Ambitious Heir

Dispensing gold coins and handing out $200 tips, Emperor Haile Selassie was enjoying himself in imperial fashion on a state visit to Brazil when a ham radio operator in Addis Ababa flashed the bad news. "Calling everybody, calling everybody! Ethiopia is in a critical state following a coup d'etat." Glumly, the Emperor lunched in his Sao Paulo hotel room on lobster thermidor, stared out the window and pondered the unkindest cut of all. The revolt had apparently been led by his own son and heir, Crown Prince Asfa Wassan, 44. By that night the Lion of Judah was back on his private DC-6B and bound for home.

The Discontents. The plot had been brewing for a year or more, and the plotters cut across Ethiopia's educated elite. In on the game, tacitly or actively, were Cabinet ministers, top bureaucrats, army colonels, students returning from studies abroad. They came from the class that Haile Selassie must count on to help bring Ethiopia into the modern world--but it is just this group that is most repelled by the trappings of a feudal monarchy. The plotters had no clear political coloration, though one of the ringleaders, former Ambassador to Washington Ras Imru, returned from the U.S. in 1953 bitter over what he considered to be racial snubs.

The plotters had a problem: in Coptic Christian Ethiopia, only an acknowledged descendant of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba would be accepted as a proper ruler by the 90% illiterate populace. After nervous speculation, the plotters approached Crown Prince Asfa Wassan himself, knowing that father and son have disliked each other for years. The Emperor had always favored a younger son Prince Makonnen (who was killed in an automobile accident three years ago), made it obvious that he considered Asfa Wassan none too bright, often subjected him to public humiliation. When Asfa Wassan wishes to speak to his father, he must first grovel with his face in the dirt like any other lowly subject. In August 1959 the Crown Prince agreed to join the conspiracy.

The plotters bided their time (and even put down one subplot to assassinate the Emperor last year). But Haile Selassie's trip to remote Brazil seemed ideal. One morning before dawn the Imperial Guard, led by rebel officers, seized strong points in Addis Ababa, including all communication centers. Asfa Wassan named Imru as Premier and went on the radio to explain that the purpose of the coup was to end "3,000 years of injustice . . . The Ethiopian people have waited patiently to be freed of oppression, poverty and ignorance." The Crown Prince promised to set up a true constitutional monarchy, and to allow the creation of political parties--for which his father has no taste. In the Congo, Ethiopian Charge d'Affaires Sabour Ahadou gleefully got out a statement hailing the coup as "the long-awaited revolution that marks the end of centuries of feudal oppression, injustice, arbitrary personal rule, corruption, suppression of fundamental human rights and the imprisonment of thousands of people."

In the Dirt. But they had all reckoned without the tough streak in the little Lion of Judah--and without his still-widespread popularity. Haile Selassie flew straight for the airstrip in Asmara in Ethiopia's Red Sea state of Eritrea, which was still under command of a loyal general. As his plane grew nearer, the plotters' fortunes began to wane. They could not even secure control of all Addis Ababa, and shells whistled into the center of town from loyalist army posts. In frustration, the rebels shot a few government officials they had captured and then fled into the mountains. Haile Selassie landed at Asmara to wild cheers and the usual earth-scraping bows.

Crown Prince Asfa Wassan would doubtless dip his nose an inch or two lower in the dirt on his next meeting with father. Haile Selassie made it scornfully clear that he considered Asfa Wassan only a dupe of others, "acting under coercion." The seeds of unrest among the educated minority of Ethiopians were still there and would grow. But it would take a stronger man than Asfa Wassan to snatch power from the little Lion of Judah.

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