta called the Derg overthrew the imperial dynasty that existed in Ethiopia for 3,000 years.
Emperor Haileselassie is among the key African leaders who founded the Organization of African Unity, which became the African Union. He oversaw the maiden meeting of the continental body in 1963. Ethiopia was never colonized and Haileselassie is credited for helping a number of African countries to gain independence.
This is just one long time coming. He deserved it for what he had done to bring Africans together in a unified fashion. OAU had successfully campaigned against apartheid and won the sympathy and support of the global population. Even though he was the head of an archaic feudal system his stand against colonialism and apartheid was exemplary. I tell you what! When I look at how many brightest of the brightest were sent to their gallows, how many young and old were callously mowed down during the regimes that followed his, I will leave to history as to be told by honest and fair historians to compare and judge him. For all I know is that he did not kill my young and bright cousin because he caught with a copy of a literature by an opposition group but Mengistu did and he did not just kill him but tossed his Allah created sacred body to the predators so his mother could not give her only son a dignified burial. She passed away wailing for the return her child for many agonizing years. The late Emperor was not the one who did that to her boy. For all I know he did not send his personal guards to mow done more than 200 peaceful demonstrators in broad daylight in the capital Addis/Finfine in 2005! Yes, his regime was so backward but what he achieved by bringing every African nation into a union deserves a recognition. Bigots from Alabama to the alleys of Dortmund wanted to see him drop dead by bringing ‘niggers’ under one roof!!!! He deserves this recognition. I congratulate his surviving family members!!!