Campus Movements and Student Revolutionaries: Imagining Haile Selassie I University in Hiwot Teffera’s Memoir Tower in the Sky

Abstract

The 1974 revolution in Ethiopia has been the topic of many histories and novels set during this period which have portrayed these events for readers beyond Ethiopia. Hiwot Teffera’s autobiographical text, Tower in the Sky, tells the story of student revolutionaries in the Ethiopian Student Movement (ESM) and the 1974 revolution that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie. The revolutionaries’ untold stories of love, intense political optimism and suffering permeate the narrative and demonstrate the significance of memoirs in documenting individual experiences which are otherwise overlooked by other narrative forms despite their impact on political developments and outcomes. This article examines the ESM’s modes of mobilisation and engagement through an analysis of Teffera’s journey as a political activist and a revolutionary. In so doing, it shows how Teffera identifies her class relationship, her gender and her romantic relationship as the dominant factors behind her political coming to awareness and her lifelong commitment to the student movement and to the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP). The article also argues that Haile Selassie I University has served the movement as a vital mental and physical space in shaping the students’ political consciousness.