by the Strathink Editorial Team

Recent events in Ethiopia reveal the growing pains of a country in transition. Just twenty-five years ago, Ethiopia was slowly waking up after nearly two decades of a failed experiment to impose an ill-suited socialism on a country that had just thrown off the last vestiges of feudalism. The country was in tatters—Mengistu had stripped the nation of its former institutions and replaced them with a hodgepodge of Marxist-sounding names that belied the not-so-hidden truth of ruthless authoritarianism.

When the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) removed the tyrants from power, Ethiopia breathed a temporary sigh of relief. Scientific socialism ended and the new government took on the Herculean task of transforming one of the poorest countries in the world to the world’s fastest growing economy. Ethiopia cast off its socialist principles like the ugly green and blue Mao suits government workers were forced to wear and the narrative, “Ethiopia rising,” began to take hold.

For 25 years, the EPRDF has governed Ethiopia in fits and starts of political and economic progress with hiccups of social unrest and turmoil. It is not surprising that on the broad landscape of enormous change there are problems. It is through change that societal contradictions are fully revealed for what they are.

Ethiopia’s contradictions within the complex narrative of a country on the rise are not new at all. Problems of ethnicity, land and governance are as old as Ethiopia itself. What can distinguish this government from other governments is how it confronts, addresses and resolves these contradictions.

There were reports of clashes in Gondar and Oromia between protesters and police over on-going land issues. There have been ethnic clashes in Gambella. These disturbances are not insignificant. Ethiopia appears to be at a key juncture in its march towards becoming a middle-income country by 2025. Continued unrest, while not unusual in a country undergoing such a rapid transformation, can hijack the unparalleled gains made in the last 25 years.

What is at the root of these tensions and how can problems be mitigated before these gains are reversed? Does ethnicity offer the best explanation for the causes of recent tension? What role does a federalist system play in mitigating/exacerbating these tensions? Are there other variables that might provide a better explanation for the unrest?

Ethnicity: Who I am

The simplistic narrative of Ethiopia’s current unrest in places such as Gondar, Oromia, and Gambella places ethnicity at the epicenter of discourse. No wonder. It is easy to explain discord through the lens of ethnic tension.

In Gondar, the aggrieved party is the Amharic speakers in an area called Wolkait. When the EPRDF took power in 1991, the map was re-drawn and Walkait ended up under the administration of Tigray. The people of Walkait are mixed ethnically and include Amharic, Tigrayan and Arabic speakers. Historically, Walkait was under the administration of the Amhara region. Tensions over land and, moreover, governance, led the Amharic-speakers of Wolkait to demand reassignment from Tigray to the Amhara region, with its capital in Gondar.

In the case of Oromia, there is historical precedent of Oromo marginalization based on their ethnicity. The Oromo have long perceived themselves as an aggrieved group ruled over by an Amhara ruling elite, beginning with Emperor Menelik’s conquest and southern expansion of his empire.

Recent unrest can be traced to the government’s “Addis Ababa Master Plan,” which was to expand the capital and displace smallholder farmers to make room for further expansion of the capital city and incorporation of the periphery into the city’s booming economy.

Gambella, an area roughly the size of Belgium with a population of about 400,000, has some of the most fertile land in Ethiopia. Significant parcels of land have been leased to international companies for commercial farming ventures. Since the Anuak were resettled in Gambella by the Mengistu regime in the 1980s, there has been tension and resulting clashes between the Anuak and the Nuer over land. The situation is even more complex given the cross-border tension with groups in South Sudan.

But does ethnicity really explain the current tensions or is it masking other issues? Does “who I am” relative to other people promote discord prima facie or is it an easy platform for messaging discontent about other issues.

“Ethnicity” monopolizes the discourse because it is easily digestible—ethnic conflict is commonly understood as “any episode of sustained violent conflict in which national, ethnic, and religious or other communal minorities challenge governments to seek major changes in status. In the case of multiethnic Ethiopia, it is an irresistible narrative that readily conforms to longstanding Western constructs of Africa. However, if we dig deeper into the causes of the current unrest, the construct of ethnic conflict falls short of explaining the “why.”

It is easy to see how the narrative focuses on “ethnic conflict” as the basis of tension. Ethnicity can be compartmentalized and categorized in a neat package that reduces the problem to a commonly understood social construct. In a multiethnic society, the social construct of ethnicity pits an ethnic group against another for control of the state. The state’s power is wrapped up in making decisions about the allocation of public goods and services—or who gets what.

It is the “how do I get what” that matters.

Land: What do I get?

According to the Ethiopian Constitution, the Ethiopian people communally own the land through the state. Farmland is leased long-term to individuals (95 percent) and companies (5 percent). Land includes not only the land itself but also the infrastructure that is built on the land.

Land is the basic unit of wealth in Ethiopia.

It is not hard to see that that the basis of unrest is land in all of three of the aforementioned cases. In Wolkait—land. In Oromia—land. In Gambella—land. The problem rests in whether or not the “who I am” determines the outcome of “what do I get.”

In Ethiopia, because land allocation is controlled by the state, decisions about land are political decisions. This has enormous implications for ensuring good governance vis-à-vis land. What do we mean by good governance here? We mean “land policy and administration as an integral part of democratic governance” and characterized by “principles of universality of tenure security, equitable participation and adherence to the rule of law, sustainability, effectiveness and efficiency.” [1]

In other words, the way the state allocates and administers land is key to good governance. Allocation and administration must abide to principles of land use security, equitable participation of the population in making decisions about land and, most importantly, adherence to the rule of law.

If the state is perceived as unfair in the allocation and administration of land, then the state is not engaging in good governance practices. Even the perception of the state as not governing fairly, in the world of politics, is poor governance. If the state cannot properly and effectively explain and defend its decisions to the people, then the state is not governing well.

Governance: How do I get it?

Let’s go back to the unrest in Wolkait/Gondar, Oromia and Gambella. The source of discontent is governance. If the regional government in Tigray was perceived as fair to all of the people in Wolkait, then there would be fewer reasons for Amharic-speakers to demand reassignment from Tigray as most people there are multi-lingual and have families that cross linguistic borders.

In Oromia, the source of discontent is clearly poor governance. The Addis Ababa “Master Plan” was a focal point for the underlying issues of poor governance in Oromia—and yes, we are using the term poor governance to include corruption. In Oromia, poor farmers were being displaced from their land before the master plan was unveiled.

And in Gambella, perceived dominance of Anuak by the Nuer in the regional government, tension over the commercialization of large tracks of land by foreign companies, and a long history of disputes over land for grazing cattle are a recipe for unrest.

What does this all mean looking through the lens of an ethnic federalist state? First, any kind of federalism is messy. There are recurrent and dynamic tensions between the central government and the governmental subdivisions—in the case of Ethiopia, the central government and the regional governments. In any federalist system, the central government can be too strong or too weak; the central government and the regional states can have overlapping interests or needs; the constitution may not explicitly spell out the roles and responsibilities of the central government and subdivisions on every issue.

Federalism based on ethno-linguistic divisions is even messier because tensions may be articulated based on ethnic chauvinism, rather than the underlying issue.

The EPRDF believed that ethnic federalism was the best way to address the historic marginalization of groups under the old system that resulted in exploitation, injustice and oppression. It was a way forward that could redress past inequalities while maintaining Ethiopia’s unity. It was democratization at the grassroots level where people bonded by ethno-linguistic similarities could govern themselves.

At the same time, problems of governance did not go away. The person who decided “what do I get” was in the same group as “who I am”—as in the case of Oromia. Or, there was a perception of unfairness because “who I am” was not in my group and, therefore, “what do I get” was unfair because “how do I get it” was stacked against me—as in the case of Wolkait and Gambella.

It is clear that at the root of these problems of unrest is poor governance. What no one wants to say, however, is this poor governance is taking place at the subdivisional level—the regional governments. This is not to say that there are no problems at the federal level—that is the topic for another article—but politics always begin local. And it must be said—the regional governments need to clean up their act.

Ethnic politics are a risky business anywhere but in an ethnic federalist configuration, they can be deadly. Let’s talk about Oromia. The OPDO governs Ethiopia’s plurality who reside in one of the country’s most verdant areas. The party’s failure to explain the Addis Ababa plan to its constituents was an enormous blunder with significant backlash against not only the regional government but the central government as well. This failure, however, is part of an overall governance crisis that pits Oromo smallholder farmers against wealthy investors—with government officials in the middle. Rent-seekers in the government have enriched themselves at the expense of poor farmers.

This puts the central government in a quandary—any move to exert central control over the regional government will be seen as overstepping its boundaries.

Complicating the issue of central authority is signs of external involvement in promoting unrest and violence. Internal tension and external interference are not mutually exclusive in this case. Strathink would have been surprised if external forces, including Ginbot 7 and its Eritrean handlers, had NOT inserted itself into the conflict.

In Ethiopia today, the progress made in the last twenty-five years has contributed to the “revolution of rising expectations” among certain groups. We argue here that discontent has its roots in the “haves” versus the “have nots”—most especially expressed by youth who have had the benefits of expanded educational opportunities but not post-graduate employment opportunities. Ethiopia may be no more corrupt than other states on a continent known for rent-seeking government officials, but Ethiopia’s current government began governing on a platform articulating economic, social and political equality.

Today, the Government of Ethiopia is composed of the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys must band together to root out the bad guys—no matter who they are or who they once were.

[1] See: Palmer. D etal Towards Improved Land Governance. Land Tenure Working Paper 11. A joint paper By Food nd Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme September 2009 available at :ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep./fao/012/ak999e/ak999e00.pdf