Page 87 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization
•
78
of Western civilization, such as modernization and Marxism, had failed to explain
adequately the problem of the Oromo, emerging Oromo intellectuals returned to
study the traditions of their society.
The Oromo nationalist nucleus originally found its active audiences mainly among
Oromo university students, students who had joined the Haile Selassie I University
178
They were already exposed to the brutality and
from different regions of Oromia.
dehumanization of Ethiopian colonialism through the experiences of their families
and local elementary and secondary schools that glorified Ethiopian culture, history,
civilization, and language while denigrating that of the Oromo. These students dis-
covered that the Ethiopian knowledge elites, with the support of the Ethiopian state
and the imperial interstate system, produced “official” history that completely denied
historical or cultural space for the Oromo and other colonized peoples. Oromo stu-
dents had two choices:They were either to ignore their denigrated Oromo identity
and accept the Ethiopian identity or to challenge the falsehood about Oromos by sid-
ing with the underground Oromo movement. If they chose the latter, it was at the
cost of risking their professions and their lives. Those who accepted the Ethiopian
identity and joined Ethiopian political groups took the position that the Oromo
movement was a “narrow nationalist” movement.
Since most Ethiopian teachers and professors taught the superiority of Ethiopian
culture and civilization and the inferiority of Oromos in educational institutions, it
was not difficult to recruit clandestinely some students and educate them about the
plight of Oromos through secret study circles. These students studied philosophy,
Marxism-Leninism, political economy, social history, revolution, and nationalism.As a
result, some of these students started to gain a critical understanding of the Oromo
question. Further, the one-sidedness of most teachers and professors and their igno-
rance of Oromo culture, civilization, and history increased the commitment of some
students to learn more about their people and to struggle to liberate them. Hence,
university education allowed some Oromo students to understand and articulate the
accumulated collective grievances of their people.With their increased political con-
sciousness and political maturity, they first used the Ethiopian student movement as a
platform to express Oromo grievances. They did this without rejecting, as Ethiopi-
anized Oromos, the Oromo identity; that is, at the same time, they began to build the
Oromo independent student movement in the early 1970s. These students worked
closely with the underground nationalist nucleus and helped in transforming the
Oromo resistance into an organized revolutionary movement. Higher education
helped Oromo revolutionary intellectuals and students to learn about “modern” or-
ganization, methods of organizing people, and historical and current ways of engag-
ing in protracted guerrilla warfare against a formidable enemy. 179
The new Oromo nationalist leaders produced political pamphlets and expanded
their sphere of influence by organizing different political circles in different sectors of
Oromo society, such as professionals, workers, farmers, high school students, and the
army.Those Oromos who fled to foreign countries and received military training re-
turned to Oromia to initiate armed struggle. A committee to organize a liberation
front was formed and the guerrilla armed struggle started in 1973 under the leader-
ship of Elemo Qilixxu.As Cabral says,“With a strong indigenous cultural life, foreign
domination cannot be sure of its perpetuation.At any moment, depending on inter-
nal and external factors determining the evolution of society in question, cultural re-
sistance (indestructible) may take on new forms (political, economic, armed) in order