Page 158 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

Beyond Nationalism
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izens with Ethiopians.Although these movements laid the foundation of Oromo na-
tionalism, they failed to achieve their main political objectives because of the opposi-
tion from the Habasha elites and their international supporters. Despite these political
failures, some Oromo intellectuals and leaders have continued the idea of reforming
and democraticizing Ethiopia.
Because of Ethiopian colonial politics, Habasha political culture, and the determi-
nation of the global interstate system to continue supporting the Ethiopian minority
at the expense of the Oromo majority and other colonized nations, Oromo reform
nationalism has become dead-end politics. The Oromo reform nationalists have
attempted to reform the Ethiopian empire based on the following four implicit as-
sumptions:The first assumption is that Ethiopia can be transformed from a colonial
empire to a country through the alliance of the colonizing and the colonized eth-
nonations.This assumption implies that some Habashas can change and accept Oro-
mos and other colonial subjects as equal citizens and partners.The second assumption
is that the Habasha elites can begin to recognize and accept the autonomous develop-
ment of Oromo leadership, institutions, organizations, culture, and history.The third
assumption is that if Oromos get access to Ethiopian state power through democracy,
they can use their cultural and economic resources without being exploited and op-
pressed.The fourth assumption is that since Oromos are the numerical majority, they
can take over Ethiopian state power through the democratic process.The failed revo-
lutions of the early 1970s and the early 1990s demonstrate that the assumptions of the
Oromo reform nationalists are fundamentally flawed.
Habashas and Oromos cannot coexist peacefully within a single state system since
they have contradictory national projects.Since the last decades of the nineteenth cen-
tury, Ethiopians and their international supporters have been determined to destroy or
subordinate the Oromo nation and exploit its resources.The Amhara-Tigrayan elites
have been destroying the independent Oromo leadership with the help of global im-
perialism. Ethiopia is not a unique empire. An empire cannot be transformed into a
country,because there is a fundamental contradiction between the colonizing and col-
onized structures, as in the cases of the empires of the former USSR and Yugoslavia,
which recently disintegrated. Ethiopians are not willing to make themselves equal
with the colonized populations by transforming Ethiopia, changing their political cul-
ture, and accepting democracy.The racist Habasha political culture and authoritarian
political values do not allow the Habasha elites to accept democracy as far as they are
strong and powerful.When they lose power because of the challenge from the colo-
nized groups and the collapsing of the Ethiopian empire, it will be too late to trans-
form and democratize Ethiopia. The Ethiopian state has made room only for
collaborators,and not for reformers,democrats,and revolutionaries.Therefore,Oromo
freedom and development require the destruction of Ethiopian colonial institutions,
including the Ethiopian state. Oromo nationalists need to realize that at the same time
they struggle to remove Ethiopian settler colonialism from the soil of Oromia,it is po-
litically and economically necessary to promote the principle of revolutionary demo-
cratic multiculturalism in the Horn of Africa in particular and Africa in general in
order not to racialize/ethnicize state power like Ethiopians.
While the African American and Oromo movements struggle to dismantle
racial/ethnonational hierarchy and colonialism, they need to design political and cul-
tural strategies that attempt to establish a single standard for all humanity by challeng-
ing all forms of oppression within and outside of their respective communities and by