Ethiopia The Challenge of Democracy from Below Edited by Bahru Zewde and Siegfried Pausewang Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala and Forum for Social Studies, Addis Ababa Indexing terms Democratisation Governance Local government Traditional authority Peasantry Land reform Political power Ethiopia Cover photo: Jørn Stjerneklar/PHOENIX Language checking: Elaine Almén @ the authors, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet and Forum for Social Studies, 2002 ISBN 91-7106-501-6 Printed in Sweden by Elanders Gotab, Stockholm, 2002 Contents Preface . 5 A Note on Ethiopian Words and Names . 6 Introduction . 7 Bahru Zewde I. TRADITIONAL SYSTEMS OF GOVERNANCE Systems of Local Governance among the Gurage: The Yajoka Qicha and the Gordana Sera . 17 Bahru Zewde Sera: Traditionalism or Living Democratic Values? Case Study among the Sidama in Southern Ethiopia . 29 Øyvind Aadland Seera: A Traditional Institution of Kambata . 45 Yacob Arsano II. THE PEASANT AND THE MANAGEMENT OF POWER AND RESOURCES Models of Democracy—Perceptions of Power. Government and Peasantry in Ethiopia . 61 Harald Aspen Peasant Participation in Land Reform. The Amhara Land Redistribution of 1997 . 71 Svein Ege No Environmental Protection without Local Democracy? Why Peasants Distrust Their Agricultural Advisers . 87 Siegfried Pausewang III. ALTERNATIVE LOCI OF POWER Civil Society Organizations in Ethiopia . 103 Dessalegn Rahmato The Role of NGOs in Protecting Democratic Values. The Ethiopian Experience . 120 Kassahun Berhanu Decentralization in Ethiopia: Two Case Studies on Devolution of Power and Responsibilities to Local Authorities . 130 Mehret Ayenew IV. ALTERNATIVE VOICES Mengistulore: Oral literatures depicting the Man, His Regime, Officials and Proclamations . 149 Fekade Azeze Democratisation and Gender . 167 Original Wolde Giorgis The State of the Press in Ethiopia . 184 Shimelis Bonsa References. 202 Contributors . 212 Preface The Forum for Social Studies (FSS) is an independent, non-profit policy research in- stitution formally established in 1998. It is the first institution in Ethiopia actively en- gaged in promoting public awareness about the development challenges facing the country and the need for the democratization of public policy making. Its main activ- ities consist of organizing public debates, undertaking policy analysis, conducting re- search on development and related issues and disseminating widely the findings of such research. FSS is part of the growing body of civil society institutions that, since the fall of the Derg, the military government that ruled the country until 1991, has been actively engaged in grassroots development, advocacy, and public education and consciousness raising. In the short time since it was established, it has published a number of works on rural development, public access to information, the indepen- dent press, the environment and natural resource management, food security and poverty reduction. This book is the result of a collaborative venture, launched in the second half of 1998, between FSS and the Chr. Michelsen Institute with funding from the Norwe- gian Foreign Ministry. It was the first joint effort for FSS and since then we have had several successful ventures with overseas institutions. At that time, FSS was struggling due to lack of funding and recognition, and the proposal for a collaborative project, which was brought to us by Siegfried Pausewang, seemed to be a vote of confidence in the young organization. The initial agreement was for FSS to commission a number of research undertakings on the broad theme of democratization in Ethiopia and to use the findings of the research as a basis for a public debate involving government officials, civil society groups, the business community, professionals and the media. As it turned out, the workshop, which was held in January 2000, brought together a much wider diversity of papers than originally anticipated, stimulating more critical debate and keen interest. In a way, the book is a collaboration not only between two institutions but between Ethiopian researchers on the one hand and Norwegian stu- dents of Ethiopia on the other. It is interesting that while the subjects addressed by many of the researchers are different, the careful reader of the book will not fail to notice an underlying consensus running through all of the chapters. FSS is fortunate to have played an important role in bringing together Norwegian and Ethiopian re- searchers and providing them an open forum for discussion. FSS hopes the book will stimulate further research and debate on the democrati- zation process in Ethiopia where, as Bahru has aptly noted in the Introduction, the burden of history lies so heavy and where the basic institutions of democratic order are struggling to emerge. The book will be useful to a wide reading audience, and in Ethiopia in particular, professionals, development practitioners, readers with interest in the emerging civic institutions, and students in institutions of higher education will find it interesting and challenging. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Siegfried Pausewang who initiated the original collaborative idea, Øyvind Aadland who was instrumental in activating the project when it was flagging, and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry for providing the funds. Dessalegn Rahmato Manager, Forum for Social Studies 5 A Note on Ethiopian Words and Names The transcription of Ethiopian words and the use of Ethiopian names in an alpha- betical list frequently cause misunderstandings. In this book we have agreed on the following general rules: Following Ethiopian practice and the logic of names, Ethiopian names are not inverted in the references in this book. In an alphabetical list together with European names, Ethiopians thus appear under their first names. Any other order creates con- fusion for the following three reasons. — The second name is not a family name, but the first name of the father; often a third name is added, which is the first name of the grandfather. — Secondly, Ethiopian names frequently consist of two words—such as Haile Mar- iam or Tekle Haimanot. To list, for example, Gabriel Haile Mariam as Mariam, Gabriel H. makes absolutely no sense. His father was not called Mariam, but Haile Mariam, which means the power of St. Mary. — Thirdly, women do not change their names when they marry. The second name of a woman, whether she is married or not, is thus always her father’s and not her husband’s name; addressing her with her husband’s name would be meaningless. The plural form of Ethiopian words has caused some headaches. While some au- thors use the singular form of Ethiopian words also for the plural, others write the Amharic plural form in the English text. Unfortunately, the reader who is not ac- quainted with Amharic might take “woredawotch” for a different word not recog- nising it as the plural form of a “woreda”. We decided nevertheless to accept both forms, but not to tolerate an (English) plural-s attached to an Ethiopian word, (sev- eral “kebele” or “kebelewotch”, but not “kebeles”). Ethiopian words in the texts are transliterated and printed in italics, except for generally used names, geographic and ethnic terms, such as Addis Ababa or Amhara. Transliteration is, however, rarely consistent. There is no scientific system with exact rules for representation of Amharic sounds in the Latin alphabet. The two or three systems that have been created are frequently not followed in everyday use. Even those scholars who use them are not consistent. Moreover, there is consider- able divergence in the spelling, particularly of place names. Some scholars are used to a transliteration which they consider an exact and consistent transcription from an admittedly less consistent Amharic spelling. Some thus insist on writing Shäwa, while others prefer to spell the region Shewa or Shawa; others spell it as Shoa. We have decided in this book to respect the authors’ transliteration preferences, and hence have refrained from attempting a consistency which would be artificial in any case. 100 Ethiopian Birr is equivalent to 12 USD (Sept. 2002). 6 Introduction Bahru Zewde As the 1960s dawned, Africa re-entered the world stage resplendent in its colours of independence and loaded with promise and hope. With an array of intellectual lead- ers of global stature (Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Léopold Sedar Senghor of Sene- gal, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, to name only four of them), the sky appeared to be the limit to the continent’s potential for progress and development. Yet, before the decade was out, the promise and hope had been replaced by despondency and gloom. A series of military coups littered the land- scape. In many ways, the giant nation Nigeria epitomized both the hope and the gloom. Home of a rich and variegated culture, its very diversity appeared to spell its doom as it was locked in one of the bloodiest civil wars the world has ever known. Thereafter, for something like three decades, military rule of various hues and co- lours appeared to be its prescribed fate. Elsewhere in Africa, too, dictatorship of one kind or another was the norm rather than the exception. This ranged from the ata- vistic empire of Bokassa of the Central African Republic, the murderous regime of Idi Amin of Uganda and the proverbially venal order of Mobutu of Zaire to the to- talitarian dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia. A “wind of change” started blowing on the African continent in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As the Cold War came to an end, most of the authoritarian regimes lost the external props that had sustained them. The East could no longer bail out the dictatorships with “socialist” pretensions. The West no longer saw the need to prop up corrupt and dictatorial regimes as bulwarks of anti-communism. At the same time, a movement from below (whether in the form of urban mass movements or rural guerrilla warfare) rendered dictatorial regimes into untenable propositions. Battered from inside and shunned from outside, these dictatorial regimes collapsed one after another like a row of dominoes (Hyslop, 1999: 1–3).