Taffara Deguefé’s works span the century, from humble beginnings on a farm under the heights of Ankobar to the lofty heights of power as bank governor to the emperor and then to Mengistu.
Of the emperor, we remember the little man who, with a slight smile, asks Taffara if he too is going to bother him as the unwilling banker is hauled in by the Derg to probe Haile Selassie on the “missing millions.” Of Mengistu, we remember the haphazard economic decision-making and early despotism.
But this is no mere recollection of great men. Taffara Deguefé selflessly served two regimes, one of which jailed him for his tireless dedication, and his memoir is a painstaking account of the minute details behind the great events that shook Ethiopia to the core.
Above all, Taffara served his motherland, and he is a sometimes bewildered foot soldier of the Ethiopian modern century. He tried his best to keep Ethiopia abreast of the times, introducing innovations, but he was ever respectful of the monarch who gave him everything. In his reflections, Taffara Deguefé looks back to the image of the hyphenated Ethiopian as central to the century: a man torn between two extremes, one foot in feudalism, the other in the 20th century.
There lurks beneath these minutes of an Ethiopian century a central question: Could things have been any different? Could the upheavals have been prevented and the tragedies avoided?
Surrounded by complexities and never complacent, Taffara Deguefé has worked much and slept little. |
