British Riots: An Ethiopian Perspective

“Why do they fight in London?” a homeless man in Addis Ababa asked me this morning, after he realised I was both British and had limited understanding of the local currency’s value. His Manchester United T-shirt, trousers with chimney-sweep ends and obviously second or third hand coat clung to his body in the rain. And his features had sunk deep into his head as though to shield themselves from a life in the dirt and the cold. He smiled as I approached, held out his hand and jingled the handful of coins he had collected that morning – a ritual repeated by the thousands of homeless all over the city that serves to provide a constant, rhythmic reminder of the ‘down and out’.

“Farenji (white foreigner), Why do they fight in England?” he repeats as I struggle to comprehend the impeccability of his English and his remarkable knowledge of world news events. Shaking off my surprise, gathering a combination of laughably pigeon Amharic and horribly patronising pigeon English, I start to formulate an answer.

“Well there are cuts,” I say. “The government is giving out less money,” I explain, to a man who’s government gave (not sold) slum land to the rich and powerful in India and China and forced the incumbent dwellers, with no where to go and no where to turn, on to the streets or back to the countryside. But not before the utter humiliation of offering the poorest in the city the chance to keep their tin-roofed, tarpaulin-draped shacks, if only they would match the eight-story office construction plans of their coming displacers.

“School costs more now,” I continue in the hope that I might stumble upon a reason that doesn’t sound ridiculous while surrounded by physically crippling poverty. He didn’t seem to understand, either because formal education is one of the few luxuries Ethiopians value enough to bankrupt themselves to obtain, or maybe because he was sat in front of Bole Secondary School, an institution that has unintentionally shamed its English counter-parts.  The school survives on 7 million Birr (£250,000) a year, which it receives from a combination of government and NGO grants, and with which it must educate its 3,500 students. The average class size is 56, students often share desks and out-dated textbooks and the ‘laboratory’ amounts to little more than a microscope and a periodic table of elements. But it does what it can. Bole School has received 500 Birr (£18) (a relatively huge amount considering average incomes and commodity prices in Addis) from every parent of every pupil since 1995. Together they have raised enough to build a new library, which will open next week and house hundreds of English and Amharic books. For the price of a Mars bar a week, they have built a library. In comparison, University tuition fees seem difficult to complain about, given the frivolity with which most students treat their time in higher education.

“Maybe people feel alone, no help [sic],” I conclude, trying to avoid the word disenfranchised, in a final vomit-inducing answer. He can empathies. Aside from the occasional, and often short-lived, NGO shelter or the chance to win the government’s harshly unfair ‘condominium lottery’, helplessness reigns supreme on the streets of Addis. There are, however, every hundred yards or so, children from the age of 5 shining shoes with rags and puddle water. There are, scouting between the shoe-shiners and the elderly women cooking corn on bare charcoal, younger boys selling individual sticks of gum and older ones touting telephone cards. And there are, as far as the eye can see, a mass of Ethiopians finding anyway to get by. This is because the poor and the helpless of Addis do not resign themselves to poverty and helplessness, and nor do they smash up Lidl because it might be their fault. Instead, they create the slum economy, the dirty little secret of developing cities exposed by Paul Mason in last week’s New Statesman.

They do not riot here, violent crime is at an all time low and there is a communal friendliness between the recently rich and the continuous poor that is almost tangible. I stop short of explaining the shooting of Mark Duggan. Mostly because its hard to describe any causal link between protesting police brutality and stealing value bags of Basmati rice from Tesco’s, especially with a child-like grasp on the local language.

Peaceful protest is of course necessary in any democracy, especially when its government’s answer to increased criminality is cuts to the police force. However, it would be nice if looters, who have ravaged local communities across the country over the last week, could come and explain to a homeless man in Addis how a population with so much can smash shop windows to get more.

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• cloakanddagger

  Yes there have been cuts already or cuts that will happen are effecting people already. What planet are you living on.

• http://twitter.com/Justhegood Joey Blogs

  It’d only be when millions of UK citizens are begging on the streets and shot by the Police will the reality of England be woken up to. 
  We don’t need Ethiopian beggars as bench marks by which we should measure the lowest denominator.  

• http://twitter.com/Justhegood Joey Blogs

  And any comment that’s too radical and blunt gets censored. 
  Your response was good for as long as it remains! 

• Jake_K

  THERE HAVE NOT YET BEEN ANY CUTS – GOVERNMENT SPENDING HAS GONE UP SINCE THE ELECTION.

  I don’t really know how much clearer I can make this to you.  Do some research.  Yes, there WILL BE cuts, that will Affect people.  The cuts have to be made because we spent more than we earned for the last decade and now the interest payments on that debt are going up and up and up - compound interest. 

  Get the cloak off your head, the dagger out of your eye, the chip off your shoulder and learn.  If you have enough time to comment on these boards you have enough time to look at, for example, the ONS website.

• Nigussie

  DAVID,

  Thank you for your comment.

  I do share the misery of everyone, whether back or white
  and I feel everybody should be treated fairly no-matter what the color of
  his/her skin maybe. I can’t understand why you choose to comment on I am
  calling the victim my brother. The issue was very broader than just a brother defending
  his brother. I want to hear your response on the core issue of my comment which
  is double standard used by your country and many other westerners.      

• cloakanddagger

  I am not a “labour supporter”. But here goes and maybe you will learn.
  1.Changes in housing benefit for under 35’s even though these may have not been introduced yet all landlords and private/social landlords are acting as if changes are occurring.
  2. I work in the charity sector: funding cuts from local governments have already occurred there hence people are having their contracts changed or losing their jobs due to funding cuts.
  Not denying we are in trouble financially or that spending for some things have gone up/ but from where I work in the homeless sector changes are occurring due to local government cuts due to central government cuts. 
  Again what world are you living in? I was not actually stating cuts were right or wrong.

• hervicus

  DAVID ROSE

  Nigussie has the right to call any man he likes his brother. If he feels compassion for them, then good on him. This makes him a compasionate man. There wasn’t much compassion during the riots, was there?

  BTW - how in the name of God can calling any man your brother be racist?

• hervicus

  Jake_K

  I completely agree with your conclusions, but some cuts had already started.

  Although not keen to advertise the fact, cuts in social security at entitlement level began under New Labour. Two examples I work with on a weekly basis are:
  (i). Cuts in entitlement to Income Support for single mothers, as to claim it, the age of the qualifying youngest child gets younger and younger each tax year.
  (ii). The abolition of Incapacity Benefit for new claimants, and its replacement with Employment Support Allowance (ESA). The new ‘disability’ tests for ESA were toughened up considerably by Labour, so that fewer people can claim it.

• http://twitter.com/Seyum_Junior Seyum Berhe

  Could not agree more with Charles Fleury’s comment. The worst bit is we been promoting this neagtive values as virtues. As we preach democracy and human rights worldwide, mostly hypocritically. We can learn communal living, friendliness and other positive virtues from countries we deride as “third world”.  Life is not just about money and materials. It is more than that – family, friendship, community, love etc have no price but eternal value.