After reading his bio in Wikipedia he does seem like a martyr to me.
Ryszard Kapuściński, jugding by his first and last name, seems to be disqualified to be writing about ethiopian rules on account of heavy conflict of interests.
Ryszard Kapuściński, jugding by his first and last name, seems to be disqualified to be writing about ethiopian rules on account of heavy conflict of interests.
But maybe you should read more about Kapuściński than his name, because I do think he was qualified to write about power and oppression. No matter the skin color.
But like other people already hinted at you: the book about Haile Selassi was mainly a attack on his corrupt system back at home. By examining the power mechanisms and corruption of King Selassis court(and publishing it step by step) he managed to publish a antiauthorian criticism on corrupted buerocracy in general, in such a corrupted system. But he could do so, because when critizized from above he said: "Do you want to imply, that this corrupt monarchist court is comparable to our democratic peoples republic elected comitees?"
Which they could not admit, even though they understood how it was meant, because yes, they were just as corrupt. Unchecked power works the same in a monarchy, than it does in socialism or anywhere else.
He simply hated corruption and opression and he lived voluntarily among the poorest of the planet, to write about their lives and their struggles.
I also do not care about all that signalling nonsense.
Citation needed.
So unless you are going to fact check every single claim in the book, I'd skip it.
This sort of blanket dismissal based on ethnicity or presumed religious affiliation is just stupid and doesn't belong here.
A good example of that is how English (mainland and colonist) got to badmouth Spanish handling of natives whereas their own deeds were an order of magnitude worse, until very recently.
Disregard the message and examine the messenger.