Navigating Oromo Political Culture and Values Since 1958

Beginning in Jimma Abba Jifar, 1958^[1]

My account begins in 1958 when it wasn’t yet common for young Americans to go to live in Africa, much less Ethiopia, and much, much, less Oromia. My acquaintance with Ethiopia started when I took a course as an undergraduate with a professor of linguistics who was a specialist in Gurage and Amharic. From Wolf Leslau I first learned of this vast land with so many languages, cultures, and political groupings. Soon after, as a graduate student in anthropology at Columbia University, I became interested in the history and structure of kingdoms as a theoretical problem. In the 1950s there was a growing literature in history and anthropology about what was called “divine kingship” in Africa, as well as a more general interest in the origins, structures, and histories of kingdoms everywhere, throughout history. My concern with these intellectual problems as well as some familiarity with Ethiopia led me to Jimma Abba Jifar.

From travelers accounts we knew of the powerful king who had ruled in Jimma –even while four smaller Oromo kingdoms in the Gibe region had been swallowed up by Menelik II. (See, e.g., Hassen 1994a; Duressa and Gemechu 2022). Abba Jifar had been left in power within his realm until he died in 1932, so it was a natural fit for my interests. Fortunately for me it also interested members of the Ford Foundation committee that awarded me the grant for the research. In November 1958 my 21-year old wife Marcia and I found ourselves in Addis Ababa, preparing for a year and a half of research. Before we left Addis Ababa for Jimma I had a long talk with D’insa Lepisa at the University College of Addis Ababa. He told me that his research indicated that gada had been universal and more or less uniform throughout the whole vast Oromo world before the Abyssinian conquests and the establishment of the Oromo kingdoms. I took that information with me into the field.

At first, we lived in a house at the edge of the city of Jimma (By coincidence it was opposite the Jimma Agricultural and Technical School which is now the site of the College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine of Jimma University). After the rainy season we moved to a tent we put up in a fallow field (belonging to Abba Milki) on the slopes of the mountain leading to Jiren and the masera, the palace and capital of Jimma Abba Jifar. Two secondary school students who often accompanied and assisted me were Jihad Abba Qoyas and Mesfin Abebe. (I expect that some readers of this article knew them—perhaps in their later careers in government – or knew Jihad as the husband of Latifah Abba Jobir and thus brother-in-law of Abba Biyya Abba Jobir).

There may be some Oromos who are unhappy with the thought that their people had kingdoms in which powerful warlords and landowners ruled subjects—just like in Abyssinia, (among the Habasha). In fact, the Amhara governor-general of Jimma, Lt. Col. Tamrat Yigezu denied that Oromos could have had kingdoms. In his Jimma office he told me that the Oromo had “No king; only balabbat. The Oromo were too primitive to have kings.” Probably for that reason when my book about the monarchy of Jimma Abba Jifar was published (Lewis 1965) it was banned from entry into the country. When I came back in 1980, however, I was pleased to see that the library in Addis Ababa University had ten copies.

With the aid of older men of Jimma who could still remember the monarchy, or even participated in it as officials, I was able to reconstruct the organization and the history and workings of Jimma Abba Jifar. (The monarchy took the name of the king, Abba Jifar, who ruled for more than 50 years). I described it as a strongly centralized state in which the Moti held the reins of the reign through direct control over military force, taxation, and the power to appoint and dismiss governors and other officials who comprised the mechanisms of rule. The kings and the population had also converted to Islam and that further weakened gada but also prevented the king from becoming “divine,” “sacred,” and thus limited in his power by powerful taboos, the way was often the case with other African “divine” kingdoms. The ruler of Jimma did not fit the pattern of “divine monarchs.”

Between rule by a powerful ruler, and the new religion that superseded the former Oromo one, there was little room for gada. However, during my fieldwork I was told that during the earliest days of the kingdom, when the rulers were converting themselves from abba dula to moti but were not yet Muslim, there were still assemblies of the elders in Jimma. They were held at Oda Hulle, where they proclaimed laws (Tuma-Hulle) under the leadership of abba boku and hayu. Some informants knew of this but it was long in the past. (I was told that the king had once slaughtered a bull there when there was some crisis). In addition, recently Megersa Regassa and Dejene Gemechu have written about Oda Hulle as one center for the jigaa institution for conflict resolution. (Today Oda Hulle is also the location of a medical center).

On to Ambo and the K’allu Institution, 1965

Through reading accounts by European travelers and missionaries I learned and wrote about the origins of the Oromo kingdoms (Lewis 1964). They arose as a result of the constant wars during which the abba dula, war leaders, over time became more wealthy and more powerful than the abba boku, the hayu, and the assemblies (ch’afe?). They became abba lafa, landowners. Therefore, gada in various communities and districts was undercut as these powerful men were able to stay in their positions as long as hostilities lasted. They amassed followers with their wealth, and could ignore the gada assemblies and their elected leaders. When the most powerful of them had defeated their rivals, they were on the brink of monarchy. (Mohammed Hassen writes of this, stressing the role of men who became wealthy controlling trade routes and as merchants [1994]).

After doing research about a kingdom I wanted to learn about political life in one of the areas in which the war leaders and wealthy landowners were conquered by Menelik’s allies before they could become rulers. In 1965 I intended to do research Western Shoa (perhaps Horo Gudru) but in Ambo one day I was stopped by two young men who asked, “You American? Peace Corps?” (They were Tesfai Hundesa and Deribe D’aba). When I explained what I was doing they said, “You would be interested in Dumfa. He rules like a king in the countryside around here.” But then they said, “He is a great spirit!” So, I wondered, how does a spirit rule? They continued, “K’enyazmach Faisa really is powerful.” Again, I wondered: a spirit rules? A Kenyazmach?

It wasn’t long before I unexpectedly encountered K’enyazmach Faisa Innika, and I discovered that the Oromos in this area had developed a new form of leadership, a new local level political system based on belief in ayana. I understand that the term ayana (or ayyana) is an extremely important one and it has numerous meanings. (See Knutsson 1967, 53ff.; Gamta 1989, 51 ayyanefaccu; also, Megerssa 2005:69ff. e.g.). The definition in Tilahun that comes closest to the Mech’a case that I observed is “deity or divinity believed to bring death, disease, happiness, etc.” (Gamta 1989, 51). The English word “spirit” is appropriate for these incorporeal beings that “possess,” take over, the person of individuals who then serve as “spirit mediums.”

I soon understood that ayana are spirits that can have immediate effects on human beings– positively or negatively. And these spirits are able to catch (k’ubsisa), possess, take over and control certain human beings (k’allu or qallu) who serve as the mediums through which the spirits can speak and be spoken to. In 1965-66 this belief and the institutions built around it were ubiquitous, powerful, and apparently growing in complexity and importance. This was a case of a development of a new cultural complex, only a couple of generations old, drawing upon a number of older traditions.

These Mech’a Oromo had repurposed the old and vital title in Oromo history and culture, that of k’allu! We know of individuals with this title from the writings about Borana where they are considered to be more of a priest (Bassi 2005; Hultin and Shongolo 2005) whereas in this case they are a “person in whom a supernatural being… is believed to reside” (Gamta 1989, 360). In the 1960s individuals with this title had a whole new set of powers and behaviors and were surrounded by a complex of practices, customs, and ideas. I found the k’allu institution in operation from Holata to regions beyond Ambo, and Karl Eric Knutsson found the same system still further West; Alice Morton reported on it to the east of Addis Ababa among the Ada Oromo around Bishoftu. Many Mech’a Oromo were led by these mediums, some of whom came to have great influence over wide areas and many thousands of people. Until the Derg and the zemecha seriously damaged it, there was another form of Oromo political system that had developed in the twentieth century. Knutsson and I both were told that the institution was only a few generations old. It filled the power vacuum created after the abba dula and abba lafa lost theirs when the forces of Menelik II, led by Fit’awrari Habte Gyorgis, came to rule the region.

As I explain at some length (Lewis 1990) and Knutsson at greater length (1967), a complex institution was erected around the belief in spirits and their ability to possess mediums. In the first place their ritual centers (galma) became places of worship where believers came to speak to the spirits and (perhaps) receive responses that could guide their behavior. More than that, the galmas became centers of assembly and social intercourse that served other functions. Because the k’allu became powerful their temples were places where important men gathered to discuss problems and to receive orders or suggestions that might come from the k’allu or from ruling powers above them, whether local, regional, or national. As Knutsson puts it, “[The k’allu] also plays an important–not to say dominant–part in the local organization of authority in general as a judge, as an expert on customs, and as the one person who can give authoritative answers to many different problems” (5). A k’allu can be said to have a court in the sense of the important followers and servants who aide him and may be found hanging around a galma but also as in a place for litigation. A central role of a k’allu’s center is as a court of justice– to be discussed below. [For further information about the K’allu institution see Knutsson 1967; Lewis 1990].

The Spirit (Ethos) of Mech’a Oromo Political Life

Aside from my study of the nature and power of the k’allu institution I discovered something else in the Ambo area that I had also noticed in lesser form in Jimma. That is what I call a political style, or culture, and values, that I think of as a “republican” ethos with respect to organizing social life, activities, and especially conflict resolution at the neighborhood and district level.

I witnessed a constant round of group activities, of gatherings in the countryside around Ambo. Aside from the many events at the temple complexes themselves, there were frequent meetings of different organizations. For example, iddir, the burial and mutual aid society, not only met when there was a crisis–the death of a person or an ox, a house burning down–but they held monthly organizational meetings and other unscheduled ones to try to settle complaints and problems. There were numerous ik’ub, the rotating credit associations, that met regularly, as well as mhaber, “fraternities.” And there were constant arara sessions intended to make peace and settle quarrels between neighbors, husbands and wives, and others. I had plenty of opportunities to witness people in action. (See Lewis 1994).

I realize that I am describing something that many readers know from firsthand experience, and everyone will have heard about these institutions. They have been written about many times among various populations. Some are currently operating in the US and elsewhere in the Oromo and Ethiopian Diaspora in various forms. It is interesting that the iddir, iqub, and mhaber, despite being relatively recent borrowings from other groups, have come to play vital roles in the life of these Oromo communities. I believe it is because they fit so well with an existing Oromo political culture that is accustomed to voluntary associations based largely on propinquity, leadership by elected officials, and assemblies for debate.

Conflict resolution, settling disputes, is a central activity, and I spent many long hours in the Ambo area sitting and listening to such sessions. Despite the desire for harmony, peace, nagaa, people fall short of the ideal; they default on their obligations and come into conflict with their neighbors, marriage partners, kin, and compatriots. It is necessary to heal the breach, to find reconciliation, and restore the peace. I wrote about this in detail in articles based on my observations in Ambo and Jimma 60 years ago (Lewis: 1989) and there is a recent article describing a parallel institution in Jimma today by Megersa Regassa and Dejene Gemuchu (jigaa). What they witnessed at Oda Hulle in the 21^st century is a parallel to what I saw around Ambo in 1965-6.

When a dispute arises the first resort is to call in mediators at the local level. They will hold an arara where the litigants plead their cases before three to eight or more of their neighbors. Certain men will be asked to act as mediators because their judgments are respected. These individuals are not necessarily old or rich but they are recognized for their altruism, their willingness to give their time, their knowledge of custom and precedent, and their good sense. These hearings are considered to be meetings of equals (k’it’e) for the purpose of reconciling neighbors, kin, and others in conflict. The term used most often for these sessions is arara, reconciliation, but sometimes k’it’e is used as well. They are not trials and do not aim to punish but to make peace. The parties to the disputes, their witnesses, and the mediators sit outside under a tree, listen to the various parties and discuss the case at length. (I never witnessed such a session inside a house). It is their practice to send each of the litigants some distance away while their opponents are speaking.

After discussion the mediators will try to agree on a course of reconciliation, a reasonable solution which they hope the disputants will accept as the best deal they can hope for. If no settlement is reached at a given session, they may call another one, involving still more respected mediators, and try again. And again. If these efforts fail there are no more sanctions available at this level other than that of negative public opinion. But for those under the influence of the k’allu institution there is a higher court: those sanctified and overseen by the ayana and organized by the important k’allu. (Cf. Regassa and Gemechu 2015; Bekelcha and Sefera 2019).

These courts (called boku or yebo), are presided over by judges (danyi), selected by their neighbors installed by the k’allu to serve in this capacity. The danyi apply the same principles of reconciliation and compromise as the mediators at the lower levels. They attempt to discern the “truth” of a case from the litigants and their witnesses and then to redress wrongs and reconcile the parties. The danyi don’t have force to enforce their decisions but they do have powerful allies: the spirits. The courts are on sacred ground, the home of the ayana, spirits that care about truth and right behavior, that can differentiate between ch’ubu–sin, unjust, morally wrong (Gamta), and d’uga–truth. If a party to litigation refuses to settle, the petitioner can curse their recalcitrant opponent before the ayana, with the approval of the court. Such a curse, abarsa, if the ayana find it reasonable, can bring considerable trouble to the recalcitrant. If this doesn’t work the only recourse is to go to the government court, with all the difficulties that this entails.

Some generalizations about Oromo political systems and values

Based on what I had learned about the kingdom of Jimma, in 1963 I wrote about an “ideal pattern” for political organization that “might be called ‘republican’” that I believed underlies the monarchy. I assumed that this “blueprint” was a kind of continuity from the earlier system, gada. This was how I summarized gada principles based on what was reported in the literature up to the 1960s:

Political membership and leadership was based largely on common residence and on achievement (‘universalistic criteria’); officers were elected; they served [strictly] limited terms and could not succeed themselves; and they held functionally specific positions with closely defined tasks. There was also an insistence on thrashing out problems in open council meetings (1963; 1965:29).

This was a significantly different basis for a kingdom than was described for so many “divine monarchies” in Africa. Those kings and queens were usually heavily dependent on their kinship groups, clans and lineages, and the monarchs had their movements and actions hedged about by powerful taboos. They might be prisoners of their divinity. (See, e.g., Irstam 1944). What I later observed of political behavior among the Western Mech’a emphasized these traits that I discerned in Jimma in another setting, but more markedly.^[2]

I would summarize Oromo political values as revealed in the original gada system, the monarchy of Jimma Abba Jifar, and the lives of Mech’a Oromo, as follows:

1. The primacy of territoriality: Neighborhood, district, propinquity, rather than kinship is the basis of most political activity and political groupings. This is unlike what has been so often reported for other African societies where membership in socio-political groupings is based in the first place of kinship, on relationships ascribed by birth–on lineage and clan membership. Although extended kinship is recognized for some purposes it is generally not widely mobilized for activities. (I pointed out in another article that the primacy of propinquity is very common among other Cushitic-speaking groups in Ethiopia as well [Lewis 1974]).

2. Election of officials: Organizations tend to have leaders [officers?] who are elected for limited terms and their office is not (usually) the “possession” of its holder by inheritance. Election is an important element in Oromo political culture at all levels and in different types of organizations.

3. Functional specificity of leaders: Elected offices have different tasks and areas of authority. For example, the abba boku who serves as the chair, the hayyu or irreessa, ritual leader, abba sa’a (treasurer), and the abba dula or moti, the war leader. In Jimma there was an abba ule, keeper of cattle. In the Ambo area the iddir has both a presiding officer [check] and a “prosecutor”–both elected.

4. Assemblies rule: The assembly (ch’afe) is vital. To meet–under an oda tree if possible–is a central principle. Problems, government, rules, conflict resolutions–are handled in assemblies. The size and the scope of the assembly varies but it is a central element–as it was in Athens.

5. Law: The idea of law is central– both customary laws, (adaa) and sera, which is “legislated” or decided upon in assembly and proclaimed as law (sera tuma “legislate”). Rules are argued, agreed on, changed, set down and declared. All the organizations, from gada to iddir, have a set of formal rules and procedures.

6. K’it’e – In western Shoa, at least, I encountered the notion that all participants in a group are to be considered and treated as equals–even though in reality some may be richer and more powerful than others; some are more skilled and have higher status. The participation and input of all members of the group are permitted, even expected, and all have equal responsibilities to the group.

7. Peace, harmony: There is high value placed upon peace (nagaa) and reconciliation (arara, ararsa) within the political community. (See Mekuria Bulcha 2015:2). The highest value is placed on the maintenance and restoration of peace, and healing the breach among people–kin and neighbors and within communities and associations.

Over the years I made a point of saying that even where gada had long been gone, even barely remembered, the principles for public behavior, for political activities that derived from gada existed in many forms throughout Oromia. Now that there has been an opportunity to reorganize political and other activity throughout Oromia I wonder how and in what ways, and where, elements of gada political and governing) behavior have been put into practice. When I was last in Jimma, in 2018, I met a man who was said to the abba gada of Oda Hulle together in a gathering with older observant Muslims as well as a scion of the royal family of Jimma. I wonder whether this return of a leader from a much earlier time and system represents a revival of an older political organizational activity or only a ritual and symbolic one for the purpose of butta ceremonies.

Two Relevant Experiences from 1991

On June 8, 1991 I landed in Bole with the first commercial plane to enter Ethiopia after the Derg’s army collapsed and the government fell. It was an interesting and exciting time–and rather dangerous. There were many trigger-happy TPLF soldiers all over Addis Ababa and Jimma, some of them just children. It was a time to witness the start of new political developments. When the EPRDF took over the exiles of many nationalities returned. The hotels in Addis were full of old friends and opponents, old school chums seeing each other after years living in exile in other countries. For that brief moment, and for the first time, the many ethnonational and other interest groups could openly meet and organize as parties. The Charter Conference that promised so much but resulted in so little took place in early July and more than 30 parties were present. (With so many based on ethnicity and language it was an anthropologist’s dream [Lewis 1991]).

On the morning of July 6^th (or 7^th?) Bob Press, correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor newspaper, asked me if I wanted to join him at the Old Post Office on Churchill Road for an Oromo meeting. I had no idea what awaited, but when we arrived, we found ten jarsa representing major sections of the great Oromo nation arrayed along dais at the front of the hall. These elders represented Arsi, Bale, Borana, Guji, Harar, Ilubabor, Raya, Shoa, Wellega, and Wollo!

Tilahun Gamta defines jarsa as: arbitrator, judge, mediator, or peacemaker (as well as old “male human”) and they were there for ararsa, jarsumma—mediation, arbitration. They were there to try to bring together the OLF and the OPDO–the competing claimants to leadership and representation of the Oromo Nation.^[3] What struck me about the proceedings was that they were carried out exactly as I watched time and again around Ambo, whether at the galma before the ayana and the danyi or between a man and wife under a tree in front of their neighbors. I was not aware of any disturbances, no speaking out of turn, no disrespect for the abba jarsa or the process. Furthermore, while one side spoke the other side was sent out of the room, just as in the least consequential arara I had witnessed. They invoked the search for harmony (naaga) and truth (d’uga). Here, at the end of the 20^th century, we were watching principles of Oromo democracy being played out.

I don’t want to sound starry-eyed and naïve, however. As you know, as in so many other cases, there was no satisfactory solution to that confrontation–this moment of historic importance in the struggle for power that would determine so much of the future of Oromia and Ethiopia!^[4]

On July 11, there was a great banquet held in the Ghion Hotel, at the invitation of Abba Biyya-Abba Jobir and “the Jimma Royal Society.” In the great hall Oromo men and women from all over the empire met, ate, and talked and talked. Ambassador Mude of Kenya, a Borana Oromo, was there, as was a leader of the Sidama Liberation Movement and Sultan Ali-Mirrah of Aussa. (I was also pleased to see at least four people associated with the University of Wisconsin at Madison were in attendance, including Dr. Tadessa Ebba who received his PhD in genetics from friends of mine). It was a grand occasion. There were many speeches and a sense of guarded optimism. It was a beautiful occasion–or so it seemed to this outsider.

In conclusion, I have two related questions about the present and future of Oromo political life that I wish I knew the answer to:

1. To what extent has gada come back into operation in Oromia as a political organization (rather than solely a revival of ritual) since the changes in Ethiopian politics permitted such a possibility? In what areas and in what way?

2. With or without gada, how much of the “republican” and “democratic” spirit that underlies Oromo culture is currently alive and useful in today’s political life?