‘A child shall lead them’

Ibo Foroma
Rastafarian Perspectives
THE Prophet Isaiah writes of one who shall reign on David’s throne.
With emphasis on Chapter 9:6-7, “For unto us a child is born … Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Chapter 11 reinforces the same fact, especially were it says, “And a little child will lead them,” and these revelations point at Ras Tafari Makonnen.
Fulfilling biblical prophecies for the Lion of the tribe Judah began the day Emperor Haile Selassie I was born. To begin with, the very same day he was born, a heavy downpour drenched over a dry and thirsty land that had suffered a seven-year-long merciless drought.
Women ululated and warriors fired a 21 gun salute, Ras Makonnen had just received his first surviving son. This “special child” was born in a round mud-and-wood hut near the ancient walled city of Harar on July 23 1892, when Ethiopia was still known as the Abyssinian Empire.
Named Lidj Tafari Makonnen, he was the tenth child born to Ras Makonnen Wolde Mikael Gudessa, a prince and governor of the Harar Province, and his wife Yashimabet Ali; he was the only one of their eleven children to survive through adulthood.
This alone is a miracle. It seems as if ‘nature’ did not will for Ras Makonnen and his beloved wife to have any surviving progenies. The book of Revelation says the devil shall try all means possible to make it impossible for the Messiah child to exist.
A short while after his birth, the devil tried to snatch away the ‘child’ but was embarrassed by his father at the famed Battle of Adowa.
Abyssinia was little changed through the centuries: a rich, proud, fiercely independent African empire with several native religious groups namely Christians, Muslims, Jews, and ani-mists.
LidjTafari was and is an Amhara, the dominant ethnic group that had adopted Coptic Christianity in the year AD 325. Coptics hold that Christ was solely divine, a belief later denounced as heretical by most of the Christian world except in Egypt and Ethiopia.
His father, Ras Makonnen, was a cousin, confidant, and chief adviser to Emperor Menelik II, an astute and powerful ruler. After Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1895, Menelik’s army soundly defeated their forces at the battle of Adowa the following year, preventing the country from being colonised.
Over the next few years, Menelik enlarged his empire, establishing Addis Ababa in the centre of the kingdom as his capital city.
He began to centralise and modernise the country, ending centuries of constant warfare.
When LidjTafari was 18 months old, his mother died giving birth to one of his siblings. Lidj is a title given to all noble children but sometimes spilled into old age, especially when the noble in question maintained childish behaviour way past his age. A classic case of this imbecility is testified by LidjEyasu.
Young Tafari grew up with a sound education in Abyssinian and Coptic traditions, he was tutored in European thought and ideas by Father Andre Jarosseau, a French missionary priest. Such exposure to foreign ways and thinking was extremely rare for an African son.
Tafari proved to be a model student. He was exceedingly intelligent and diligent, with an excellent memory and paid maximum attention to even the smallest details. These capacities proved and served HIM efficiently throughout his political career and especially as Emperor.
Recognising his abilities, his father proclaimed Tafari Dejazmatch (commander) of a local militia in 1905 at the age of 13, and established a separate household for him with his own servants and soldiers.
Ras Makonnen transfigured into the next realm the following year, entrusting Tafari to the care of Menelik II. Scriptures say the Messiah is without mother and without father, with neither beginning nor ending. Psalm 110 says he is forever a priest in the order of Melchezidek.
The Emperor summoned young Tafari to court and appointed him governor of a small province. Tafari was a progressive administrator whose policies increased the power of the central government at the expense of the feudal nobility.
He developed a salaried civil service, lowered taxes, and created a court system that extended legal rights to the peasantry.
Promoted to a larger province in 1908, two years later he was made governor of Harar, just like his father. In 1911, he married Wayzero Menen, a great-granddaughter of Menelik II.
During the course of their marriage they had six children, and they remained married until she finally decided to exit this boring realm into the next and more promising in 1961.
Menelik transfigured in 1913 and his grandson, Lidj Eyasu (Yasu), became Emperor. But Lidj Eyasu was seen as pro-Muslim, alienating Ethiopia’s Christian majority. Tafari became the rallying symbol for opposition noblemen and high church officials, who cunningly manoeuvred Yasu’s overthrow in 1916.
Zauditu (Zawditu), Menelik’s daughter, became empress, the first female to rule the nation of Ethiopia since the Queen of Sheba, while Tafari was named a Prince (Ras) as well as Regent and Heir to the Throne.
RasTafari was interested in modernising Ethiopia, Zauditu was conservative and more concerned with religion than politics. The two maintained an uneasy alliance as various rival factions of nobles vied for power.
The young Prince introduced the first regular courts of law in the country. Ethiopia’s first printing press began operating in 1922, soon followed by the introduction of a regularly published newspaper, as well as motorcars, electric generators, telephone service, and a reformed prison and justice system.
In 1923, RasTafari gained Ethiopia’s admission to the League of Nations. This was no stroll in the park. The League of Nations was dominated by racist whites who treated their black subjects as savages and no more different from baboons and monkeys.
In 1924, the young Ras abolished local slavery which existed in the empire. More or less unpaid servants, this slavery was not equivalent to mainstream trans-atlantic slave trade. Indeed little Lidj Tafari did lead the mighty Ethiopian Empire.