Tekle Hawaryat

Tekle Wolde Hawaryat (1900 - 17 November 1969 was an Ethiopian politician. Anthony Mockler describes him as "the only contemporary of Haile Selassie who throughout a long life was always prepared to come out in open opposition to him." [Mockler, "Haile Selassie's War" (New York: Olive Branch, 2003), p. 418]

He received a traditional education at the church school at Saint Raguel on Mount Entoto. Not only did Tekle Wolde befriend his contemporary, Blattengeta Heruy Welde Sellase, but for many years was a trusted member of Emperor Haile Selassie's inner circle. [Bahru Zewde, "A History of Modern Ethiopia", second edition (Oxford: James Currey, 2001), p. 106]

Tekle Hawaryat later broke with Haile Selassie over the Emperor's departure from Ethiopia to personally speak to the League of Nations. Following the Ethiopian defeat at Maychew, Tekle Hawaryat decided to remain in Ethiopia and resist the Italians. At one point in the conversations on 1 May 1936, when the Emperor pondered taking the unprecedented act of leaving Ethiopia, Tekle marched up to the Emperor with a pistol barrel in his mouth and addressed Haile Selassie, "Are you not the son of Theodore?" -- referring to Tewodros' act of committing suicide at the moment of utter defeat, rather than resort to flight or surrender. [Mockler, "Haile Selassie's War", p. 134] After Haile Selassie departed Addis Ababa, Tekle gathered his own partisans and left to continue fighting. Within a few months, he joined the garrison at Jimma, and retreated with them to Ras Imru Haile Selassie's encampment in the wilds between Jimma and Gore. When Ras Imru rejected Tekle's proposals for a campaign of guerrilla war against the invaders, he departed to go his own way. [Mockler, "Haile Selassie's War", p. 167]

Tekle Hawaryat attempted to unite the fractious bands of the arbgenoch, the Ethiopian resistance fighters, who often fought each other as much -- or more often -- then the Italian oppressors, but met little success. Disillusioned with his Emperor, he embraced a republican ideology, which had permeated Ethiopia through French influence on the intellectuals of the city of Dire Dawa.Bahru Zewde, "Modern Ethiopia", pp. 174f] But eventually the exiled Haile Selassie gained the support of the British, and was able to engage on returning home, and Tekle "did all he could to prevent him from regaining his throne. When British arms supported the return, Takkala dedicated the rest of his life to trying to dethrone Hayla-Selassie."

At first Tekle Hawaryat was imprisoned (1942-1945), then released and the Emperor made an attempt to placate his former friend by making him "afenegus"; caught in another plot against the Emperor, he was imprisoned for a longer period, until 1954. He regained the office of "afenegus", only to lose it after another unsuccessful plot. Released a final time, an old man in his seventies, it was thought that he had at last put aside his plots -- only to be discovered at the center of one last plot to kill the Emperor with a landmine in the road outside of Sebeta. He was killed in a shootout with police at his home in Addis Ababa. [Bahru Zewde, "Modern Ethiopia", p. 211; Mockler, "Haile Selassie's War", pp. 396f]

References

External links

* [http://users.ju.edu/jclarke/model.html Jacksonville University article]