Uncovering Africa’s Renaissance

By Charlayne Hunter-Gault

The first time I went to Ethiopia was in 1990, and I was filled with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. My excitement was sparked by the prospect of visiting one of the oldest countries in the world, and as I entered the hotel where I was to stay, I was greeted with the sweet, ancient smell of incense being burned by beautiful brown women. Each woman was dressed in the traditional natella — a beautiful white gauze dress with a colorful border — seated around a brass urn, serving tea, and this tranquil scene transported me instantly to a state of near-bliss.

But my anxiety lay just beneath the surface, for I had managed to secure a promise of the first-ever television interview with Mengistu Haili Miriam, the Ethiopian leader who, among other things, had come to be known as one of Africa’s cruelest dictators, a man who brutally suppressed dissent, fed a famine, and forcibly relocated millions of opponents to a countryside without food or other basics. He had seized power in 1974 from long-ruling Emperor Haile Selassie, whose life he had spared, but whom he confined on the grounds of the old Imperial Palace until he died almost a year later, some say suffocated in his sleep. Others suffered a worse fate, as Mengistu carried out what he called The Red Terror, imprisoning, torturing, and murdering hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians he considered to be against his rule. Rumor had it that Mengistu had called a Cabinet meeting once and mowed down several of those he had come to distrust. Hence, my anxiety, because I knew I would have to put some tough, uncomfortable questions to him — provided the interview did, in fact, come through…

Read the rest of Hunter-Gault’s essay at Powell’s.com.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault was a correspondent for PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer for twenty years and during her career as a journalist she has won two Emmy and two Peabody awards. Her latest book is New News Out of Africa.