Jawar Mohammed’s Clarification on Minnesota Speech

In recent weeks, several video clips from my speeches at various events have been systematically edited to present a narrative that portrays me in the worst moral and political light. The latest of these doctored videos are pieced together to create the impression that I was advocating violence against Christians in Ethiopia. Needless to say, this is a calculated and horrendous political strategy so commonplace in the Ethiopian political landscape. Let me say as clearly as I can: I find such views so revolting and so repugnant that it has no place in any civil political discourse. Whatever motivated those who engaged in EPRDF style character assassination, this past week has given us an impeccable evidence about the state of our media and the place of truth, and journalistic ethics in their operations.  It is also ironic that many of the individuals and  groups engaged in this propaganda are the same people who  went a long way to disparage me as ’naïve’,  ‘spineless’, and ‘passivist’ for writing and speaking about nonviolence. Given the sensitivity of the issue and the malicious manner in which these videos were edited and presented, I want to take this opportunity to explain the context in which that particular speech was delivered.

On May 25, 2013, I was invited to speak at a town hall gathering organized by Risala International, a consortium of three Minnesota-based mosques. There were several prominent spiritual and secular leaders from various communities in North America. Present were also representatives from the Minnesota delegation to the U.S. congress. Based on my own observation and the organizers account, the audience consisted of Muslim Oromos, non-Muslim Oromos, non-Oromo Muslims, and Ethiopians of other faiths.

As I do with every invitation, I asked the organizers to give me a specific topic to address, a language of their preference, and format of the presentation. In this case, the organizers asked me to analyze whether the Oromo struggle and ongoing Muslim protests for religious freedom are complementary or contradictory. I prepared my presentation in Afan Oromo, however, after learning there were attendees who do not understand the Oromo language, I ended my comments with a rather condensed summary in Amharic. Given the moderator was flying the ‘times up’ sign on my face, I did not have the privilege of explaining my point in details

It was at the end of that comment that I made a statement which led to a controversy and used by interested group to advance their own political agenda. I said where I grew up, where Muslims make up majority, there is a broad consensus that people would stand up and fight; and the saying goes, they would fight with what is traditionally known as Menca in Afaan Oromo. Here I was trying to underscore the point that even if politically powerless, being numerical majority brings about a sense of collective security which leads people to confront the abusive state  head on forcefully. Hence, this serves as a restraining factor against those who seek to undermine their dignity.  In contrast, where the politically oppressed is also numerically outnumbered, the sense of vulnerability might lead to submission to injustice; consequently enabling the oppressive system to violate their rights with no fear of repercussion.

Every normative community has its own unique way of assigning and discerning meaning in a text or utterance. The expression I used is a sarcastic expression used for a humorous effect. Although it did not occur to me at the time, sarcasm, like satire and irony, works precisely on the slippage between what is said and what is meant. It is often joked among Oromos that Manca is a weapon of pride in Hararghe, as Shimala (a stick) is in Shawa, Eboo (a spear) is among the Arsi, Togorri for Karrayyuu  and so on. These cultural expressions make meaning only within the cultural geography in which they are uttered. I suspect that the majority of the participants attending the consortium understood that the expression is intended not as a statement of fact but as sarcastic expression that signifies almost the opposite of what it seems to say. However, when several versions of the video—some of it doctored to generate the political effects needed by my detractors—several friends, colleagues, and other individuals who did not understand this cultural context expressed their disappointment, hurt, and even a rage. I fully regret these unintended consequences and the lack of foresight on my part.

I understand that a lot of Ethiopians disagree with my views and I welcome all constructive debates and criticisms. However, taking my statements out of context and juxtaposing unrelated events for mere character assassination is not only malicious but also an outdated political tactic. In this era of heightened instant communication lies have a shelf life of minutes before being countered by facts. But during that short lifespan, they could cause serious harm, not so much to their targeted subject, but more so to the unsuspecting general public.

If it is of any help, those who want to mislead the public should know that I am a product of an interfaith marriage. My father was a Muslim and my mother was from an Orthodox Christian background. Moreover, my wife is a Lutheran. I do not advocate religious freedom and interfaith understanding and tolerance because it is fad of the time. I was raised with and live by those values.

Now let me return to the real issue at stake. I would like to remind all that the defamation campaigns, including the distortion of this video followed the  Al Jazeera program that focused on the plight of the Oromo people, in which I was a panelist. The frenzy has now gone beyond defamation and verbal threat. Abdi Fite, a young Oromo journalist was recently ambushed in Washington DC, physically attacked and threatened with knife to his throat. This attack happened following a video Abdi released sharing his perspective on being an Oromo. Those who are trying to silence the Oromo voice through physical and symbolic violence should reflect on history and revise their strategy. My reading of history is that  targeting Oromo individuals have not yielded the intended result of destroying the struggle of Oromo People.

The Oromo people have a just cause that no amount of violence nor distortion can delegitimize. The Oromo nation has produced and continue to produce sons and daughters that pick up and carry the flag when one comrade falls. For those who are still attempting to recycle the old divide and destroy tactic, be sure that Oromos have  a time tested culture and system that cherishes its diversity  and  promotes pluralism. Oromos are masters of coexistence with their neighbors. They are also fierce warriors in defense of their sovereignty. The just Oromo struggle is about restoring dignity to a  people who have been ruthlessly denigrated, and violently subjugated. It is a struggle that gives back to the people their right to self determination in its fullest sense. This sacred goal must be achieved no matter the cost.

 >gulelepost

Statement from OYSA/WWDO: We Are Oromos First Too!

OYSA/WWDO: We Are Oromos First Too! | July, 20, 2013

Oromummaa or Oromo nationalism has achieved successive victories and reached a higher level to mobilize the untapped Oromo human resources for a just cause – Oromo national movement that had been continuously and viciously attacked by successive Ethiopian regimes.
Even though Oromummaa has proved its maturity, firm stand, commitment and readiness to pay the necessary sacrifices back in Oromia, the recent minor retreat in the Oromo struggle has given the old empire builders in the Diaspora the courage not to accept the truth, just cause and strong Oromo nationalism. Instead they have wrongly convinced themselves that this would be a right time to rehabilitate and wage counter attack on Oromumma – which is altogether a futile attempt to begin with.

The recent multi-faceted audio-visual, oral and written media attack on Oromians and Oromummaa, although nothing of significance to deter us, is exceeding its limit and developing into physical attack on one of our members, who a few days ago produced and released a video clip declaring “I am Oromo First!” The attack happened on Tuesday July 16, 2013 in Silver Spring, Maryland in disguise. Firstly, such cowardly acts are indicators that some extremist Ethiopian immigrants, by infringing the law, have resorted to physical attack in a democratic country where they took refuge. Secondly, such unprecedented media and personal attacks on Oromumma are clear signs that Oromo nationalism has prevailed and unquestionably secured the upper hand in the political discourse in that old Empire.For Full Statment go to WWDO website, Washington.GaaddisaOromoo.com

>ayyaantuu

The ‘Blue’ cannot mask the ‘Amhara’: Behind the propagation of ‘Individual Rights’

By Jilcha Hamid

In early June of this year a major protest staged in Finfinne caught the attention of the international media, which described it as the first protests since the 2005 elections. I assume that they were talking specifically about political opposition protests. Stepping into the spotlight and reading a statement to the media on behalf of the political opposition was Yilikal Getnet , chairman of the ‘Blue Party’. In the statement the chairman called for the release of political prisoners while highlighting other political and economic problems. The call raised a lot of interest and support, most notably from the ‘Hear Our Voices’ movement which had been protesting and advocating for religious freedoms for Muslims in Ethiopia for well over a year by that time. So when the Blue Party took to the streets for their first protest, the ‘Hear Our Voices’ (HOV) movement mobilized its alongside them. The HOV movement had long been looking for a partner outside of the Muslim community, namely to counter the regimes ‘Jihadawi’ propaganda levelled against their movement. The Blue Party on the other hand was looking to gain wider support for its political program by appealing to the disenfranchised Muslims.

Not much information was available regarding the Blue Party at the time, but in an interview with a local Amharic paper, Life Magazine, Mr. Getnet explained his party platform which he characterized as being based on “individual rights” as opposed to “group rights”. His main issues appeared to be with the existence of regional states, and “ethnic politics”. He states:

“Individuals come before groups (individuals are primary to groups). And so, we believe that when individual rights are respected, group rights will be respected.”

A political party should in time correct itself rather than stick to its pre-commitments; it can’t do politics in this way. For example, you can be a tribal organization but not a tribal party. Because of the sensitivity, in this country, we don’t talk about it, but if someone starts by saying I am an Oromo organization, where else can he go other than [to] Oromo? Because it is limited from its very start. We believe that organizing oneself on a tribal basis is the cause of new issues. But we don’t have a view that in our Ethiopia everything should revolve around tribes.” There are no tribal organizations or political organizations. He then goes on to say:

 “Ethnicity comes with colonization. Colonizers exploited it to divide and rule. The English have walked a long way on this matter. However, as this belief is getting position and power, it is messing up the country. Even if the sort of ‘I am better’ … ‘I am better’ competition is putting our country on the verge of collapse, we are struggling to give individual right a priority. We Ethiopians used to be great, if you go and search on the Internet, you will find out that we are one of the oldest nations. Ethnicity is a new creation and we need to go back to the old greatness.”

I wonder which colonialist introduced ethnicity to Ethiopia? Was it Aba Bahrey, the 16th century Oromophobic monk? Or was it Aleka Taye the Oromophobic Ethiopian Court historian (father of the “Oromos from Madagascar” theory)? The irony here is that Mr. Getnet promoting his own brand of ethnic nationalism. The only difference is that he refers to Amhara nationalism as Ethiopian nationalism.  The old greatness that he refers to is the promotion of his own ethnic nationalism as the foundation of the Ethiopian state. When a single ethnic identity is promoted in such a way at the expense of other ethnicities, the members of the promoted ethnic group will naturally develop a sense of entitlement and attachment to the state. Mr. Getnet is exhbiting this sense of entitlement. When he dismisses ethnicity as a colonial tool, he’s not dismissing his own ethnic identity because his ethnic identity, as far as he is concerned, is inseperable from the state. His language is the language of the state. The ethnic identities that he’s dismissing are the ones which were not promoted and nurtured by the state.

“I don’t understand what was achieved. It is not new to speak in your language. If you go to south Ethiopia, you see people speaking Amharic. The number of Amharic speakers has not decreased. The number of books being written is much higher than that time. Then, there was not much magazine, now you will find a lot of them in Amharic. Except benefiting few ethnic elites, I don’t see anything new. Afan Oromo is not created in EPRDF time. It was there before. But to develop the language, it would have been better to use Geez instead of Latin alphabet. EPRDF deliberately used this issue like colonizers to rule over the people. There are people who become millionaires overnight just because they are in the EPRDF circle. The poor Ethiopian whether he speaks Amharic, Oromo, Sidama …is not their problem. There is nothing special; they are still living with their tiny plot of land. Afan Oromo used to be spoken in the rural area, and it is still there. No one prohibited it then, and it doesn’t have anything new now.”

His fundamental problem seems to be that when others promote their languages and identities he characterizes it as “narrow” and partisan, while his promotion of the Amharic hegemony via Ethiopian patriotism is somehow different, and is considered to be neutral.

But going back to his party platform, why does the Blue Party consider the existence of ethnicities to be an affront to individual rights? The reality seems to be that the issue has little to do with individual rights. What is being threatened is the hegemony and privilege that he believes should belong to his language, culture, history and ethnic identity as enshrined in the old system. He believes that Amharic is for the state, while Afan Oromo is to be confined to “the rural area”. This seems to be the mentality hiding behind the cloak of individual rights, and it just shows how persistent some groups are in continuing to promote failed ideologies through modern slogans of “liberalism” and “individual rights”.

>gulelepost

Ethnicity in Ethiopia: The View From Below

- Summary of Article by Herbert S. Lewis

By Tolera Fikru Gemta

The modern empire of Ethiopia was created as a result of rapid military expansion of Amhara rulers of Shoa, to south ward. It is 110 age only. The empire was created during the European Power British and French established Empires in Africa. The creation of the empire was more brutal in south, especially those who did not submit peacefully faced massacre, expropriation, dislocation. The conquered people were not similar with the conquerors in all aspect of culture, (language, religion and etc). The territories conquered by Menelik military were autonomous people. The local administrations that forcibly built with gun (the neftegna) were so exploitative and oppressive. The indigenous political leaders appointed by the system also serve only as an instrument for Amhara rule; and the effect was the same.

As matter of fact, the Oromo Nationalism came through different developments. The most evident one was the Bale rebellion of (1960). This rebellion was so powerful that it successfully resounded at national level and creates awareness among Oromo. Then after, the Pan-Oromo consciousness was intensified among Oromo students, civil servants and NGO workers and others.

The flourishing of different government controlled associations by Derg regime resulted in more political awareness among the Oromo everywhere meanwhile Derg’s forced re-settlement program had disastrous effect on Oromo social economical and ecological life. As matter of fact, Oromo nationalism resembles with that of all colonized people.

On the other hand the present day Ethiopia which deemed to be established on the principles UDHR has not yet achieved the intended purpose. Two views are, however, occupied Ethiopian Political space. The view from Amhara elite (not all of them) that focus on the weakness of ethnic nationalism, and the pessimistic observers together make the first view; on the other side there are who claim that the present regime could not solve ethnic national questions (or implement the fundamental human rights principle) adequately.

As much as the similarities of Eritrea with Tigre did not keep Eritrea with Ethiopia, claiming objective similarity view of history only will not keep Ethiopian people together.  Thus, it is important and advisable not to deny that there are groups of peoples who have own identities as distinct peoples in Ethiopia. Obviously politics that based on domination of one’s identify is unthinkable in the today’s world.

Source: Herbert S. Lewis,“Ethnicity in Ethiopia: The View from Below (and from the South, East, and West).” 158–178 in Crawford Young (ed.), The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism (Madison:University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 160.

>gulelepost

The Wounded Ethiopian Nationalism and Its Insecurity Dilemma

By Leggese A. Gurmu

Ethiopian Nationalism is a wounded nationalism. The bloody war it has been fighting with its foes since the 1960s has left it severely wounded. It has been fighting both with its internal and external enemies which were created, harbored and brought up by Narrow Ethiopian Nationalism itself. It has been decisively defeated both in the battles of armed struggles and in the realm of ideas. Due to these bitter defeats Eritrea has gone forever. “Ethno”-Nationalists (even though I do not like this name, I could not get better one) have got State power and launched bloody wars against Ethiopian Nationalism. In fact, Ethno-Nationalists have scored so many successive “victories” that has far deepened the wound of Ethiopian Nationalism. Due to these defeats, Ethiopian Nationalists have started to doubt the validity and viability of their political commitments and values. They have lost self values and have become trapped into the vicious cycle that could be analogized to theory of “insecurity dilemma” of the given regime.

In this regard, Messay Kebede, the best mind Ethiopian nationalism can offer, wrote these statements in his recently published article titled Ethiopia’s Fragmented Elites: Origins and Syndromes. He writes, “The dreams of the generation of the 60s and early 70s have been squashed by the victory of the Derg whose dictatorial rule decimated its morale and that of their offspring. Both were offered nothing but the humiliation of a massive exodus. Whether they stayed in the country or left, all experienced another cycle of humiliating events when they witnessed, powerless, the defeat of the Ethiopian army, the invasion of the country by an ethnic army, and the secession of Eritrea. It is hard not to infer from these events a severe damage to Ethiopian nationalism and an erosion of self-confidence such that the generation’s belief in its ability to accomplish great things has received a deadly blow. Without self-confidence, the readiness to unite for a great cause is also likely to suffer gravely.”

For me the real problem is not only the humiliating defeat the Ethiopian Nationalists faced but also how they understand and appreciate their humiliations and defeats. They rightly come to the conclusion that they cannot simply sit and watch their “ideological” and political death. Without any doubt, they will, and indeed have come to the conclusion that they have to do something about their irreparable losses. It seems they want to do this unknown “something” urgently. In the face of this urgency, humiliation, loss of self confidence and values, Ethiopian Nationalism becomes more reactive and irrational, as opposed to pragmatic and strategic. The reactive and irrational nature of this nationalism exposes itself to more systematic and organized attacks of its foes, which are better organized, armed with better ideas and instruments. The more it reacts, the more it gets heavy smacks from all corners of its angry and suspicious adversaries. This has similarity to theories of insecurity dilemma: the more you do things to insure your survival, the more you expose yourself to the greater threats and risks. This is a serious confusion and a fatal vicious cycle that kills via euthanasia.

Ethiopian Nationalists deeply misunderstood their relative strength, weakness and challenges. They think their adversaries are weak, useless and will eventually die. You can say Ethiopian Nationalism has been incurably hurting itself by “delusions of greatness and feelings of impotence”. Since what Ethiopian nationalists think of themselves and their actual realities do not correspond, they are a living and talking world of contradiction. These create and deepen the psychology of “haplessness” and prevent them “from devising realistic responses” to the deadly socio- political problems that they have been creating, developing and promoting. When more organized and competing political forces come to the show and effectively challenge Ethiopian Nationalism, which was protected from all sorts of democratic or whatever competitions until 1992, the leaders of Ethiopian Nationalists found themselves in unceasing and deepening crisis. They could not come up with unifying ideologies that can compete and win support in the realm of marketplace of ideas. Since they do not have any galvanizing idea around which they democratically organize people from different sections of Ethiopian society, Ethiopian nationalism and its leaders face problems of trust and confidence as to their competence and ability to guide and lead. Who is going to follow the losers and people who cannot come up with contextualized, updated and working ideas? In this regard Messay writes again,

“Defeat and humiliation entail leadership crisis. Just as a defeated army questions the competence of its commanding officers, so too a vanquished generation loses faith in leadership. Once leadership is distrusted, the willingness to unite in an organization is drastically reduced. No less than the need to accomplish great goals, confidence in leaders is a requirement of unity.”

Another serious problem of Ethiopian nationalism is that it carries the seed of violence. This is a clear inconvenience given that it cannot be adopted into democratic values and institutions that can earn trust and confidence from different sections of the society. Since this nationalism was (until the final fall of the Derg) created, promoted and maintained by bloody authoritarian regimes, and hence fully backed by state security/coercive  apparatus, the seeds of violence are in its deep philosophy of dealing with  all sorts of problems and competing legitimate interests.

In other words, Ethiopian Nationalists cannot help but resort to use of violence at their disposal whenever they find themselves in problems or crisis. That is why they are still using the structure of violence that they have been building since the end of the 19th century.

Even if they do not have a direct control over the institutions and personnel (the hardware) of Ethiopian repressive security apparatus, Ethiopian Nationalists are still providing the game changing ideas and justifications (the lethal software) for current Ethiopian regime whenever it comes to dealing with their perceived or real “enemies”. For instance, they usually do not hesitate to use the “multimedia platform” under their control to launch deadly offensive propaganda wars against some Oromo political leaders and targeted activists, whom they love to label as “Atseyyafi  Gosangoch /Zeregnoch”, in English “detestable Ethno-Racists”. These acts are a sheer exercise of violence and they show how these nationalists are very much comfortable with the use of violence against their perceived “enemies” whenever possible. This violent nature of Ethiopian Nationalism is not convenient to solve any serious political or social matters with peaceful and democratic procedures. Fundamentally, from the past history and current political and social circumstances, it is possible to say Ethiopian nationalism is yet to be “civilized” to accommodate the differences and live peacefully with competing ideologies. Even today peace, freedom, liberty, and other democratic values are not in the nature of Ethiopian nationalism; it is as wild and barbaric as that of Menelik’s time.  How can anyone with sound mind be attracted to this kind of nationalism that is void of any moral or substantive political content of 21st century?

The violent nature of Ethiopian Nationalism makes it counterproductive, the more it uses subtle but dangerous means of violence, the more it creates problems primarily for itself and its followers. By exercising this violence, Ethiopian Nationalists simply remind everyone, including their moderate followers, what this nationalism has been all about for the last one and half century. It is forcing almost all, including the moderate and people who have been incorporated into the Ethiopian political identity, to integrate past traumas of their ancestries into their life stories, or their self-perceptions, the traumas that are embedded into the minds of the significant majority which have been narrated as “outbreaks of lethal violence that have been described as ‘massacre,’ ‘genocide’ and ‘expulsion.’ Etc. These again create another cycle of resentments and mistrusts which decisively works against their wounds, but immensely strengthen their opponents. This is something that makes me wonder how this nationalism is founded upon its own grave.

I can list so many ways in which the very manifestation of wounded Ethiopian Nationalism works against itself than working against its competitors. Just because of time and space again, I will try to put this in another part of my note. Once more, I would like to quote Messay’s recent statement on this wounded nature of Ethiopian nationalism. It is dark and gloomy but illustrates the points I would like to emphasize. He writes,

“It would be naive to expect from a wounded generation the solutions to Ethiopia’s numerous problems. What was ruined by one generation cannot be fixed by the same generation. True change requires, above all, culture change, which takes time because it is a matter of creativity and growth. In short, real change is a generational issue.”

I totally agree with these statements. I would like to add that the wounded nationalism will die if it does not know how to stop wounding itself overtime it tries to attack its real or perceived enemies.  Now, every day and every moment, Ethiopian nationalism is busy in severely wounding itself and in fact bleeding to death. Doesn’t this nationalism have any nervous system that detects and traces the bleeding wounds and inform the victims to take the correcting measures? I think one of their  nerve nodes  Professor Messay has started to see how he and his generation have been wounding and slowly killing their Nationalism which they took an oath to care for, nurture and protect by all means, the means they do not have any clue about, however.

>gulelepost

Ethiopian airline plane makes rough landing after fire threat

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July 18, 2013 (ADDIS ABABA) – An Ethiopian Airline plane from the capital Addis Ababa to the northern tourist town of Axum was forced to make a rough landing on Wednesday after its smoke sensors went off minutes before landing, an airline official told Sudan Tribune.

The Ethiopian Dreamliner plane (aviationtoday)

The plane, a Bombardier Q400 with 78 passengers and crew on board, made the landing after alarms went off went off to warn of smoke in one of its wings.
“The smoke sensors in the aircraft indicated a fire alarm one minute before landing” the official who decline to be named said adding, “the left wing of the plane was smoking and one engine was not functioning properly”
The official said the cause of the smoke is under investigation. By the time of filing this report, Ethiopian Airlines had not made an official statement over the incident.
“We could see smoke coming out of the plane’s wing. Everybody panicked. It was a very scary incident,” said Rigaet Haile-aeb, one of the passengers on board told the Sudan Tribune by phone.
Haile-aeb was travelling with her husband and their one year old daughter.
The captain reportedly made a steep descent and quickly landed before reaching the main runway to avoid a potential fire outbreak as all passengers safely disembarked from the plane.
Quoting aviation experts, the Ethiopian Airlines officials said the aircraft could have blown up in the sky, had the smoke - which had the potential of turning into fire - began five minutes earlier.
The official lauded the captain’s quick measures and his courage in handling the situation professionally. Passengers reportedly paid tribute to the captain for saving their lives.
This is a second Ethiopian passenger plane to face difficulties in less than one week.
Last week, Ethiopian Airlines owned Boeing 787 Dreamliner which was parked at Britain’s Heathrow airport caught fire forcing a temporary shutdown to the airport’s main runways.
(ST)

>sudantribune

‘Are you Oromo First or Ethiopian First?’

By Awol Allo |The Glasgow Legal Theory 

July 19, 2013 (The Gulele Post) — That was the question put to Jawar Mohamed by Al Jazeera’s The Stream co-host Femi Oki. Jawar’s response—‘I am an Oromo first’, and that ‘Ethiopia is imposed on me’—raised a political tsunami that provides us with a unique and revealing insight into the moral parochialism and ethical deadlock that pervades our political imagination. Many moved too quick and jumped too fast- seeking to obliterate the political stature of the man they lauded as ‘progressive’ and ‘visionary’ not long ago. Their love affair with Jawar came to a sudden halt with his declaration of loyalty to his ethnic subjectivity, as opposed to his Ethiopian subjectivity. Their objection was not merely against Jawar’s specific claims but a concern with why the ‘Oromo’ question, and why at this time.

As I tried to understand the modes of reasoning, forms of rationality and kinds of logic that permeated the political earthquake that followed, I am reminded of my own politics of location. How should I interpret these multi-polar exchanges that seem to traverse the spheres of politics, affect, thought and reflection? How can I avoid playing into the existing political fault lines- the politically disarming essentialism of Ethiopiawinet and the hyper-coding of ethno-nationalism? I have no answer to these questions except to say that there is no position of neutrality, an outside from which one can speak an objective truth in any discussion of issues so fraught with contingencies and complexities. In what follows, I will only address the debate that pertains to this specific question of what one is in and of himself and how that question is deeply tied to power, force, and right.

Let me begin with the notion of Ethiopiawinet—a master-signifier central to the political storm. What does it signify and how did it come to have the kind of political reality that it has? Allow me to take a bit of a detour here to establish my point. In his ‘history of the present’, Michel Foucault says this about history: “history had never been anything more than the history of power as told by power itself, or the history of power that power had made people tell: it was the history of power, as recounted by power.” History as an index of power, and as an operator and reinvigoration of the hegemony of a particular group! I think those who met Jawar’s response with such utter surprise and outrage are those dazzled by this magical function of history. This history weaves the heterogeneity, indefiniteness, and complexity of the country’s past into a coherent narration. Key events and moments in the nation’s history—stories of origin, war, victory, conquest, occupation, pillage, dispossessions, marginalization, etc—becomes discursive formations tied to power, force, and law. These dissymmetries were coded and inscribed into juridical codes, laws, and institutions- providing Ethiopiawinet the kind of truth that it now has.

Disregarding the vulgarity that has been so ubiquitous, even the most sophisticated of replies take a similar and predictable pattern: Ethiopiawinet is a kind of reality with a deeper meaning and therefore goes without saying. In a short genealogical excavation of Ethiopia’s essentialist historiography, Semir Yusuf offers a trenchant critique of the mainstream history of modern Ethiopia. He provides an interesting insight not into the truth of history but the formation of truths and the system of meaning they constitute and circulate.  They overlook the ritual inherent to that concept, the deployments made of it, the reappropriation to which it is subject, the erasures it inflicts, and the claims it seals and keeps inaccessible. I suggest that we conceive Ethiopia as a creation of a grand historical narrative and Ethiopiawinet as an ideology. Ethiopia, like the United States, Great Britain, France, Kenya, or any nation for that matter, has crafted beautiful lies of its own aimed at creating a ‘historical knowledge’ that serves as a weapon of power. Ethiopiawinet, like American-ness, British-ness, Scottish-ness, and Oromumma is an ideological construct. Both as an imaginary and symbolic form, it has no preemptory force that gives claim to truth and rationality.

In Ethiopia, however, historical knowledge was installed in a rather invasive way, in a totalized and totalizing way, eliminating every form of counter-narrative from circulating in the social body. Because of this exclusive access to narrative production, Ethiopiawinet has come to inscribe itself not only in the ‘nervous system’ of its subjects but also in the temperament, making people believe that there is a hidden truth to this beautiful lies and myths. As a result, Ethiopiawinet became a ‘master signifier’, as psychoanalysts would say, and came to signify something pure and superior.  For those who embraced the category without questioning its constitutive logic, it is a fixed, stable, and preemptory category that signifies something divine and adulterated. It is perceived as something absolute, eternal, and immutable, an ontological form that has its own intrinsic reality. I think it is precisely this ontologization of an ideological category that explains the fury of Ethiopianists. They don’t recognize that the truth of Ethiopiawinet is a making of our own, that is not independent of social system and power relations. In their refusal to recognize the right of an Oromo to give an account of himself in his own terms and the unassailable sense of correctness that accompanies this refusal explains just how embedded and symbolic this ideology is.

For others, it is a depoliticizing category that mutes differing articulations of identity, commits historical injustice, and conceals the battle cries that can be heard beneath the rhetoric of national unity. By muting an expression of loyalty with the subject positions that power uses but deliberately and systematically misrecognizes, the dominant articulation of Ethiopiawinet depoliticizes other identity categories. By depoliticizing it, it silently erases the injustices it perpetrated against these subjectivities. By refusing to embrace this type of Ethiopiawinet, by proclaiming his loyalty to Oromumma, Jawar is attacking the hinge that connects ‘historical knowledge’ of Ethiopiawinet to power. It is not a denial of his Ethiopian identity but a displacement, and an attack on an exclusionary conception of Ethiopiawinet that is deployed as a weapon in political struggles, and one that does not recognize the right of people to be called by a name of their choosing. If there is any right of people, it is the right to be called and identified with the name they want. The refusal of Ethiopianists to recognize the voices of others reveals a play of power at work in every invocation of this concept.

 The Personal is the Political

True, every nation weaves together its own necessary myths to keep the social fabric and its ideological edifice together. But these ritualized myths that glorify the uninterrupted and untarnished glory of the nation should not annihilate the political agency of those who occupy this subject position. Oromumma is not a necessary biological category. It is a political category. It is a subject position and an identity category. Those who embody the material and lived experience of being an Oromo are political subjectivities with unique and different experience of their own. They were treated with contempt and indifference because they spoke their language. Their dignity and humanity has been reduced because they asserted their identity. For those who endured the every day gestures of humiliation and coded dehumanization, the personal is the political. They become subjects of resistance when their identity is frustrated, demeaned, when my identity, so to speak, fails as a result of a wider systemic failures. It is when the individual links his failure with systemic failure, his with the universal, rather than the personal inadequacy; that the stranger in him emerges. This is precisely what Jawar meant when he said, ‘because we are forced to denounce our identity, we ended up reaffirming and reasserting our identity’.

The words of Steve Biko are poignant reminders: When Steve Biko says, “Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being”, he is trying to politicize blackness. He is trying to destabilize the naturalized nexus between blackness and subservience. Those whose sense of worth questioned, whose dignity squashed, and humanity contested because of their subjectivity will have a different narrative of who we are as a society. Surely, the rage in Jawar’s head, the fire in his belly and the energy with which he sought to reassert his dignity and worth as an equal speaking being represents a redemptive quest for the recognition of his subjectivity and his claims as a discourse worthy of voice and visibility.

In politics, what is not said is more important than what is said in public. I personally do not need a lecture by a mathematician or for that matter a historian that these things happen in Ethiopia. I do not need anyone to tell me that they never occurred. I have seen people argue in meetings that other languages should not be spoken in public places such as universities. I have seen students in academic institution frown upon students who chose to speak in Afan Oromo; I have heard religious figures claim that it is a curse to preach in Afan Oromo. I have seen people pause with astonishment when someone fails to fit their caricatured image of an Ethiopian. And we have all seen the hostile turn around in Taxis whenever a different language other than Amharic is spoken. I know many of you will dismiss this as ‘inferiority complex’—but these are the embodied experiences of a subject that no ideology or vilification can displace. What was evident from the events of the last few weeks was that the hubris of Ethiopiawinet does not and cannot recognize other subject positions unless they speak from within its discourses and frameworks. Whatever the latter says, the former hears it as a noise, not as discourse.

Hegemony is a form of political theology. The hegemonic groups see his hegemonic position as a bestowment. They demand that the oppressed and excluded makes use of the very vocabularies, analytic categories, archives, histories, discourses and standards used by the oppressor when articulating their grievances. It demands that the oppressed and the excluded renounce its claims to past injustices for a reconciled future without saying the terms of that reconciliation. That kind of Ethiopiawinet can no longer go without saying. We need a new beginning, a new concept of Ethiopiawinet that embodies and celebrates diversity and listens to all its voices. We need an Ethiopia of all its people can walk tall assured of its dignity and worth. This subconscious hegemony that compels us from within to squash the dignity of those who refuse to use a partisan and exclusionary discourse is no way to get to that free and democratic Ethiopia.

–The Gulele Post

>ayyaantuu