By Kassim Sheimo*
Oromo terrestrial land becomes precious commodity for the successive Abyssinian ruling classes ever since the reign of Menelik to the present day TPLF/EPRDF regime. Under the Menelik and Haile-Silassie Amhara-dominated feudal system, Oromo land was ransacked by the regime-loyalists and the Orthodox Church of Abyssinia. The Orthodox Church of Abyssinia, not only robbed the Oromo of their land, but also became an instrumental tool in enforcing the regimes’ racist policy by preaching the divinity of kings, the supremacy Amhara – the supremacy culture and language – and the inferiority of the Oromo and other nations in the South of the country. Through this coordination of the Church and the kings – and their close association, millions of Oromo farmers lost their precious land to these preys. Much fertile and coffee lands in Central, Southern and Southeastern and Western Oromia had been plundered, divided and occupied by the land tenure elements of the kings, the princes, the princesses, the Orthodox Church of Abyssinia, their Fitawarary’s, Dajazamach’s, Qangi Azthmach’s, Indaraase’s, … Ballabase’s.
The land tenure system gave these elements the opportunity to deeply embed in the land, drawing large numbers of Oromo and southern nations and nationalities out of their lands, villages and communities, thereby forcing them to fall into direct and indirect control of the regimes’ authorities at different levels of the oppressive apparatus and reducing the indigenous people of the land into servitude and slavery. The feudal institutions defined the political authority and hierarchy around the land ownership by establishing a patron-client relationship in which clients were inferior in social classes and ranks. The feudal landlord would possess greater power, wealth and prestige as to when, where, how and on what term and condition he or she controlled the land. The political arrangements were established from the local, the state, the regional to the national levels in such a way that the Amhara elites and regime-loyalists got leeway to mobilize and control large swaths of land under their control. The losses of land – along with the psychological warfare against the Oromo language, the Oromo belief, the Oromo culture; the restricted freedom of movement and association; and the unjust property ownership system – left millions of Oromo and many Southerns to suffer under the systematical and institutionalized discrimination. The regimes instituted the second-class citizenship by denying or limiting the Oromo people’s legal, civil, economic and social rights. The Oromo people were subjected to mistreatment, displacement and neglect at the hands of the putative feudal landlords. In much of the country, Oromo children were denied basic and fundamental educational opportunities. Few of those who had gotten the opportunity were indoctrinated by the Amhara culture, philosophy, belief and language to glorify the Abyssinian feudal supremacy. That influence is still evident among many educated under that system – these have assumed leadership roles among some political groups and constantly denounce the Oromo struggle for the right to self-determination and freedom. Among many of these prominent politicians are Ob. Leenco Lata and his followers. They are, I believe, the products of such institutionalized indoctrination which has made them to glorify the immiyye Ethiopia – even under the current repressive and suppressive totalitarian TPLF regime.
Many thanks to the determined prominent Oromo politicians who resisted and contributed remarkably for the overthrowing of the feudal system and the monarchy – which were preached and believed by many as divine and supreme beings that would never be challenged by a human force. The Students Movement in the early 1970’s galvanized and injected full energy into the struggle against the repressive, backward monarchy. The mass movements in urban centers – along with the peasants’ resistance against the feudal land policy – had precipitated into the downfall of the “King of Kings – The Majesty Haile Sillasse” regime.
In March 1975 the Derge military regime issued a sweeping land reform proclamation, which brought about a complete transformation in the complex feudal system that had made the Oromo people landless. Much of the Oromo land was recovered, and millions of Oromos were allowed to take over much of their indigenous lands led by peasant associations. That ambitious land reform faced hurdles as it was taking into full effects. It was hijacked by the Socialist ideology that only allowed the land utilization in collective forms, rather than redistribution to individual Oromo farmers. Many youth revolutionists and intellectuals believed that the socialist system was the best way to handle such a difficult and sensitive issue like the land reform. The peasant associations, created by the revolutionary development administration at the local, provincial and national levels, were the powerful tools in breaking down the feudal fabrics – even though they denied the individual/private ownership of the land. However, it is fair to say that Oromo peasants have enjoyed from that collective ownership.
Beside some concrete steps like the land reform, the Derg regime failed to produce other political, economic, and social reforms in the country that was brutalized by the backward feudal system. Instead, the Derg waged expensive wars against the Oromo, the Eritrean, the Tigrean and the Ogaden national movements – and as a result of these national liberation wars, millions of people from all sides are believed to have been killed. Many prominent Oromo politicians were killed and eliminated; some of them were thrown into notorious jails. Even though some Oromos took political and military leadership under the Derg regime, the fundamental change had yet to materialize for the Oromo. The Derg regime was finally overthrown by the combined struggles of the national movements in 1991.
The land reform that took deep root during the Derg regime started to take a radical twist under the TPLF junta. The TPLF declared that the land belonged to the government. Imagine, the government is TPLF, and, therefore, it is logical to say that the land and its resources belong to them. It has instituted a very ambivalent land transformation in which the government has been declared to be the sole owner of the land whereas the farmers, and others who own businesses on the land, are nothing more than lease-owners. Broadly speaking, we can distinguish two antagonistic political discourse on the land question: (1) the discourse of fairness and state protection that argues for the state ownership, and (2) the discourse of privatization and efficiency. The TPLF government has hidden itself under such ambiguous policy cover, and has started to privatize the Oromo land by selling or leasing to whomever it sees as a potential investor – mostly to their own prominent Tigrean politicians, businessmen/women and their associates. That turns the land ownership into the hands of a few TPLF members – displacing the poor and destitute Oromo farmers and their families with no regards to their rights and livelihoods. Under the TPLF, the land became the most valuable commodity from which many powerful and corrupted TPLF politicians have amassed millions of dollars – by selling, and by building huge businesses and industries on the Oromo farmland – in short, this has re-instituted the feudal system under a neo-feudal lord, the TPLF.
Many local and international conglomerate corporates have started to ally with the TPLF regime – directly or indirectly – joining the frenzy of the illegal land grab in urban vicinity for housing, business and industrial developments, and in rural areas for large-scale crop productions, intended for bio-fuel consumption abroad – all displacing indigenous populations and leaving them for starvation. The land issue is becoming, not only the local issue, but has gained global attention and trends.
As the population growth is exploding, the demand for food and shelter is increasing every year. The climate change and the rise in temperature and extreme weather phenomena – directly related to the global warming – have become more evident and severe. This has caused low crop yields with the seasons that keep changing – making it harder for the farmers to exactly predict the rainy/right seasons to sow. Wild weather and unpredictable weather phenomena are changing what farmers can grow – even using fertilizers. The regime forces, investors, even some of the farmers looking for fertile lands as food prices keep soaring – are cutting down more and more forests. The anarchical land policy created by the regime plus the ever increasing population – along with the changing weather patterns – keep the food price higher and higher. These factors have made the land issue to be at the center of the major conflict in the Ethiopia Empire. TPLF eyes to change the demographic distribution of population so that – in the long run, no one can claim the land except the few Tigrean elites like Abay Tsehaye. His deplorable and outrageous verbal outburst shows how far TPLF has gone deep – aiming at dislodging Oromo farmers from their fertile land. I argue that the TPLF policy is the mirror-image of the South African Apartheid system – in which 5% White minority controlled 95% the land and its resources – even decades after the Apartheid regime has been overthrown. Under the so-called Addis Ababa Master Plan, TPLF is planning to forcefully kick the Oromo people out of their lands with promises of compensations that neither are adequate nor fair. Under such threats, millions of Oromo farmers living in the immediate vicinity of the capital city are under a constant nightmare that, one day, they will wake up to messy environment when TPLF tugs evict them from their lands and properties on which they have lived for centuries. This will, for sure, create destitute poverty and tenancy institutions, and forced mass rural-urban migrations of landless Oromos – who will be servants of the new conglomerate Tigrean, Chinese, Indian, Amhara and Arabian landlords. That means, it is a matter of time that the place we all call home, Oromiyaa, will have a radical transformation unless we, not only put up stiff resistance, but also fight to completely get rid of the TPLF tyrant regime. Make no mistake; the land belongs to whoever BUILDS on it. If TPLF is allowed to go with “Master Killer Plan,” it would be a game changing situation that the map of the country would be slashed into unconnected pieces of Oromiyaan lands here and there. It would be a very dangerous phenomenon that no sensible Oromo can afford to ignore. This regime does not understand the logic – it does not know the vocabulary of RESPECT for human rights and the rule of law. We need to unequivocally demand that the TPLF take off its hand from Oromo (our) land.
Thank you – “Galatooma”
* The author, Kassim Sheimo, can be reached at kibrole@gmail.com
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