Part I of II
“The principles of Ubuntu are the original wisdom of all our common ancestors…that the only way they can not only survive, but thrive, is by working together to relate to one another in a way that says: ‘I am, because you are. ”
Mamphela Ramphele, author and physician, South Africa
Dr. Ramphele, a person I came to know at the World Bank, is right. We Ethiopians must embrace our common humanity and our human worth if we wish not only to survive; but to thrive. The current polarized ethnic system will not allow us to do that. If Ethiopians fail to learn from the debilitating and incapacitating ethnic politics of the past four decades, that have cost the Ethiopian people tens of billions of dollars in investments and thousands in human lives, they do not have anyone to blame; but themselves.