Teddy Afro: The invincible
messenger
By Abebe Gellaw
ǀ October 14, 2009
There
are some people blessed with an unbreakable spirit. They can turn adversities
into triumph and setbacks into progress. These kinds of people have a deeper
understanding of life as a rollercoaster with ups and downs, turns and twists,
gains and lose, defeats and victories…. They take times of sadness, grief,
illnesses, falls, trials or tribulations with grace and resurrect themselves
against all odds. After all, true heroes and heroines are not those that kill
enemies with the arrows of vengeance and hatred, but those who defy the darkest
hours of life and come out shining.
Tewodros Kassahun, widely known
with his stage name Teddy Afro, was supposed to come out of jail a broken man,
dejected and depressed cursing his fate and Almighty God. During his trials and
tribulations in those filthy dark jails infested with scary rats and bugs, he
was supposed to forget his songs, rhythms, lyrics and his messages of love,
unity and change. He was supposed to turn into a zombie unable to do anything
worthy of recognition. Indeed, he was supposed to take the back seat of history
and disappear into oblivion.
But true stars never die. From
the farthest and darkest corners of the universe, they continue to shine defying
the dominions of darkness. Teddy Afro has just proven this fact just a few days
after he came out of those cruel dark jails that have broken the spirits and faith of
so many courageous men and women.
“Heroes take a journey,” says the
poet and writer Carol Lynn Pearson, “confront dragons, and discover the treasure
of their true selves.” Teddy also confronted the unjust dragons of Kangaroo
courts that turned what should have been an ordinary trial into a widely
ridiculed farcical circus passing harsh verdict and punishment even before the
evidence was gathered and the charges were filed. And yet, not only did he come
out unscathed and unbroken, but also found more of the treasure of his true self
that has remained to be the foundation of his success as an artiste that pumps
powerful messages into our inner souls of conscience.
Teddy’s latest single, which was
released just a few weeks after he walked out of jail, is another testimony to
the fact that he is an artiste with a cause to resonate the heart beats and
pulses of millions of voiceless Ethiopians. The charity single, Sew,
touches a raw nerve in our psyche and disturbs our emotion as he smoothly sings
about the plight of the majority of Ethiopians who are suffering from abject
poverty. He brings closer to our hearts a hard to ignore message about the
forgotten millions who have no shelters, food, and clothes to cover their naked
indignity.
In the 21st century
where much of the world has been making great strides, divided and fractured
Ethiopia is still a country caught in an endless cycle of unimaginable agony as
year after year it stretches its hand to beg food and alms from afar. Beggary
and famine have become trademarks to a once proud nation dubbed the “bread
basket” and “water tower” of Africa. TPLF’s so-called double digit economic
growth has even failed to translate into food for the hungry, but it is visibly
fattening the new ethnocentric elite. Even in Tigray, where the Endowment Fund
for the Rehabilitation of Tigray [EFFORT] brags about accumulating wealth beyond
our imagination in the name of the people, millions are on food safety net
walking on a tightrope that stretches between survival and death.
Mortality is an early calling for
the majority Ethiopians whose life expectancy is below 40 years. Maternal
mortality rate is one of the highest in the world. Children born in Ethiopia
have a greater chance of dying before the age of five as a result of
malnutrition, hunger and diseases than anywhere in the world. Despite the fact
that the TPLF has been claiming to be too busy fighting poverty, famine and
pestilence, it has invested nothing in democracy, equality, justice and real
growth and change, the people’s clarion call that Teddy beautifully echoes
putting himself in harms way and in a collision course with a vengeful elite out
to punish and silence every little critic.
TPLF has done too little to
extricate the nation from rain-fed agriculture. It is rather selling up virgin
and irrigable lands to rich oil barons, including Saudi investors led by Sheik
Mohammed Al Amoudi, who has been engaged of late in gigantic mechanized farming
to produce food for the Middle Eastern rich in a country eternally facing the
fangs of hunger year after year. When Ethiopia will soon turn into the bread
basket of Arabs exporting Ethiopia-grown food to feed Saudi and Gulf States, it
will continue to beg food as millions have no prospect of escaping from the
cycle of hunger. That will definitely be another perplexing paradox!
In the nation of endless paradox,
Teddy’s latest song reminds us of the suffering of tens of millions of fellow
Ethiopians who are dispossessed, hungry and diseased. Unfortunately, there is no
clear strategy to end the burden of being Ethiopians for these unfortunate
people in a land of plenty whose eternally flowing rivers have been feeding
neighbouring countries.
A few weeks before Teddy was
released, NPR journalist Gwen Thompkins filed a story from Addis Ababa, a city
gripped with fear and suspicion because of the level of repressions of a
paranoid regime. “Whether Afro can or will continue his career in Ethiopia
remains a question. Recent laws in the country have further restricted free
speech. And human rights groups contend that the government could easily use the
nation’s new anti-terrorism law to move against its critics. A top government
leader has strongly denied that claim. But nearly everyone here is uneasy about
Teddy, about the future, about the price of saying too much,” she reported.
Teddy Afro should continue to
echo the heartbeats of his people. If I have a wish list of new songs for Teddy,
on top of the list will be a melodic tribute to prisoners of conscience like
Birtukan Mideksa whose only crime is wishing freedom and the best for their
people suffering under a tyrannical regime. Those who are on the wrong side of
history never stop worrying as they know full well that tyranny has never been a
permanent fixture in history.
In Movement of Jah’s people,
an article published right after Teddy’s release from his 16-month
long incarceration, the Economist magazine noted: “The worry for the government is that the release
of Mr Afro will now throw the spotlight back on its jailing of Birtukan Mideksa,
a charismatic young opposition leader, judge and single mother. Ms Mideksa had
already spent 18 months behind bars before she was jailed again earlier this
year for denying that she had asked for a pardon. Her supporters say she has had
to spend much of the year in solitary confinement.” In fact, it is incumbent
upon us to sing and pray about those who have lost their freedom for the sake of
their people.
Under the brutal dictatorship of
Meles Zenawi, there is indeed a huge price to pay for telling the truth. And
yet, trying to kill the messenger makes the message more popular. The reason why
Teddy’s trial and tribulation created so much uproar and outrage was not because
he was tried in a law of court, it was rather due to the fact that there was and
still is an obvious intent to break the spirit of inspirational Ethiopians like
Teddy. Fortunately, Teddy has emerged a much more powerful voice who will take
his transformative and inspirational messages far and wide… There is no message
as subversive as the truth and there is no messenger as credible as a true
believer with a passion for freedom. Teddy Afro is undoubtedly a powerful voice
that has proven to be irrepressible and invincible.
In the end, there will inevitably
come a day where everyone will fearlessly sing… “Free at last, free at
last…Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.” Those songs of slaves will
eventually be sung in Ethiopia, a country that has been proud not to have been
colonized and occupied by external powers and yet has never enjoyed the true
meaning of independence and liberty.
Teddy’s
new song,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqLw9xVi2xE
...
