Mengistu Haile Mariam (21 May 1937-) was Chairman of the Derg from 17 to 28 November 1974 (succeeding Aman Andom and preceding Tafari Benti) and from 3 February 1977 to 10 September 1987 (succeeding Benti) and President of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 10 September 1987 to 21 May 1991 (preceding Tesfaye Gebre Kidan). His dictatorial rule left between 1.2 and 2 million Ethiopians dead from famine or war, and he was overthrown at the end of the Ethiopian Civil War.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Mengistu in uniform
Mengistu Haile Mariam was born in Wolayita, Ethiopia on 21 May 1937; his mother was allegedly the illegitimate daughter of Haile Selassie's Crown Councilor Kebede Tessema, who was himself allegedly the illegitimate son of Emperor Menelik II. Mengistu followed his father into the army, serving under General Aman Andom and receiving military training in the United States. He experienced racial discrimination in the USA, leaving him with a lasting anti-American sentiment. In 1974, he became a junior member of the Derg military junta following the overthrow of Haile Selassie in a communist coup, and he served as deputy chairman of the Derg from March 1975 to February 1977. Mengistu and the Derg allegedly had Haile Selassie strangled in 1975 after executing 61 of his former officials, and, after Tafari Benti's death in a shootout in 1977, Mengistu became Chairman of the Derg.
Rise to power[]
Mengistu giving a speech as Chairman
Mengistu consolidated his power by having the Vice Chairman Atnafu Abate and 40 other officers executed, and he became an ally of the USSR, the Warsaw Pact, and Cuba. As the EPRP's insurgency intensified from 1977 to 1978, Mariam initiated the "Red Terror", cracking down on political dissidents and armed separatist and revolutionary groups in the country; he also turned against the MEISON socialist student movement in the "White Terror". Up to 50,000 people were killed in the Ethiopian Red Terror. Meanwhile, Mengistu came to preside over the second-largest military in Africa as a result of the Ogaden War, defeating Somalia's attempts to conquer the ethnically-Somali Ogaden region.
Mengistu's last speech
Mengistu also openly embraced Marxism-Leninism and began a series of socialist reforms, including land reform, the abolition of feudalism, nationalizations, and the redistribution of wealth. From 1983 to 1985, the nation suffered from a devastating famine which was exacerbated by the Derg's misrule. In 1984, Mengistu created the Workers' Party of Ethiopia, followed by the creation of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in 1987 in an attempt to satisfy Soviet demands for the creation of a civilian-based vanguard party. By the late 1980s, however, the Eritrean independence cause and Ethiopian revolutionary groups were making progress in their struggles against Mengistu's regime, and, in 1990, the USSR cut off foreign aid to Ethiopia as the Dissolution of the Soviet Union began to occur.
Downfall and exile[]
Hailemariam Desalegn posing with Mengistu in 2018
Mengistu formally renounced Marxism in favor of a mixed economy in a bid to regain some of his lost support, but, in May 1991, the EPRDF advanced on Addis Ababa from all sides, and Mengistu was forced to flee the capital before its fall. Mengistu deserted the WPE and Derg leaderships, obtaining asylum in Zimbabwe and surviving an assassination attempt in 1995. He came to advise Robert Mugabe on security matters and live in a luxurious home, even after Mugabe's downfall; he was found guilty in absentia of genocide in Ethiopia. In 2018, the former Prime Minister of Ethiopia Hailemariam Desalegn posed with Mengistu in a photo posted to social media, eliciting controversy and forcing Desalegn to remove the photo from his profile.