We Can’t Wish Away Federalism in Ethiopia – No Matter How Hard We Try (Tsegaye R Ararssa, January 2019)

We Can’t Wish Away Federalism in Ethiopia – No Matter How Hard We Try (Tsegaye R Ararssa, January 2019)

Posted by Ibsaa Gammadaa

 January,22, 2020

Ethiopia’s multinational federalism has not been without its detractors. For years, we had debated this endlessly and, for a while, the detractors seemed to have come to terms with it because they had run out of ammunitions.

In a more extensive piece, I will engage with the antifederalist moves resurrected by PM Abiy’s reckless and polarizing rhetoric (who, by the way, did not hesitate to characterize it as ‘racialiazed or racist, aka ዘረኛ federalism). But for now, it is important to point out some of the distortions in Mamdani’s piece.

Apparently misinformed by his Ethiopianist (not to say Amhara supremacist) students at Makerere University, and partly manipulated into it by those who knew of his well know scepticism about ethnic-based distinctions between natives and non-natives elsewhere in Africa, Professor Mahmood Mamdani added his voice to the band of those who bash what he calls ‘ethnic Federalism in Ethiopia.’ As a view from a distance, its inaccuracies may be forgiven. But the distortions and bogus claims can’t.

Mamdani deliberately uses the term ‘ethnic federalism’ to refer to Ethiopia’s federal arrangement showing his prejudgement about the system before analyzing whether it is so. In this, he only followed tack of the habesha commentators who used this phrase and several others ( eg., tribal [የጎሳ] federalism, racialized [የዘር] federalism, apartheid, balkanization project, Stalinist federation, etc, etc) more to justify the imperial and socialist pasts in which non-habesha peoples were conquered, subjugated, and exploited (and subsequently ‘given out’ to nafxannyas literally as salaries because they are viewed as useful chattels to work the land they were dispossessed of through conquests) than just to vilify the current dispensation.

It is interesting to observe that, in contrast to Ethiopianist writers’ frequent but reckless use of the phrase “ethnic federalism,” the phrase actually does not occur anywhere in the text of the constitution, or anywhere in the Ethiopian public law regime in general.

The Amharic equivalent for ‘nations, nationalities, and peoples’ is “ብሔር፣ ብሔረሰቦችና፣ ሕዝቦች”, a term roughly the same in meaning as its English version. In the constitution, in art 39(5), there is no difference in significance if any group is referred to by any of those three words (nations, nationalities, or peoples). (There was, of course, a difference in size and rights during the derg era. And many of the derg era folks, especially habesha supremacists, still make that distinction to deny some groups, especially in the South, the self-determination rights granted them by the constitution on account of being ‘nationalities,’ or peoples, as opposed to nations).

Foreigners often use it recklessly either as a shorthand for the rather cumbersome ‘nations, nationalities, and peoples’ phrase or, at times, just to be lazy and uncritically follow tack of the habesha writers. Mamdani’s NY Times article is one such piece.

More careful scholars (eg. Will Kymlicka, George Anderson, James Tully, Jan Erk, Alan Tarr, Robert Williams, Ronald Watts, Ferran Reqejo (who also uses ‘plurinational Federalism’), Michael Burgess, Thomas Fleiner, Lidja Basta Fleiner, Brendan O’Leary, and a host of others use the term ‘multinational federalism’. I myself use the same phrase although I also use ‘plurinational federalism’ in more sophisticated professional venues.

For Amharic speakers who have sense in them, the proper term to use is ‘multinational federalism’. The amharic equivalent for multinational federalism is ሕብረ-ብሔራዊ ፌደራሊዝም. This is in perfect congruence with the (historical) fact that the federal dispensation was negotiated to solve what was characterized in the student movement of the 1960s as the “national question.” It took years, and a lot of consistent insistence on our part, for the generation (including those in the EPRDF leadership) to catch up with this phrase. It had almost become a word of mainstream use until Abiy came and started to make speeches that seek reversal of the rights of nations, especially that of the Oromo. (He is on record criticizing Oromo nationalism more than any of the other nationalisms in the country!) Naturally, the Amhara supremacists jumped onto his bandwagon of disparaging Oromo nationalism as tribal-local.

And this is what we have now.

Contrary to what Mamdani says, the trouble with Ethiopia is not ‘ethnic fderalism’ as Ethiopia’s federalism is not ethnic in the first place. (One needs only to look up the meaning of ethnicity in a dictionary to see that it is not!). The trouble with Ethiopia is not federalism (as, absent democratic consent, federalism is impossible to practice). The trouble with Ethiopia is not even ethnicity.

The fundamental trouble with Ethiopia is the nature of its state that still operates on the basis of values that divides citizenship unevenly between the habesha core and the ‘heathen’ periphery, the ‘civilized’ semitic center and the ‘savage’ other, the imperial settlers of the garrison towns and the dispossessed and displaced indigenous groups.

The problem with Ethiopia is the explicit (in the past) and tacit (in the present) ranked relationship that operates to differentiate between Ethiopians as citizens and subjects.

The trouble with Ethiopia’s federalism is that it wasn’t yet federal enough as there was not the prerequisite democracy to make genuine federalism operational.

In deed, the trouble with Ethiopia is not more, but less, federalism.

Unlike Mamdani’s claim, the trouble with Ethiopia is not as much a flawed constitution as lack of democracy. The problem, in the eyes of many Ethiopians, is the failure of EPRDF to deliver on the promises of the constitution.

It is no accident that all the recent resistance against the regime in the course of the #Oromoprotests and beyond, from corner to corner, were invoking and calling for the delivery of the constitutional promises. (This was the case in the Muslim’s quest for freedom of religion; the Oromo demand for self-rule, land, and equitable share in resources, opportunities, and power; the Qemant and Walqayit demand for recognition of identity; the Sidama and Agaw quest for autonomous statehood; the Konso quest for local self-rule; the Somali quest for equality and/or self-determination in Ethiopia, etc, etc.)

Yes, there is a polarity among ethnic groups in Ethiopia today, but that is more because of the PM’s agitation to curtail and limit the rights of the nations, by wanting to reconfigure their territory, by seeking to revise the constitution which was the rallying point for their struggle so far. It is also because of his stalling of the much anticipated democratic transition by short-circuitiing it to an Amhara supremacist Ethiopian nationalism.

Mamdani is wrong in saying that land rights are granted on the basis of ethnicity. Land is a state property currently being sold around by the government to displace farmers and give it over to (foreign and local) investors.

Mamdani was also wrong in characterizing the resistance to the Master Plan as an ethnic resistance to civic citizenship. It was a resistance against forced evictions and displacement, a resistance against a strategy designed to push out and, working under the imperative of a typical settler colonial logic, to eliminate the Oromos (along with their language, identity, and culture) from their own country.

Mamdani talks about inconsistencies of the “ethnic federal system” that created only nine states out of ninety ethnic groups. Precisely! If it was ethnic, how could this have happened? The problem is that you called it ‘ethnic’ and then failed to find it on the ground!

And by the way, the two city administrations are not ‘city states’. Not by a long shot. Finfinnee was a city state between 1991 and 1994, but no more. Dirre-Dawa has never been a city state. In fact, constitutionally speaking, it has always been, and it still is, an Oromo city, illegally wrested from the latter by TPLF’s Abay Tsehaye who, ever since, have made a mess of the administration including through an illegal and unconstitutional Charter that projects the city as an autonomous city.

No, there are no ethnic mobilizations for homeland today. There are only mobilizations for self-rule in their homeland, either as a separate state in the federation or as a unit of self-administering local government at the Zonal, Woreda, and/or Special Woreda levels.

There are no disenfranchised groups anywhere in Ethiopia today. There are places, mostly urban sites, where settlers lived for decades (as part of the settler colonial legacy) or newcomers (as beneficiaries of freedom of movement recognized in the constitution) are concentrated. They have all the rights, often the more privileged rights, in their places of residence. They have full rights of voting, election, and right to property there. They often complain that they couldn’t run for office because of the legal requirement [which, incidentally, is now repealed since August 2019] that they should speak the local language. That’s as it should be because they can’t serve their constituency unless they can communicate the language of the people there. In stead of learning the language of the people in whose midst they live, these (often Amhara) residents seek to create an enclave of Amhara colony where they are the viceroys (for their Amhara region), and yet complain that they are discriminated on the basis of language, that their freedom of movement is limited, etc. Nothing is farther from the truth. (This is a peculiar phenomenon noticed in the garrison towns of Assalla, Gobba, Adoola, Shakkiso, Nagellee Borana, Dilla, Yirgalem, Hawasa, Harar, Adaama, numerous other towns of the Empire, and, now, in large parts of Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella, and Afar.)

Mamdani ends his piece by saying that the way forward is to change the constitution to abolish ‘ethnic federalism’ (the ethnic federalism that never was!) in order for the reform to succeed. First, he should have shown a rational (causal) link between the federalism and the stalled transition. Second, he should have shown what the alternative is and how that alternative helps facilitate the desired ‘reform’.

The assumption is that Abiy is a reformist PM obstructed by the constitution. The truth is that Abiy is not a reformist. Yes, he was propelled to power by a resistance struggle (orchestrated by none other than Mamdani’s own former student Jawar Mohammed). However, Abiy ended up an opportunist that sabotaged the struggle for freedom by turning, for support, to reactionary right wing politics of imperial ‘nationalists’ that masquerade as Ethiopian nationalists. That’s why, in stead of working to facilitate democratic transition, PM Abiy is still dabbling in the platitudes of imperial politics of yesteryears, often pathologizing the people, if only to set the scene for his messianic delivery to come.

And while we are at it, there are also those who think that the so-called border conflicts are caused by ‘ethnic federalism’ and that if we just stop to be federal, these conflicts will all go away.

First, there is no causal link between the federalism practised (if at all) in Ethiopia and the current conflict. In fact, we all know that the border conflicts are TPLF’s proxy wars declared against Abiy and severely undermining federal self-rule and the federalist mode of managing intergovernmental relations. Poor Abiy is fantastically playing it into TPLF’S hands when he is routinely making antifederalist gestures. Secondly, any attempt to tamper with the constitutionally sanctioned multinational federalism is simply a recipe for disaster, even an endless civil war in Ethiopia.

Given the fact that politics is the art of the possible, the more realistic–and the simpler–thing to do is to enhance the transition to democracy while also aggressively implementing the constitution thereby delivering on the promises of multinational federalism. To do this, first, demilitarize the politics. Then, form a consultative inter-party platform where to engage ALL parties on the directions, roadmaps, and modes of bringing about the democratization to come, i.e, conducting a credible, peaceful, competitive, free and fair election.

The tinkering with the constitution, or the federalism therein, will come later.

Else, if you want a quick route to civil war, tamper with federalism. And, granted, you shall see the abyss. And quickly!