February is Black History Month and this year marks the 400th anniversary that blacks were brought to Bermuda as indentured servants. Throughout this month, The Royal Gazette will feature people, events, places and institutions that have contributed to the shaping of African history. Mengistu Haile Mariam, a former lieutenant-colonel in the Ethiopian army, led a coup that ousted Emperor Haile Selassie from power in 1974. Mengistu took control of the government and served as its communist head of state in Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991.He formally assumed power as chairman of the Worker’s Party, head of state and Derg (military junta) chairman in 1977. In fact, Mengistu had wielded behind-the-scenes power since the coup of 1974. Under Mengistu, Ethiopia received aid from the former Soviet Union, other members of the Warsaw Pact and Cuba.Opposition against Mengistu’s regime emerged with a rebellion against the new government between 1977 and 1978. The government suppressed the rebellion and in the process generated thousands of casualties, estimated at 100,000 killed or disappeared. In response, the anti-Mengistu Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party launched a guerrilla struggle that would last until the overthrow of Mengistu’s regime in 1991.On September 10, 1987, Mengistu became a civilian president under a new constitution and the country was renamed the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Mengistu’s government was faced with enormous difficulties throughout the 1980s in the form of droughts, widespread famine — notably the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 — and insurrections, particularly in the northern regions of Tigre and Eritrea. In 1989, the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front merged with other ethnically based opposition movements to form the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. In May 1991, EPRDF forces advanced on Addis Ababa. The EPRDF force successful toppling of the Mengistu government coincided with the fall of communism in the Soviet Union. The new Russian government ended aid to Ethiopia.Mengistu fled the country with 50 family and Derg members and was soon granted asylum in Zimbabwe as an official “guest” of President Robert Mugabe. Mengistu left behind almost the entire membership of the original Derg and the Worker’s Party of Ethiopia leadership, which was promptly arrested and put on trial upon the assumption of power by the EPRDF. Mengistu still resides in Zimbabwe, despite attempts by Ethiopia to extradite him to face trial. Several former members of the Derg have been sentenced to death in absentia. The trial against Mengistu started in 1994 and in January 2007 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide. He remains in exile in Zimbabwe.• Sources: Saheed A. Adejumobi, The History of Ethiopia (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007)