Brigadier General Tafari Benti (; 11 October 1921 – 3 February 1977) was an Ethiopian military officer and politician who served as head of state of Ethiopia from 1974 to 1977 in his role as second chairman of the Derg, the ruling military junta. His official title was Chairman of the Provisional Military Administrative Council. Early life and career Tafari Benti was born near Addis Ababa to an Oromo father and an Amhara mother. He joined the Ethiopian Army at the age of 20, graduated from the Holetta Military Academy, and served in the Second, Third and Fourth Divisions of the army. In 1967, he served as a military attaché in Washington, D.C. where he and several other Ethiopian colleagues suffered from racial discrimination. On 23 November 1974, Lt. General Aman Mikael Andom, the first chairman of the Derg and acting head of state, who had been in a struggle for power with the other members of the Derg, was killed in a shootout at his home. Mengistu Haile Mariam served as interim chairman until the Derg appointed Tafari to the position. He had been serving as brigadier general in the Fourth Division, which was stationed in Asmara, at the time of his appointment. Tenure During his tenure, Tafari presented himself as the public face of the ruling junta. According to the Ottaways, while at first, he was "a neutral and powerless figure", in the end "he was too colorless, soft-spoken, and undemonstrative to be the figurehead of the revolution." However, according to Rene LaFort's account, Tafari offered some hints that he supported those opposed to Mengistu. One such hint was in July 1975, when in a public speech he made overtures to the civilian left—groups which included the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP) and MEISON—proposing a united front "of all the forces that rejected the ancient regime, built from the base, that is from the mass organizations born of the great reforms"; LaFort points out that this was "a strategy which Mengistu Haile Mariam and his supporters opposed and would continue to oppose more and more resolutely." He repeated this message in a speech on the first anniversary of the deposition of Emperor Haile Selassie. During his mandate, he constituted the public face of the Government Board, delivering the public announcements of the Derg. Among which was an announcement made on 11 September 1975, in which the Derg declared