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Tafari Benti

Tafari Benti (October 1921-3 February 1977) was Chairman of the Derg from 28 November 1974 to 3 February 1977, succeeding Aman Andom and preceding Mengistu Haile Mariam.

Biography[]

Tafari Benti was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in October 1921. He joined the Ethiopian army at the age of 20, and he served as a military attache in Washington DC, where he and several other colleagues suffered from racial discrimination. In 1974, he took part in the Ethiopian Revolution against Emperor Haile Selassie, becoming Chairman of the Derg junta following Aman Andom's death in a shootout with his former supporters in November. He was initially a puppet of the more charismatic and powerful Mengistu, and, in May 1975, he oversaw the formal abolition of the Ethiopian Empire and its replacement with a Marxist-Leninist one-party state. Tafari went on to transfer Mengistu's supporters out of the capital and into the countryside, where they could no longer pose a threat to him. However, Tafari's support for reconciliation with the EPRP led to Mengistu rallying opposition against Tafari, whom he had arrested on 3 February 1977. He then accused Tafari of putting Ethiopia before socialism, and he had Tafari taken to a dark basement where he and several other arrested officers were massacred by soldiers armed with automatic weapons and silencers.

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