GETZ #8

By Donald N Levine

For all the attention paid to issues of ethnic conflict occasioned by the Government’s charge of “genocide” (see Getz #7), I find it puzzling that so little attention has been paid to one of the most momentous ethnic issues of all: Oromonet. In the contemporary Ethiopian political scene, Oromo protests–starting with the Mecha-Tulema association and the Bale Oromo Movement of the late 1960s–existed nearly as long as those centered in Tigray, and to this day often appear as associated with highly divisive departures.

As with Tigrayawinet, the Oromo populace is marked by strong ambivalence toward the Ethiopian nation and its government. On the one hand, most Oromo feel gratitude to EPRDF for having brought them an unprecedented level of self-determination. As one Oromo businessman sympathetic to the opposition said to me, “Although I disagree with many of his policies, Prime Minister Meles is a jewel. He has enabled the Southern peoples to have an important say in their governance, and that is a huge accomplishment.” Indeed, there is no denying the fact that Oromo participants played a major role in drafting the Charter that laid the groundwork for the Ethiopian Constitution. On the other hand, many Oromo object to their disproportionately low presence in the higher echelons of the federal administration. They have been aggravated by what they perceive as years of harsh repression, such that some extremists have indulged in talk about an EPRDF policy of ethnic cleansing. This includes unfounded charges such as that Dedessa prisoners are shaved with a single razor blade in order to proliferate HIV infection.

These baseless allegations apart, the credible grievances voiced by Oromo politicians center on three issues–language, power, and repression. MP Bulcha Demeksa, for example, argues that it would be reasonable to make Oromiffa, the language spoken by the largest single ethnic group in Ethiopia, a second national language, pointing to Switzerland as an example of a country where multiple official languages coexist.

Similarly, Oromo leaders press claims for a larger Oromo representation in the national government that is commensurate with their demographic and economic strength. Finally, although allegations about an explicit anti-Oromo policy are exaggerated, the reality behind them is the fact of the imprisonment of thousands of Oromo on political charges and the harassment, arbitrary imprisonments, and killings of Oromo citizens imagined to be sympathetic to the Oromo Liberation Front. When President Negasso Gidada left office in 2001, he estimated that more than 20,000 Oromo citizens were being held in prison. A Human Rights Watch Report on Oromia amplifies human rights reports by the US State Department and other agencies in painting a grim picture of abuses, especially in the Wollega area and at the Dedessa prison camp; I myself have spoken with credible survivors of such abuses. The matter has become so flagrantly scandalous that the Oromia state legislature has reportedly called for an investigation. There is also the allegation that de facto governance in Oromia is still in the hands of TPLF cadres.

On the face of it, the readiest option for dealing with all such issues would simply be to strengthen the political and cultural dimensions of the Oromia kilil–far and away the largest, after all–in the state of Ethiopia. Beyond that, some Ethiopians imagine that the problems are so deep-seated that creating a separate state might be the best solution. One reader, Aberra Buli, raises the question of Oromo options in a recent letter:

Your previous and present writing is eloquently demonstrating the problems of nation building in a multiethnic society like Ethiopia. Frankly speaking, if one analyzes Ethiopian society in historical perspective and considers the social antagonism between the Kibre Nagest and Gadaa Oromo social and political systems, one arrives at two contradictory social orders… The different nations and nationalities inhabiting contemporary Ethiopia are not based on voluntary union of the people but at gunpoint. The oppressed nations and nationalities are waiting for a good day to get out of this prison of a nation to chart the social contract that keep them together as a modern nation by dissolving the old order. I believe the way out of this vicious circle is the imposition of Gadaa-based political democracy that embraces the southern people and the Oromo nation or else to facilitate the separation of these antagonistic social orders forever and arrange new territorial definitions in the Horn of Africa. What do you think about this?

One can surely sympathize with the experiences that underlie a wish for separation. (I shall have more to say about that in a paper to be presented at the Oromo Studies Association on July 29.) My own view, however, is that a two-state solution would not be optimal, and indeed that the very existence of the Oromia kilil as presently constituted impedes satisfactory solution of the above-noted problems of language marginalization, insufficient power, and historic repression.
Oromo Ethiopians have expressed three concerns to me that support such a conjecture: dissatisfaction with enforced uniformity within Oromia, maladministration in an oversized province, and marginalization at the center.

A former student of mine sought me ought during my February visit–the first time we had met since 1960. One point that angered him about the current set-up was how it presumed and tended to enforce a presumption of homogeneity among all Oromo. “This make no sense,” he exclaimed. “I am a Hararge Oromo, and we are more different from the Oromo of Wollega than the Gondares are from the Tigreans.” His comment reminded me of the statement of some (then-called) Galla of Jimma Abba Jifar, who in the early 1960s objected to being referred to as Oromo on grounds that that name betokened a “pagan” identity whereas they were proud to be Muslims. In short, there is so much heterogeneity among the Oromo themselves that putting all of them under a single political authority would probably breed more problems than it solves, not to mention depriving the Oromo of participating in what still promises to be the most successful polyethnic democratic state in all of Africa. What is more, by incorporating all the Southern peoples under such an authority, it blithely ignores the aspirations of millions of non-Oromo Ethiopians who currently live in those areas, such as the Dorze, the Wollayta, and others who appear to feel long-standing anxieties about Oromo domination.

If a single Oromo entity–whether kilil or independent state–is objectionable on cultural grounds, it poses no less difficulty on administrative grounds. At present, citizens of Oromia often find it to be so large that it is administratively unwieldy. They would prefer kilil proportioned more on the size of other others. This would enhance delivery of services such as education, health, agricultural improvement, infrastructure, and the like. And creating different administrations within that vast territory might also help enfranchise the numerous non-Oromo ethnies living under Oromo rule.

Regarding language policy, to make Oromiffa a third official language would require the many non-Oromo Ethiopians there to learn at least four languages. This situation would of course be amplified by making Oromiffa an additional official national language. An alternative reform has been advanced by Dr. Getatchew Haile, who suggests that all Ethiopians be required to learn a second Ethiopian language in addition to Amharic, a reform that would both benefit Oromo-speakers and spread the linguistic burden more equitably.

Perhaps the biggest complaint of many Oromo citizens–their exclusion from the central elites–has some connection with the separateness with which the EPRDF regime has defined the Oromo population. The notion that a presumptive entity called Oromia had and should have a separate existence has two drawbacks: historically, it is counterfactual; politically, it relegates the Oromo to a place as second-class citizens within the Ethiopian nation. What this view of Oromonet omits is the huge and essential role played by Oromo in the building of the modern Ethiopian nation. In a joint seminar with noted Oromo scholar Asmarom Legesse in the 1960s, we discovered that we had come independently to appreciate this role, one rarely touched on in the literature. Professor Asmarom’s notion that the (then-styled) Galla constituted a cultural corridor through which diverse other ethnicities were integrated into a single national community of Greater Ethiopia captured one of these points perfectly. (See my Greater Ethiopia [Tiliqwa Etyopiya], ch. 12; see also the conclusion of Getz #7).

The marginalization of the Oromo can be overcome if the Northerners welcome them more emphatically and if Oromo leaders who view themselves simply as oppressed and as second-rate would evince a more positive attitude. Even the head of the most radical Oromo group, the OLF, emphasizes the advantages that can be realized by working within the existing Ethiopian national system. In an interview in Les nouvelles d’Addis of March 29, 2006, Obbo Dawud Ibsa Ayana embraces this option on the basis of removing three obstacles to democracy in Ethiopia-–the ruling party’s control of the media (see Getz #1); of the judiciary (see Reply to Critic of Getz #5); and of the security forces–-and of addressing the outstanding grievances of the Oromo people. With sufficient determination and political will, all of these changes can be accomplished.

Then the door would be opened to integrating Oromo political culture more forthrightly into Ethiopia’s democratization process. What would it be like to begin all sessions of Parliament and public meetings with the kind of language invoked at the start of Gaada assemblies, which encourages speakers to avoid provoking resentments and to promote peace (nagaa)? What would it be like to feature the theme of social inclusiveness, as in the Oromo practice of incorporation through adoption–a practice that over generations enabled Oromo to integrate groups from other ethnies such as Konso and Wolleyta, to assimilate immigrants, and to adapt to other cultures which they penetrated? What would it be like to feature the theme of inter-religious harmony, as in the Oromo custom of having one spouse be a Christian, the other a Muslim? What would it be like to institute a system of democratic self-rule, in which leaders were elected for finite periods with the expectation that they would turn over the reigns of governance smoothly to a properly appointed successor cohort? I trust that this is the sort of institution of Gaada-inspired democracy that Obbo Aberra advocates. Cultural creativity of that sort would complete the process of nation-building in which Oromo peoples have been engaged so conspicuously over the past three centuries, and would enable the Oromo tradition to resume its historic trajectory with a flourish.