regarding the tensions between the Oromo and southern nations on the one hand, and the Ethiopian state on the other, from the era of Emperor Menelik II to date.52 Issues of Oromo identity, slavery, dispossession, land tenure, and political contestation underpin the history and nature of escalating Oromo nationalism today.53
When the Oromo children arrived at Lovedale in 1890, they were no longer slaves, but theirs was, nonetheless, a form of forced migration. In recent years we have witnessed the forced migration of Oromo individuals and groups fleeing widespread repression, arbitrary arrests, detention without charge, enforced disappearance, torture, and possible death. While Oromo migrants and refugees have been seeking protection in other African countries—including South Africa—for decades, an “Addis Ababa Master Plan,” proposed by the authorities in Ethiopia for the expansion of the capital city, triggered major Oromo protest and heavy government response. For the Oromo, the majority of whom are agriculturalists and nomadic pastoralists, the plan meant expropriation of their land. In response the government declared a state of emergency in October 2016, shut down communications (including Internet connectivity), and closed Ethiopia’s doors to foreign journalists, observers, and human rights organizations. Hundreds were killed, and many more were injured, arrested, or detained.
Since then, the Master Plan has been shelved and an apology issued for the deaths, while in April 2018 an Oromo member who had served in the Ethiopian Parliament since 2010, Dr. Abiy Ahmed, was elected the twelfth prime minister of Ethiopia. This was doubtless a strategic move designed, at least in part, to placate the Oromo people. Though his vision is believed to be at odds with the Oromo people’s demands for self-determination within their Oromia region without federal interference, toward the end of 2017 he issued a statement that may signal hope: “[Ethiopian citizens] expect a different rhetoric from us . . . we have to debate the issues openly and respectfully. It’s easier to win people over to democracy than push them towards democracy. This can only succeed peacefully and through political participation.”54
When the Oromo runner Feyisa Lilesa crossed the finish line on 21 August 2016 to win the silver medal for the marathon at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, he raised his arms above his head and crossed his wrists. In that silent sign of protest, he signaled his support for the hundreds of thousands of protesters back home in his Oromia state in Ethiopia. With that simple gesture Feyisa Lilesa was more effective in delivering a startling wake-up call to the world that all is not well in today’s Ethiopia than any number of mainline media articles or NGO reports.55 As one South African online newspaper headlined his story: “Ethiopia’s Feyisa Lilesa Gets a Silver for Running—and a Gold for Bravery.”56
What many among the world’s reading and viewing public discovered in the backwash of Feyisa Lilesa’s graphic message was that the ongoing protests and the injustices meted out to the Oromo in Ethiopia were not new. The Oromo people have been marginalized and oppressed as a political, economic, and social minority in modern Ethiopia since Emperor Menelik II ascended the imperial throne in old Abyssinia in 1889—the year the final group of Oromo children of the following story were liberated.
PART I
Roots: Memories of Home
CHAPTER 1
Ethiopia: The Lie of the Land
Modern, landlocked Ethiopia occupies the largest portion of the territory known as the Horn of Africa. Bordered on the south by Kenya and on the west by Sudan and South Sudan, Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea in the north is blocked by Eritrea and in the northeast by Djibouti. The eastern tip of Ethiopia is wrapped by large, number-7-shaped Somalia, whose long coastline takes in both the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The topography of Ethiopia is complex, but the center of the country is dominated by a high plateau with an altitude ranging from 1,290 meters to a peak of more than 4,500 meters. The central plateau is intersected diagonally by the Great Rift Valley. From this plateau, the land drops away—in places sharply—to the lowlands of the north, west, south, and east. Lake Assal, in the Afar or Danakil Depression, one of the hottest and driest places on earth, constitutes Ethiopia’s lowest point at 155 meters below sea level. The country is watered by the many rivers that rise in the mountainous regions of the plateau and wash down toward the Nile on the west, with others, like the Awash, flowing into Djibouti and Somalia; and the Omo, feeding into Lake Turkana.
Drawing an arc from the western border of Ethiopia with Sudan to the Kenyan border in the southwest is Oromia, the region occupied by the Oromo people (see map 1.1). Oromia, constituting one of nine ethnically defined administrative regions (or kililoch), occupies the largest land allocation of all the regions (353,007 square kilometers), which accommodates the largest single population group (approximately 40 percent of a total estimated Ethiopian population in 2016 of 102,374,044).1
The topography of the Oromia region is varied and is generally divided into three principal topographical categories, ranging from the mountainous areas of the Ethiopian central plateau in the north to the grassy lowlands in the east, west, and south. Despite several substantial rivers and other water sources in Oromia, the region, like the rest of Ethiopia, is vulnerable to periodic and often devastating climate-driven droughts and famine.
MAP 1.1. Modern Ethiopian administrative regions (source: adapted by Sandra Rowoldt Shell).
More specifically, the three major topographical localities of the Oromia region can be divided into (a) the western highlands and lowlands; (b) the eastern highlands and lowlands; and (c) the areas falling within the East African Rift Valley region.
In the context of the Oromo slave children, the most significant of these localities are the western highlands and lowlands. Under the present political dispensation, this area of Oromia takes in the modern administrative zones of North Shewa, West Shewa, Jimma, Illubabor, East Wellega, and West Wellega. In general, the region features a rugged plateau with a slightly lower altitude than the land farther north. The highest peak is Mount Badda, rising to 3,350 meters above sea level. The western lowlands cover a smaller area of this region.
The eastern highlands and lowlands, incorporating the Arsi, Bale, Borena, East, and West Hararge zones, have an altitude ranging from 500 meters above sea level in the undulating lowlands to Batu Mountain, which peaks at 4,307 meters above sea level. The plateau here features inhospitable rocky desert land supporting a sparse population.
Some forty million years ago, one of Africa’s most spectacular geological phenomena resulted in the splitting of the African tectonic plate, forming a continuous rift stretching 6,000 kilometers from northern Syria to Mozambique. The entire geological phenomenon, still often described loosely as the Great Rift Valley, is actually a series of separate rifts. Where the valley intersects Ethiopia from the Red Sea in the north through to the Kenyan border in the south, it is more accurately described as the Great East African Rift. Splitting Oromia from north to south, the East African Rift Valley region takes in part of the Arsi and East Shewa zones. Volcanic hills, lakes, and depressions fill the valley, while high mountains frame the ridge of the rift.
FIGURE 1.1. Mountainous terrain between Axum and Lalibela in Ethiopia (photograph by Johann Wassermann, 1994).
Terrain and topography impact patterns of human settlement and mobility. Clearly, the particular ruggedness of Ethiopia’s terrain has had, over time, a distinct bearing not only on human settlement and mobility but
