A Critical Reflection on Historical Violence: Why Selective Memory Cannot Build a Democratic Ethiopia
Public intellectuals have an obligation to analyze history with intellectual honesty, consistency, and contextual depth. Yet some contemporary commentators—such as Dr. Yonas Biru—deploy a selective narrative that magnifies episodes of violence associated with the 16th-century Gadaa system while minimizing or entirely ignoring the far more systematic, continuous, and institutionally sanctioned brutality embedded within Ethiopia’s feudal imperial order from 1270 to 1974.
Such an approach is not historical scholarship; it is political myth-making, designed to delegitimize a people rather than illuminate the past.
1. Feudal Ethiopia Was Structurally Violent, Hierarchical, and Anti-Human
If we apply the same “critical lens” Dr. Biru uses against the Gadaa system, the Ethiopian imperial era emerges as one of the most brutal and unequal sociopolitical systems on the African continent.
From the rise of the Solomonic dynasty in 1270, society was formally divided into rigid, hereditary castes:
Negash – the royal bloodline
Angach / Mesafint / Mekuanint – aristocrats and feudal lords
Qedash – clergy, monastic hierarchy, church servants
Army nobles
Occupational castes – blacksmiths, tanners, weavers, potters, hunters (treated as ritually impure)
Slaves and serfs – the backbone of the feudal economy, owned, traded, and exploited
This system legally enforced inequality, normalized human bondage, and created a multi-layered hierarchy where millions were treated not as citizens but as instruments of labour.
It is historically documented that slavery persisted in Ethiopia until 1974, and even beyond informally. No Gadaa era compares to the 600-year endurance of feudal domination.
2. Violence Was Not Episodic — It Was Institutional
If we examine the records without bias, imperial Ethiopia’s brutality far exceeded the episodic warfare of the Gadaa age. Notable examples include:
• Emperor Tewodros II (1855–1868)
Known for exemplary leadership in some reforms, yet also infamous for extreme punishments such as burning entire families inside locked huts (tukuls), mass hangings, and public floggings.
• Emperor Yohannes IV (1872–1889)
Recorded for harsh campaigns against:
Wallo Muslims, forcing mass conversions
Gojam peasants, where hand and neck mutilation was used to instill fear
No comparable institutional record exists in Gadaa history.
• Emperor Menelik II (1889–1913)
His southern campaigns included:
Mutilation of Arsi Oromo captives
Mass killings of war resisters
Burning villages with people inside
Brutal punishment of Eritrean POWs
Eradication of entire communities refusing forced conversion to Orthodoxy
Over centuries, from the 14th to 18th, numerous peoples were decimated for rejecting Orthodox Christianity. This was not incidental violence, but state-sanctioned religious warfare.
If violence is the criterion of judgment, then Ethiopian feudalism stands as a monument of systematic cruelty.
3. Why Selective Judgment Is Intellectually Dishonest
Dr. Biru selectively weaponizes history by:
1. Highlighting Oromo violence of the 16th century,
2. Ignoring the centuries-long systemic violence of the feudal rulers,
3. Framing one people as inherently violent,
4. Sanitizing or overlooking atrocities committed under emperors he implicitly identifies with,
5. Converting historical complexity into political propaganda against a modern identity (Oromummaa).
This is not academic critique; it is political targeting masquerading as scholarship.
Every society in the region—Oromo, Amhara, Tigray, Somali, Afar, Sidama—has a history shaped by warfare, migration, state-building, and resistance. The only ethical approach is to analyze all histories with equal critical distance.
4. What a Responsible Historical Method Should Do
A genuine historical critique must:
Recognize context, not weaponize it
Distinguish between episodic violence and institutionalized oppression
Compare systems fairly, rather than selectively
Avoid using the past to stigmatize present identities
Seek accuracy, not political convenience
The purpose of history is understanding, not assigning eternal guilt
5. Conclusion: Ethiopia Needs Honest Memory, Not Selective Demonization
The Ethiopian political crisis today is fueled by selective memory, elite mythology, and politicized interpretations of the past. Demonizing the 16th-century Oromo while romanticizing a feudal system that oppressed millions for centuries is both intellectually fraudulent and politically toxic.
Ethiopia can only heal when all histories are acknowledged, not just those that serve ideological agendas.
What we need is not historians who divide, but scholars who illuminate.
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