Ethiopia's Unacknowledged Problem - The Oromo (Paul Baxter)

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The Royal African Society

Ethiopia's Unacknowledged Problem: The Oromo


Author(s): P. T. W. Baxter
Source: African Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 308 (Jul., 1978), pp. 283-296
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African Society
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ETHIOPIA'S UNACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEM:
THE OROMO

P. T. W. BAXTER

THE FRONTIERS OF ETHIOPIA have been restored, or are being restored, to their
old Imperial limits, and ethnic minorities in Eritrea and the Ogaden which
were seeking to break away are either cowed or on the defensive, at any rate for
the present. The difficulties that Ethiopia has been enduring in the Horn
have received fairly full news coverage, because the fighting zones have been
accessible to reporters and the interests of the Great Powers and their satellites
have been involved. Memories of European perfidy to Ethiopia in the 1930s
perhaps still tugs a little at the consciences of the elderly, while the young
question why it is that, whereas the technology of the rich nations could only be
tardily organized to alleviate the famine which toppled Haile Selassie, it can
quickly be organized to airlift tanks to Jigjiga and to distribute machine guns
to penniless peasants. But the efflorescence of feelings of common nationhood
and of aspirations for self-determination among the cluster of peoples who speak
Oromo has not been much commented upon. Yet the problem of the Oromo
people has been a major and central one in the Ethiopian Empire ever since it
was created by Minilik in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. If
the Oromo people only obtain a portion of the freedoms which they seek then
the balance of political power in Ethiopia will be completely altered. If the
Oromo act with unity they must necessarily constitute a powerful force. What
is left of the Ethiopian regular army and the militia depends amongst other
things on Oromo officers and other ranks. If an honest and free election was
held (an unlikely event) and the people voted by ethnic blocs, as experience of
elections elsewhere in Africa suggests that they well might do, then around half
the votes would be cast by Oromo for Oromo and only about one-third for
Amhara.
'Amhara' is the name of the tribal group from the north western corner of
Ethiopia which is coincident with the old kingdom of Abyssinia. During the
Scramble for Africa the Amhara conquered, or acquired by the default of the
other colonial powers, the territory which became the Ethiopian Empire of
Minilik and of Haile Selassie. Amhara have provided almost all the holders of
government offices and appear to dominate the present military junta. The
absolute political domination and cultural dominance of the Amhara has resulted
in the public presentation of Ethiopia as a state with a much more unitary

The author, an anthropological authority on several African peoples in the Horn of


Africa, is presently Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Manchester University.
He has worked in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, and taught in Ghana.
283

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284 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

culture than, in fact, it has. Even sch


the evaluation of its own sophisticated an
Much of the history of Ethiopia can
Amhara and the Oromo, compared to
struggles of the petty northern chief
torians, represent a 1066 and All That so
90 years or so the Amhara have been do
has been loosening since at least the 1
few years are much more an awful and bl
tion than they are of a class war; more
have been unleashed by the collapse of H
Until recently the Oromo have been be
Galla', but that is a name which none use
They are made up of a number of trib
Raya, Wollo, Karaiyu, Kotu, Leka, Me
but there are several others. I have w
Oromo are Muslim, some Monophysite C
traditional religion. There are great ecol
hence great variations in mode of life an
nomadism to itinerant trading to hoe agr
The cradleland of the Oromo was probab
Ethiopia where they lived as pastoral stoc
triggered by demographic and ecological
stand and possibly also by the introduct
population upsurge and Oromo spread
territory which they still farm or gr
overran, and drove out the garrisons an
the south of Ethiopia which the Amha
century. The expansion of the Oromo w
with (and indeed in part may have be
Ahmed Gran which, to contemporaries a
the Christian Abyssinian state.
The different Oromo tribal groups evo
which varied from small acephalous clust
to quite complex kingdoms. Oromo ha
and, in the past, have possibly expended
each other has they have in fighting an
have maintained, at least in their valu
their famous gada or luuba system of age
Bahrey, an Abyssinian ecclesiastic who
the end of the sixteenth century, sele
which harnessed Oromo valour into an
by age and genealogical generation into a

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ETHIOPIA'S UNACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEM 285

organization which maintained a strongly democratic and egalitarian


restrained the exploitation of office, wealth and power. Under t
gada no office holder, nor set of elders in office, could retain office
than a ritually prescribed period, usually of eight years. Some Orom
ists seek to reconstruct a form of gada as the political basis for the n
state they seek to establish. Gada is unlikely to provide a practic
model which can deal with the complexities of a modern nation stat
an ideal mythical charter in which to enshrine Oromo values.' O
brought up to resist authority based on wealth or political posi
are very few situations in which one Oromo can order another to d
Unlike the Amhara, who value deviousness and rank and pomp,2
do not expect possessors of brief authority to brag, boss and bully.
Disinterested nineteenth century travellers among the Oromo were
by their culture and its underlying unity. D'Abbadie wrote of '
grande nation africaine',3 and the great missionary explorer Lud
suggested that 'Providence has placed this nation in this part of Afri
important reasons. It is the Germany of Africa'.4 Krapf, perha
and certainly ethnocentrically, saw the Oromo as the dynamic natio
would, if only they accepted Christ, lead their less fortunate and less
neighbours militarily, economically, spiritually and culturally. B
event, it has taken the shared experiences of Amhara imperialism t
Oromo national consciousness.
Their preservation of a subtle, literary and Christian cultural tradition in
beleaguered isolation in the Ethiopian Highlands is an achievement in which
Amhara take a very proper, if exaggerated, pride and one which one should not
denigrate. The ruling elite never seems to have doubted the absolute superiority
of its own culture and its duty to impose it on any who sought near equality
with it. But, since the sixteenth century, fears of Islam and of the Oromo
have dominated the political consciousness of the Amhara ruling elite, and the
thought of the two in combination has been their recurring nightmare. Their
policies have provoked, and thereby confirmed, those very responses which
they feared. For example, the mass acceptance of Islam by the highland Arssi
of Arussi5 Province in the 1930s was, in part, a mass demonstration of anti-
Amhara sentiment and rejection of all the values of their Amhara colonizers.

1. See articles by Baxter, Torry, Hinnant and Blackhurst in P. T. W. Baxter and Uri
Almagor, editors, Age, Generation and Time: Some Features of East African Age Organisa-
tions (London: C. Hurst, forthcoming) for a full discussion of surviving Oromogada systems.
2. See Donald N. Levine's Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture
(Chicago University Press, 1965), and Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multi Ethnic
Society (Chicago University Press, 1974).
3. A. d'Abbadie, 'Les Oromos grande nation africaine', Annales de la Societd Scientifique
de Bruxelles, 1879, 2nd partie, pp. 167-192.
4. Quoted by Richard Pankhurst in 'The Beginnings of Oromo Studies in Europe',
Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi documentazione del'Istituto Italo-Africano, XXXI,
No. 2, 1976, pp. 171-206.
5. For note 5, see next page

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286 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

It confirmed Amhara beliefs that Oromo


they rejected Christianity so passionately.
In action the policies of northern adminis
Oromo as pagans or as Muslims to be pilla
them as inferiors who might neverthel
into Ethiopia as full citizens on the other.
to the black Negro (Shankilla) peoples of t
Pre-revolutionary Ethiopia, to Oromo and
was not, as it is described by the ruling m
'feudal state'. The term 'feudal' may h
traditional northern Amhara and Tigrean s
or to the Empire as a whole it only obscur
a ramshackle, though rapidly changing an
the members were subjects rather than ci
Oromo were colonial subjects.
The officers who administered Oromolan
of very little formal education. Most of
patronage-cum-bureaucracy ladder which
trative system. Few members of the culti
charmed European visitors ever served in th
governor level. If policy was made by s
interpreted by made-up rankers in the fi
hardly inhibited, as was that of colonial o
respect for a powerful metropole to whic
principle could outweigh expediency. Pr
and it was anticipated that they would su
opportunities offered by office. My guess
had lived on their official pay they would
the level which their positions required. T
orientated civil servants which Haile Se
produced were seldom sent to the provinc
ployed in the administration of Arussi Prov
had been presented as an Imperial duty
along with the Pax Amharica, by the 19
oppressive anachronism.

5. There are no standard ways of spelling Eth


script. I use Arussi for the province, which is t
language and land which is near to the folk p
for the grant which made my research in Ethi
6. One might have hoped that E. M. Chilver's 'Feudalism in the inter-lacustrine
Kingdoms' in East African Chiefs, ed. by A. I. Richards (London: Faber and Faber,
1960), pp. 378-93 had settled the matter, but the debate on the use of 'feudal' appears
to be endless. For a succinct analysis of the use of the term generally and in relation to
Ethiopia see Gene Ellis, 'The Feudal Paradigm as a Hindrance to Understanding Ethiopia',
Journal of Modern African Studies, 14, 2 (1976), pp. 275-295.

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ETHIOPIA'S UNACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEM 287

Officials were feared and usually loathed as were the Amhara settlers to
much of the best land had been alienated. (Most officials were also s
but most settlers were not officials.) Many Oromo, particularly those li
in the more fertile areas, were transformed by conquest (or later on by g
ment allocation of their land to landlords) from free farmers into poor
cropping tenants. A major rallying cry of the Oromo Liberation Fr
call to get rid of the foreign settlers (naftaanya), many of whom are sa
remain in Oromoland despite Proclamation No. 31 of 1973, 'To prov
the Public Ownership of Rural Lands'.I
Accurate population figures for Ethiopia are just not obtainable. M
Wolde Mariam," for example, quotes an official estimate of the total popu
of Ethiopia, in 1968, as 26-4 million and John Markakis9 quotes another o
estimate for 1970 as 24-3 million, with an annual growth rate of 2-5 pe
But these gross indicators are near enough for our purposes. Estim
Oromo population vary from Levine's, in 1974, of 7 million10 to that of
Oromo Liberation Front, in 1978, of 18 million." The Imperial Gove
deliberately obfuscated the ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity of Et
so that, as Markakis remarks, 'the relative strength of the major ethnic
remains a matter of guess work... Such conjectures as have been ad
often are politically motivated and therefore of little value'.12 The
Ethiopia, for example, which was prepared for student use, has an (inac
map (No. 46) which shows the distribution of mules, and tables which li
most trivial manufactures, but it does not attempt to present accurate or
hensive data on the populations of different tribal, linguistic or religious
ings of the Empire, and what little information it does give is presente
prevaricating and misleading style. But almost certainly the Oromo
largest ethnic group in Ethiopia and make up somewhere between a thir
just over half of its population. A reasonable estimate would be ten
and fifteen million would not be wild. (In addition some hundred th
Oromo are citizens of Kenya.) Certainly there are more Oromo than the
Cubans in Cuba or members of many of the minority nationalities of the
There must also be as many Arssi and Guji Oromo as there are Somali in
Somali Republic.
There are many differences of pronunciation, vocabulary and syntax b
the differing dialects of Oromo but an intelligent and eager natal speak
one dialect can make himself understood in any other, and soom become f
at ease in it. Oromo speakers in Ethiopia stretch, though not uninterru

7. Negarit Gazeta, No. 26, 29 April 1975; reprinted in 'Rural Development in Et


Rural Africana, No. 28 (Michigan, Fall, 1975), p. 145.
8. An Atlas of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, 2nd ed., 1970, p. 73.
9. Ethiopia: Anatomy of a Traditional Polity (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 51.
10. op. cit., p. 38.
11. Union of Oromo Students in Europe, Press Release, 17 January 1978.
12. Markakis, op. cit., p. 52.

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288 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

from Wollo in the north (approximately 1


from past Harar in the east to past Dem
between the most northerly Oromo in
Kenya is about 1,200 kilometres. Orom
second language and is probably as widely
For example in Kofele, where I lived for a
can recall who claimed not to be able to spe
and the telephone operator: I was assur
because they thought it demeaning to s
must have been less studied and have less
any language which has a comparable num
The criterion of language is important in
is an Oromo. Amhara society is, at its frin
certainly many Oromo have become A
commonly said that the late Emperor Hail
as much Oromo as Amhara, but no one w
Oromo. The crucial criteria are cultura
adopting the observances of the Coptic
style and, particularly, by using the Amha
The Amharic language, particularly wh
symbol of national identity as well as the
Amharinya and an Amharic way of life w
government employment; and governmen
schooled labour. For most officials to civilize was 'to amharize'. Indeed
Imperial officials used to fabricate the census figures to show that Amhar
was driving out the other languages of the Empire, and particularly Orom
by a sort of inverted linguistic Gresham's Law!
Until the final days of the Empire Oromo was denied any official status
it was not permissible to publish, preach, teach or broadcast in any Or
dialect. In court or before an official an Oromo had to speak Amharinya o
an interpreter. Even a case between two Oromo before an Oromo spea
magistrate had to be heard in Amharinya. I sat through a mission chu
service at which the preacher and all the congregation were Oromo but at w
the sermon, as well as the service, was given first in Amharinya, which few
the congregation understood at all, and then translated into Oromo.
farce had to be played out in case a Judas informed and the district office
fined or imprisoned the preacher. Every Oromo child, like every chil
Ethiopia, had to start his primary school studies in Amharinya, which
Semitic not a Cushitic language like Oromo. Every child who sought hi
education had to pass an examination in Amharinya even though he would
instructed in English. It is as if every English child had to use Russia
primary school and switch to Turkish for his secondary schooling. But ma
Oromo were inspired by the very difficulties which confronted them and,

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ETHIOPIA'S UNACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEM 289

Ewe or Welshmen, sought through education an entry into salaried


During the fake dawn which followed the fall of Haile Selassie's
one edition of an Oromo newspaper (Bariisu; Dawn) did appear
Amharic script. I understand that few further issues appeared alth
underground papers have appeared in Oromo. Educated Orom
resent being deprived of the use of their native language for a
domestic purposes, and particularly so when it is the first languag
of some ten million or so people.
Official ethnic affiliation then has, to some extent, been optional
cated, ambitious and mobile, except that few Muslims could
changing their religion. (There are a few Muslim Amhara.)
From an Oromo viewpoint an Amhara is anyone who is eithe
Amhara society and culture or anyone who chooses to enter them,
Amharic in domestic situations, by adopting an Amharic lifestyle an
in public situations in support of Amharic values, in particular by
the fasting rules of the Coptic Church. In rural Arussi the ma
different fasts and rules about slaughtering and feeding and alcohol
is a major marker of ethnic differences. It is extremely difficult f
and Muslims to be convivial together.
An Amhara is one who, all in all, assumes that Amharic culture is
superior to the other cultures of Ethiopia that all Ethiopians sh
acquire that culture. I do not suggest for a moment that these cri
ones which Amhara themselves, or students of Amharic culture, w
use. Clearly they are partisan, but I am only endeavouring to p
the view point of an Oromo sympathizer; and it is time Arssi rather
had some partisan backing! To Arssi, at any rate, 'Amhara' and 'sel
dominant elite' have become convergent categories. That Amh
in their own homelands were also abused and exploited by gove
that there were a number of migrants from the north who lived
were not facts which impinged much on Arssi consciousness: just as
of poor white trash in the old American South or whites living on
payments in South Africa do little to diminish black awareness of w
ance. What Arssi experienced were the slights and hardships an
which were imposed on them by a foreign ruling elite. An elit
which appeared to look down on them and to discriminate agai
cultural and political inferiors.
A cheery middle-aged official whom I got to know fairly well wil
example. He had over thirty years in government service as a c
district magistrate. He had acquired an extensive knowledge o
law in action, as it were, and his bribery tariff was considered mo
than that of most of his opposite numbers. He enjoyed his vocatio
ready to tell me what the laws of Ethiopia were. But he did no
subject in a learned way; he did not own, or have access to, a sing

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290 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

nor even to a copy of the laws of Ethiopia


in favour of the rich, powerful or open han
of a disability. Arssi did not bring cases to
heard were between Amhara or between Amhara and Arssi. He did not let
his prejudices hamper his self-interest, and any Arssi who was substantially
richer than the Amhara with whom he was in dispute had a good chance of
winning his case.
The magistrate told me he was an Amhara. Arssi classified him as such but
also said that he came of Christian Oromo stock from Shoa (I do not know if
that was so). But he had used his various government positions to acquire
land and stock and used Amharic as his domestic tongue and spent a lot of his
leisure time drinking Scotch with Amhara. Certainly, he perceived Arssi
culture to be totally inferior to Amharic culture. His response to my research
was similar to reactions I had experienced among the more insensitive Europeans
in other parts of colonial Africa. He assured me that I was just wasting my
time studying Arssi culture, because they had none and were 'uncivilized' (in
support of which he instanced that those Arssi who owned wellington boots
continued to wear them into the dry season!)
Up until the Italian invasion there were sporadic, local outbreaks of rebellion
against particularly harsh governors or landlords but nothing that hinted of
concerted action. When Haile Selassie returned to Ethiopia during the Second
World War he was able to strengthen his grip on the country remarkably.
The first Oromo rebellion which had national reverberations was that of Arssi
patriot-cum-brigands in Bale in the 1960s. With some Somali support they
pinned down substantial units of the regular Army and demonstrated that
determined Oromo could wage effective guerilla warfare against the Addis
Ababa authorities. But, probably more important for the development of
Oromo national consciousness were the unanticipated consequences of the
Imperial Government's own creation of a strong, centralized administration
which ignored local differences of custom and culture coupled with the imposi-
tion of Amharic culture. Both of these increased resentment and developed
by reaction positive feelings of nationality. As more Oromo became civil
servants, Army officers and NCO's and more Oromo school boys became
undergraduates, and as more Oromo MPs managed to get elected, each group
found that, in addition to sharing humiliating experiences, each shared a common
language and similar values. The new pan-Oromo consciousness was generated
in the army, the University and the Parliament itself. For example, when I
was looking for one of the Members from Chilalo constituency in the lounge
of Parliament I was directed, by an usher, to the corner where 'the Oromo
members usually sit together'.
Those who achieved success in the national arena, and hence were opinion-
formers at home, discovered just how numerous, extensive and similar the
Oromo peoples were. The most conspicuous manifestation of this conscious-

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ETHIOPIA'S UNACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEM 291

ness was the Mecha Oromo Self Help Association which was founde
by an Oromo civil servant, and immediately attracted an enthusistic
I met some of its leaders in the club house in 1967 and it was clear that the
movement was flourishing. It even attracted and persuaded an amharized
general, Tadessu Biru, to renounce his elite status and become its active patron.
It was impossible to measure precisely the support the association gathered but
it so alarmed the government that, using a bomb explosion in a cinema as a
pretext, it imprisoned the general and the association's key members and
dissolved the association.13 As elsewhere in Africa, as for example among the
Ibo, Akan, Somali or Kalenjin, increased education, trade and mobility has
fostered wider ethnic sentiments and affiliations; whereas wider national and
narrower class consciousness have more frequently been subjects for political
rhetoric rather than realized aspirations.
Each of the Oromo peoples has a distinctive history but all have shared
comparable experiences. Perhaps I may select a few observed by myself in
Arussi to illustrate some common types of Oromo experience.
The Arssi people extend far beyond the boundaries of Arussi Province, which
takes their name, into Bale and Sidamo. They were finally subjugated by Shoan
gunpower in 1887 after six different annual campaigns which R. H. Kofi Darkwa,
the Ghanaian historian of Minilik's reign, summarizes as 'perhaps the most
sustained and the most bloody which Menilek undertook'.14
Arssi in the 1960s spoke of their conquest by Amhara as the commencement
of an era of miseries, since which life has not run as God intended it but out
of true. Boran likewise divided their history into two eras, 'before' and 'after',
the first of which was good and the second bad and which were divided by their
colonization. John Hinnant reports Guji as tending 'to blame all social prob-
lems on their incorporation into Ethiopia'.15 It is an example of the unthinking
colonial arrogance of Amhara that the only secondary school in Arussi Province
was named after Ras Darge, who was the Butcher Cumberland of the Arussi
Highlands, and whose name is still reviled there.
After their conquest much of the best Arssi grazing lands were promptly
given as booty to the soldiers and clients of Ras Darge. Where, as in the Rift
Valley or on the better agricultural land, they had acquired most of the land
and were sufficient in numbers to give each other mutual support, and had a
protective garrison town nearby, the settlers stayed and expanded. Those
however who had been allocated land in areas best suited only to grazing, which
also tended to be furthest from the garrisons, were often unable to withstand

13. See Patrick Gilkes, The Dying Lion. Feudalism and Modernization in Ethiopia
(London: Julian Friedmann, 1974), Ch. 7 for a fuller account of Oromo national move-
ments.

14. Shewa, Menilek and the Ethiopian Empire (London, Heinemann: 19


15. In 'Gada as a Ritual System: the Guji' in Uri Almagor and P. T. W
Generation and Time: Some Features of East African Age Oganisations (Lo
forthcoming).

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292 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

the implacable hostility of their Arssi tenan


them for stock which they then took back t
lords were also killed or driven out during th
Indeed many Arssi elders in Kofele and Ged
cally about the brief period of Italian rule as
been free to kill Amhara, been free of exp
impositions by officials, had been encourage
been able to earn money. It was not that t
that they had found it a much less oppressiv
Moreover, the Italians had broken the power
they had never been able to completely re-es
autocrats over their tenants. I several tim
that however harsh the Amhara appeared to b
ate than it had formerly been.
I worked in Kofele District which had the s
settlers and landlords in Arussi Province, an
see anything at all that the population had g
the Ethiopian Empire. To the people it seeme
taxes and exactions were yet more officials to
and bribes. The people of Kofele did not ap
as their fellow tribesmen of the Rift Valley f
tremely poor though they farmed and grazed
Critical Population Density,18 for people
passed and the grazing was degrading and ba
places to a level at which it did not justify p
cultural crisis was masked by the increased c
hydrate producer, the false banana (Ense
kwashiorkor, yet a large proportion of the bu
and exported from the district by traders fr
short and opportunities for wage-labour wer
not create social problems simply because th
men could migrate.
There was a chasm between the 'Amhariz
handful of young, schooled and determined
the handful of wealthy Arssi landlords or he
courteous and formal (or 'joking') relations, b
with local Amhara. Almost all the school
Province were filled by the children of settle

16. Karl E. Knutsson, 'Dichotomization and Integr


tions in Southern Ethiopia', in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, ed. F. Barth (London:
Allen & Unwin, 1969), pp. 86-100.
17. See Yilma Kebede, 'Chilalo Awraja', Ethiopian Geographical Journal, 5, 1 (June
1967), pp. 25-36.
18. See W. Allen, The African Husbandman (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1964).

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ETHIOPIA'S UNACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEM 293

out of the 57 senior officials listed in the official handbook of Aruss


were not classified by Arssi as Amhara. I don't think even a single A
employed in an equivalent post outside the Province. Only about 5 o
or so low-level government employees in Kofele District were A
Kadi, who only ever dealt with disputes or religious affairs between
Arssi, was even alloted a Christian Amhara clerk.
Indeed the Muslim religion was denigrated in large and small
Provincial Handbook, for example, listed 216 Churches but only
in an area in which almost every settlement had a hut reserved as a
The churches and priests had land and tenants granted to them and
donations from the state; mosques did not. Every seller in Kofel
almost every one of whom was Muslim Arssi, paid a toll. Almost
revenue was absorbed in the wages of the Chirstian Amhara cler
small surplus was used to pave a drive to the Church, while the marke
a foul quagmire throughout the rains. Only I was amazed at thi
The officials assumed that no better use could be found for the money
assumed that market tolls were just another exaction from them to be
rulers. Later, during the cholera epidemic, the great annual pil
the tomb of Shekh Hussen was banned because it would spread infec
that to the Christian shrine at Koluubi was allowed because the
Christian pilgrims should diminish the epidemic! To add insult to in
church at Koluubi itself (an Oromo name meaning 'wild garlic
deliberately erected on the site of a traditional Oromo site of b
pilgrimage in order to Christianize it.
I could heap up incidents of arrogance but brief versions of two oth
suffice.
One Friday afternoon a Police Land-rover brought an Arssi prisoner to
Kofele to be hanged in the market place on the next day. It was the only
police vehicle to visit the district during the twelve months I lived in it. The
condemned man had been under sentence for over ten years, for participating
in the shooting and killing of the adult son of his landlord. There had been a
violent quarrel over the calculation of the share of crops due to the landlord.
One of those sentenced with the prisoner had escaped from prison and the
other had died in prison. The landlord had refused to accept compensation
and hence have the death sentence commuted, so the sentence was to be carried
out. The prisoner, who had been provided with clean clothes for the event,
told me that he had been sent for execution because the prison in Asella was so
overcrowded.
What looked like a rugged set of football goal posts had been erected in the
market place. The policemen who had accompanied the prisoner put the
noose around the prisoner's neck, threw the loose end over the crossbar, tied
it to the front bumper, reversed sharply and jerked the man up. They then
untied the rope from the bumper, hitched it to a stout peg and left the corpse

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294 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

dangling. They drove back directly to A


corpse was not to be removed before d
mission convert and teacher and a most ge
buried at his own expense. The gibbet was
The reasons for the delay in carrying ou
its performance could tell us a lot abou
Testament harshness which compose Amh
concern.

The Arssi were numbed and outraged. Those who had heard
waited by the paths to inform those coming to market; the women
wailing as they do at a mourning and the men were silent and angry
was completely boycotted on that day, and on the following Satur
by curious children and northern settlers and migrants.
Arssi, rightly or wrongly, were convinced that if it had been an
had shot an Arssi, then the most that could have happened was th
would have been ordered to hand over some compensation, and th
victim ordered to accept it. Again and again, as if it was a refrain
'This is the way the Amhara destroy us. Are we like bush animals
At the Parliamentary Elections of 1969 the two-seat constituenc
Kofele District formed a part returned two Arssi members. A
the overwhelming majority of the electorate, but this was the first ti
Arssi had been returned; and that was simply because more Ar
persuaded to register and to vote. The Governor however regarded
as subversion of the proper political order and had one of the candidat
(the other was thought to be protected by Swedish Aid patrons) a
fresh poll. During the second poll Arssi voters were threatene
prisoned and the majority prevented from voting so that a Christia
was declared elected.19
Most Arssi in the District had demonstrated only the slightest in
Election up to the time of the Governor's intervention. They trie
any contacts at all with government agencies which all, in their e
existed only to hold them back; they regarded Parliament, not en
as another Amhara trick. But the Governor's crude cheating rouse
Arssi, if not Oromo, feelings. They were angry not just becaus
repressed, they were familiar enough with that, but because they w
humiliated. Protests such as 'The Amhara are trying to kill us': 'Th
are trying to destroy the Arssi': 'It is better to live like Tigre
revolt as in Eritrea): or 'It would be better to follow Waako' (the l

19. A reliable informant, who for obvious reasons wishes to remain anonymous, has
told me that a similar incident to that which I describe occurred in Deder in Harerghe
Province. The Governor, with the agreement of the Ministry of the Interior, merely
disallowed one of the Oromo candidates and declared an Amhara elected in his place.
Nevertheless Oromo overall representation in Parliament increased in 1969. The
allocation of seats was nonetheless heavily skewed to favour Amhara areas.

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ETHIOPIA'S UNACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEM 295

guerilla force in Bale), were reiterated again and again. Men re-told
stories of Italian times when they had had the freedom to kill Am
defeated candidate was transformed from a traditionalist and Government
time-server into a tribal martyr. A consequence, which surely the Governor
could not have wished, was that poor peasants and wealthy pastoralists learned
that Parliament must have some importance if the Governor was so anxious
to cheat Arssi out of a representative. A small group of schoolboys and primary
school teachers had always been embarrassingly eager to discuss national affairs
with me, but the great mass of the rural population had been quite unconcerned.
But after that incident I was constantly asked, even by elderly women, about
how elections, etc., were carried out in Europe. This particular act of Amhara
arrogance struck just at the time it could set off a reverberating chord.
The collapse, with hardly a shove, of Haile Selassie's autarchy has obviously
released a variety of repressed forces throughout the Ethiopian Empire. Cer-
tainly among the Oromo many of what were local, sullen resentments have been
converted into national aspirations and a national struggle, which has now been
temporarily diverted by the intervention of foreign forces. The breech-loading
rifle helped subjugate and hold down the Oromo, as it did many other African
peoples in other Empires. It is yet to be seen what will be the repressive
concomitants of the Kalashnicov.
It is not possible to assess accurately either the extent or the depth of pan-
Oromo fervour nor to estimate the effectiveness of pan-Oromo organization
and resistance in Ethiopia, but clearly both are growing and the Oromo peoples,
as distinct from a handful of Oromo individuals, will certainly become an
increasingly influential component in Ethiopian politics. A nationalism which
is rooted in a common language and shared modes of thought and feeling,
and which has been nurtured in shared colonial-style oppression can only be
repressed by an extremely ruthless, strong and efficient state, such as the
Republic of South Africa. There is no reason to think that Ethiopia will
suddenly become efficient, however more and more ruthless its rulers may
become in the short term.
Even a wealthy, secure and benevolent government would find it difficult to
woo the Oromo successfully. The present ruling junta has shown none of
those characteristics. It is, moreover, a miniscule fraction of a misinformed
Marxist minority of a ruling group recruited from what is the Shoan segment of
an ethnic minority, and it is propped up by both terror and foreign support.
It must remain dependent on the fire-power of its foreign allies unless it can
find some more permanent appeal to base itself upon than the Somali bogy.
If it does not, the Russians could well find themselves with their own mini-
Vietnam in the Horn; in which case, once again, poor blacks will provide an
undue share of the poor and bloodied infantry.
Oromoland encompasses Shoa, which is the very heartland of the Ethiopian
state and includes the capital Addis Ababa (Finefine in Oromo). The soil in

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296 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

the north has been degraded by generation


forests destroyed. The most productive
south and much of it is farmed by Orom
of the north and its supplier of meat, but
national drink, mead), and of coffee and ev
Ababa and the new towns of Shoa could no
rural Oromo land and labour. The south als
exports of coffee, gold, timber and hides
were detached Ethiopia would merely be d
to detach themselves, then it is not just that
would be part of the detached Oromo l
stuck together and Haile Selassie held to
Amhara would then be forced back to their
On the one hand their numbers, geograph
give the Oromo a strong base from which t
the crucial dependence of Ethiopia on th
Amhara dominated, government to strike
consciousness. If Ethiopia is not to disinteg
by foreign garrisons, its government must
the alienation of the Oromo, but it is diff
they would follow in order to do so becaus
through Shoan eyes. The junta appears to h
tion, though justified by quite different do
stamped on and that to grant any devoluti
outsider who is deeply attached to Ethiopi
the only humane way. The slogan of th
Oromo freedom flower today!' (Addi bil
may be a very over-optimistic hope but, if
of fruiting cannot be delayed forever.

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