Cyber Ethiopia

We saw last week that during the month or so after the Italian occupation of Addis Ababa, on 5 May 1936, the Italian Fascist leadership differed as to the type of regime which should be established in Ethiopia. We saw further that Mussolini gave his support in this matter to his doctrinaire Minister of the Colonies, Alessandro Lessona (whom the post-war Ethiopian Government, incidentally, was later officially to accuse as a War Criminal). Lessona's Guide-lines, and Telegrams Lessona, it was, who, as we have seen, drew up the official guide-lines for the Fascist administration's attitude towards Ethiopian chiefs. He elaborated on these principles in a telegram which he despatched to the Fascist Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani on August 4. In this wire Lessona stated, very definitely, that Mussolini,

the Head of the Government, as he liked to term him, did not consider it "opportune that Ras Seyoum be called to take part in the consultative organs of the government." The Minister of the Colonies added in a memorandum of August 5 that Italian policy should be based on the motto, "No power to the Rases," an axiom which had been explicitly ordered by the Duce. The "native" population, the Minister proclaimed, must have the "very clear feeling that Italy does not govern on a metayer basis," i.e., by sharing power with "native" chiefs, and "that Italy has sufficient force and authority not to have to deal with anyone to make herself obeyed." "The Natives Must Feel..." Conceding that "one could not destroy in 48 hours a social order installed for centuries", Lessona accepted the principle that local chiefs could "serve as intermediaries" for the Italian Government, but bluntly added: "the natives must feel that the chief speaks only in the name of the [Italian] Government and that if he still enjoys any prestige it is because the Government has granted it to him." Ras Haylu's 100,000 Lire A Month Despite these dogmatic instructions, the Italian military authorities in Ethiopia realised that they had no hope of "pacifying" the country without the help of "native" assistants. The Fascist administration found it, in fact expedient, if not necessary, to make considerable use of the leading collaborator, Ras Haylu, whom they employed in fighting against the Patriots. For this he was in receipt, according to an entry in the diary of the Italian journalist Ciro Poggiali, of a monthly subvention of no less than 100,000 lire a month, 20,000 of which was his personal allowance. Graziani and Lessona Graziani, on taking over the functions of Viceroy found himself subject to far more explicit directives than had been given to his predecessor, but accepted them, at least openly, with good grace. He accordingly replied to Lessona's memorandum, on August 17, that it had laid down guiding principles which had "already been and will be even more faithfully followed in the future." Notwithstanding this courteous reply the Fascist Viceroy was by no means satisfied with the administrative structure which Lessona had established for the empire. The newly appointed Viceroy was in fact angered, as he subsequently revealed in his memoirs, by the appointment, without consultation with him, of the five provincial rulers, all of them generals with the right to communicate directly with the Ministry of the Colonies in Rome. "Correspond Only with the Minister" This arrangement of divided responsibility led him into an immediate clash with Lessona, for the Viceroy and the Minister of the Colonies each interpreted the ordinance of June 1 in his own way. As early as June 5 1936 Lessona telegraphed to Graziani, and to the governors of Eritrea and Somalia, to inform them that the various governments of the empire "should henceforth correspond only with the Minister of the Colonies", from whom exclusively they would receive instructions and communications. Graziani rejected this interpretation of the Ordinance, but the Minister emphatically replied, on June 11, that he had "not, I say not, in any way modified or suspended the application of the law." Conflict with the Provincial Governors Conflict, not surprisingly, also soon developed between the Viceroy and the Fascist provincial governors. On June 23 Graziani complained to them, by telegram: "Your Excellencies frequently despatch telegrams directly to the Minister on various questions, without sending them for information to the Governorate-General which in consequence remains in the dark on important questions." He instanced the plans of the Italian government of Eritrea for telegraph lines which extended beyond the boundaries of the former colony, and affected the whole of Ethiopia. He therefore "specifically ordered" that, except in matters of "ordinary administration," for which 'it was possible to communicate directly with the Ministry, he should be informed of all communications involving military, political, juridical, economic and other matters; and he added that he had explained to the Minister of the Colonies that copies of all important telegrams to the various governorates should be sent to him for information. The provincial governors should, he declared, take note of his "mode of governing and commanding which did not include the word 'abjure'." Not content with this admonishment, he sent the governors a further telegram, on June 24 revoking his previous permission for them to inform Rome of "news of a politico-military character" which had thenceforth to be supplied to him alone, "even if negative." Graziani "Not To Communicate with Any Ministry" Lessona rejected Graziani's interpretation of the statute. On August 12 he accordingly ordered the Viceroy thenceforward not to communicate with any Ministry, including the Ministry of Press and Propaganda, except through the Ministry of the Colonies. Graziani, however, refused to brook any such constraint, On August 31 he proudly telegraphed to the Minister that he "insisted on expressing his opinion on any matter", as he did not want the functions of the Viceroy to be reduced to a branch of the Ministry. Were this to come about he added a threat: that he would be "very ready to cede the position to a successor." Lessona still adamant. replied, on September 8, that "excessive centralisation of powers at Addis Ababa would retard and often annul all activity in the peripheral regions, though he admitted that "to find right limits" was "difficult but not impossible". Poggiali; A "Swindle" and "Infamy" While the Minister for the Colonies, the Viceroy and the provincial governors were thus wrangling for power there was little time little to create an effective administration. Though Fascist propaganda in Italy depicted the empire in glowing terms there was much disillusion in Italian-occupied Addis Ababa. Poggiali, who was shocked by the low capacity of many of the Italian officials, noted in his diary on September 21 1936 that the Italian judge in the Addis Ababa court did not know a word of Amharic, that no one was making any effort to learn it, and that the often highly legalistic proceedings were conducted entirely through the aid of a "black interpreter" who knew only enough Italian to ask for a glass of water. Exclaiming that the proceedings were incomprehensible to the accused, and hence a "swindle" and an "infamy," the Italian writer could not help remarking:"the natives... do not have any confidence in us; if he is white, they reason, he is against us." All this, he commented, was not surprising as the Italian officials in Addis Ababa came "not through a spirit of patriotism or adventure," but because "service in the colonies counted as twice the normal," and the officials were "all old men going as fast as possible to a pension." In a subsequent entry on his diary, on October 16, Poggiali spoke of the difficulties facing the new empire, and sadly observed that a young brigadier of the finance guards who did not even know how to speak Italian properly, crowds of people coming from Italy with the purpose of obtaining monopolies, or demobilised soldiers looking for posts in the colonies, "unfailingly set back solutions, raise difficulties, put sticks in wheels, and render everything inconclusive." All this, he declared, was living testimony to the empire's "slow-moving, obstructive, impotent and useless bureaucracy." Another Dispute In Rome meanwhile, Lessona had become involved in another dispute, this time with his predecessor Emelio De Bono. Difficulties between Lessona and De Bono Difficulties between two other Fascist leaders, Lessona and De Bono, began in the summer of 1936 when the Minister for the Colonies started investigating a contract for the development of the renowned Massawa-Asmara road, which De Bono had granted as High Commissioner for Eritrea in the period of preparations immediately prior to the invasion of Ethiopia. The contract had been awarded to a certain Salvatore Scalera of the road-building company S.I.C.E.D.P., which had a paid-up capital of only 5,000,000 lire but had contributed no less than 300,000 lire to the Asmara Fascist newspaper. Lessona, who saw that this was palpably fishy, then discovered that the sum agreed upon for the road far exceeded actual construction costs. He therefore suspended payments to the company, and attempted to scale down the contract from 120 to 67 million lire. Scalera, angered by the potential loss of his pickings, thereupon appealed to his patron De Bono, who wrote to the Duce as the latter's "old, affectionate servant", on September 9, 1936. In this letter he recalled the contractor's "great fascist and patriotic merit", as revealed by his generous contributions to Fascist Party funds, and appealed to Mussolini for "justice, your justice." The Fascist dictator, however, advised De Bono to avoid becoming involved in the case, but the former Commissioner for Eritrea, who was more than a little arrogant, refused to listen to such advice. He declared in a confidential letter to the Duce,that it was his "sacred right to do so." This was the first financial scandal concerning De Bono, but not, as we will see next week, the last.