Let’s Save Addis Ababa’s Historic Buildings!

The Sad Story of Qanyazmach Belehu (or Shaka)’s Old House

The rapid pace of urban development is a mixed blessing as historic buildings are being torn for bland high- rises. The preservation of old buildings is an important and vital issue that relates to how we value our own future. Professor Pankhurst reminds us to take better care of our architectural heritage.

The Menilek- Iyasu-Zawditu period of Ethiopian history, which dates broadly speaking from Menilek’s victory at the Battle of Adwa in 1896 to the death of his daughter Empress Zawditu in 1930, was an important one.
This period was particularly significant from the point of view of Addis Ababa’s development. Menilek’s consort Queen Taytu gave the city its name Addis Ababa, or New Flower, in 1887; and it was in 1916 that the all-important Franco-Ethiopian railway from Jibuti reached the Ethiopian capital.
This period witnessed the emergence of new buildings, and the development of what historians and architects describe as the Menilek-Zawditu style. This style is characterized by the abandonment of round buildings, and the use of worked stone, with wooden balconies, and often steep roof gables. Though in some ways reminiscent of Indian architecture - which is not surprising in that many of the city’s early builders hailed from the Sub-Continent, the architecture of the Menilek-Zawditu era is unique. There is in fact nothing exactly like it anywhere in the world.
Addis Ababa’s historic buildings of the Menilek-Iyasu-Zawditu era represent an important type of architecture about which the country can feel proud. Several of these buildings have won high praise from architectural scholars. The need to preserve them is recognized in a recent Addis Ababa City Government policy statement which I have before me. It states that the preservation of such buildings is of major importance:
to give the next generation “a profound and extensive awareness” of its historic and cultural heritage.
to remind society at large of “the level of civilization” it attained in the past.
to attract tourism, which is expected to become increasingly significant in the years ahead.
The importance of the city’s historic buildings – and the need to preserve them as part of the country’s cultural heritage – has led to founding of one of Ethiopia’s most far-sighted NGO’s: Addis Wubet which is committed to the city’s cultural preservation.
It is however regrettable that no official list of Addis Ababa historic buildings, as far as I am aware, has thus far been published; that the citizens’ responsibility to preserve their cultural heritage has not been officially proclaimed – and that there is no provision to prosecute property-owners who allow the country’s heritage to disintegrate in front of their very eyes.
These harsh words are provoked by the fate of one of these historic buildings which should have been jealously preserved– the former home of Qanyazmach Belehu Degefu, more popularly known as Shaka Belehu. It has been allowed partially to collapse!
The building was architecturally and historically of considerable importance. As can be seen, dear reader from Milena Batistoni and Gian Paolo Chiari’s admirable book Old Tracks in the New Flower. A Historical Guide to Addis Ababa, which was published in the city in 2004. See page 114.
Qanyazmach Belehu Degefu – or Shako - was for his part a notable Ethiopian patriot, who joined Ras Imru during the Italian Fascist occupation, and is mentioned in Emperor Haile Sellassie’s Autobiography,