The Roots of Ethnic politics in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is the only country which excercise Ethnic based federalism in the horn of Africa because of this sometime i want to share my experience how this evolved around the student movement of the 60s and 70s as well why the members of the ruling party such as Leggesse Zenawi and others stick to this ideas as a solution to the question of nation and nationalities.

Since i was a bit late to the 60s students movement except i was one of the kids who went to bury an empty funeral box for Tilahun Gizaw at the saint Mary Church in Mekelle my participation was minimal. What i remember of the time was the blue magazine published and distributed by the student council at Atse Yohanse secondary school,may be this time Legesse was also at Adwa.

My foccus will be mostly from the early 70s where i used to be one of the students who know him very well as well why he tried to bring an old ideas which evolve at our school after a long guerrila warefare.

As students i can say that our school was a mixed forum of Ehnic groups from all over the country with good educational backgrounds the reason being to produce the elites which could contribute to the future of the country (not bad idea).

It was during this time that students fight each other joining their ethnic background by using sticks and bricks at each other.This tells our people that that there was also some issue related to ethnic roots which is new to most of the people who live at harmony among them in all places and conditions(EVEN THOUGH some Tigreans come from Gamo Gofa/Amhara from Harar or Sidamo etc).

In 1970s was a clash between the Amhara and Oromo students and before there was also clashes between the Tigreans and Amhara students which sometimes police was invited to settle the case.

These backgrounds lay grass root hatred and there was at the time an excercise to teach Quobee in the time the example given was Ziad Barre who started Latin written Somali language as now it stands for Quobee. This time produced people like Legesse,Yohanes(Lencho),Negerri,Solomon,Jifar,Zemicheal Oqbe,Alemu,Asfaw bomb ras,Brehane wedi chewa,Abel etc emerged, of these some came to form the trasitional government after the fall of the Military junta.

Thsi ill driven and dreamt idea was easy to excercise when one has the gun and what started to free Tigray ended up to a mock to free Ethiopia from Dictator and replace another Autocratic Leggesse.

What we learn from the above situation is that unless and otherwise we fight this divide and rule ethnic based government our misery will last for our childeren and we have to stop for a second and think what every one of us what we have to contribute. That does not mean interms of positive one but also to not contribute on the negative side is also a positive contibution to the struggle of the Ethiopia People.