President Bill Clinton is the inventor of what has come to be known as �A Sister Souljah Moment.�  Sister Souljah was a rapper who was at the forefront of pushing the lyrical envelope in hip-hop.  She had a song whose quotable lyrics included:

If your white great-great grandfather killed my great-great grandfather,

And your white great grandfather sold my great grandfather,

And your grandfather raped my grandmother,

And your father stole, cheated, lied and robbed my father,

What kind of fool would I have to be to say "Come my friend" to the

White daughter and son.

Can you feel the love?  In 1992, while campaigning for the nomination of the Democratic Party to be its candidate for president, Clinton was invited by a black civil rights group to deliver an address.  Instead of delivering the customary, liberal message (�America is still a racist country, white America has failed you; I apologize on their behalf and if elected I will double the funding for all your pet projects�.�) he railed on, and told them that the community has to heal itself and blasted Sister Souljah for propagating a cycle of hate.

That was the birth of the Sister Souljah Moment, now applied by pundits anytime an American politician speaks what he thinks is the uncomfortable and unflattering truth to a constituency that is normally supportive of him/her.   The Sister Souljah Moment is different from a gaffe, which was explained years ago by American journalist Michael Kinsley as one applying to moments when an American politician accidentally speaks an obvious truth but pays for it.  A good example of this, he said, is when Walter Mondale (another guy running for president) casually expressed his wish that he would rather be in sunny California than snowy Minnesota, and he was met by an offended group of Minnesotans. Years earlier, when he was running for president, Jesse Jackson, a black civil rights activist, said that at night, when he is walking and he hears footsteps behind him and turns around to check, he is relieved when he finds out that the person following him is white.   Again, this is not racist because the person uttering it is a black �progressive� and not a white �reactionary.�  Another gaffe, albeit a concentrated version venturing into taboo land. 

Now Clinton was such a master politician the jury was out for years whether he deliberately had his �Sister Souljah moment� to separate and distinguish himself from a very crowded and indistinguishable field of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination (The cynics said that the question of �Which one is Clinton?� would be answered in his favor, �He is the one who told the blacks what all of us want to tell them.  Good for him!�) or whether his lecture was spontaneous and heartfelt.

This controversy was settled in his favor during his second term when a great American writer, writing for The New Yorker, bestowed upon him the crown of America�s First Black President:

Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas. 

Nobody dared call the writer a racist because the writer was the famous Toni Morrison: liberal, black, female.  She wrote this in defense of Clinton, when he was embroiled in impeachment for lying under oath about cheating on his wife.  She saw a certain parallel between the pro/persecution of Clinton and the persecution of black American males for, when everything else fails, sexual transgressions. 

It Is Not What Is Said But Who Says It

The Eritrean political landscape has seen more than its share of feuds that centered on the question of patriotism, �non-intervention,� and slices of our history.  Many of these disputes were fueled by Haftna Souljah Moments�fake ones at that�the reAyuley smUley kind, designed not to correct an errant friend or fellow-traveler, but to show off to people, including people who wish you did not exist, that you and only you are to be trusted with whatever it is you want to position yourself as having a monopoly on.  

Of the many misfortunes that have befallen the Eritrean people are a bickering opposition and our inability to co-ordinate and pinpoint the struggle.  Our diplomatic efforts are haphazard, full of mistrust and have been sustained so far, if we are to be honest with ourselves, on the diplomatic maturity of others.  The issue of our dealing with Ethiopia is a perfect example. 

First the Alliance went and reached an understanding.  Although the first article in their charter was �We shall preserve the unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of our nation that has been achieved by decades of heroic struggle,� they were accused of selling Eritrea�s interest.  It is not what is said by who says it.   Then the heads of the Eritrean People�s Movement went and reached an understanding and tried to tell us that they can work with Meles Zenawi.  More skepticism: more accusations of selling out.  Because it is not what is said�.  Now we have the Eritrean Democratic Party and the ELF-Revolutionary Council, separately, having meetings with Ethiopian officials and announcing they have had productive talks and reached a level of understanding. There are still remnants of skepticism, writing their fiery denunciations. This process of �let me hear it for myself� took three years and, throughout, there were too many Sister Souljahs moments to count.  Is the Ethiopian government supposed to meet with every opposition group, including the ones that will inevitably be formed in the future, for us to get total and full assurance that their quarrel is with the PFDJ and not the Eritrean people? 

There have been differences in approach to the border issue between those who believe that a frequent stating of an unequivocal position is what principle and Eritrea�s sovereignty requires and those of us who believe that, given that Eritrea�s only peace partner in Ethiopia is Meles Zenawi, and given that this same Meles Zenawi is a shrewd operator, what the issue calls for is (1) quiet diplomacy and (2) a united Eritrean opposition front.  Another Eritrean writer who alternates between flashes of brilliance and acute cases of Sister Souljahness put it best recently �It is worth to note that it would be easier for the Ethiopian government, and especially for PM Meles or any other �Tigrayan-dominated� governments, to hand over the disputed areas only once the border issue falls off the headlines from both countries.�   

When I count the failures of the opposition over the past three years, I certainly include me�I am part of the opposition so the criticism applies, at some level, to the self.  The role of the Eritrean media, meaning the Internet, has been to, wittingly or unwittingly, be a conduit and a platform for the unnecessary feuds.  Sometimes I think that the political parties would have had no choice but to unify much earlier if they hadn�t been too busy reading critical articles and opinions of each other in the Internet.  Because many haven�t had an opportunity to meet face-to-face, much of each party�s view of the other had been limited to reading each other�s viewpoints; misunderstandings are amplified until they accelerate to a point of taking a life of their own.   We all make the mistake of assuming permanence but an article, including the one you are reading now, is only one writer�s thought at the time s/he wrote it: a person sharing an opinion at the time s/he conceived it.  That is all.  Same thing applies to interviews.  It is not a manifesto; it is not a creed; it is not a platform.  But we react to them as if they are.

Compounding all of these complications is that awful convenience of the Internet: the pen name.   Years ago, a great writer and citizen, Habtom Yohannes, proposed that we, at least those of us in Diaspora, do away with pen names.   His argument was that as long as we tolerate pen names, our opposition movement would never grow, as people will never be emboldened to take the necessary steps to remove the suffocating PFDJ.    I�ve never used a pen name but, at the time, I disagreed with Habtom because I thought that there are still valid reasons for people to use pen names.  But now when I see people, important people in our opposition movements, speculate on who is really behind this pen name and that one, and then based on their often-wrong assumptions provide often-negative reactions, I wonder.  More than wonder, I have changed my mind: Habtom was right and I was wrong.  Pen names encourage hostile communication.  They divert people�s focus into speculation that is worse than useless, but actually negative.  The retardation of our opposition efforts is due to, in no small measure, the anonymity provided by pen names�which allow people to escape accountability and utter the most destructive and libelous expressions.

The balance we have not reached is this: how does a media outlet that is committed to freedom of expression design a system that does not give people total absolution from being responsible for what they write?  Should someone who uses a pen name but adds a lot of value to our debate be treated the same as someone who uses a pen name only to add confusion and abuse other Eritreans? If we get to decide who gets published and who doesn't, aren't we abusing our "power"?  Questions we grapple with all the time and, unfortunately, haven't designed a satisfactory answer for.  

Demarcation of Eritrean Politics

Now that we finally have an all-inclusive united opposition, we need to sustain and nurture it and, to me, the best way to do that is to continuously remind ourselves, as often as possible, how truly hideous the Isaias regime is.  It is not just bad or wicked but breathtaking evil; it is sadistic in its cruelty to the defenseless people of Eritrea who must wake up every day to face their nightmarish lives, burdened by the realization that there is nobody out there to help them.   Other suffocating regimes have some sort of consolation prizes to a segment of their population�like China�s prosperity or Cuba�s advances in medicine or North Korea�s nuke power status which may appeal to its super-nationalists�but the PFDJ offers nothing in exchange for its brutality except more war, more famine and more hopelessness.   Some compare the PFDJ era to the Derg era, but psychologically, the situation is actually much worse, for during the Derg era, the people always lived on the hope that �deQna��the freedom fighters�will come to save them any day now and during the terror of the Derg, unlike now, there were virtually no Eritreans defending the Derg�s cruelty and conspiring with it.  

With all its shortcomings and growing pains, our opposition is more democratic, more representative, and closer to the side of angels than the morally bankrupt PFDJ and it is now, more than ever, worth our support and encouragement.  There is now a crystallized clarity in the Eritrean political arena, between the opposition, whose stated position is to take power from Isaias Afwerki and surrender it to the people and, on the other side, Isaias Afwerki and his hand-selected lieutenants who want to do everything in their power to stop that.   

Our politics has never been demarcated so clearly.  And not along the soft-on-Ethiopia, principled-on-Ethiopia, violent vs non-violent, nationalist vs sectarian/ethnical but along meaningful divide: pro-tyranny and pro-democracy.

In the middle are the hostages of Isaias Afwerki�the people of Eritrea, including its Defense Forces and civil servants.   By words and deeds we must now assure the hostages that the replacement to Isaias is not just �not worse� than the tyrant, but imminently better and that there will be tangible improvements in their lives if they take the risk to unshackle themselves from his chains.  That is hard work and requires a co-ordinated effort.

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