Nordic Journal of African Studies 15(3): 256–276 (2006)

A Critical Review of the Political and

Stereotypical Portrayals of the Oromo in the
Ethiopian Historiography
JEYLAN WOLYIE HUSSEIN
Alemaya University, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT
This paper attempts to make a critical review of the political and stereotypical portrayals of
the Oromo in the Ethiopian historiography. For the theoretical and analytical purposes, the
paper draws on the Marxist theory of representation. The fact that there is no one particular,
unified and uniform portrayal of the Oromo is as important politically as why a portrayal is
required. Even the Oromo academics have differences in this respect. While the majority of
them express their pain about Oromo great antiquity thrown in as red herrings, some consider
this as simple exclusivism and discursive premordialism whose value is less important in
contemporary socio-political context of nation building. The European writers are also
equally divided among themselves in their narratives about the Oromo. Some point out the
effects of the long years of Amhara tight grip on Oromo national identity, while others
emphasize the political side of citizenship, applauding the 19th century conquest of the Oromo
as a resolute political fulfillment and in doing so legitimizing the continual suppression of
ethnic rights. A critical look at the literature also suggests that each writer’s or a group of
writers’ personal and political attitudes towards Oromo history, nationalism and ethnicity,
which in turn is the result of each individual writer’s subjective and ideological orientations
within the wider historical and cultural context, affects the way they portray the Oromo. The
paper shows the tensions of settling the Ethiopian historiography. It seems that the force of
those who are condemning years of injustice are stronger than that of those who like to
maintain the hegemonic relationships. My conclusion is that a better solution to the current
ethnic problems of the Oromo of Ethiopia lies in breaking with explicit as well as implicit
traditions of socio-political denigrations of the cultural and political identity of the conquered
ethnic groups. This calls for the re examination of the traditional historiography of Ethiopia,
which seals the history of the country as a completed project.

Keywords: Oromo, portrayals, Ethiopia, identity

1. A BRIEF NOTE ON THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE OROMO
The Oromo are the largest ethnonation in the Horn of Africa. In Ethiopia, they
constitute 40% of the country’s total population and occupy the largest regional
state of the federal state. The Oromo live largely in the Regional State of
Oromia, the largest and the most populous of the nine regional states formed
following the downfall of the Dergue regime in May 1991. A considerable
 A Critical Review of the Political and Stereotypical Portrayals
number of Oromo clans are found also in northern Kenya. The regional State of
Oromia is located between 3 and 15 degrees north latitude, and 33 and 40
degrees east latitude. The following map of the Regional State of Oromia shows
the numerical as well as geographical importance of the Oromo people in
Ethiopia.

Figure 1. Map of Oromia Region at UN-OCHA.

The Oromo speak Afaan Oromo (the language of Oromo), an Afro-Asiatic

language and the most widely spoken language of the Eastern Cushitic linguistic
sub-phylum. The Oromo practice three religions: Islam, Christianity and
Waaqeffannaa (belief in Waaq or sky God). Waaqeffannaa is the Oromo version
of the African traditional religion (Hussein 2004, 2005).
Most historians due to sheer historical limitation limit the Oromo appearance
in the Horn of Africa to the 16th century. This was the time Oromo made a huge
movement in the region. Some historians tell us that the Oromo were unknown
people before the 16th century although they hardly tell us why they were
unknown. The physical, cultural, soicio-political and religious identities of the
Oromo clearly indicate that they are indigenous to the region. According to
some scholars (e.g. Bates 1979), the Oromo were an ancient race, the indigenous
stock, up on which most other peoples in the eastern part of Africa have been
grafted. The Oromo movement of the 16th century played a major role in the
internal dynamics of the Horn of Africa (Hassen 1990). The Oromo’s current
numerical preponderance in Ethiopia is partially the result of their social and
demographic impact in the Horn from the 16th century onwards.

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One thing that makes the Oromo the most important people in the African
continent is their possession of the Gada system, the egalitarian cultural,
political, economic and military organization that the Oromo have largely lost
partially as a result of their adaptation of the monarchial system of governance
since the beginning of the 19th century and notably due to their fall under the
conquest of Menelik II at the turn of the 20th century. The Oromo Gada system
is the most sophisticated socio-cultural organization ever known in traditional
Africa (Legesse 1973). Legesse (2000: 195) stated that the Gada-based “Oromo
democracy is one of those remarkable creations of the human mind that evolved
into a full-fledged system of government, as a result of five centuries of
evolution and deliberate, rational, legislative transformation.” The Gada system
was a complex institutional organization that embraced the Oromo peoples’
political, social, economic and religious life in entirety. The Oromo had and still
have many indigenous systems of teaching and learning, peace making, religious
systems and worldviews. They have indigenous systems of co-operations,
integrations and regulations. For example, a cursory look at the Oromo marriage
system shows the people’s need of strong relationships. The religious and
cultural songs and other systems of expressions reveal the society’s indigenous
worldviews, religious systems, organizational principles and social motives
(Hussein 2005).
Based on the information they got from Ethiopian imperial chronicles, some
European writers rate the Oromo movement of the 16th century as a sudden and
an aimless human stampede or explosion which the ravage nomads inflicted on
the Christian Kingdom using as the opportunity the political gap created by the
Muslim-Christian War during that time. Historical and ethnographic evidences
demonstrate that the reverse is true. They show that the Oromo are indigenous
people to the Horn and started their movement with well-developed indigenous
systems of expansion that helped them assimilate those whom they met on their
way (Blackhurst 1996; Hassen 1990; Zitelmann 1996). Hassen (1990: 20–21)
makes clear that the main reason why the Oromo put huge areas under their
control within a short period of time was because of their indigenous systems of
integration and this was part and parcel of their expansionary plans:
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 [those whom
they found on their way], and at the same time they imparted their
language and the complex gada system, which eventually replaced Islam
of the conquered people…. The Oromo genius for assimilation quickly
claimed any non-Oromo, defeated or otherwise.

The Oromo used their indigenous institutions and peacefully incorporated the
non-Oromos into their social, cultural, military and political lives. One of these
institutions is the moggasa (adoption) institution, which provided governmental
protections for the many tribes that were cut loose from the protections of any
political leader following the ruinous warfare between Christians and Muslims
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(Curtin et al. 1995). The Oromo used the following ceremony to incorporate the
non-Oromos into themselves:
The adoption was undertaken by the Abba Gada on behalf of his gossa
(“clan”). Before adoption, animal(s) were slaughtered and a knife was
dipped in the blood of the victim and planted in the assembly, repeating
in chorus what the Abba Gada had to say. “I hate what you hate, I like
what you like, I fight whom you fight, I go where you go, I chase whom
you chase, etc… This oath was binding and “unbreakable” on both sides.
The adopted groups now became collectively the “son” of the gossa. The
blood symbolized the brotherly unity of the gossa to fight for the rights
and the cause of their new gossa (Hassen 1990: 21)

According to Hassen (1990), the Oromo regarded harmony and solidarity as a

virtue that can help create an indissoluble unity. One current study of the Oromo
echotheology (Kelbessa 2005) makes clear that the idea of Oromo unity
incorporates harmony and solidarity between nature, God and humans. One
important thing is that the Oromo system of adoption was accompanied with
legal and moral protections for the incorporated ones against any feelings of
superiority by the indigenous Oromo although the origin of the word gabbaro, a
categorical name for the autochthonous people whom they assimilated, is yet
unknown. The Hadiya clans of the Arsi-Oromo must have been incorporated in
this way (Braukämper 2002).
In their Conflict, Age and Power in Northeast Africa, Kurimoto & Simonse
(1998) made clear the impact of the Oromo Gada System and other social
organizations on the other age set systems in northeast Africa. Braukämper
(2002), Hassen (1990), Hussein (2004) and Trimingham (1965) emphasized the
social and religious dimensions of the Oromo influence on ethnic groups living
in the southern and southeastern peoples of Ethiopia.
The Oromo have indigenous calendar, which is based on skillful readings of
the astronomical configurations of the moon and the stars. They have also
indigenous systems of resolving social, economic and political conflicts. They
have been using these systems to live in peaceful co-existence with neighboring
tribal and ethnic groups and to negotiate or redefine their relationships (Edosa,
et al. 2005; Watson 2001). For example, the Borana use their Gada leadership to
avoid conflict over water resources. The wells are managed by a council of the
clan group which includes a retired hayyuu (special counsellors or individuals
who hold ritual authority to judge (Watson 2001)), the Jallaba (a local lineage
of clan elder or special messenger (Homann et al., 2004)), the abbaa Konfi
(trustee of each well), the abbaa herregaa (the coordinator of water use and
maintenance) and other members of the traditional leadership (Edosa et al.
2005).
The Oromo egalitarian collectivism as contrast to the hierarchical Amhara
religio-political system, and the general Oromo folk wisdom gives priority to the
security and continuity of the society as a socio-cultural bond than to
individuals. The Oromo oral arts and belief systems emphasize that the existence
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of an individual is reliant on the stability and continuity of the society. For
example, the Oromo proverb Lubbuu jirtu hudduun xiixxi (the anus sounds only
while the soul exits) points out this worldview (Hussein 2005). This does not,
however, mean that in the Oromo cultural traditions individuals have no place; it
only means that the right, value and attribute of an individual is driven from and
shaped within the larger society. Personal initiatives and action may not be
discouraged in so far as they do not violate the socio-cultural standards.

2. THE MEANING OF PORTRAYAL AS USED IN THIS PAPER

I use the concept portrayal to capture the negative as well as the positive
representations of the Oromo. The negative portrayal of the Oromo is basically
rooted in the chauvinist and discriminatory policy of the Abyssinian ruling
system. In short, under the Abyssinian ruling system the Oromo suffered not
only political and economic deprivations, but also symbolic and cultural
segregations. On the other hand, the Oromo reappraisal of their history, culture
and political traditions is an aspect of the recent pan-Oromo consciousness and
has its setting in the century old Abyssinian political domination on and
suppression of the Oromo people (Spencer 1997).
The paper draws on Marxist perspectives for its interpretation of the
academics’ cultural, political, religious and social portrayal of the Oromo. It
tries to understand oral and written texts about the Oromo within their historical
contingency or situatedness. As I see it, portrayal is the process of expressing or
denoting a particular idea or impression of a situation, a person, or an object by
means of a words (discourse), figures, signs (symbols) with the intention of
influencing opinion. Central to both Marxist and hermeneutical theories of
interpretation is the view that the interpretation of a situation is invariably
conditioned by the prior history of the impact of that situation (Hoy 2000). For
example, one cannot effectively understand the Oromo national self-reappraisal
today unless one carefully looks into the historical preconditions of the Oromo
nationalism. Similarly, when one analyses a portrayal, for example, paintings,
photographs, characters in fictional works, academic texts, oral literature, and
advertisements, one must analyze it in terms of who is being depicted, the
explicit or implicit intention behind the portrayal, the socio-political reality
within which the portrayal has been embedded, and the tone of the signifying
and or consigning practice. Thus I define portrayal as a signifying and
consigning practice and use it to mean description or representation of the
soicio-political life and experience of a people through socially and culturally
based signifying devices. Portrayal, like other signifying practices, is
constitutive and reflective of our place in the political, social, economic,
religious and racial/ethnic configurations of our being. A person who portrays
the other person or object himself/herself is a socially and historically
constituted subject. From the Marxist point of view, one can see portrayals as

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places where ideologies are figured, refigured, and debated, and as sites for the
apparent mediation of power/knowledge differences.
Portrayal involves the constructions of both negative and positive
reputations. Portrayal is realistic when it is based on factual information; it is
unrealistic when it is virtually based on fabricated information. Individuals as
well as groups may receive both positive and negative portrayals at a time. For
example, a white commentator in a football or athletics tournament may praise a
strong black performer in mere physical terms and may demean the performers’
intellectual ability. An Asian athletes may be depicted by cultural stereotypes in
a way that draws on the stereotypical representations of Asians as stoic
conformists and as excessively hard workers who are zealously concerned with
successes (Sabo et al. 1995). According to the critical/Marxist perspective of
portrayal, those who are discursively marginalized are usually aware of the
suppressing effects of the negative representations; they may know, for example,
that negative portrayals limit their opportunity. However, they may not
immediately react to the negative representations for they may lack the means to
get rid of the system that suppresses them. The opposite side of this is that those
who are beneficiaries of the oppressing system may fail to recognize the pain the
system causes and tend to buy into the beliefs and practices that perpetuate the
oppressive system. This is why proslavery propagandists openly and fiercely
ridiculed the idea of emancipation and defended the continuation of the slaves’
brutalized condition of life.

3. THE PORTRAYAL OF THE OROMO IN THE ETHIOPIAN

HISTORIOGRAPHY
As I mentioned above in passing, the Oromo have been suffering symbolic and
cultural segregations within the Ethiopian Empire. The prejudice against the
Oromo goes back to the time of their movement in the 16th century. It was
starting from this time that the Amhara gave the name Galla to refer to the
Oromo. The word Galla whose linguistic origins is yet uncertain is a pejorative
portrayal used to stamp a badge of inferiority on the Oromo. The Oromo do not
like to be called Galla. This is the name the Amhara rulers used to wage a
psychological war against the Oromo. As a term, the word Galla carries an
overtone of race and slavery, and the imputation of lack of civilization
(Sorenson 1993: 60). The term Galla has been used as a smear campaign to
frustrate, humiliate, and alienate the Oromo from their consciousness, and to render
them strangers in their own country.
It is not surprising that over a period of time the term Galla has undergone
changes both in its sense and sensitivity. To point out the relentless courage and
determination with which the Oromo controlled the wide sweep of land
following their expansion, the Amhara used the phrase chakagn Galla (cruel
galla). Following the defeat of the Oromo at the end of the 19th century it was

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common to hear farii galla (cowardly Galla), a psychosocial strategy of
imposing superiority. Now, following the gradual increase in the pan-Oromo
national/political consciousness, which is the result of the long years of their
oppressions within the hegemonic Amhara rule, new categorizations like
zarayna galla (racist galla) and xabbab galla (narrow galla) have become
pervasive (Debella & Kassam 1996).
The negative construction of the Oromo, as I pointed above, goes back to the
th
16 century, when the Oromo, using their socio-political institutions, made a
fast and irresistible expansion, a history that enabled them to control the present
Oromolanad. Abba Bahrey, whose report about the Oromo is considered as the
most dependable first hand information, stated that he “began to write the
history of the Galla in order to make known the number of their tribes, their
readiness to kill people, and the brutality of their manners” (Cited in Hassen
1990: 1–2). This shows that somebody (Abba Bahrey here) starts to write the
history of the Oromo primarily to make explicit their brutality, backwardness
and their overall impact.
The Abyssinian chroniclers (most of whom were court historians and monks)
were at the centre to disseminate antipathy against the Oromo. One of this was
Alaqa Taye whose portrayal of the Oromo is outwardly negative. He stated that
the Oromo migrated from Asia and Madagascar and reached the region via
Mombassa. In his book, An Introduction: Geography of Ethiopia, Wolde-
Mariam (1972: 16) cites Aleqa Atsme, the early 20th century Ethiopian
chronicler, who portrayed the Oromo movement of the 16th century in the
following way. “If the Amharas in Gojjam and Dembia and the Tigrians did not
confront them with sufficient strength and stop them, the Galls, like a flooding
river, would have spilled over Egypt. The Amharas stopped this great human
flood and prevented it from outside Ethiopia.” There is no wonder that Wolde-
Mariam himself reduced the Oromo demographic impact on the whole Horn of
Africa “as a nomadic, destructive and purposeless force” (Wolde-Mariam 1972:
17).
The European as well as the Ethiopian writers of the 20th century followed
the footstep of the Abyssinian chronicles and depicted the Oromo expansion as a
purposeless flow of rivers. In contrast, they magnified the Christian campaign
against the Oromo as a purposeful operation that redeemed Ethiopia from
centuries of seclusion from the rest of the world. Buxton (1970: 28) writes that
taking advantages of the general chaos caused by the Muslim wars, Gallas
flooded into the southern marches of Ethiopia. Some Ethiopists point out right
away that the Oromo movement of the 16th century brought the reign of
darkness on the Christian Kingdom. For example, Ullendorff (1965: 75) argues:
“Not until the advent of King Theodore in the mid-nineteenth century does
Ethiopia emerge from her isolation. Only then, in her rediscovered unity under
the Emperors John, Menelik, and Haile Selassie, does the country finds its soil
and genius again, its spirit and its sense of mission.” It is paradoxical that Atsme
gives us the biblical and diluvian portrayals of the Christian rulers as righteous
people who saved not only themselves and the civilization of their ancient
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Christian Kingdom, but also the Egypt from the tsunamic devastation which the
violent onrushing tidal wave of the Oromo could have brought about (Hultin
1996: 86–87).
Such a negative portrayal of the Oromo overshadowed the Oromo cultural
pride and socio-political contributions in the Horn of Africa. According to
Hassen (1990: 2):
In such writings [the negative portrayal] the Oromo were never credited
as creators of an original culture, or as having religious and democratic
political institutions which flowered in patterns of their own making and
nourished their spiritual and material well-being. On the contrary,
unsubstantiated myths and untruths were created and Oromo were
arbitrarily degraded to a lower stage of material, as people who needed
the “civilizing mission’ of their Abyssinian neighbors.

The Amaha ruling class looked up on the Oromo society from a position of
superiority. The Amhara viewed themselves as possessing sociocognitive
supremacy over the Oromo and other conquered peoples. According to Hassen,
the propagation of the superiority of the Amhara culture and religions over that
of the Oromo is an ideological stance that has heavily drawn for its survival on
the colonial psychology and whose prime goal is to perpetuate the Oromo
subordination within the Ethiopian empire. Hassen argues that
the new Ethiopian ruling class, typified by Emperor Menelik… found it
necessary and profitable to denigrate the Oromo people, their culture, and
their history in all ways great and small. This ruling class especially
perceived the danger of the larger Oromo population to its empire.
Consequently, the ruling class systematically depicted the Oromo as
people with out history, and belittled their way of life, and their religious
and political institutions (1990: 2).

The Ethiopian clergy’s skewed constructions blinded the traditional scholars of

Ethiopian history in general and the Oromo representations in particular. Thus,
these scholars waged their reductionist and Eurocentric verbal assaults on the
Oromo. Lipsky’s (1962: 13) portrayal of the Oromo was:
The Gallas were at a much lower civilization than the peoples whose
lands they invaded. They contributed little in the way of material arts,
and their penetration diminished the effective response of Ethiopians to
the crisis through which they were passing. They in fact were among the
main factors contributing to the isolation and depression of the country
confirmed in the seventeenth century.

In the same way, Ullendorff (1965), in his book whose objective he asserted was
“to present a balanced picture of Ethiopia to the reader” diminished the Oromo
to the lowest point of ignorance and disgrace, and unhesitatingly portrayed them
as archenemies of the ancient Abyssinian civilizations. As the following

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quotation clearly shows, he associated the Oromo to abominable nature in the
following way:
The Gallas had little to contribute to the Semitized civilization of
Ethiopia; they possessed no significant material or intellectual culture,
and their social organization differed considerably from that of the
population among whom they settled. They were not the only cause of
the depressed state into which the country now sank, but they helped to
prolong a situation from which even a physically and spiritually
exhausted Ethiopia might otherwise have been able to recover far more
quickly (1965: 73).

From the quotation one can conclude that Ullendorff portrays the Oromo as
social evil that disrupted the continuity of the noble Christian empire and drew a
reign of darkness over Ethiopia, a time of isolation, stunted intellectual
development and xenophobia (Sorenson 1993). There is no wonder that one can
see the representation of the Oromo as destructive agents even in more recent
works. Braukämper (2002: 13), for example, states “the Oromo (Galla)
migration in the second half of the sixteenth century abruptly discontinued the
indigenous historiography concerning southern Ethiopia in both Arabic and
Ethiopic. Moreover, the expansion of this people was the main reason why the
Islamic principalities were completely extinguished, and their memory is only
kept in the oral traditions.” Braukämper (2002: 18) continues to point out the
cultural inferiority of the Oromo. He states “the Oromo, like the Somali, were
predominantly a nomadic people who possessed no tradition of stone
architecture, and state organization.”
Abir (1968) provides us a confusing data about the Oromo. At one place he
represents the Oromo as deeply disunited people, as a people with out ideology
and strangers just seeking a better land to settle in. Abir states that one of the
major reasons why the Oromo failed to establish hegemony in Ethiopia in the
19th century was due to their foolish abhorrence of the use of firearms
(revolutionary instruments) which the quick and witty Tigrians and Amharas
benefited from and thus ultimately defeated the Oromo. At another place he
gives a witness that the Yaju Dynasty, well organized as it was challenged the
Christian Kingdom during the Era of Princes or Zemen Mesafent.
Eurocentrically and chauvinistically limited Western writers give us
contrasting portrayals about the Oromo. Ullendorff (1965) soils the Oromo
down by representing them as savage and destructive people with out history
and culture. On the other hand, allured by the structural and functional
sophistication of Oromo Gada system and the corresponding indigenous
calendar, Haberland (1963) stated his doubt of the possibility/originality of such
sophistication in Africa:
Two important questions remain unanswered. First, is the gada system an
Ethiopian invention, or must we seek its origins outside Ethiopia?
Second, how did the Gada system come to be adopted by the Gall? …it is
arguable in view of the extremely simple archaic pattern of galla culture
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as a whole that the complicated nature of the gada-system makes it
appear a foreign element, like the calendar, whose foreign origin is
unquestioned (cited in Legesse 1973: 282).

This utterly ethnocentric doubt is the bye-product of the Hegelian view of the
African continent as the continent of darkness devoid of human significance
(Irele 2000). It is pure denial of Africa’s contribution to the cultural and
philosophical heritage of the world (Legesse 1973).
One aspect of the negative representation of the Oromo is the rating of their
ethnonational questions as a false agenda founded on fabrications. Among
writers who downplay the national questions of the Oromo these is Harold
Marcus. Marcus rejects the existence of Oromo national identity/consciousness
in general. According to him, attempting to build the Oromo nation state is
equivalent to attempting to mold a glorious history of a nation out of scratches
(Marcus 1991).
The base from which the traditional historians attacked the Oromo was
rooted in the Abyssinian antipathies against the Oromo and in their uncritical
propagation of the Greater Ethiopia image. The traditional and hegemonic
portrayals of the Oromo are receiving rebuttals now. A number of scholars have
recently refuted the image of the Oromo as strangers, outsiders, émigrés, or
subjects. For the sake of category, I use the phrase counter hegemonic scholars
to refer to scholars who have been challenging the hegemonic views that were
dominant characteristic of most of the historical and ethnographic publications
on Ethiopia. These scholars have challenged the negative portrayal as a pseudo-
historical tradition rooted in faulty and inflexible general hatred that on its part
is rooted in irrational narrow mindedness, chauvinistic antipathy and sense of
exclusiveness (Zitelmann 1996). Gilchrist (2003) concludes that:
The Oromo had a distinct culture that was as highly organized and
complex as that of the Abyssinians, based on a distinct language,…
distinct religion, and a democratic system of government (gada). Through
the creation of the modern Ethiopian state the Abyssinians eventually
subjugated the Oromo in a political system reminiscent of European
colonialism in the rest of Africa.

These scholars point out that the Oromo differed from Abyssinians not only in
religion and world outlook, but also in their social and political organizations.
These scholars attribute the general cultural disintegration of the Oromo and the
deprivation of Oromo scholarship to the Amhara suppressive rules. They also
challenge the traditional historians’ view that the Amhara’s conquest of the
Oromoland was a positive measure of unification and a fulfillment of God’s call
on Menelik to carry out the task of maqanat (civilizing and elevating) the
barbarians. These scholars emphasize Gilchrist’s (2003) view of the Oromo as a
strong group of people having distinct social, political, religious, linguistic, and
cultural history from the Semitic Abyssinians they have now formed a nation
with. They also believe that the Oromo lost their cultural, political, religious and
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economic freedom following their fall under the Amhara conquest at the turn of
the 20th century. Among these scholars, Bulcha (1994, 1996), Hassen (1990,
1996), Jalata (1998) and Megersa (1996) and Sorenson (1993) to mention but
few. These scholars blame not only the Amhara rule but also the European
involvement in the suppression of the Oromo people. They believe that the
Europeans favored the Amhara Kings and supplied them with modern
armaments, with the help of which the latter conquered the Oromo and other
peoples of Ethiopia.
Hassen (1990) attempts to provide a balanced portrayal of the Oromo. While
he points out the historical and cultural base of Oromo social and cultural
organizations and the implication of the Oromo pressure on the current
geopolitics of the Horn of Africa, he does not deny that the fall of the Oromo in
the hands of the Amhara kings was partially attributable to the Oromo
geographical expansion and the gradual decline of the political and military role
of the Gada system following the Oromo’s adaptation of the monarchial rule
system, particularly in the Gibe states.
The counter-hegemonic scholars have been challenging the uncritical rating
of the Oromo nationalism as an invention founded on a non-existing myth
fabricated by Oromo intellectuals (Marcus 1991). For instance, Bulcha (1996:
49) perceives that the discourse of Oromo nationalism as a sham nationalism is
an unjust evaluation of the Oromo national cause and as a view that has
completely “mistaken the absence of centralized state in Oromoland in the past,
for a lack of common identity.” Based on the findings of Holcomb & Ibsa
(1990), Bulcha (1996: 59–50) argues, “ it was the Ethiopian empire and
Ethiopian territorial nationalism which are of recent origins.” Bulcha makes
clear that “there is ample historical and ethnographic evidence to suggest that
the Oromo have a common past identity as a people/nation.” To strengthen his
argument, Bulcha draws on Obieta-Chalbaud’s (1986) sociological and
historical conceptualization of nation as “cultural and linguistic community,
whose ethnic conscience is clearly felt and espoused by the majority of its
members, and which possesses a territory of its own” (cited in Bulcha 1996: 50).
A cursory look at some works on Ethiopian history and culture produced by
Western scholars portray the country as a fixed, essentialized and a solitary
state. They applaud the country as (1) one of the oldest states in the world, (2) a
nation that defeated a strong European colonial power and escaped colonialism,
(3) a nation that has a long history of Christianity, (4) a nation that is home to
different ethnic stocks, (5) the only sub-Saharan African nation with its own
writing system, (6) the home of the legend of Queen of Sheba and the
Solomonic dynasty, (7) the setting for the mythology of Prester John and (8) the
cradle land of humankind. All of these while they added to the swelling pride of
the Christian antiquity, really masked the depth of the socio-political problems
in the country, particularly the long-aged political and economic victimizations
of the Oromo and other ethnic groups in the country.
The traditional scholars of the Ethiopian history celebrate Menelik II’s
conquest of the Oromo and other peoples at the end of the 19thh century as a
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purposeful mission whose immediate result was the bolstering of “Ethiopia’s
position as an independent African power” and the ending of the pre-conquest
intertribal strife and slave trades (Levine 1974: 26). Those who do not agree
with the elevation of the Ethiopian position as a paragon of virtue in Africa
argue that it is a mere fabrication rooted in orientalist narrations of Ethiopia as
an immaculate ancient land (Sorenson 1993: 40). The political and ideological
root of such a glorified image of Ethiopia as one of the oldest states in the world
with an impressive and uninterrupted history of independence that goes back to
the millennium before Christ (Nahum 1984: 559, emphasis mine) is now being
evaluated as an invention or discursive attempt to convince the world of the
‘biblical monolithicness’ of Ethiopia and to legitimize the hegemonic hold of
peoples’ rights (Holcomb & Ibsa 1990; Sorenson 1993). Nahum’s romantic
representation of Ethiopia contrasts to Ullendorff’s and Lipsky’s accusation that
the great Ethiopian history was interrupted by the Oromo invasion. For the
Amhara rulers, one ingredient of this glory is the elevation of Amharic as the
national language of Ethiopia and the homogenization of other peoples into the
supposedly superior Amhara psychology to maintain the unity of Ethiopia.
Viewed from the perspective of power reductionism (Huntington 1996;
Levenson 1958), the view of Ethiopia as a monolithic country and the Ethiopian
peoples as a monolithic gathering is impinging. The main reason why the
dominant group puts a hegemonic hold on a victim’s cultural identity is to put its
own institution in place. For example, the Oromo failed to develop their
language into written language due to the undemocratic policy of Amharization,
which the Ethiopian governments adamantly followed in the name of
maintaining the unity and integrity of Ethiopia (Bulcha 1997; Gilchrist 2003).
The counter-hegemonic scholars’ rebuttal does not target only on the
Western scholars loss of sight of the pre-20-century existence of the Oromo as
an independent nation and the depiction of the Amhara conquest as a civilizing
agent, but also on other few Oromo scholars’ misapprehension of Oromo
recruitment in the Amhara military and political hierarchy. Among the Oromo
scholars who have the view that the Oromo secured an influential place in the
ruling systems of the Ethiopian kings is Gudina. In his attempt to argue against
the counter-hegemonic scholars’ view that the Amhara domination of the Oromo
have the same sense and sentimentality with that of the European colonization of
Africa, Gudina (2000: 1509–1510) says the following:
There are some facts of history to which the Oromo nationalists have to
reconcile with. The British queen never married a Ghanaian, a Nigerian
or a Kenyan, but Ethiopian kings were marrying the Oromos. Tewodros,
Menelik and Haile Selassie are the best examples. In the same token, the
Ghanaians, the Nigerians or the Kenyans never dreamt to become kings
and queens of the British empire under whatever type of assimilation, but
the Oromos assimilados were able to become kings and queens of
imperial Ethiopia. The best examples are Iyyassu, Haile Selassie, King
Michael of Wollo and King Takle-Hymanot of Gojjam.

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Gudina (2003) reemphasized his view that the Oromo were equals with the
Amhara within the latter’s political edifice and seemingly argued in favours of
seeking solutions for the Oromo problems within the united Ethiopia than in
other options, for example the formation of an independent Oromo state
(Sorenson 1993). Gudina failed to notice that the Amhara rulers starting from
the second half of the 19th century and even before that used intermarriage as a
strategy to conquer the Oromo. His ideological parochialism is the masking
effect of the hegemonic political calculation, born in the Amhara ruling system
typically to continue the subjugation of the Oromo. Gudina seems to have failed
to recognize that the intermarriage, which the Amhara arranged with the Oromo,
overloads like Gobena Dache was primarily to serve their own political ends,
that is to help them control the Oromo through an indirect ruling system
reminiscent of the European colonialism in the rest of Africa (Gilchrist 2003).
Gudina’s analogical connection (Ghanaian vs. British and Amhara vs.
Oromo), which has lost historical and ontological base from the beginning, had
already received rebuttals from other writers who had looked at Oromo-Amhara
relationships from different perspectives. Hassen (1996: 74–75) cites Bulcha
(1994) to show that the Oromo elites’ recruitment into the Amhara ruling system
was one of the strategies to speed up and consolidate the subjugation of the
Oromo:
The life of assimilated Oromo was often peripheral. In spite of their total
submission to ‘pressures for their cultural suicide and to the dominance
of the Amhara over non-Amhara peoples in all aspects of life’, they were
seldom treated as equals by the Amhara. The Amharization of the Oromo
and other groups was attempted “wit out integrating them as equals or
allowing them to share poser in any meaningful way.” As the “Amhara
mask” they wore was often to transparent, assimilated Oromos rarely
reached decision-making positions within the Ethiopian bureaucracy.

In his other work, Gudina (Gudina 2000) becomes a perfect witness as he admits
that not all of the Oromos gained important place in the ruling system of the
Amhara. The Oromo elites that were recruited into the Amhara ruling systems
were largely from the Shawa Oromo who were neighbors of the Amhara and
who adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Amhara. The Oromo generals of
the late 19th and 20th century cleared the way for the Amhara kings to become
emperors while they concurrently reduced the status of their own people to
gabbars (serfs) alienated from the land of their ancestors. This simply means
that one has to understand the Oromo political consciousness as well as the
difficulty to transform ethnic-based nationalism to statehood within this
complex historical duality (Gudina 2000).
The Oromo scholars who hold the view that the Amhara-Oromo relationship
in the past was the relation of colonialism draw on the practical experience of
the European-African colonial relationship. According to them, the only
difference between the Amhara conquest of the Oromoland and that of European
colonization of the African continent is that the Europeans were white and came
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from Europe whereas the Amhara are the African people. The Amhara-Oromo
domination is a colonial domination of one African people over the other. The
second angle of their argument is that there is ample similarity between the
legacy of the Europeans’ impacts on the black Africans’ consciousness, culture,
politics and that which the Amhara caused on the Oromo.
One thing that readers should know about the Amhara ruling system is that
although they have been its victims, the Oromo (the Oromo elites) participated
both in the creation and perpetuation of the Amhara ruling system. The oft-
mentioned Gobena Dache, the right wing of Menelik II, was one of those who
hastened the incorporation of the Oromo and other southern nations and
nationalities under the rule of Menelik. Given the role Gobena played in the
military campaign of the Shoan king and later Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia,
one can conclude that if it had not been for Gobena’s formidability, Menelik
would not have created the Ethiopian Empire. The Amhara ruling elites that
followed Menelik II also managed to manipulate the Oromo generals to
perpetuate their power. Through out the Amhara ruling system, there were a
considerable number of Oromo elites who assumed higher political and military
offices. Although they are the Oromo, they are still part of the Amhara ruling
system that oppressed the Oromo. This complex situation of the traditional
ruling system in Ethiopia has confused some Oromo political activists (e.g.
Gudina 2003) and one should not be surprised when they say, just by looking at
the political and economic advantages of individual Oromos within the
oppressing system, that the Oromo had assumed important places in the
Ethiopian ruling system.

4. SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS

The paper attempted to point out the negative portrayals of the Oromo and the
rebuttals they have received from what I called counter-hegemonic scholars.
The paper is a critical analysis of academic publications on the Oromo social,
historical and political identities. It indicated that the Oromo portrayals are
situated within the broader sociological and political history of the Oromo in the
Horn and in the political dynamics of domination and subordinations.
This paper has several implications for the political situations in Ethiopia.
The ethnic portrayal, particularly the negative portrayal is a signal of an
unhealthy social reality. The political and economic marginalization of an ethnic
group and the deliberate denigration of the group’s cultural and social identities
is an aspect of a pathological social and political system that evokes
ethnic/nationalist conflicts in pluri-ethnic or pluri-national countries like. A
negative portrayal of an ethnic group is one of these. The other is the
suppression of the linguistic, cultural, political and religious rights and identity
of a person and a group on mere ethnic grounds. Some politicians in Ethiopia
point out that the social reality of ethnicity in Ethiopia and the ethnic-based

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federalism are invented to roughen social cohesions between peoples and to
perpetuate the unfair rule of people. Their fear is that the ethnic-based
federalism ultimately divides the country into artificial parts for easy political
manipulations. These politicians call for de-ethnicized politics and political
struggle for power. They state their fear that ethnic/national identities create
feelings of antagonism. In actual sense, their intention is to completely close the
file of ethnic questions. They believe that the Ethiopian people are unique
people and the Ethiopian unity is unique in Africa. According to them political
ethnicism has been recently implanted into the country by narrow nationalists
who want to magnify the cultural, political, economic and linguistic deprivations
which the past governments inflicted on peoples for their own political
advantage. A number of African writers and thinkers share this instrumentalist
view and assert that ethnicity is the turbulent, chaotic and violent social reality
of post-colonial Africa invented and sustained by elites from Europe and Africa
to keep the people divided for the sake of easy manipulation and dominance
(Ake 2000; Aluko 2003; Owolabi 2003; & Ujomu 2001).
Various African evidences show, of course, that the political elites rely on
their ethnic and tribal identities to both to compete for political power and to
stay on the power. This problem occurs when individual political elites blinded
by their narrow self-interests decide to use a drawn-out social strife as a strategy.
This shows that in a pluri-ethnic society ethnicity is easily manipulated for evil
political gain. My view is that ethnicity of itself may does not necessarily evoke
feelings of antagonism towards other groups and it is the way it is manipulated
that can cause a problem. Ethnic conflicts arise out of concrete historical
situations and are shaped by particular and unique political, economic and
stereotypical circumstances (Ake 2000). Experiences throughout Africa and the
rest of the world show that the propensity for ethnic self-awareness and ethnic
factions would be high in pluri-ethnic/pluri-ethnic nations where political elites
deliberately suppress the ethnic identity of a group for their own political or
‘ethnic’ ends. The other problem is when ethnicity becomes the chief, if not the
only factor in the struggle for political and economic power. In a situation where
ethnicity becomes the leading factor in a struggle for political power everyone
who knows that s/he belongs to the politically dominant ethnic group may
consider himself/herself part of the ruling system and may explicitly/implicitly
show their superiority over those who do not belong t their group.
The ethnic question of the Oromo has been motivated by the Ethiopian
governments’ structural and procedural deprivations of ethnic rights. There has
been an obvious imbalance in material and discursive resources between ethnic
groups. In the past, the government institutions and academic centres have been
voraciously used to sanctify and perpetuate the imbalances. Ethnic problems,
whether they are dormant or active, seek careful mediation. Otherwise what is
taken simple and irrelevant can grow into big hostility. The Ethiopians who
abhor nationalist questions should know that nationalism is the result of the
political, discursive and administrative resonance of the Ethiopian history and

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that the power asymmetries created in the name of national integrity and
sovereignty should be balanced.
According to the liberal reconstructivist school of thought, checking
administrative and attitudinal factors that violate ethnonational rights and thus
provoke ethnic factions can alleviate ethnic problems. Imbalance in the ethnic
groups’ access to influential resources like language can deepen antipathies, as
the experiences in other African countries show (Aluko 2003). If one language
is favored more than other languages the ethnic groups whose language are not
favored have lesser capacity to make their definitions of ethnic identity prevail;
they can easily see the existence of asymmetries in social capital (Diez-Medrano
2002: 4) and get provoked for self-defense. The ethnic-based opposition to the
exploitive and oppressive ruling systems of the Ethiopian governments long
started in 1960s and 1970s and it is believed that the ethnic misruling of the
Ethiopian monarchies provoked the ethnic self-consciousness.
Ethiopia is one of the countries in Africa where the ideas of national,
linguistic, political, cultural, religious and national is being revised. Now, the
tension between the forces of controlling and that of self-liberation is the
political reality of the Horn. As the Amhara saying goes: ba duroo bare man
arrasa (who has ever ploughed the land by the ox of the past). The old way of
thinking, for example, the portrayal of Ethiopia’s Greatness through symbolic
use of objects and lives, and the political rigidity in the name of unity has now
become a weak and shaky political strategy in the face of strong national
consciousness in Africa and the rest of the world.
This paper suggested that the Oromo historiography and its disfigured image
cannot be isolated from the historical resonance of the Horn. The most central
message of the paper is that if Ethiopia has to continue as a modern nation,
critical citizenship is required that ensures a ‘true equality between its peoples.’
It is difficult now to continue with the essentialist view of Ethiopia as the oldest
nation in the world and as a land of bliss, wherein its nations and nationalities
lived in equality. This was a false political discourse that has been used by the
rulers to throw people together. Unity is more that throwing people together and
making them pray in one language. The day-to-day evidences show that there
are several conservative nationalists who have difficulty in accepting the reality
that Ethiopia, which the conquest of Menelik II formed at the end of the 19th
century, is an agglomeration of divergent nations and nationalities. This is true
particularly when it comes to linguistic and cultural questions. There are
educated Ethiopians who openly oppose to education policy that supports
primary education through mother tongue. They hold the view that such a policy
is a disintegrationary policy that spoils the glorified image of Ethiopia. This
emanates from the failure (intentional or unintentional) to understand that
uniform linguistic gives rise to an uneven distribution of linguistic, cultural,
political and economic capital. In my view, the recognitions and maintenances
of these linguistic, cultural, historical and religious divergences are essential and
can keep the people together. The view that if you give a slave an inch, he will

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ask for an ell, does not save Ethiopia from the disintegration. Ethiopia gets little
also from a stubborn denial of the national and ethnic identity of people.
It is obvious that in Ethiopia because of concrete historical and political
reasons, one ethnic one ethnic group attained political, economic, educational
and cultural domination over the others. This simply means that ethnicity as well
as ethnic domination is a social phenomenon. Kloss (1968: 72) mentions
Ethiopia as one of the countries n the world where “the ethnic group speaking
the dominant language has formerly subjugated the other ethnic groups.”
According to the writer, the other examples are, “the Afro-Americans now
ruling Liberia, and the Spaniards whose tongue dominates public life in Bolivia.
The groups [ethnic groups speaking the dominant language] have defeated and
conquered those ethnic groups who to this very day have preserved their own
languages and who still form the majority of the population. For Kloss (1968:
72), a country that has been formed the subjection of other previously
independent ethnic groups is called subjection-based nation-states. Thus, one
can speak of Emperor Haile Selassie’s imposition of Amharic over the non-
Amharic ethnic groups as subjection-based linguistic homogenization.
On a final note, I say that the Ethiopian historiography should be reexamined
to gain a better understanding of the historical situations of the 19th century that
prepared the material as well as the spiritual preconditions for the creation of the
modern state of Ethiopia. Doing this may bring about a better understanding
about the ethnic and national upheavals that are now facts rather than myths.
Gilchrist (2003: 107) shares my idea: “The traditional scholarly approach of
regarding Ethiopia as a monolithic culture centred on Abyssinian society has
proven inadequate to understand the sociopolitical conflicts that trouble modern
Ethiopia. One can put to an end the continuation of ethnic conflicts only through
recognizing and respecting the rights of each ethnic group and their citizens. It is
important to know also that the anti-democratic political traditions in Ethiopia
(mainly Emperor Haile Selassie’s aristocracy and the military government’s
dictatorship) have their roots in the colonial venture of Menelik II. This should
not continue in this country. Zewde (1994: 156) puts the rigors of the Ethiopian
political crisis in the past in the following way: “The Ethiopian past is replete
with authoritarianism and dogmatism and woefully short on democracy and
tolerance. Imperial autocracy, military dictatorship, Marxist-Leninist
commandism-these have constituted the staple political fare of the Ethiopian
people. There is in short no golden age to revive as far as democratization is
concerned.” This criticism implicitly calls for a new political order in the
country. This is the point Hassen (1990) accentuated in the last page of his book.
Hassen also calls for the rethinking of Ethiopian historiography to redress
wrongs done in the name of the integrity and sovereignty of the Ethiopian state.

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REFERENCES IN THE INTERNET

Irele, F.A. 2000.
The Crisis of Cultural Memory in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall
Apart’, 4(3): 1. [online] URL:
http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v4/v4i3a1.htm

About the author: Jeylan Wolyie Hussein is an Assistant Professor in the

Faculty of Education at Alemaya University (Ethiopia). He has M.A in English
language teaching from Addis Ababa University and M.ed in Critical
Practitioner Inquiry (CPI) for educators from Umeå University (Sweden). He
has published articles on the social and cultural functions of the African oral
traditions. His other manuscripts are at different levels of considerations for
publications in different local and international journals. His research interests
are on teacher education, critical literacy and the role of language to
communicate power relationships in a society or among groups.

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