Friday, July 30, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Creation of The OAU
By Makonnen Ketema
Part One
In May 1963, thirty-two independent African States, who had genuine hopes and visions for the continent of Africa, came together in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to create the Organization of African Unity (OAU). I had the privilege of hearing a detailed account of the staging of the 1963 Addis Ababa Summit Conference, and the reason as to why the Ethiopian capital became the site of the OAU headquarters, from a man who was once described by the international media as being closer than any other to the staging of the creation of the OAU. The man was none other than my father, the late Ketema Yifru, who was the Ethiopian Foreign Minister (1961-1971) at the time. Ketema Yifru was also recognized by the media as having played a prominent role in the creation of Africa's regional organization.
Based on the discussions I had with my father as well as his taped and written interviews, I now clearly understand what he meant when he said, "Only a few are aware of the hard work and all the effort that brought about the creation of the OAU." Most of the public is not aware of the shuttle diplomacy, the closed door negotiations, and all the tireless effort, in general, that paved the way to creating the OAU. In addition, the majority of the public is not aware of the fierce diplomatic battle that was fought by a number of states to have the OAU headquartered in their respective capital cities.
Foreign Minister Ketema Yifru with Emperor Haile Selassie
After I spoke to many people and read through a number of books that have been written on this subject, it dawned on me that many are not privy to the details behind the formation of Africa's regional organization. It seems that other than a handful of people, the majority are not aware of the OAU's history and its formation. It is my hope that once this article reaches the public, it will give the readers an opportunity to understand the history behind the creation of the OAU. The article that you are about to read is solely based on the former Ethiopian Foreign Minister, the late Ketema Yifru's account on how the OAU was formed. The BBC's Focus on Africa Report describing Ketema Yifru's role in the creation of the OAU, stated that he was probably closer than any other to the staging of the 1963 Addis Ababa Summit Conference, which paved the way to the creation of the OAU.
Ketema Yifru was promoted to the rank of Foreign Minister in 1961 - a period in which the rift between the Monrovia and Casablanca Groups seemed to have caused a permanent division in the continent. Ketema Yifru was an active participant in all the meetings and negotiations that led to the creation of the OAU. He also played a leading role in the August 1963 Dakar Foreign Ministers Conference, where the question regarding the location of the OAU's headquarters was once and for all resolved. This article will give the reader a bird's eye view of the events that led to the creation of the OAU. In addition, it will also put to rest the unfounded speculation of the reason as to why the Ethiopian capital was chosen to house the headquarters of Africa's regional organization.
Introduction
President Kwame Nkrumah
In order to strengthen the continent of Africa and to make it less vulnerable to outside influence, President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana strongly believed that the continent should be united. Thus, in the late 1950s, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah started a movement, which stressed the immediate unity of the African continent.
When Dr. Kwame Nkrumah introduced the concept of African Unity to the continent, a division, which was based on the implementation of this new concept, was created at the onset. On one hand there were those countries which believed in the immediate unity of Africa. These countries were originally Ghana, Guinea, and Mali. Later on Egypt, the Transitional Government of Algeria, and Morocco, joined the Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union to form the Casablanca Group. On the other hand, the twenty-four member Monrovia Group, otherwise known as the Conservatives, which included Nigeria, Liberia, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Togo, and many others believed in a much more gradual approach to the question of African Unity. Many believed that the rift between the two groups would become permanent and thus ending the hopes and dreams of African Unity.
Presidents Modibo Kieta of Mali, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Seku Toure of Guinea (1960)
Yet, in May 1963, these two opposing groups were able to come together to form the Organization of African Unity. Many had speculated as to how such opposing groups would merge to form the OAU. Some have suggested that all the independent states that came together in Addis Ababa, did so because of the great respect they had for Emperor Haile Selassie. Others have managed to feed the public, through various mediums, with similar unfounded stories as to how the OAU was formed. Even those who have genuine interest in telling the story have not been successful in their endeavors, because it is impossible to tell the story of the creation of the OAU with just a paragraph or two.
Addis Abeba Fistula Hospital
The Doctors HamlinIn the late 1950s, two young doctors, Reginald and Catherine Hamlin, were dedicated obstetricians living and working in Catherine's native Australia. Early in their careers, the couple practiced gynecology in Sydney, but they were eager to seek out and aid the women who needed them most. They got their chance in 1959, when they were called upon to come to Ethiopia and set up practice in a hospital in the capital city of Addis Ababa. When they arrived, Reginald and Catherine discovered a very poor country with almost no resources for expectant mothers. The Hamlins planned to open a midwifery school at the Princess Tshai Memorial Hospital and to stay for three years. Pioneering fistula treatmentOn the evening of their arrival, the Hamlins were doing their best to settle into their new home, when a fellow gynecologist came to visit. That doctor described obstetric fistula to the Hamlins, neither of whom had ever seen an obstetric fistula before. "To us they were an academic rarity," Catherine recalls in her book, The Hospital by the River.  Before the Hamlins came to Addis Ababa, there was no treatment available for fistula victims anywhere in the world. Most such injured women – and there were thousands – had suffered in silence for years.Reginald and Catherine quickly began to learn everything they could about obstetric fistula, a condition that had all but disappeared in the United States in 1895, when the first fistula hospital closed its doors in New York. The Hamlins perfected a surgical technique to mend the injuries, while continuing to treat a broad range of obstetric cases. In their first year in Ethiopia, the Hamlins treated 30 fistula patients. The founding of a hospitalThrough first hand experience, the Hamlins quickly became aware of the suffering endured by women with fistulas. Fistula victims are usually shunned so severely due to their odor that even other patients refuse to be near them. Reginald and Catherine knew the fistula women deserved a hospital of their own. The Hamlins worked for more than a decade to establish a fistula hospital, even through a military coup when most foreigners fled Ethiopia. Finally, in 1974, the Hamlins opened the doors of Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. It remains the only medical center in the world dedicated exclusively to fistula repair.
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"Saint Catherine"Catherine Hamlin’s pioneering work and perseverance are a textbook example of how vision is transformed into action and action into excellence.
~Robert Segal, radio host
Friday, July 23, 2010
Birth: 1861
Death: Nov., 1879Birth: 1861
Death: Nov., 1879
He was born a prince with a bloodline stretching back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the son of an Ethiopian emperor and heir to the treasures of one of Africa's richest royal dynasties.But,taken as a boy to Victorian England by British soldiers who ransacked his father's mountain-top palace,Prince Alemayehu died alone aged 18 in Leeds,in November 1879.Now the Ethiopians want his body returned to mark their millennium,President Girma Wolde-Giorgis has written to the Queen, requesting that the prince's remains be exhumed from where they were buried in a crypt beside St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle."It really was such a tragic and short life," said Richard Pankhurst, 78, professor of Ethiopian studies at the University of Addis Ababa, and the son of universal suffrage campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst."The boy saw his parents die, he was taken from his home, sent to India and then to the intense cold of England, but the government simply refused to listen to his requests to return home."Britain sent a military force to the palace of Emperor Tewodros II at Maqdala, in the mountains of northern Ethiopia, to bargain for the release of diplomatic hostages.Denied an audience, the troops routed the emperor's army in a three-day battle over Easter 1868. The emperor committed suicide as his fortress fell to the British.The seven-year-old prince's mother succumbed to illness days later. In the care of the British, he was first handed to the Raj in India, which administered Abyssinia, and then sent to Britain.In London he was befriended by Queen Victoria, who enrolled him at Rugby School and later sent him to Sandhurst for officer training.But having grown up in a royal household he never settled into British public school life. After nine unhappy years at Rugby, and less than a term at Sandhurst, he died of pleurisy at the home of his private tutor, in Leeds, in November 1879.Queen Victoria was struck by the orphan prince's melancholy during audiences at her palace, writing in her journal at the time: "It is too sad! All alone in a strange country, without a single person or relative belonging to him...His was no happy life."There have also been requests for the return of Ethiopian artefacts, including illuminated manuscripts and altar slabs, which are now held at the British Museum and in private collections at Windsor Castle.
Burial:
St George's Chapel
WindsorBirth: 1861
Death: Nov., 1879
He was born a prince with a bloodline stretching back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the son of an Ethiopian emperor and heir to the treasures of one of Africa's richest royal dynasties.But,taken as a boy to Victorian England by British soldiers who ransacked his father's mountain-top palace,Prince Alemayehu died alone aged 18 in Leeds,in November 1879.Now the Ethiopians want his body returned to mark their millennium,President Girma Wolde-Giorgis has written to the Queen, requesting that the prince's remains be exhumed from where they were buried in a crypt beside St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle."It really was such a tragic and short life," said Richard Pankhurst, 78, professor of Ethiopian studies at the University of Addis Ababa, and the son of universal suffrage campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst."The boy saw his parents die, he was taken from his home, sent to India and then to the intense cold of England, but the government simply refused to listen to his requests to return home."Britain sent a military force to the palace of Emperor Tewodros II at Maqdala, in the mountains of northern Ethiopia, to bargain for the release of diplomatic hostages.Denied an audience, the troops routed the emperor's army in a three-day battle over Easter 1868. The emperor committed suicide as his fortress fell to the British.The seven-year-old prince's mother succumbed to illness days later. In the care of the British, he was first handed to the Raj in India, which administered Abyssinia, and then sent to Britain.In London he was befriended by Queen Victoria, who enrolled him at Rugby School and later sent him to Sandhurst for officer training.But having grown up in a royal household he never settled into British public school life. After nine unhappy years at Rugby, and less than a term at Sandhurst, he died of pleurisy at the home of his private tutor, in Leeds, in November 1879.Queen Victoria was struck by the orphan prince's melancholy during audiences at her palace, writing in her journal at the time: "It is too sad! All alone in a strange country, without a single person or relative belonging to him...His was no happy life."There have also been requests for the return of Ethiopian artefacts, including illuminated manuscripts and altar slabs, which are now held at the British Museum and in private collections at Windsor Castle.
Burial:
St George's Chapel
Windsor
Berkshire, England
Created by: cookie
Record added: Jun 11, 2007
Find A Grave Memorial# 19829783
Added by: cookie
Cemetery Photo
Ad
Berkshire, England
Created by: cookie
Record added: Jun 11, 2007
Find A Grave Memorial# 19829783
Added by: cookie
Cemetery Photo
Ad
He was born a prince with a bloodline stretching back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the son of an Ethiopian emperor and heir to the treasures of one of Africa's richest royal dynasties.But,taken as a boy to Victorian England by British soldiers who ransacked his father's mountain-top palace,Prince Alemayehu died alone aged 18 in Leeds,in November 1879.Now the Ethiopians want his body returned to mark their millennium,President Girma Wolde-Giorgis has written to the Queen, requesting that the prince's remains be exhumed from where they were buried in a crypt beside St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle."It really was such a tragic and short life," said Richard Pankhurst, 78, professor of Ethiopian studies at the University of Addis Ababa, and the son of universal suffrage campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst."The boy saw his parents die, he was taken from his home, sent to India and then to the intense cold of England, but the government simply refused to listen to his requests to return home."Britain sent a military force to the palace of Emperor Tewodros II at Maqdala, in the mountains of northern Ethiopia, to bargain for the release of diplomatic hostages.Denied an audience, the troops routed the emperor's army in a three-day battle over Easter 1868. The emperor committed suicide as his fortress fell to the British.The seven-year-old prince's mother succumbed to illness days later. In the care of the British, he was first handed to the Raj in India, which administered Abyssinia, and then sent to Britain.In London he was befriended by Queen Victoria, who enrolled him at Rugby School and later sent him to Sandhurst for officer training.But having grown up in a royal household he never settled into British public school life. After nine unhappy years at Rugby, and less than a term at Sandhurst, he died of pleurisy at the home of his private tutor, in Leeds, in November 1879.Queen Victoria was struck by the orphan prince's melancholy during audiences at her palace, writing in her journal at the time: "It is too sad! All alone in a strange country, without a single person or relative belonging to him...His was no happy life."There have also been requests for the return of Ethiopian artefacts, including illuminated manuscripts and altar slabs, which are now held at the British Museum and in private collections at Windsor Castle.
Burial:
St George's Chapel
Windsor
Berkshire, England
Created by: cookie
Record added: Jun 11, 2007
Find A Grave Memorial# 19829783
Added by: cookie
Cemetery Photo
Ad
Monday, July 19, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
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