The Oromo people, the single largest ethnic group in the Horn of Africa, with the third widely spoken language in Africa after Arabic and Hausa, were incorporated into the Ethiopian Empire in the second half of the 19th century by successive conquests undertaken by Abyssinian emperors. Prior to the conquests, the Oromo, a nation of the free, elected their leaders democratically according to the Gadaa system, one of the egalitarian systems they contributed to the world civilization. The British diplomat Walter Plowden remarked that ‘Gadaa is superior among republican systems’ and Gadaa government “as pure as a republic can exist.” Similarly, an Eritrean anthropologist, Asmarom Legesse, described Gadaa as “the most astonishing and instructive turns [in] the evolution of human society.” Bulatovich, who traveled through the Oromo land, described Oromo’s republican system as “the peaceful, free way of life, which could have become the ideal for philosophers and writers of the eighteenth century [Europe], if they had known of it.”
In addition to their democratic systems, the Oromo are known for their hard work. A U.S. diplomat, Robert Skinner, who visited Ethiopia by the beginning of the 19th century, dubbed the Oromo as a “race of excellent intelligence … industrious farmers and safe citizens.” Having extensively traveled throughout the Horn of Africa, Augustus Wylde came to a conclusion that “No harder worker than the [Oromo] peasant of Abyssinia exits,” and in contrast, he also put that “No more truculent, worthless, conceited, lazy, useless creature than the Abyssinian soldier.”
In addition to their hardworking etiquette, the Oromo are a peace-loving and good neighborly society, who invented a mechanism for en masse assimilation of aliens, even including their antagonists. Famous for their peace-loving manners and ubiquitous peace rituals, the British anthropologist Paul Baxter referred to the Oromo as a people of “a river of blessing.” Professor Donald Levine described the Oromo as sociable, tolerant, democratic, egalitarian, welcoming, and respectful, and communal, and he found Oromo qualities antithesis to Amara qualities of secrecy, suspicion, individualism, and authoritarianism. The Oromo also have such enormous love for trees, mountains, and rivers that helped them to develop such a pervasive concept of honor and respect for mother earth.
Inasmuch as the Oromo valued congenial environment with their neighbors, they were intrepid warriors who defended their land, resources, and dignity against invaders for centuries before the European firepower changed the regional power equilibrium. Fascinated by Oromo’s productivity and awesome military formations, some European missionaries, who visited Northeast Africa prior to the Scramble for Africa, were convinced that the Oromo would play a central role in the future of the Horn of Africa. Whereas the German Protestant missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf equated the Oromo to “Germans of Africa” if they would embrace Christianity, the French Catholic missionary Martial de Salviac likened the Oromos to the “French of Africa if they would be converted to Christianity.” Despite the fact that the Oromo demonstrated that they were bearers of indigenous civilizations and prodigious workers, the Oromo failed to pass the litmus test of the so-called civilization, Christianity. No wonder then, even, for admirers of the Oromo (such as Krapf and de Salviac), the ability of the Oromo to administer themselves and succeed as a nation was viable only through the agency of Christianity.
During the European Scramble for Africa, unlike the rest of Africa, the major contenders for the continent, Britain and France, reached a deadlock in the race for controlling Northeast Africa. The modus operandi of the time favored dealing with a certain king or patriarch than dealing with egalitarian (and a polycephalous) societies like the Oromo – whose Executive Branch holder changes periodically. In proxy battles for an influence in the area, therefore, the Imperial Europe provided weapons for various warring Abyssinian factions – considering that the Christian Abyssinians were custodians of “superior” civilization and excellent slave dealers (as well as looters), who were capable to pay Europeans back for their death machines. Proximity to the sea, hierarchical nature of the Abyssinians, the slave trade and Christianity helped the Abyssinians to acquire an enormous amount of weapons from Europe.
At this junction, the destiny of the freedom loving Oromo nation, who were masters of their destiny and “did not recognize [external] authority other than the speed of his horse, the strength of his hand, and the accuracy of his spear,” as Bulatovich described, began to change like elsewhere in Africa.
When Europeans turned the Christian Abyssinia into a storehouse of modern weapons, the biggest beneficiary from the floodgate of the weapons was none other than Emperor Minilik, who amassed 1 million rifles and 47 million cartridges of ammunition. Emboldened by possession of a formidable firepower, the juggernaut Minilik declared to the world that Abyssinia had officially joined the Scramble for Africa. “I have no intention to being an indifferent spectator,” arrogantly proclaimed Emperor Minilik, “while far distant powers make their appearance with the intentions of carving out their respective empires in Africa.” His lust of conquest was unmatched, “I shall endeavor, if God gives me life and strength, to reestablish the ancient frontiers of Ethiopia up to Khartoum, and as far as Lake Nyanza with all the [Oromos].” The emperor vigorously led the Abyssinian expansion into the lush green of the south to export the Abyssinian “civilization,” the civilization that brought an industrial scale massacres, the slave trade, and destruction of Africa’s indigenous civilizations.
Therefore, Emperor Minilik’s army, which is often compared to the biblical locust of Egypt because of its looting and destruction, conquered Oromiya with unparalleled and untold brutalities and destruction. While the Abyssinian marching army destroyed the green lush of Oromiya, the conquests over-flooded Finfinne, his capital, with food-surpluses in the middle of an apocalyptic famine — Kifu Qan. Indeed, Finfinne was nicknamed a “Noah’s Ark” since it was the only escape from the famine, which ravaged ninety percent of cattle population of the country and consumed countless of human lives. Once the masters of Northeast Africa, the Oromo lost their land to Abyssinian settler warriors, sold into slavery, robbed of their resources, and denied the right to enjoy their culture. Lost their dear self-identification, the Oromo were called by a derogatory appellation, and even worse, their humanity was questioned. The empire portrayed the Oromo as “invaders” (or a “curse” of God to spoil beautiful alpines of Abyssinia), who subdued once the Christian Abyssinia recovered from her lapse into savagery they brought. These were the trends and behaviors subsequent Abyssinian rulers followed and strengthened.
The Oromo never accepted an alien rule imposed on them and continued to resist their incorporation into the Ethiopian Empire. They fought in different ways in various regions of Oromiya against the occupiers who ransacked their property and derided their culture. Nevertheless, the once remarkable military formations of the Oromo hardly matched the Abyssinian army armed with European death machines. De Salviac described a scene in Oromiya during the conquests as “the theatre of a great massacre,” and “the charming Oromo land … ploughed by the iron and the fire; flooded with blood and the orgy of pillage.” Bulatovich termed it, “[T]he dreadful annihilation of more than half the population during the conquest took away from the [Oromo].” Emperor Minilik, who managed to defeat a European power using the European technology, liquidated a solid five million Oromo, half of the entire Oromo population, at the time, according to accounts of European travelers and missionaries.
The Oromo, a nation of brave warriors, put a ferocious resistance against Abyssinia, an empire in which a political, cultural, economic, social, and religious power expressed through the use of gun, the naftanya system. Against all odds, the Oromo survived the Abyssinian genocide and ethnic cleansing. Alike a Phoenix, the Oromo always regenerate and rise from the ashes, with more vigor, whenever the Abyssinians believed that they had broken their indomitable spirit. However, the enemy tried, for more than a century, to destroy the Oromo culture and Oromummaa, the Oromo are still the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, and their once banned language is still one of the biggest languages spoken in the African continent. As a young activist Toltu Tufa said, “A language whose music and words were once forbidden still wets the tongues of [over] 40 million people.” This happened because of uninterrupted struggles of brave sons and daughters Oromiya.
During the Napier’s conquest, the Wallo Oromo played a crucial role in defeating Emperor Tewodros, a symbolic founder of the modern Abyssinian Empire, by laying siege to his citadel and turning him a virtual captive in the middle of the very people whom he considered “invaders” and vowed to “throw” from Abyssinia. There is a contentious claim that brave warriors of an Oromo queen killed the emperor, while he holed up, in the fortress, and hunkered down for writing lengthy letters to seek an honorable settlement with Napier. No wonder then the British forces came to Tewodros’ hideout without a single gunshot except storming the fortress. Whereas Tewodros butchered all Oromo captives (he released all non-Oromo prisoners), the Oromo, who surrounded the fort on the call of General Napier, showed an extraordinary sense of humanity and civility. They neither killed nor did they harm a single of Tewodros’ soldiers, running in disarray, except surrendering and handing them to the British forces.
In 1870 and 1880s, the Wallo Oromo resisted the occupation, massacres, forceful conversion and evictions of Emperor Yohannes, who died in the hands of Mahdist Sudan while he was trying to execute the British colonial agenda in return for a piece of land in Eritrea and weapons to reinforce his iron fist control on the Oromo country of Wallo.
Equally, the Arsi Oromo checked the Minilik army relentless onslaughts for six years, in which about 100,000 gallant Oromo heroes and heroines lost their dear lives in defense of the motherland. At one time, Minilik and his wife barely managed to escape in one of the ferocious battles. To break their resistance, the conquering army engaged in amputations, beheading, summary executions, and poisoning of water wells. If it is not called genocide, that it was, Arsi peasants have coined a term for the sheer slaughtering of the conquerors, “warradomsa,” a people who kill until a knife turns dull.
When the Minilik army tried to occupy the Oromo country of Ittu and Humbanna, the Oromo annihilated them on their first bid until the Abyssinian marching army of 10,000 riflemen defeated the poorly organized peasant army at the Battle of Calanqo.
During the Italian conquest, the rebellious Rayya Asabo defeated Hayla Sillase’s army and killed his minister of war in March 1936. The uprisings of Oromo peasants, in different parts of Oromiya, dealt a deathblow to the staggering Empire before even the Italians controlled Finfinnee. In fact, thirty-three Oromo leaders sought recognition and protection from the abeyant international community after forming the ‘Western Oromo Confederation.’
Whereas the Italian occupation, as Professor John Markakis said, “brought welcome relief from the burden of Ethiopian rule to the people of the periphery,” Hayla Sillase re-instituted the same exploitative systems when he restored to power with British bayonets. The Oromo in Bale, Borana, Hararghe, Guji, Jimma, among others, rose to fight the restoration of the naftanya system, but only to be crushed by contingents of British army from Kenya and Sudan.
The Era of Modern Resistance and General Waqo Gutu
Whereas the resistances of the Oromo were sporadic and ephemeral in nature, the Oromo began to put organized and unified civic and military resistances in the early 1960s, which gave rise to the birth of the modern Oromo consciousness and nationalism. In 1963, when the exploitation and abuses of Hayla Sillase administration went through the roof, the Oromo rose to assert their right for equality, freedom, and self-determination. The year witnessed the birth of Maccaa-Tuulamaa Self-help Association and the Oromo student activism for the betterment of the lives of their masses. In the same year, the Oromo in Bale region, in a close alliance with various Oromo and Somali clans, under the leadership of General Waqo Gutu Usu, launched a military resistance to check the exploitation and oppression of the empire. Born in 1924, from the Rayitu clan of Arsi, in the Holy City of Madda Walabu, Bale, General Waqo sparked the armed resistance of the Oromo people against the Ethiopia army, the most mechanized army in the entire African continent. His fighters either controlled or made ungovernable most part of the southern Oromiya in the Ethiopian Empire for a decade until they yielded to the military pressure in the early 1970s, having placed the Oromo struggle in the political map of Ethiopia.
Remembering the legacy of General Waqo Gutu
On October 20, 2013, in Minnesota, the Oromo will come together in a commemoration of the 50th year anniversary of the modern Oromo military struggle against the Ethiopian rule.
On the commemoration, we sing songs of freedom, emancipation, unity, love, happiness, better tomorrow, and above all, we vow to finish what our heroes and heroines started more than a century ago. Please join us as we shall celebrate the legacy of our heroes and heroines, and reflect on their significance for this generation to advance the Oromo cause.
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*The writer, Kadiro A. Elemo, is a Chicago-based author. His new book, ”The United States and Ethiopia: The Tragedy of Human Rights,” is now available on Amazon.com
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