May 26, 2026
“Even the drum knows the dance is fake”
By: Habte H.
Early in the morning, buses began arriving at the district administration office. Teachers, civil servants, university students, and residents quietly gathered under instructions to attend the ruling party’s election rally. Many came because absence is strictly noted. Others feared future administrative problems if they refused. A few avoided eye contact altogether. Some attendees reportedly joked quietly among themselves that the loudest cheers often came from the people most desperate to leave early. Yet by midmorning, state media cameras captured cheering crowds, waving flags, and carefully framed images of “popular enthusiasm.” In Ethiopia, people have a saying: “Even the hyena laughs when the village pretends not to see the fire.” Everyone at the rally understood the performance. The people in the crowd knew it. The officials counting attendance knew it. Even some party cadres quietly knew it.
By evening, state television would likely present the rally as proof of democratic enthusiasm and overwhelming public confidence in Ethiopia’s Prosperity Party (PP). Carefully edited images of cheering crowds and waving flags would once again feed the familiar national performance of political legitimacy. Yet almost everyone inside that performance understood the deeper reality. Many attendees had not come out of conviction, but out of fear, administrative pressure, exhaustion, or the quiet instinct to avoid trouble. The tragedy is that this political theatre has become so routine that nearly everyone recognizes the script, citizens, local officials, even many party members themselves. Perhaps only distant international observers still mistake these choreographed spectacles for genuine democratic energy. This is where political self-deception becomes especially dangerous: when a government begins believing the staged performance that society itself no longer believes.
Authoritarian systems rarely survive through repression alone. They also survive through emotional and political self-deception. Over time, governments begin constructing realities that protect them from confronting how society feels. Eventually, leaders stop merely spreading propaganda to others and begin believing it themselves. This danger is becoming increasingly visible within Ethiopia’s PP. Ethiopia’s political tragedy is no longer simply repression. It is the growing distance between what everyone says publicly and what almost everyone whispers privately.
Across the country, state media repeatedly broadcasts images of mass rallies, election celebrations, and declarations of national unity. Officials present these spectacles as proof of overwhelming public confidence in the party. Yet beneath this carefully managed political theatre lies a reality many Ethiopians clearly understand: deep frustration, fear, exhaustion, economic hardship, and political alienation.
Recent election mobilizations illustrate this contradiction clearly. In many places, particularly in the Amhara region, public servants, students, and ordinary citizens were pressured – directly or indirectly – to participate in political demonstrations and election campaigns. Citizens were also pushed to obtain voter registration cards, while the government later reported these numbers as evidence of voluntary democratic participation.
The issue is not simply political manipulation. Many governments attempt to manufacture appearances. The deeper danger emerges when political elites begin mistaking forced participation for genuine legitimacy. A crowd gathered through pressure becomes reimagined as love. Silence becomes interpreted as support. Fear becomes mistaken for loyalty. A frightened crowd can raise flags. It cannot raise trust. Fear can produce attendance without producing legitimacy.
The dangerous collapse of honest feedback
The greatest danger for any government is not criticism. It is the disappearance of honest feedback. When leaders stop hearing uncomfortable truths, they begin making decisions based on illusions rather than reality. Criticism becomes dismissed as sabotage. Public frustration becomes explained away as foreign manipulation or extremist influence. Regional grievances become treated only as security problems rather than political signals. This is how self-deception evolves into systemic blindness.
In such environments, even local officials stop telling the truth upward. A district administrator who reports weak turnout risks punishment or suspicion, while one who exaggerates participation appears loyal and successful. Over time, the entire political system becomes organized around manufacturing appearances rather than understanding reality. It becomes like a wedding where everyone dances, not because they are happy, but because nobody wants to be the first person to stop clapping.
History repeatedly shows that governments often collapse not because opposition suddenly appears, but because rulers become incapable of recognizing how deeply dissatisfaction has already spread beneath enforced conformity. Systems built on fear frequently appear stable until suddenly they are not.
One reason is that resentment accumulated in silence is difficult to measure. Citizens may obey publicly while emotionally disengaging privately. Institutions continue functioning outwardly even as trust erodes internally. The result is a government increasingly disconnected from the society it claims to represent.
A government trapped inside its own performance
Perhaps the most dangerous stage of political self-deception occurs when leaders begin believing their own performance. At that point, propaganda no longer functions merely as a tool for controlling society; it becomes a mechanism for insulating rulers from reality itself. Everyone learns to repeat what leaders want to hear. Local administrators manufacture success stories. Participation statistics become inflated. Political rituals become detached from genuine public feeling. Over time, the state becomes trapped inside a self-created theater of legitimacy.
But appearances cannot permanently substitute trust.
True legitimacy cannot be built through compulsory demonstrations, administrative pressure, or managed political enthusiasm. It emerges when citizens freely support institutions because they trust them, not because they fear consequences for refusing participation.
The PP still has an opportunity to avoid deeper political isolation. But doing so requires confronting uncomfortable truths rather than suppressing them. In many places today, the government no longer asks whether the crowd believes the performance. It only asks whether the cameras captured enough people. It requires recognizing that criticism is not always sabotage, that public frustration is not automatically extremism, and that coerced participation is not democratic legitimacy. Most importantly, it requires the courage to hear honest voices again. Because once a government begins confusing fear with support, it slowly loses contact with the society it claims to govern. A government can force people to attend rallies. It can force offices to fill quotas. It can force flags into people’s hands. But eventually, even the loudest applause cannot hide the silence that has already entered people’s hearts. And history shows that when governments begin performing legitimacy mainly for themselves, reality eventually interrupts the performance.
Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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