Ethiopia: Understanding democracy versus self-determination

By Yaadasaa Dafaa

August 20, 2008 — Understanding the difference between the concepts of democracy and self-determination is important. Conflating the two concepts together is problematical and that leads to bafflement and confusion. Some Oromo nationals have already become a victim of this and unable to differentiate the two concepts, one from the other. To begin with, self-determination, as historically defined, does not oppose democracy. That is, though democracy and self-determination are not conceptually the same, they are not exclusive to each other. It is for this, John Stuart Mill recognized that democracy can function only where the nationalist principle that every nation ought to have its own state is realized. The implication of this is that there cannot be democracy in an empire where nations and peoples are forced to live together in an empire. In order not to fall into conceptual trap, one should distinguish the difference between the concept of self-determination and democracy. Since 2001, a few elements within Oromo nationals have chosen to follow a political line of democratization of Ethiopia. Since then, these elements have been trying to twist, bastardize, and distort the two concepts in order to fuse the two together as one and the same, so as to confuse and mislead the public.

To be on the safe side, first and foremost, one should understand that democracy means a system of government or rule of the people. Abraham Lincoln defined it as government of the people, for the people, by the people. Therefore, the struggle for democracy should be understood as a struggle for the government or rule of the people, by the people, and for the
people within a nation state. Its functions are the guarantee of rights and
freedom of free expression of opinion, including rights and freedom of speech,
of press and of religion; the rights and freedom of assembly, of association,
and of organization among others. It is a system of rule of law whereby equality before the law is respected. And it is a system by which people choose and replace officers of the government through fair and free election, by one-man one-vote. In this way, the majority
vote decides the out come of an election. It is for this; democracy is said to
be the rule of majority, whereby the rights of minority are guaranteed,
respected and protected. This is not new to the Oromo society, for democracy
is built in the Oromo culture, in their cultural habits and in their way of life. Gada system of governance was based on this culture of Oromo, the culture of justice, tolerance, cooperation, understanding, and compromise. But this is not the type of tolerance, cooperation and compromise that the capitulationists (galtuus) have been engaged in since the war of conquest of Oromiyaa and ever since. A nation under colonial occupation, as that of Oromo, fight for the life of the nation and to reclaim its lost national sovereignty. Under this condition, it is not Oromo way to tolerate, to cooperate and to compromise with the occupiers of Oromiyaa and its supporters or its alliance. Therefore, one should not fall into the pit hole of the capitulationists’ or gantuus’ interpretation of the right of nation to self-determination.

With colonization of Oromiyaa, the Abyssinian rulers replaced the Oromo
democracy with Abyssinian authoritarian rule. It is for this, the struggle
for self-determination of the Oromo is not only the struggle for independence
but it is also the struggle for reclaiming of our democracy. So, democracy
cannot be given to a society as manna from the sky by a heavenly or an earthly
kingdom or by a benevolent self-appointed leader or dictator. But it is
internal to a society; it grows, develops, and flourishes through history
within the culture of a society. On the contrary, a mimic of democratization
based on foreign models to be enforced on a society amounts to failure; it
does not work. Suffice to say, democracy cannot be imported or exported or it
cannot be imposed by external force upon a society. If one seeks it from
outside to be imposed on a society by the help of external powers that
democracy will perish. History has proven, time and time again,
this to be true both in Africa, Asia and Latin America. By and large, the
struggle for democracy is within the existing sovereign nation-state, not
empire. History teaches that Empires are born by wars, growth and rise by
wars, and maintained by force, by terror and repression. As they born by wars,
so they die by wars; as they grow, so they stagnate; as they rise, so they
decline and as they stand tall and so they finally fall. That is, these are
the laws, the rules, and fates that governed all empires so far known to man.
Hence Empires have never known to stand tall for all times. It is not as some
turncoat (gantuu) elements want us believe that “the failure of the empires
to be democratized is because the system excludes the participation of the
majority.” On the contrary, empires failed to be democratized, because of
their innate formation, their character and their nature. Empires are not
meant to be democratized but to be dismantled and
dissolved. Hence, Ethiopia is an empire and it cannot be democratized. To
this effect, the Oromo’s struggle is not for the democratization of
Ethiopia, as some Oromo turncoats wish us to believe. In another word, the
struggle for the right to self-determination is not conditional on the absence
of democracy, or on the grievances of injustice as a result of national
oppression, subjugation, and exploitation, though they contribute to the
struggle, but it is a struggle of the people for polity, for politically
independent separate sovereign state. It is, therefore, neither a struggle for
fair and free elections, nor a struggle for freedom of speech, nor a struggle
for equality, nor for freedom of assembly, or association in an empire, as
Oromo capitulationist elements want us to believe. Here we must be reminding
ourselves, the struggle for self-determination is not the same as the struggle
for a mere democracy alone. In the case of colonized people,
the struggle for self-determination is part and parcel of the struggle for
independence as well as for reclaiming their lost democracy- their system of
government, the rule of people. However, the struggle for democracy does not
by any means be translated to imply as a struggle to establish sovereign and
independent state.

As aforementioned, the Asmara group also known as Shanee (the splinter faction
from the OLF who still fraudulently and deceitfully call itself the OLF) has
recently turned to the re-defined version of right to self-determination which
is the internal self-determination or sometimes referred to as internal
decolonization, as it turned to the appeal of settler colonialism. The purpose
has been to confuse the people. The given reason is: the world has changed
and that change made the traditional concept of right to self-determination
dead, obsolete, archaic, and so not applicable. In the understanding and in
the interpretation of this group, the concept of self-determination as
historical defined and understood has outlived its useful days and has lost
its relevance in international community. And so it has turned to, accepted
and owned a new concept of internal self-determination, for the purpose of
serving its political end goal and its foreign supporters. Nowadays, such phrase has become tools for opportunists to
rationalize their failures as success. Again phrases such as
self-determination, Ethiopian democratization, free and fair election have
become rhetorical veils of the group to mask its unrestrained pursuit of its
narrow self-interest in its scramble to capture foreign financial handouts.
In this, Shanee interprets the right of the Oromo to self-determination in
terms of internal self-determination meaning democracy in Ethiopia. As
mentioned above, internal self-determination means the collective rights of
national groups within a given state. And the people have to remain within the
national boundaries of the specific existing state. According to the
advocators of this concept, Shanee included, the collective rights of Oromo
people are to be determined within the Ethiopian colonial empire. This is
what the slogan democratization of Ethiopia is all about. That right to
internal self-determination refers to cultural, linguistic, identity, and to political
(as to free speech, right to vote, right to elect and to be elected), and to
local legislative and local administrative bodies. In general, it refers to
the right to local autonomous status, but its concept and implementation does
not refer to sovereignty and to free and independent Oromiyaa state. In
Shanee’s political view, internal self-determination is applicable and fits
the Oromo struggle, while external self-determination or self-determination as
traditionally defined to mean sovereignty, separate statehood and independent
nation-state does not.

Shanee’s argument is that European colonialism was an external colonialism
to Africa and Asia whereby the colonizers came across ocean, from far distant
lands. Ethiopian colonialism, the group believes, is settler colonialism and
so it does not fit the concept and character of European colonialism. Hence
in Shanee’s political lingua, Abyssinians are the settler colonizers while
Oromo is internally colonized people. On the basis of this, it rejected the
Oromo quest for independence. Shanee sought a solution for the Oromo quest
within the framework of the democratization of Ethiopian empire. Such is
tantamount to make Oromiyaa an integral part of Ethiopia and that it means
Ethiopia has sovereignty over Oromiyaa. This is Shanee’s and its
associates’ rejection of independence of Oromiyaa. One should understand
that colonialism is an international phenomenon. Oromiyaa is a colonized
country. As such, it is an occupied territory without the consent of its people. To this effect, the Hague Convention of 1907 states
“The occupying power does not, through occupation, gain sovereignty over the
occupied territory.” Hence it is clear; Ethiopia does not have sovereignty
over Oromiyaa. Again M. Van Walt Van Praag of Peace Action Council’s words,
“a state that oppresses, destroys or unduly exploits a people or community
instead of protecting it or representing its interest has no legitimate right
to invoke the principle of territorial integrity against that people or
community.” Indeed, Ethiopia is colonialist state. Being a colonialist
state, Ethiopian state does not represent the interest of the colonized Oromo
people. Its purpose is and has been for the exploitation of the Oromo people
and their resources. Over a century down to today, the successive empire
rulers have been slaughtering the Oromo people. The collective interest and
aspiration of the Oromo people is and has been
the independence of Oromiyaa. Ethiopian colonial state does not represent
the Oromo interest, their hope, and their aspiration. And so, the solution to
the Oromo question does not rest within the domain of the colonizer, the
Ethiopian empire, but it rests within the jurisdiction of international
community.

Colonialism is not about skin color or about the distance as to the closeness
or nearness from where the colonizer comes. That is, colonialism is not
monolithic to a place of its origin or it is not monolithic to white people as
Europeans colonialism or to yellow people as Japanese colonialism. It was
happened by historical accident but not by design. That is, it is not
predestined for the Europeans or Japanese to colonize others. Africa could
have been a colonizer of the rest of world. That is colonialism could have
come from black people, but it did not. This cannot justify that colonialism
is only monolithic to Europeans or Japanese. In fact, Abyssinians are a black
colonizer. Hence, Oromiyaa fell under Abyssinian colonialism. The system
does not have color. Colonialism is a system. In colonial case, a call for
self-determination is a call for right to sovereignty. The right to
sovereignty as universally defined means, among other things,
the right to ones territorial integrity, the right to noninterference in the
internal affairs of ones state, and the right to promulgate, adjudicate, and
enforce ones legal rules and laws within ones territory. It is the right to
make defensive war and also it entails the power to make treaties, alliances,
and trade agreements with other states. In this case, the United Nations
Millennium Declaration (2000) “upholds the right to self-determination of
peoples which remain under colonial domination and foreign occupation.”
While outside of colonial case self-determination is turned into a principle
of human rights within the territory of each state.

Strangely enough, from the coined twin concepts of internal self-determination
and settler colonization Shanee came with a solution to colonial question. The
solution it came with is the colonial question can be solved within the
colonial empire. For the how question, Shanee’s response is through
democratization of the empire. The proponents of empire democratization are
those persons who joined the OLF during Darg era and later deserted the OLF,
and those Darg’s party members and its cadres who joined the OLF after the
fall of Darg. These are the political chameleons that can change their skin
color and their political views at any convince to them.

LIBERATION VERSUS INDEPENDENCE: IS THERE A DICHOTOMOUS MEANING OR CONCEPT?

The point here is to establish that there is no difference between the word
liberation and independence in their meanings and concepts. One can use them
interchangeably. However recently, as in self-determination, attempts have
been made to eschew the meaning of liberation, suggesting that it is different
from independence. The story has been told to convince public that liberation
is applicable to people while independence is to country. It seems that this
is an attempt to twist, to reinterpret, and to rewrite its meaning. But, to
my knowledge, no nationalists have ever assigned liberation to people and
independence to country. That is, there is no dichotomous meaning or
concepts between liberation and independence that suggest one for the people
and the other for a country. If one looks at national liberation struggles,
use of these two words do not have mutually exclusive or contradictory meaning
to suggest one to be used for the people and
the other for country. And in fact, there meanings and concepts overlap.
One can say national liberation or national independence. Both have the same
meaning and the same connotation. For instance, there were and are many
liberation fronts and organizations that adopted the name liberation or
independence. For instance, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO),
Front for Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), Popular Front for Liberation of
Angola (MPLA), National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA),
National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), and the Algerian Front for
National Liberation (FNL), National Liberation Front of Vietnam (NLF), and the
Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) are and were among many. Here some organizations
added liberation to their name and others used independence. All means the
same thing: liberation or independence of the country and the people. The
story that liberation is for the people and independence is
for a country is a false one. The term national liberation in its natural
meaning denotes the liberation of national territory and the people of that
territory from colonial occupation. To put it even more simply, liberation
struggle against colonial occupation is a struggle for restoring the
independence and sovereignty of a colonized nation and nationalities. Hence
when we say liberation of Oromiyaa, we mean a free Oromiyaa and a free Oromo
people- -in other words, the establishment of independent people’s
Democratic Republic of Oromiyaa. This means, people are independent; the
state is independent; it is people’s state; it is a republic; it is a
democratic, and hence the democratic state means the empowerment of the
people. This means, the state and its government belongs to the people. That
is, people are the government and they own the state. Here one must
understand the individuals put in office are not the government; they are put
in the
office to serve the government: the people. Hence Oromo national struggle
for liberation or Oromo national struggle for independence against Ethiopian
colonialism is to restore the sovereignty of our people over Oromiyaa and over
its resources and their freedom and human dignity. Liberation is a very
powerful concept. It is a negation of colonialism and hence a negation of the
platform of colonial empire democratization. Empire democratization is a
concept alien to history. The term liberation really answers the question as
to what kind of Oromiyaa do we want and what kind of governance we wish to
have. In its core meaning, liberation encapsulates, among other things,
self-determination, self-reliance, democracy, freedom, social justice, human
dignity, national pride, and peace, and it includes the liberation of mind and
body, the world over. It also encapsulates the ideas of getting rid of
foreign imposed harmful cultures, ideas, and influence as
well as getting ride of ones own bad cultures and ideas. That is, cultures
and ideas that impede human and material progress. It promotes the idea of
release of human energy, resources and capabilities. It embodies the totality
of what are good and noble in humans. Hence, the meaning and concept of
liberation captures the hopes and aspirations of the Oromo people. It is for
this, our people continue on calling for liberation (bilisummaa). The founders
of the OLF understood the concept of liberation from the very beginning as at
the heart of Oromo question. Hence, liberation or bilisummaa does not have
any other meaning than what we mean it means.

OLF struggles for the liberation of Oromiyaa and its people. This liberation
is to end Oromiyaa’s political position as a colony and to this effect to
drive the colonizer from Oromiyaa. Hence the Oromo national liberation
struggle seeks to force the withdrawal of colonial military occupation from
Oromiyaa, and with that the destruction of the local pro-colonialist loyalist
armed forces and with that the wiping out the harmful colonial political and
cultural influence from Oromiyaa and winning back the lost national
sovereignty with the establishment of free, democratic, and independent
Oromiyaa. In this case, it must be understood that our struggle is not simply
for the Oromiyaanization of the Ethiopian Empire’s existing colonial
institutions but for the destruction and abolition of them and replace them
with true Oromo institutions that reflect the Oromo culture, identity,
history, and the Oromo worldview, their philosophy, and their vision. To
this effect the target of Oromo national struggle is the Ethiopian
colonialism, its institutions as represented by its police force, its security
apparatus, its military installations and facilities, and its bureaucracy, and
its local Oromo pro-colonialist loyalists, but not by means the civilians. It
is for this the OLF, its leadership, and its rank-and files members, from
the very inception, truly understood and distinguished the difference between
the real meaning of the liberation or independence from fictitious or phony
independence. It is from this understanding that the OLF, its leadership, and
its members firmly and resolutely stood alone with determination opposing and
fighting against Shanee’s political platform of Ethiopian empire
democratization, the platform that advocates for the abandoning of the
independence of Oromiyaa. We opposed it at the time when Shanee (the Asmara
group) received a support of large number of Diaspora based
Oromo nationals and even when all Oromo political organizations were confused
and went along with it. This was the time when Shanee asked the Oromo people
and the OLF to kneel down with it in humiliation before the Ethiopian colonial
rulers and in front of the World community in accepting its political platform
of the democratization of the Ethiopian empire, telling us that one day in the
distant future, Oromiyaa will get its independence without sacrifice. It
again asked the OLF leadership to lay down their arms and to disarm and
disband the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA). This was at a time when Shanee boasted to have had a support of America, Norway, and Eritrea for its platform
of Ethiopian empire democratization. We refused to accept it because we know
the true meaning of the liberation of Oromiyaa. We perfectly understand that
the Oromo struggle is anti-colonial national liberation struggle. And so as
all previous anti-colonial liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the focus of the Oromo struggle is and has been on the demand or on the question for national self-determination or national sovereignty, which embodies the institutions of popular sovereignty.

The Oromo nationalists should not borrow the meanings or concepts of
liberation or independence from the opponents of the Oromo independence. We
should not borrow the meaning or the connotation that OPDO and its likes
attached to liberation (bilisummaa). That is, we should refrain from
interpreting the meaning of liberation following in the footsteps of the Oromo
local pro-colonialist loyalist forces, as represented by OPDO and its
alliances. Let the opponents of Oromo national struggle say whatever they
want to say about liberation. Our job is to expose that misleading meaning
and interpretation attached to it. And also it is our responsibility to give a
correct meaning, interpretation and concept of it. However, it is unwise and
wrong on the part of nationalists to run away from the true and original
meaning or concept of liberation, in the hope to create and re-write another
meaning for it, simply because OPDO and its alliance distorted its
interpretation. Hence one should not fall prey to the meaning, the OPDO and
its alliance attached to it. It is equally wrong to spine, to massage, to
turn and twist so as to distort the original meaning of liberation and give it
another interpretation simply to be different from the meaning given to it by
the opponents of Oromo independence. To do so is to confuse the public. And
it is our responsibility not to confuse the public. It is wise to stick to its
original meaning and concepts as all nationalists used it in their struggles
throughout history. As we have seen OPDO, its supporters, and its masters
have been intentionally trying to distort its meaning so as to fit their
political line. Nationalists should expose this. The issue really boils down to this. The interpretation of liberation by some Oromo nationals is based on the world outside of the purpose, the goal, the understanding, and interpretation of its historical meaning and concept and also it is outside of our understanding of its meaning and concepts, in our struggle. Hence the recent attempt to interpret and reinterpret liberation to mean differently from what its meaning was, from what its meaning is and from what its meaning and concept has been is outside the scope of what was originally meant by the concept, liberation. It is based on the
interpretation outside of what we mean by it. Hence, to argue that liberation
is for the people and independence is for the country is a flawed argument and
hence such meaning is a distortion of its original and true meaning and it should be avoided”.

The author can be reached at [email protected]