Ethiopia’s invisible 1/3 “minorities”
On October 14, 2018, a couple of months after Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali took office, Lencho Bati, now a senior advisor to the Prime Minister, wrote this:
“Ato Yilkal Getenet of Smayawi Party wrote about Oromia and Shaggar being an invention that never existed in history. As an empirical reality, the existence and flourishing of Oromia do not need his approvals. This guy is ignorant about how nations are constructed through resistance and contestation. All nations and symbols are human creations to serve the social and economic needs of society. What clouded his understanding about the making and existance of Oromia is pure prejudice or crude ignorance. Oromia and the great Oromo people are here to stay. Lets say if the last three thousand of Ethiopian history was shaped and influenced by Amharas and Tigreans, we can surely say the future three thousand years of Ethiopian history and politics is going to be shaped and dominated by Oromos”
Lencho Bati’s statement has several ideological and theoretical assumptions that provide instrumental contexts for how the Ethiopian political and economic policy has been shaped in the past, and how it is taking shape at present.
Lencho Bati is among the founding members of the Oromo Liberation Front, OLF. OLF is one of the political organizations that mushroomed in Ethiopia following the 1974 coup d’état and then the assassination of Emperor Hailesialse. The OLF, similar to its counterpart TPLF, the Tigrayan People Liberation Front (TPLF), claims to represent a specific cultural group of people in Ethiopia, the Oromo. OLF’s initial stated goal was similar to that of TPLF: to form an independent country called Oromia. The TPLF’s initial plan was to create an independent country called Greater Tigray Republic (For more on the prospect and viability of an independent Tigray republic, read here).
Over the years, much like the TPLF, the OLF has undergone a significant transformation in its stated goals once it gained momentum and took central power. Both the TPLF and OLF received, and continue to receive, strong backing from western countries that have their vested interest in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region. Previously, during the Cold War, western countries had the objective of countering the Soviet Union’s influence in the area. Currently, the western countries have a vested interest to counter the impact of rising “Communist China,” and to a lesser extent, the influence of Iranians in Yemen, across the Red Sea.
Western countries claim they back the OLF and TPLF political blocks because the Tigriyans and the Oromos have been “marginalized” by the “Dominant Amhara.” As Lencho Bati said, “The last three thousand of Ethiopian history was shaped and influenced by Amharas and Tigreans.” This narrative is supported and propagated by “Western experts of Ethiopian History” and their students. For these “experts,” Ethiopia is all about Amhara, Tigrie and Oromo.
There’s no doubt these three cultural groups of people in Ethiopia constitute about 2/3 of Ethiopia’s 110 million multicultural people. Needless to say they continue to have a monopoly of political and economic narratives in Ethiopia when defining who gets what, when and how. The rest 1/3 of the people who live mainly in the “Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region — SNNPR”, Afar region, Gambela region, Somali region, and urban centers across the country, are left at the peripheral margins.
The 2/3 majority want the 1/3 minority if and when they want to solidify their power at the center and to counter the challenge they may face from each other. Among the 1/3 minority used in this regard are the Gurage, Siltie, Welaita and Sidama cultural groups. Once one of the 2/3 majority assumes central power, they claim to be guardians of the Ethiopian state. They look for support from one of the cultural groups among the 1/3 minority to present themselves as “inclusive.”
While the Amhara, Oromo and Tigray cultural groups accuse each other of subjugating one another, none of these three admit their subjugation of any of the 1/3 minority. For instance, as much as people like Lencho Bati would like to claim about the marginalization, domination and assimilation of Oromos by Amharas, they will probably never admit similar marginalization, domination, and assimilation by the Oromo. On the contrary, such marginalization, domination and assimilation by the Oromo cultural group are depicted as “Oromo Genius.” The Oromo Historian Mohammed Hassen writes:
“At this early stage in their migration, the pastoral Oromo seem to have manifested Unique characteristics of adaptability. They easily adapted to another environment and coalesced with indigenous people, and at the same time they imparted their language and the complex Gada system, which eventually replaced Islam of the conquered people. The desire to participate in the spoils of the Christian and Muslim states may have attracted various non-Oromo groups to join the Oromo groups that entered in the course of the battles. An unusual aspect of Oromization was that many of the absorbed groups were nomads. The Oromo genius for assimilation quickly claimed any non-Oromo, defeated or otherwise”
Among the cultural groups that the “Oromo Genius” assimilated is the Sidama of Southern Ethiopia that has adopted a version of the gada system as part of their culture. Currently, the Sidama has become the 10th ethnic region in Ethiopia. The Sidama’s request for ethnic, regional government status was supported and uniquely granted by the federal government, to which Lencho Bati is a senior advisor.
While the three cultural groups claim to be guardians of the Ethiopian state, none of the 2/3 majority has more to gain from Ethiopia’s continuation as a nation-state than the 1/3 minority. This is evidenced by the fact that much of the political ills in Ethiopia stem from one of the three groups attempting to out-dominate each other. Given their population size, as Lencho Bati said, they bid to “dominate and shape Ethiopian history and politics” in turns.
This rivalry between the three cultural groups to dominate Ethiopian history and politics has resulted in the never-ending conflict and destruction of Ethiopia. The root of almost every conflict in Ethiopia can be traced to these three cultural groups trying to oust each other from power. In the meantime, it is the 1/3 minority that continues to pay a heavy price in life, limbs and fortunes. Every time there’s power rivalry between the three cultural groups, any of the 1/3 minority group would be targeted.
For instance, in September 2018, following exiled OLF leaders’ return to Ethiopia, there was widespread violence. Civilians were targeted; their properties were destroyed in and around Addis Abeba. This round of violence led to Lencho Bati’s statements about four weeks later, in October 2018.
The return of OLF leaders from exile on September 15, 2018 was accompanied by a mass rally of OLF’s supporters, who targeted and violently attacked non-Oromo cultural groups, mainly the Gurage, Siltie and Gamo people who live in Burayu district of “the special Oromia zone,” which encircles Addis Abeba. The September 2018 violence resulted in the killing of 58 people and the displacement of thousands. That same year, close to half a million of the Gedeo people was displaced due to OLF’s attacks in the area adjacent to Guji Zone of Oromia.
More recently, in July 2020, urban areas like Shashemene, Zeway, and Harer have seen rounds of violence that targeted the 1/3 minority groups. Following the death of Hacalu Hundesa on June 29, 2020, places such as Shahsmene were targeted by rioters who blamed the “Neftegna” for Hacalu’s death. “Neftegna” is a label that the OLF and its supporters assign to individuals of non-Oromo cultural groups who live in town centers such as Shashemene. In the wake of Hachalu’s death, a group of organized youth called Qero targeted and killed individuals with a deliberate and organized list of who lives where, and thousands were displaced.
As seen from Lencho Bati’s statements and the rounds of violence in Oromia over the past couple of years, urban areas in Ethiopia, particularly Addis Abeba, are the major political and economic battle grounds for the 2/3 majority. In reality, however, places like Addis Abeba are built by the sweat and hard-working labor of individuals who belong to the 1/3 minority cultural groups. This is because once one of the 2/3 majority assume central power, they tend to hold “High esteemed government positions” to control government bureaucracy. Most of their political elites take jobs and functions reserved for the “Ruling class” and then battle to “dominate Ethiopia’s history and politics.” Meanwhile, the 1/3 minority spend their sweat and labor building the urban centers from the ground up. Yet, they remain at peripheral margins of these centers, and targeted by any one of the three groups in the quest to dominate each other out.
