Enderta Province - The Woyane Rebellion of 1943 in Southern and Eastern Tigray

The Woyane Rebellion of 1943 in Southern and Eastern Tigray

In an Imperial determination to weaken the power of the regional nobles and elites of Ethiopia, the Haile Selassie government in 1941 introduces a new regional administration. The law or edict provides for fourteen provinces (Teklay gizat), around 100 counties (Awrajas), and 600 districts (Woredas). Therefore, curbing the power of the hundreds of nobles and their provinces throughout the Empire. This then enabled Haile Selassie to centralize his authority and in effect rendered these nobles with their administrations dependent to the central government. Historians agree that "the basic policy of Haile Selassie was a centralizing one continuing the tradition of the great centralizing Emperors from 1855 onwards." The provision reduced the many provinces of Tigray into eight counties: Raya Azebo, Enderta, Tembien, Kilete Awla'lo, Agame, Adowa, Axum and Shire along with many districts under each of the counties' jurisdictions. After the liberation of Ethiopia from Italian occupation in 1941, Ethiopia saw many rebellions spread out in different parts of the empire. Among these rebellions however, the "Woyane Rebellion" in southern and eastern Tigray in 1943 had become a powerful and highly popular uprising that, within a few months it had shaken the government of Haile Selassie to its core and as a consequence, the Imperial government resorted in using aerial bombardment by collaborating with the British Royal Air Force so as to quell the rebellion. The woyane uprising in Tigray seems to have arisen when administrative corruption and greed ignited a situation of existing instability and insecurity, one awash with weaponry in the wake of the Italian defeat.