Millennium for Whom?
The Oromo Network - September 4, 2007
By Kallacha Dubbi
Historically, there are two main versions of Christian calendars - Julian and Gregorian. Both are religious by origin. According to the Julian calendar, it will soon be 2000 years since the birth of Christ. On the other hand, followers of the Gregorian calendar calculate that it has been 2007 years since Christ was born. Other religions and civilizations have their own calendars. For instance, in Islamic calendar, the Higira, today is Sha'ban 20, 1824. As another example, I will briefly introduce the Oromo calendar below.
In an eerie twist of irony, in just over a week, on the same day when USA commemorates the 9-11 victims, Ethiopia will celebrate a Julian millennium. This celebration comes about seven years after the rest of the world celebrated Y2K. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government has already invested more cash on this single event than the Derg, annually celebrating its own rise to power, or Haile Sellasie celebrating his infamous birthdays while the people starved to death, literally. In this country, there is fondness to self-celebration without backing it with success of any sort. There is also a short memory to history; those who condemned the lavish birthday parties of Haile Sellasie and used this impropriety to rise to power later started more lavishly celebrating their own rise to power. And those who condemned the Derg for celebrating its murderous rise to power are now doing their own celebrations with even more glamour and cost. 16 giant LED screens have arrived from China and I also read that artist Beyonce will lead the New Year's concert with pop-star Janet Jackson and rapper 50 Cent. Lavish indeed for a country that ranks 170 out of 177 in the United Nations Human Development Index. However, whether or not this millennium is a travesty or worthy event, whether or not this indeed is a good investment of the poor taxpayer's money should generate an interesting debate which I am sure will be instructive. For now, let us focus more on the use of the calendar ...