Page 135 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization
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Millions of Oromos were enslaved, and most of
emerging Ethiopian colonialism.”
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Oromos were reduced to the status of semislaves.
The Ethiopian colonialists con-
tinued to depopulate Oromia through slave trade until the 1930s when the Italians
abolished slavery to recruit adequate labor for their agricultural plantations in the
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Horn of Africa.
Emperor Menelik, the founder of the Ethiopian empire, and his
wife at one time owned 70,000 slaves, and he was considered “Ethiopia’s greatest slave
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entrepreneur.”
After expropriating three-fourths of Oromo lands, the Ethiopian settlers gave the
remaining one-fourth to these Oromo intermediaries who were integrated into the
colonial system and who acted against the interest of the Oromo majority.As a result,
the majority of Oromos became landless gabbars, tenants, and sharecroppers.Although
the major objective of the local balabbat system was to ensure the maintenance and re-
production of the Ethiopian colonial system, the immediate purpose was to facilitate
the continuous supply of grain, labor, and other necessary materials for the settlers.A
few Oromos who gave up their Oromo identity were Ethiopianized (Amharized) and
became collaborators and served the interests both of their class and of the settlers.
This was not possible for African American collaborators since the racial caste system
totally excluded them until the 1960s. However, Ethiopian colonialism and its institu-
tions had kept the Oromo majority under tight control and in darkness by denying
them formal education and information, and by suppressing Oromo institutions.
Just as the American Civil War had created new conditions for the African Ameri-
can struggle, the arrival in the 1930s of Italian Fascist colonialism in Ethiopia created
a more conducive atmosphere for the future of the Oromo struggle.Paradoxically,Ital-
ian Fascist colonialism of the Ethiopian empire created new conditions by removing
all the archaic Ethiopian institutions of slavery and nafxanya-gabbar systems between
1935 and 1941. By abolishing the nafxanya-gabbar system and slavery and by intro-
ducing wage labor and colonial capitalism, Italian colonialism created social structural
and conjunctural factors that would allow Oromos to express their grievances and
Oromoness. The Italians attempted to win Oromos and mobilize them against the
Ethiopians by broadcasting in the Oromo language, using this language in the court
and schools, 106 and by giving “many of them full rights to the land they had cultivated
under Amhara landlords.” 107 Using these opportunities, Oromos attempted to expel
their Ethiopian enemies and achieve autonomy for themselves. Although the
Ethiopian state was restored in 1941 with the help of the British government, Italian
colonialism laid an economic and physical infrastructure that facilitated the develop-
ment of colonial capitalism in Oromia. Italian colonialists built roads and bridges that
connected Oromos from different parts of Oromia. Further, the development of colo-
nial capitalism gradually produced structural and conjunctural factors for the emer-
gence of Oromo consciousness and nationalism:The new social forces that emerged
with the development of capitalism began to develop Oromo political consciousness.
In the 1960s Oromia began to produce a centralized leadership linked to a farmer re-
bellion, despite the barbaric nature of Ethiopian colonial rule, which restricted lead-
ership development in Oromo society.
African American nationalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had the
right to develop segregated religious, economic, and cultural institutions in urban
areas, although they did not have access to state power. However, they were not al-
lowed to influence the slave population.The American racial and sexist democracy
at least allowed free Blacks and their children to develop their separate institutions,