The Rise and Fall of Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF): Postcolonial Rethinking of Ethnic and Language Based Federalism in Africa

Abstract

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) emerged as an ethno-nationalist political movement on February 18, 1975, initiating an armed struggle primarily based in Dedebit, North-western Tigray. The movement’s initial political program was rooted in pro-Albanian socialist theory and included the establishment of a Republic of Greater Tigray. However, shifts in the global geopolitical architecture, particularly the dissolution of the Cold War order, significantly altered the movement’s objectives and provided a strategic avenue for the seizure of central state power. Following a seventeen-year insurgency against the socialist military government known as the Derg. The predecessor was also a socialist military junta that deposed Ethiopia’s last Emperor, King Haile Selassie. The TPLF successfully overthrew the Derg junta in 1991. Subsequently, the TPLF founded the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition that established a system of ethnic and linguistic federalism structured around a multiparty framework organised along ethno-regional lines. For three decades, the TPLF served as the dominant force within the EPRDF coalition, consolidating control over the nation’s political, military, and economic institutions. This sustained period of institutional capture and its attendant narrow political agenda precipitated widespread mass protests beginning in 2015. This grassroots mobilisation ultimately resulted in a significant internal political transition within the EPRDF coalition in 2018, leading to the TPLF’s loss of control over the central executive authority. This study employs a rigorous qualitative, single-case study research design, framed within a critical postcolonial perspective. The primary objective is to undertake a systematic investigation into the confluence of postcolonial governance structures, tribal party politics, and ethnic-based federalism, examining their function as sources of conformity or contradiction and assessing their resultant impact on state stability and institutional resilience in Ethiopia. The article may be categorised as a historical trajectory and institutional analysis of ethno-federalism in Ethiopia.