INDEPTH: ETHIOPIA
Beyond Tears
CBC News Online | December 14, 2004
From The National, Dec. 13, 2004
Reporter: Brian Stewart
Producer: Harry Schachter
When Canadians first learned of the famine in Ethiopia, the response was raw emotion. There was shock and immense sadness at the images they saw. But Canadians moved beyond that and mobilized support. Farmers and pop stars, politicians and college kids together raised millions of dollars. There was a pandemic of giving in this country, the likes of which we had never seen before.
That was 20 years ago this fall. The CBC's Brian Stewart helped bring the story to the world's attention. He's been back several times since. Here he is again with what happened when Canadians moved beyond tears.
The coming of chill evening, late fall 1984. Across the country, people settled down to watch the evening news unaware their sense of the outside world was about to be altered forever. At 24 Sussex, a new prime minister would have a restless night, and, by morning, would face his first crisis.
All watching the news saw something they would never forget. And had not imagined before. At the time, I reported:
As each week passes, the hordes of famine victims in northern Ethiopia multiply in this endless, silent, frightening march for food, a spectacle hard to believe for our age. To some it's more an image of the great plagues of famines of the medieval world. To others, more science fiction, a projection of a crumbling world after a nuclear holocaust.
Twenty years ago, the scenes of the greatest African famine of modern times poured into homes night after night for weeks. Years of drought had left seven million in Ethiopia, 28 million across the continent facing starvation.
It was the first night people most remember.
Stephen Lewis
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It staggered Canada's rookie UN ambassador, Stephen Lewis, just weeks on the job.
"The family collectively wept as we watched. It was overwhelming," Lewis recalls. "I had a lifetime of experience around Africa and I had been through the Biafran civil war and I'd seen famine and starvation in Eastern Nigeria. I'd never seen anything like these images. I was completely dumbstruck by it."
Stephen Lewis raced immediately to New York. He found that months of warning by aid groups and the Ethiopian government had been ignored or discounted in UN corridors. "No one was talking about it in my recollection in diplomatic and bureaucratic circles," Lewis says."
Within hours, Lewis heard from an emotional Prime Minister Brian Mulroney outraged by the same images.
Brian Mulroney
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"It was a calamity that was unfolding before our very eyes and nothing was happening." Mulroney says. "You had the drought impacting everybody, children dying, no infrastructure in place, no money, no commitments, and when I communicated with Stephen, I was trying to find out whether he was getting any feedback of leadership initiatives developing elsewhere. He said no. He said something to the effect, I hope, Prime Minister, that you're thinking of doing what I think you're thinking of doing, and I said, I am, Stephen. We didn't know exactly what we were going to do except that we were going to step in and provide some leadership.
Days later, Lewis used his first speech before the General Assembly to shake up a listless hall.
"Late last Thursday evening, I happened to be at home with my family in Toronto, Canada watching the national television news. In a sequence which will be familiar to everyone in this hall, there was an extended report on the tragedy in Ethiopia," Lewis told the delegates. "I cannot remember in my entire adult life scenes of such unendurable human desolation. It was heartbreaking. There is no doubt in my mind that Canadians sat and wept as we did and would wish to respond with compassion, generosity and fervour. What must come now is a Herculean effort on the part of all member nations to address those conditions which give rise to the crisis."
Lewis's passion finally stirred the assembly.
Stephen Lewis
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"My feeling was that this was an imminently dramatic, intensely human moment in the history of the UN. It was bringing Africa and the dilemma of modern Africa into the homes of the world as never before," Lewis say.
Mulroney, the Conservative, and Lewis, the New Democrat, were curious allies, brand new to their posts. But Lewis was surprised to find Mulroney shared a keen interest in Africa, and this unsuspected passion drove Canada into a leadership role in the crisis.
"It was clear that he had a particular feeling about the continent and particularly that underdog feeling of Mulroney's where you want to come to the defence of the beleaguered. It was a fascinating dimension of the man which is not widely appreciated by Canadians," Lewis says.
Mulroney, in fact, had been deeply interested in developing nations since his late teens at St. Francis Xavier University. He was inspired by pioneer student projects to help Africa. So in 1984, most governments acted only after public outcry over famine. Ottawa, virtually alone, moved immediately.
By chance of history, the crisis coincided with the swearing in of the prime minister most interested in Africa and one impatient to use power internationally.
"I thought someone else was going to do something, the United States or the United Kingdom. I didn't know. I was brand new," Mulroney says. "And when, after a couple of days or so, nothing had happened, Joe Clark and I got together. I said, Joe, I know you share my view. We've got to do something about this immediately. No one else appears to be doing anything."
As the crisis broke during the cold war, Ethiopia's Marxist regime had severely strained relations with leaders in the West. They were reluctant to offer help to a regime headed by this strongman.
David MacDonald
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Then, the first week in November, Canada broke rank. In one of the most dramatic Canadian diplomatic missions ever undertaken, Foreign Minister Joe Clark rerouted a return from India to fly in to Ethiopia. With him was Canada's just-named emergency co-ordinator, David MacDonald.
"We got off the plane and, well, we met you [the CBC crew], and you said, I've just come from the field. I've got this incredible footage," MacDonald says. "We went up to your room and you showed it to us. We're sitting on the bed watching stuff that neither of us had ever seen before."
Clark, who had been travelling, had not seen television coverage and was not permitted to fly to the war-affected famine zone. His tears were similar to those shed by millions at home.
Joe Clark
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"Shocking pictures. I can understand why they would cause that kind of reaction at home, and what I came to do was to try to get some sense as to how much use would be made of aid that Canadians sent. I would like some indication as to just how effective the co-ordination is," Clark said then.
Clark promised the demoralized aid groups that help was coming. He was the first Western official to arrive and ahead, even, of the UN leaders.
At a critical meeting, Ethiopian leader Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam asked Canada to become Ethiopia's bridge to the West. The Canadian delegation left Ethiopia deeply worried. The crisis would require a humanitarian mobilization unprecedented in history. Would the public be onside? They had no idea of the emotional tidal wave about to sweep Canada.
It was a near instantaneous chain reaction. Canadians rallied to the cause of saving Ethiopia.
At Farmers Co-operative Dairy they are piling bags of skim milk powder, 5,000 kilograms of it for Ethiopia.
Students gave up smoking and the money that wasn't spent on cigarettes went into the cash tray, and this group of kids fasted for the children in Ethiopia.
At Father Lacombe High School, students set a famine relief goal of $1,100. That was easily surpassed in a one-day collection blitz, students and teachers kicked in $2,000.
The government gave more than $50 million for starters and promised to match private donations. But the public gave twice the most optimistic expectations. That pressured Ottawa to spend still more.
"Oh, God. I can remember schools and municipalities and small groups of people organizing bake sales and runs and all kinds of things, contests," Mulroney says.
Private and government agencies were at first overwhelmed.
"It just came up from the ground. We couldn't handle the requests from people who said: tell us what we can do to help! We've got money. We've got people, we've got resources. How can we get out there? How can we d something?" MacDonald says.
"I don't think any country mobilized internally as Canada did," Lewis says. "That was fascinating and unusual, and everyone else followed us in that instance. We sort of leaped into the fray first and embraced Ethiopia. It was actually incredibly moving and incredibly touching what happened in Canada."
One pattern quickly emerged. Those with the least gave most.
"This woman from, I think, Edmonton wrote at about that time and said, you know, I'm a single mother. I don't have much money. But here's a cheque for $125, which normally I would spend on my kids at Christmas, but I've told them that this is their Christmas gift. I wanted to do something to help," Mulroney recalls.
In Canada's Far North, the area most remote from Ethiopia, those in poor Inuit communities gave the most per capita of any Canadians, perhaps of any in the world.
In tiny Pangnirtung, a phone-in campaign on the radio brought in $5,000, much of it from people who are unemployed.
People donated to a community auction. Artists carved soapstone pieces to be sold, and when the bidding was over, more than $20,000 was raised. Deep in Inuit culture is the need to share in an unforgiving climate. They felt a profound urge to rescue the starving.
In the first three months, famine relief seemed desperate. There was only a trickle of outside aid, and even that was hard to distribute in isolated northern Ethiopia. Many were too weak to reach feeding camps so international airdrops raced rations to famine zones. In the darkest days, however, thousands of tonnes of grain from Canada arrived. The bright Canadian flag became one of the most famous symbols of salvation. As other nations joined Canada, relief became a military-style campaign involving relief trucks, ceaseless airlifts, more than a million-and-a-quarter tonnes of grain.
As Canada remained a leading donor, Prime Minister Mulroney and Clark for months ran a crisis command to bypass normal channels.
"Joe Clark and I were immediately apprised of everything that was going on," Mulroney says. "We would make decisions. Joe would call me and say we need this there or we need such-and-such initiative at the United Nations or will you call the president of the United States to tell him such-and-such to get this thing going, and we would do that."
The government relied heavily on experienced NGOs. An alliance of farmers kept grain shipments moving. And big unions like the Canadian Steel Workers kept giving and pressed others to give.
In Ethiopia by February, we started to see more international shipments of food arrive and felt overwhelming relief as the death toll started to fall.
The tide was turning. And yet I wondered how long this belated world solidarity would last and when interest would fade. But that month Canada's top performers arrived at a Toronto studio inspired by the example of Bob Geldof's Band Aid, mobilized in solidarity with Ethiopia. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bryan Adams and others would sing Tears Are Not Enough, the title that directly captured the crisis reality.
Anne Murray
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Today, Anne Murray remembers a day like no other.
"When somebody who sings for a living has the opportunity to do something, even if it's something small for something like that, I mean, you jump at it," she says.
"You don't hesitate. I said yes right away. Whatever they wanted me to do, great, I was there. We were all kibitzing, socializing, getting to know each other, and rekindling old friendships and all of that. Then this lady came in, an Ethiopian lady, I don't remember her name, to talk to us, to give us some feel for what it was all about."
Ainalem Tabeje was a young Ethiopian new to the country. She had heard of none of the musicians, just felt they were kind strangers.
Ainalem Tabeje
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"For me, it's a painful experience to be here and to see my people dying. I know you all share my grief, but nothing is close to have your roots there. They're hard working people. They're religious people. They're generous. They're beautiful," Tabeje says.
"It was one of the most moving little speeches," Anne Murray recalls. "There wasn't a dry eye in the place when she was finished. It took a while to get back up again. But she made us really want to make this good. And we did."
The song was an instant success, raised millions. More importantly, it helped keep the government and the public focused on Ethiopia.
Today, Tabeje is a civil servant in Ottawa. She calls the famine response Canada's finest hour in peacetime.
"I've never seen a nation mobilize to that extent for a cause that's outside our border so I remember that. I remember those schoolchildren. I remember the musicians. I remember the churches. I remember the food grain that came. So this I what I remember about that song, that song goes much more beyond that recording session," Tabeje says. "We were kind of mobilized around one cause which I haven't seen happen again. So Ethiopia was like a rallying point for Canada. Ethiopia the example of how we did it."
In Ethiopia, crisis relief ground on for another two years.
Before the end, Canada alone saved perhaps 700,000 of more than seven million lives spared by emergency relief. It was the nation's largest peacetime rescue effort. Canada's aid to Ethiopia and Africa increased steadily through the 1980s, then fell off sharply in the '90s.
Today, Ethiopia, now a fledgling democracy at peace, still struggles to repair its shattered land, one of the poorest nations on earth receiving only patchy help that is glaringly inadequate and inconsistent. Those who had faced the famine watched first in disbelief, then anger.
"You can't do it sporadically. You can't say, oh, I've got an African initiative," Mulroney says. "Gee, let's get together and talk about an African question. It has to be a constant thing because you've got hundreds of millions of people who depend upon a reliable, predictable degree of aid, technology transfers, education, health, water projects, desertification projects, all of these things, you can't turn the taps off. Once you turn the tap off, these poor people have nothing."
"It was the famine and the consequences of the famine that made everyone sit down and say you have to work out a compact around Africa," Lewis says. "The compact was worked out and it was immediately betrayed. And all of the response that had occurred around Ethiopia never occurred again to this day."
The crisis saw a leadership and involvement in Africa that no other Canadian government has approached, yet it is now scarcely mentioned in our history. Other rich nations also lost focus on Africa, squandering a decade of possible development and leaving Ethiopia seemingly always on the verge of another catastrophe like the one we once could not imagine in 1984.
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