On November 23, 1974, in the event known alternatively as the “Massacre of the Sixty” or “Black Saturday”, Derg security units gathered a group of imprisoned high-ranking ex-government and ex-military officials and executed them at the Kerchele Prison in Addis Ababa. The Derg’s stated reasons for the executions were that these officials had made “repeated plots … that might engulf the country into a bloodbath”, as well as “maladministration, hindering fair administration of justice, selling secret documents of the country to foreign agents and attempting to disrupt the present Ethiopian popular movement”. Among those executed included Haile Selassie’s grandson, other members of the Ethiopian nobility, two ex-Prime Ministers, and seventeen army generals.
(Taken from Ethiopian Civil War – Wars of the 20th Century – Vol. 4)
Derg seizes power In March 1974, a group of military officers led by Colonel Alem Zewde Tessema formed the multi-unit “Armed Forces Coordinating Committee” (AFCC) consisting of representatives from different sectors of the Ethiopian military, tasked with enforcing cohesion among the various forces and assisting the government in maintaining authority in the face of growing unrest. In June 1974, reformist junior officers of the AFCC, desiring greater reforms and dissatisfied with what they saw was the AFCC’s close association with the government, broke away and formed their own group.
This latter group, which took the name “Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police, and Territorial Army, soon grew to about 110 to 120 enlisted men and officers (none above the rank of major) from the 40 military and security units across the country, and elected Majors Mengistu Haile Mariam and Atnafu Abate as its chairman and vice-chairman, respectively. This group, which became known simply as Derg (an Ethiopian word meaning “Committee” or “Council”), had as its (initial) aims to serve as a conduit for various military and police units in order to maintain peace and order, and also to uphold the military’s integrity by resolving grievances, disciplining errant officers, and curbing corruption in the armed forces.
Derg operated anonymously (e.g. its members were not publicly known initially), but worked behind such populist slogans as “Ethiopia First”, “Land to the Peasants”, and “Democracy and Equality to all” to gain broad support among the military and general population. By July 1974, the Derg’s power was felt not only within the military but in the government itself, and Haile Selassie was forced to implement a number of political measures, including the release of political prisoners, the return of political exiles to the country, passage of a new constitution, and more critically, to allow Derg to work closely with the government. Under Derg pressure, the government of Prime Minister Makonnen collapsed; succeeding as Prime Minister was Mikael Imru, an aristocrat who held leftist ideas.
Haile Selassie’s concessions to the Derg included measures to investigate government corruption and mismanagement. In the period that followed, Derg arrested and imprisoned many high-ranking imperial, administrative, and military officials, including former Prime Ministers Habte-Wold and Makonnen, Cabinet members, military generals, and regional governors. In August 1974, a proposed constitution that called for establishing a constitutional monarchy was set aside. Now operating virtually with impunity, the Derg took aim at the imperial court, dissolving the imperial governing councils and royal treasury, and seizing royal landholdings and commercial assets. By this time, Haile Selassie’s government virtually had ceased to exist; de facto power was held by the military, or more precisely, by Derg.
The culmination of events occurred when Haile Selassie was accused of deliberately denying the existence of a widespread famine that currently was ravaging Ethiopia’s Wollo province, which already had killed some 40,000 to 80,000 to as many as 200,000 people. Conflicting reports indicated that Haile Selassie was not aware of the famine, was fully aware of it, or that government administrators withheld knowledge of its existence from the emperor. By August 1974, large protest demonstrations in Addis Ababa were demanding the emperor’s arrest. Finally on September 12, 1974, the Derg overthrew Haile Selassie in a bloodless coup, leading away the frail, 82-year old ex-monarch to imprisonment.
The Derg gained control of Ethiopia but did not abolish the monarchy outright, and announced that Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, Haile Selassie’s son who was currently abroad for medical treatment, was to succeed to the throne as the new “king” on his return to the country. However, Prince Wossen rejected the offer and remained abroad. The Derg then withdrew its offer and in March 1975, abolished the monarchy altogether, thus ending the 800 year-old Ethiopian Empire. (On August 27, 1975, or nearly one year after his arrest, Haile Selassie passed away under mysterious circumstances, with Derg stating that complications from a medical procedure had caused his death, while critics alleging that the ex-monarch was murdered.)
Ethiopia’s Provinces during the Ethiopian Civil War
The surreptitious means by which Derg, in a period of six months, gained power by progressively dismantling the Ethiopian Empire and ultimately deposing Haile Selassie, sometimes is referred to as the “creeping coup” in contrast with most coups, which are sudden and swift. On September 15, 1974, Derg formally took control of the government and renamed itself as the Provisional Military Administrative Council (although it would continue to be commonly known as Derg), a ruling military junta under General Aman Andom, a non-member Derg whom the Derg appointed as its Chairman; General Aman thereby also assumed the role of Ethiopia’s head of state.
At the outset, Derg had its political leanings embodied in its slogans “Ethiopia First” (i.e. nationalism) and “Democracy and Equality to all”. Soon, however, it abolished the Ethiopian parliament, suspended the constitution, and ruled by decree. In early 1975, Derg launched a series of broad reforms that swept away the old conservative order and began the country’s transition to socialism. In January-February 1975, nearly all industries were nationalized. In March, an agrarian reform program nationalized all farmlands (including those owned by the country’s largest landowner, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church), reduced farm sizes, and abolished tenancy farming. Collectivized agriculture was introduced and farmers were organized into peasant organizations. (Land reform was fiercely resisted in such provinces as Gojjam, Wollo, and Tigray, where most farmers owned their lands and tenant farming was not widely practiced.) In July 1975, all urban lands, houses, and buildings were nationalized and city residents were organized into urban dwellers’ associations, known as “kebeles”, which would play a major role in the coming civil war. Despite the extensive nationalization, a few private sector industries that were considered vital to the economy were left untouched, e.g. the retail and wholesale trade, and import and export industries.
In April 1976, Derg published the “Program for the National Democratic Revolution”, which outlined the regime’s objectives of transforming Ethiopia into a socialist state, with powers vested in the peasants, workers, petite bourgeoisie, and anti-feudal and anti-monarchic sectors. An agency called the “Provisional Office for Mass Organization Affairs” was established to work out the transformative process toward socialism.