Author: David Steinman

Publisher: Free Planet

ISBN: 9780578525853

David Steinman describes himself as an international revolutionary who was nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for his strategic role in Ethiopia’s recent democracy revolution. As he has pointed out to me, his debut novel, Blood, Money and Conscience was inspired by his experiences in Ethiopia where the country has been sliding into genocide. Within the last two years, nearly three million people have been ethnically cleansed. Steinman has been published in the Washington Post, Forbes.com and other major media where he exposed the Ethiopian dictatorship’s human rights abuses and theft of billions from famine victims.

In his bold and deeply troublesome novel, Money, Blood and Conscience Steinman narrates a riveting story of a highly successful television producer, Buddy Schwartz, who is in his early sixties. Buddy, along with his partner, Alan had racked up a string of television winners. Yet Buddy felt that he was contributing very little in helping people. Buddy wanted to do something useful and decided to film a documentary about the famine in Africa. This led him in 1987 to fly to Ethiopia, where he was about to witness the turmoil and horror that engulfed this African country. What he saw would have a profound effect on Buddy's life for the next several years. It was at the time when the military dictatorship (Derg) under the leadership of Colonel Mengistu was fighting the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the student-led rebel movement that was Buddy's host. 

When Buddy lands in Ethiopia, he meets twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant Hanna Ashete, who is the Public Affairs Officer for the TPLF. Buddy eventually falls in love with Hanna. As we continue our reading, we will become aware of the critical role she will play in Buddy's life. 

Hanna introduces Buddy to the leader of the TPLF, Meles Zenawi, who, after a seventeen-year civil war, becomes the thirteenth Prime Minister of Ethiopia from 1995 to his death in 2012. Some say Zenawi was a visionary leader and they stood by him no matter what atrocities he had committed. Others, who were excluded and marginalized under his rule, considered him to be a tyrant who violently held them down from their desire to experience freedom and justice. This, in a nutshell, was the dilemma Buddy will find himself in as he tries to balance the good with the bad. 

When Meles meets with Buddy for the first time, Meles asks him to make a commercial rather than a documentary that will show the world the plight of the starving people in Ethiopia. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Buddy, after a year of hard work, organizes Help Ethiopia, one of the largest worldwide telethon broadcasts in the history of television resulting in raising sixty-eight million dollars for the impoverished of Ethiopia. 

It all sounds fantastic to Buddy! He now feels he is doing something useful with his life. Unfortunately, all of this comes tumbling down when a reporter uncovers something distressing. The reporter approaches Buddy and inquires if he is aware that the money his telethon raised has been used to purchase arms. Buddy is caught off guard and questions Hanna. She admits that she knew about it. Buddy is furious, even though Hanna tries to explain to him that Los Angeles is a different world from an African war. Buddy confronts Meles and tells him that the money he raised was for the feeding of hungry Ethiopians and not to purchase arms. Meles feigns ignorance and assures Buddy that the money was spent on humanitarian aid, but it freed up other money for arms purchases. This is only one of many unpleasant encounters that Buddy has with Meles who has a knack of manipulating him into raising more money while at the same time keeping him in the dark about the misappropriation of funds and the genocide that is going on in Ethiopia. 

In the ensuing years, Buddy and Hanna are hearing more about political prisoners being thrown into prison as well as being tortured. As for the reporter who approached Buddy about the arms' purchases, he unfortunately, along with many other reporters ended up in Meles's bad book and were never seen again. Even Hanna felt her life was threatened, and she exclaims to Buddy that she didn't fight in the bush to make another dictator. She implores Buddy that it is up to him to tell the world what is going on under the dictatorship of Meles. Buddy now finds himself facing quite a dilemma in dealing with a brutal dictator on the one hand while on the other side trying to make sure the monies he has raised ends up feeding the Ethiopians for which they were intended.

It is difficult to convey the full importance of this riveting novel and as Steinman writes at the end of the book: “this is a work of fiction, it was written to call attention to an important truth. Meles is dead, but his TPLF, the cause of so much human tragedy, remains like a wounded animal, a dangerous and destabilizing force.” The novel is compelling, daunting, and illuminating storytelling accessible to those who never heard of Meles, the TPLF and the atrocities that have been taking place in Ethiopia.