Oromantic’s Weblog

The nation is artificial, but ethnicity is natural says Deng Yiech Bachech.

After the fall of Mengistu’s Derg regime in May 1991, people of Ethiopia had great hopes that the peace will ultimately prevail. The bloody and torturous days experienced by the people of Ethiopia in the hands of Mengistu and his cronies were now gone; and the new government had to solve political, economic and social crises created by past regimes. In essence, the new regime had to come up with a new form of democratic political system that would accommodate the conflicting needs and interests of the people of Ethiopia in general. In doing so, the ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), embraced “Ethnic federalism” as a viable political experiment to accommodate ethnic differences.

This essay attempts to describe and analyze political events in Ethiopia since the coming of EPRDF to power in 1991 until present time. The major focus of this analysis will however examine and investigate the problems and prospects of EPRDF’s ethnicized politics of federalism. In the process, the fundamental ideas of ‘identity, history, and nation’ will highlight the present ethnic dimensions of state formation, ethnic leadership, party design and competition, and governance in Ethiopia.

The history of Ethiopia as a state is almost two hundred years old. Unlike other African states which were colonized by European powers, Ethiopia was never formally colonized, but it was ruled by successive emperors (1855-1974). The nature of the state was imperialistic and autocratic, whereby past emperors brought together various ethnic groups to form the existing Ethiopian state through conquest and domination of other less powerful ethnic groups by the major two ethnic groups: the Amhara and Tigre. This expansion policy had not been without resistance. In fact, according to Peter Woodward who has done extensive works on the Horn of Africa, wars of expansion had been the classical methods of state formation in Ethiopia. In the late 18th century emperor Menelik II, an Amhara, brought all regions in Ethiopia under his rule, and exerted a traditionally autocratic political system that gave little autonomy over his subjects, basically the ethnic groups that constitute southern Ethiopia today. Among these groups were the Oromo and other ethnic groups in the southwestern Ethiopia. Since then the dominance of the Amhara and Tigre in all aspects of life had prevailed at best and had been resented at worst.

Therefore the concept of Ethiopia as a unifying nationality identity has been in big question because other ethnic groups, especially the Oromo, felt that the current Ethiopia belongs to only Amhara and Tigre. They claimed that the Ethiopia has never been a unified country with common history, culture, and language, except the 19th century wars, which were fought against the colonist powers such as Turks, Italians, Egyptians and Sudanese. Conversely, various ethnic groups were fighting against an internal war of colonialism and imperialism which they considered as ‘Ethiopian imperialism” perpetuated by the Amhara and Tigre with the help of Europeans. Because of the Amhara’s pre-eminence in military, political and economic spheres in the country, Amharic history, language, and cultures have been imposed upon others through either peaceful or assimilation means.

That being said, since 1960s scholars from the Oromo ethnic group that constitutes about half of the Ethiopian population have tried to redefine and re-conceptualize their national identity and reject an all-embracing Ethiopian national identity. In this sense, “Ethiopians had a national consciousness, [that] was the consciousness of subjects united under the emperor, not that of citizens with a voice in the government of the country.” Asafa Jalata, an Oromo, claims that there has not been a commonly held identity as “Ethiopia” or “Ethiopian”. Historically, the people who are called today, as Ethiopians were the native people of Abyssinia referred to as “Habasha,” (Amhara and Tigre). The Habasha lived in the northern Ethiopian highlands of Gondar, Gojjam, Tigray, Wollo, and Shoa. Due to their proximity to the Red Sea, Abyssinians (or Ethiopians) had enormous contacts with European forces, mainly the Greek, and that enabled them to build their empire by colonizing and subduing their traditional enemies. When they became militarily and economically powerful, they maintained their power by collecting taxes from the conquered ethnic groups to build their Christian kingdoms. Because of a popular perception that Ethiopia was a ‘Christian island in an Islamic Sea,” Europeans helped Ethiopian Christians to resist Muslim invaders, infiltrating into Ethiopia heartland through the lowlands of Ethiopia from the Red Sea.

To read the whole article visit Sudan Tribune.