Haile Selassie overthrown by the Derg

On September 12, 1974, a committee of junior army, air force and police officers known as the Derg (Amharic for committee) deposed Emperor Haile Selassie, who had ruled Ethiopia for more than 40 years. He was driven off in a Volkswagen Beetle to detention and died in captivity in 1975, in circumstances most historians attribute to murder. The Derg abolished the monarchy and in time installed a harsh military socialist regime led by Mengistu Haile Mariam.¹

Selassie was a symbol of Ethiopian independence, which the country had kept by winning the Battle of Adwa in 1896, and after the Italian occupation of 1936 to 1941 he regained his throne. But his rule had grown old, with a rigid aristocracy owning most of the land, a poor peasantry and little political reform. A famine in Wollo province in 1972 to 1973 killed tens of thousands while the government stayed silent, and a quadrupling of fuel prices after the 1973 oil crisis pushed up living costs. Strikes by teachers, taxi drivers and soldiers spread in early 1974.¹

The Derg began as a movement that arrested ministers and officials and took power in stages without a clear program. In 1975 it nationalized rural land, a measure that freed peasants from landlords. Then it turned to terror. Mengistu eliminated rivals in 1977, and the Red Terror of 1977 and 1978 killed tens of thousands of suspected opponents. Backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, the regime won the Ogaden war against Somalia, but its collectivization, civil wars in Eritrea and Tigray, and the famine of 1983 to 1985 brought it down. It fell in 1991 to rebel armies.²