Haile Fida
| Haile Fida kuma ሐይሌ ፊዳ ኩማ |
|
|---|---|
| Chairman Provisional Office for Mass Organizational Affairs | |
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In office 2 December 1975 – 14 July 1977 |
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| Chairman All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement | |
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In office Late 1960 – 14 July 1977 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
4 April 1939 Jimma Arjo, Ethiopia |
| Died | 4 April 1979 (aged 40) Addis Ababa, the circumstances of his death are unclear |
| Political party | All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement |
| Alma mater |
Institut Universitaire de France Addis Ababa University General Wingate Secondary School |
Haile Fida (1939?-1979) was an Ethiopian politician and a leader of the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement (popularly known as "MEISON", after its Amharic abbreviation). His most significant accomplishment was drafting the Program for the National Democratic Revolution on behalf of the Derg.
Haile Fida was born in Jimma Arjo, Wollega and grew up in Nekemte, Wollega. Haile Fida was an Oromo who had been studying in France since the early 1960s, and had acquired a Marxist ideology that was closer to the Soviet version than to the New Left; Haile studied MA in sociology and social anthropology and PhD in philosophy at the Institut Universitaire de France. Rene LaFort states that he was a fellow-traveller of the French Communist Party. He returned to Ethiopia soon after the start of the Ethiopian Revolution, sometime in 1975, having answered the Derg's appeal for all educated Ethiopians to return home to help modernize the country. With Negede Gobeze, who had also been studying abroad in France, he opened the "Progressive Book Store" near the campus of Haile Selassie University (now Addis Ababa University), which made the basic texts of Marxism-Leninism available to Ethiopians. "The store", note the Ottaways, "a dilapidated old house, was swamped by students, and each new shipment of books was immediately sold out."
He soon came to the notice of not only the Derg, who were in need of both civilian supporters and advisers in Marxist-Leninist theory, as well as to the notice of its leading member, Mengistu Haile Mariam. In December 1975, the Derg secretly created what became known as the Provisional Office for Mass Organizational Affairs (POMOA), and Haile Fida was made its chairman. The goal of POMOA was not only to build support amongst the general public, but to reach out to other leftist civilians. It was while chairman of POMOA that Haile Fida drafted the Program of National Democratic Revolution, a document which replaced the patriotic but vague motto Itiopiya Tikdem ("Ethiopia first") the Derg had used as their guiding principles with a Maoist vision for Ethiopia. Relying on the revolutionary alliance of the proletariat, the peasantry and the progressive petit-bourgeoisie, the trinity of feudalism, imperialism and bureaucratic capitalism would be destroyed and eventually a People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia established. Mengistu announced the adoption of the National Democratic Revolution at a mass demonstration 20 April 1976.
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