and repression of Mobutu’s Zaire, would then set up a
regime just as corrupt and perhaps even more disastrous. It
was certainly farcical that he tried to start a Mobutuesque
personality cult aided and abetted by Dominique Sakombi
Inongo, previously Mobutu’s minister of information, and
that Mobutu’s regime was itself fashioned on patterns of
exploitation of the masses that had started more than a
century previously with King Leopold’s Congo Free State. It
was indeed a farce that the Marxist officer Mengistu would
start living in a palace, viewing himself as an emperor, and
enriching himself and his entourage just like Haile Selassie
and other emperors before him had done.
It was all a farce, but also more tragic than the original
tragedy, and not only for the hopes that were dashed.
Stevens and Kabila, like many other rulers in Africa, would
start murdering their opponents and then innocent citizens.
Mengistu and the Derg’s policies would bring recurring
famine to Ethiopia’s fertile lands. History was repeating
itself, but in a very distorted form. It was a famine in Wollo
province in 1973 to which Haile Selassie was apparently
indifferent that did so much finally to solidify opposition to
his regime. Selassie had at least been only indifferent.
Mengistu instead saw famine as a political tool to
undermine the strength of his opponents. History was not
only farcical and tragic, but also cruel to the citizens of
Ethiopia and much of sub-Saharan Africa.
The essence of the iron law of oligarchy, this particular
facet of the vicious circle, is that new leaders overthrowing
old ones with promises of radical change bring nothing but
more of the same. At some level, the iron law of oligarchy is
harder to understand than other forms of the vicious circle.
There is a clear logic to the persistence of the extractive
institutions in the U.S. South and in Guatemala. The same
groups continued to dominate the economy and the politics
for centuries. Even when challenged, as the U.S. southern
planters were after the Civil War, their power remained
intact and they were able to keep and re-create a similar
set of extractive institutions from which they would again
benefit. But how can we understand those who come to
power in the name of radical change re-creating the same
system? The answer to this question reveals, once again,
that the vicious circle is stronger than it first appears.