Page 180 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

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Notes
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47. The first three sets belong to Borana, and the second two sets are branches of Barentu.
The descendants of these moieties occupy specific areas in Oromia today:The Raya and
Assabo branches occupy northern Oromia (i.e., include some part of Tigray, the whole
of Wallo, and some part of northern Shawa).The regions of Macha and Tulama include
most of the present regions of Shawa,Wallaga, Ilu Abba Bor, and some part of present
Kaffa.The branches of Sabbo and Gona occupy some part of the present Sidamo, part
of Gammu-Gofa, and Borana, Gabra, and Guji lands, and some part of Kenya.The de-
scendants of Siko and Mando occupy the Arssi and Bale lands, and part of the Rift Val-
ley. Finally, the branches of Itu and Humbana live in most of Haraghe and some part of
Wallo in the north. Nevertheless, there have not been demarcated boundaries among
these parts of Oromia.Asmarom Legesse (1973, pp. 39–40) explores the kinship system
of Borana Oromo of southern Oromia and identifies Sabbo and Gona as the dual or-
ganization of a system of moieties with almost equal number; marriage or sexual inti-
macy is exogamous. He notes that members of these two moieties are not
geographically separated, but rather intermingled. According to Legesse (p. 41), these
two moieties “stand in opposition to each other. Borana make a conscious effort to try
to represent both moieties in forming a council for any purpose, even in the delibera-
tion of intra-moiety problems.The source of social justice in Borana is the perpetual
balance in the power delegated to the two primary divisions at all levels of the social
system.”
48. Baxter comments on the Oromo kinship as follows:“The presence of similarly named
and widely dispersed descent groups has . . .eased and encouraged individual and group
movements.There is a solid body of ethnography which supports these contentions, so
two simple examples must suffice here for illustration. First,Arssi . . . is the overall name
taken by the several million-strong Oromo group whose territories extend from the
Rift Valley to the Bale-Ogaden boundary. Among the Boran, the Arssi are one of the
clans of the Gona exogamous moiety.Among the neighbouring Gabbra they are a sub-
clan of the Alganna phratry.They are also a Guji subclan. Second, Karaiyu is the name
of the largest clan of the Sabho [Sabbo] moiety of the Boran. It is also the name of . . .
[the clan] living along the Awash, and of Guji subclan. Guji is also the name of a Boran
clan.The recurrence of a name across a wide range of putative descent groups of var-
ied depths and spans is as much a feature of the Oromo as it is of the interlacustrine
Bantu.” Baxter,“The Creation and Constitution of Oromo Nationality,” p. 177.
49. See Gemetchu Megerssa, op. cit., pp. 20–23.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Aneesa Kassam,“The Oromo Theory of Social Development.”
53. Ibid., p. 93.
54. Ibid.
55. Gemetchu, p. 14.
56. Ibid., p. 95.
57. Ibid., pp. 94–95.
58. Asafa Jalata,“The Cultural Roots of Oromo Nationalism,” in Oromo Nationalism and the
Ethiopian Discourse: The Search for Freedom and Democracy, ed. A. Jalata, (Lawrenceville
N.J.,The Red Sea Press, 1998), p. 34.
59. John Hinnant,“The Guji: Gada as a Ritual System,” in Age, Generation and Time: Some
Features of East African Age Organizations, ed. P.T.W. Baxter and U.Almagor, (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1978), p. 210.
60. See Addisu Tolesa,“Documentation and Interpretation of Oromo Cultural Traditions,”
Proceedings of the Conference on the Oromo Nation,Toronto, Canada,August 4–5, 1990, pp.
41–42.
61. Aneesa Kassam,“The Oromo Theory of Social Development.”