Ethiopia's Unacknowledged Problem - The Oromo (Paul Baxter)
Ethiopia's Unacknowledged Problem - The Oromo (Paul Baxter)
Ethiopia's Unacknowledged Problem - The Oromo (Paul Baxter)
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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
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284 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
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ETHIOPIA'S UNACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEM 285
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
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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
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288 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
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ETHIOPIA'S UNACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEM 289
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290 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
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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.
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292 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
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ETHIOPIA'S UNACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEM 293
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294 AFRICAN AFFAIRS
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
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