The Emperor

This work of literary reportage reconstructs the final years and fall of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, through the voices of his surviving courtiers. Ryszard Kapuściński, a Polish journalist, traveled to Addis Ababa after the 1974 military revolution that deposed the Emperor and sought out former palace officials in hiding. Accompanied by Teferra Gebrewold, a former section head in the Ministry of Information, he visited them after dark, navigating muddy alleys under the threat of armed patrols. His informants cautioned him to record no names, no addresses, no physical descriptions. From their testimonies, Kapuściński assembles a portrait of an entire system of court life and the slow unraveling that led to its destruction.

The book opens with the daily routines of the Imperial Palace. The Emperor, slight and frail, rose before dawn and never displayed irritation or emotion. Everything in his administration was relayed by word of mouth, a strategic choice: Without written records, the Emperor could claim a subordinate had said something different from what was actually reported, and the subordinate had no proof to the contrary. His words were barely audible even to the Minister of the Pen, the official who transcribed and interpreted the Emperor's whispered orders. The minister wielded enormous power in this role yet served as a convenient scapegoat if decisions proved unpopular.

Each morning the Emperor walked in the Palace park, feeding veal to his lions and beef to chained leopards, while three competing intelligence chiefs reported on conspiracies. The Emperor listened without comment, understanding that any reaction would cause informants to tailor their reports to his expectations. He carried all intelligence in his memory, maintaining no written dossiers.

The structured hours that followed reveal the mechanics of autocratic power. During the Hour of Assignments, the Emperor personally announced every appointment in the Empire, from high dignitaries down to postmasters. The governing principle was loyalty, not talent. The Emperor fostered competition among three palace factions: the aristocrats, conservative landowners grouped in the Crown Council; the bureaucrats filling the ministries; and the "personal people," bright young men from the lowest social orders who owed their positions entirely to the Emperor. By shifting favor among these groups, the Emperor maintained a balance that prevented any faction from threatening him. He preferred mediocre ministers and insisted that any reform appear to originate from him personally.

During the Hour of the Cashbox, petitioners received envelopes of money from the Emperor's confessor and treasurer, Aba Hanna Jema. The envelopes often contained only a fraction of what was promised, but public opinion blamed the treasurer rather than the Emperor.

Kapuściński interrupts the courtiers' testimonies to describe his own earlier encounter with the Emperor's world. At a 1963 conference of African heads of state, the Emperor threw a lavish reception with wine and caviar flown from Europe and over three thousand guests sorted by rank. Stepping outside, Kapuściński discovered barefoot beggars devouring bones and fish heads thrown to them by dishwashers. The contrast foreshadows the crisis that will destroy the regime.

The book's second section, "It's Coming, It's Coming," traces the escalating threats to the throne. In December 1960, while the Emperor traveled to Brazil, Germame Neway, a young nobleman educated in the United States, and his brother General Mengistu Neway, chief of the Imperial Guard, attempted a coup. The rebels arrested the Emperor's family and dignitaries, and Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, the Emperor's eldest son, read a proclamation on the radio denouncing stagnation and poverty. But few Ethiopians had radios. Loyalist generals rallied the regular army against the elite Guard, and after three days of fighting that killed hundreds, the rebels were crushed. Eighteen imprisoned dignitaries were executed by the fleeing conspirators. Germame shot his companions and himself; his brother survived, was court-martialed, and hanged.

The failed coup permanently damaged the Palace. Three of the Emperor's most trusted intimates had betrayed him, and a pervasive unease afflicted the court. A slow purge replaced old courtiers with new "personal people," but a creeping negativism flooded everything: "The Palace was sinking and we all felt it" (80).

The Emperor responded with modernization, building factories, opening hospitals, and installing a blinking development map in the Palace. The army and police, however, consumed forty percent of the national budget versus one percent for agriculture. University students, increasingly radicalized, denounced the development program as hypocrisy amid mass poverty, demanding land reform and democratization. In 1968, peasants in Gojam Province rebelled against new taxes, illustrating what one informant calls the "principle of the second bag": Peasants revolt not from the burden they already carry but from a second burden thrown suddenly on their backs. Student protests intensified, and when the army killed student leader Tilahum Gizaw in 1969, the Emperor closed the university for a year.

The final section, "The Collapse," begins with the 1973 famine. Jonathan Dimbleby, a British television journalist, broadcast Ethiopia: The Unknown Famine, juxtaposing images of mass starvation with footage of the Emperor feasting with dignitaries. The Minister of Information denied knowledge of any famine. Later the government solicited foreign aid, but local dignitaries hoarded grain and inflated prices. When the Finance Minister imposed customs fees on the aid shipments, foreign benefactors suspended deliveries.

In early 1974, the crisis accelerated. Soldiers in remote garrisons mutinied over rotten food and denied water. Taxi drivers struck; students rioted. In rapid succession, the Second Division in the northern territory of Eritrea, the navy, the air force, and the Fourth Division all rebelled. The Palace split into three factions: the Jailers, led by the Emperor's daughter Tenene Work, demanding mass arrests; the Talkers, calling for dialogue; and the Floaters, the largest group, hoping to drift passively through the crisis. The Emperor listened to all, praised all, committed to nothing.

A coordinating committee of young officers called the Dergue, led by a major named Mengistu Haile-Mariam, systematically dismantled the Imperial elite. Always claiming to act in the Emperor's name, they arrested ministers, generals, and dignitaries one by one, gradually emptying the Palace. The Emperor, wearing his military uniform, received delegations of corporals and sergeants, conferring with the very men dismantling his power.

On the Emperor's eighty-second birthday, he spoke before a nearly empty courtyard in the rain, his voice breaking, tears on his face. In the final weeks, only his elderly valet, identified as L. M., remained. The two men rose at dawn, read the Book of Psalms in the Palace chapel, and sat amid silent telephones. Officers came to demand money hidden under Persian carpets and inside Bibles. Demonstrators marched outside shouting for the Emperor to be hanged.

On the night of September 11, 1974, Ethiopian New Year's Eve, L. M. lit candles throughout the Palace. The Emperor was shown Dimbleby's famine film; he watched it to the end in silence. At daybreak, three officers read the act of dethronement. The Emperor thanked everyone, said the army had never disappointed him, and declared that if the revolution was good for the people, he would not oppose it. He was led to a green Volkswagen, fell silent, and waved to the few people visible on curfew-empty streets as the car disappeared into the Fourth Division barracks.

Two brief dispatches close the book. An Agence France Presse report from February 1975 describes the imprisoned Haile Selassie still believing he is Emperor, his guards still bowing, reading without glasses, and giving advice to soldiers. A notice from the Ethiopian Herald, dated August 28, 1975, announces his death. The cause: circulatory failure.