Fighting and Broadcasting: A History of Ethiopia’s Radio Voice of Tigray People’s Liberation Front

Abstract

The article explores the historical genesis and function of an Ethiopian rebel radio station in the fight against the rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam (1974–1990) through mobilisation, politicisation and organisation of the Tigrean population in and outside Ethiopia. As a motivational technology, the clandestine radio added momentum to the rebellion helping it expand into northern, central, southern and western Ethiopia in the late 1980s when the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front formed the nucleus of an emergent Pan-Ethiopian rebel group: Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front. The architects of the rebel movement were aided in the recruitment of fighters and conscientisation of the Tigray and other national groups through different strategies that helped acquire legitimacy in the “counter-state” of rebel held territories and beyond. Broadcasting from Ethiopia's cloud-capped highest mountain Ras Dashen and then from an inconspicuous cave to evade detection and bombing, the radio was a symbol of resistance that provided combat and political news and alternative perspectives to those of the government. The insurgent radio was also engaged in countering image threats from the Mengistu Haile Mariam state as well as rival rebel entities that had engaged in reputational attacks against it. The historic radio invoked mythology, heroism and martyrdom as important mass communication strategies of the insurgency until the culmination of the war in 1991.