Amhara: What's in a name?
by Professor John Markakis*
The occasion we have gathered here to celebrate has provoked certain thoughts I
should like to share with you. They focus on the name of the party honoured on
this occasion, the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM). Amhara is a name
with an awesome history in Ethiopia, and a political party that bears this name
is unavoidably burdened with a heavy legacy from the past. The weight of this
history is like a chain that binds a party to the past, forcing it to confront
the yesteryear rather than address the future. When it comes to political
contests on the national stage, this is a huge handicap. To use an analogy from
boxing, the party is compelled to fight with one arm tied behind its back.
History draws its subjects with broad strokes, and the case of Amhara is no
exception. The image to which the name is attached appears compact, firm,
composed of pure, homogeneous matter, undifferentiated, united, undivided; in
effect a monolith. As such it has been linked to momentous political
developments in Ethiopian history - ' Amhara domination', Amharization’ and also
became a slogan ' Amhara chauvinism’ These carry a strongly negative connotation
in the current phase of political evolution in this country, and are the burden
the party has to bear.
Inevitably, Amhara in its several guises became the subject of varied
interpretations in a highly polarized political as well as scholarly debate. '
Who is an Amhara?' is a familiar question posed at one extreme, implying there
is no such thing. ' Once an Amhara, always an Amhara' is a statement heard at
the other extreme, implying that the nature of the thing is immutable. The
object of this brief paper is to highlight certain of its features that have
contemporary relevance, without necessarily joining the debate.
Looking at the past, as we must, Amhara lends itself to several definitions and
connotations; historical, ethnological, cultural and political. In the first
instance, it refers to the inhabitants of a region by that name in the Ethiopian
highlands. Its geographical contours were anything but precise, and it itself
disappeared as an identifiable entity for a long time, when it dissolved into
its constituent provincial components - Gojjam, Gondar, Wolo, Shoa - only to
reappear very recently as a regional state in the FDRE. In the second
(ethnological) instance, Amhara refers to a branch of the Abyssinian nation,
whose other branch is Tigray. In the third (cultural) instance, Amhara refers to
a language that is exclusively its own, and a culture it shares with Tigray.
It is the fourth (political) instance that became and remains the dominant facet
of the image others perceive; the Amhara as empire builders and rulers, the
founders of the modern Ethiopian state. (Broadly correct, this interpretation
ignores the contribution of other groups- mainly Tigray, Oromo, Gurage in this
historic event.) Like all empire builders, the Amhara used state power to
appropriate resources from all regions of the empire to support an imperial
ruling class of wealth and privilege. (More precisely, the Amhara took the
lion’s share, and others shared the rest).
All these facets are familiar enough. However, they do not disclose a crucial
historical fact which is brought out when a sociological definition is added to
the previous four. Amhara society was rigidly stratified, with a vast peasant
base supporting a narrow ruling hierarchy of aristocrats and clerics, a social
structure often described as feudal. Whether one agrees or not with this
description, there is no doubt that this society was based on class divisions,
and only class analysis can highlight its implications. The main implication is
that the Amhara peasantry, itself oppressed and exploited by the ruling class,
realized little if any benefit from the empire. Indeed, by the end of the
imperial era, the northern highlands were the most impoverished part of
Ethiopia, and the people there were prey to famine. Seen from this point of
view, Amhara refers not to a nationality but to a ruling class. “To include the
peasant mass of northern Ethiopia in the designation ‘dominant’ is a gross
distortion, for this class belongs to this group in cultural and psychological
terms only.” (Markakis, 1974:8)
In consolidating its power over the empire, the ruling class – which comprised
mainly Amhara but also elements of other groups, and is more precisely described
as ‘neftegna’ – greatly expanded its horizons absorbing people from the
conquered areas. The empire builders were an extroverted lot who mingled
uninhibitedly with their subjects, settling among them, and taking local wives
and concubines whose children invariably became Amhara. They also continuously
recruited ambitious people from these areas who proved eager to join its ranks.
The recruits had to pass a cultural entry test; that is, to espouse Christianity
and speak the language of the Amhara. They formed an auxiliary elite that
reinforced imperial rule.
This process of assimilation- known as 'amharizaton'- promoted under the empire
had an obvious political implication. Its goal was the fusing of Amhara and
Ethiopian identities. Next to conquest and exploitation, 'amharization' was the
most resented imperial imposition. The process was halted, but not reversed,
later, and not before it had absorbed a significant number of people from
diverse national and cultural origins.
Ethiopian political life since the demise of the imperial regime has been
dominated by the imperative need to reverse and redress the iniquities
attributed to that regime, in the midst of civil conflict whose roots are traced
and blamed on the same regime, and against a background of seemingly permanent
and worsening economic crisis. The military regime that followed imperial rule
sought radical solutions and applied them forcefully, but succeeded only in
exacerbating old problems and created new ones. All these are the stuff of a
lively, if often strident, political debate, which the recently introduced
federalism and creeping democratization have allowed to flourish.
Unsurprisingly, Amhara with its many links to the despised imperial past is a
staple feature of this debate. Crudely put, any intervention from that source is
perceived and denounced as motivated by the desire to restore the past with all
its iniquities. 'Amhara chauvinism' is a powerful contemporary political slogan
based on the presumption of an undifferentiated, unchanging political tradition
and practice on the part of Amhara, however one defines this group.
In fact, Amhara lends itself to radically different political ideologies and
practices, which often have been violently opposed to one another; never more
obviously so, than in the uprising that ended imperial rule. This was provoked
by radical counter- elite imbued with a revolutionary social ethos and the self
- appointed mission of overthrowing the imperial regime. Modern education was
the hallmark of the group that came to be known as the student movement, and the
Amhara were its majority, if only because they had greater access to education
earlier.
Amhara were heavily involved in the ranks and leadership of the student movement
and the several political organizations that emerged from it to struggle against
the imperial regime and its military successor. It is correct to say that Amhara
were crucially involved in the struggle that ended Amhara imperial rule.
Furthermore, the radicals denounced the ' amharization' of Ethiopia. It was an
Amhara, Wallelign Mekonen, who first exposed what he labelled 'a prison of
nationalities.'
Rejecting the cultural chauvinism of the imperial regime, the radicals sought to
define an Ethiopian identity free of links to any specific nationality to match
their vision of the country and its future. I recall a stormy debate at the
University in the late 1960s whose topic was ' Etiopiawiw Mano?' (Who is the
Ethiopian?). Any mention of specific nationalities or regions was shouted down
and, in accordance with the Marxist orientation of the radicals, the meeting
concluded that it is the peasant who represents Ethiopia; that is, a class
definition.
The effort to arrive at a definition of a national identity divested of the
Amhara link continued throughout the struggle against the Dergue, which
witnessed the fragmentation of the radical movement. Ostensibly, the fracture
divided those who chose class as the most effective basis of mobilization in
that struggle from those who chose nationality for the same purpose. Underlying
it, however, was the Amhara factor. The class advocates were accused of 'greater
nation chauvinism', implying a persistent, exclusive Amhara claim to
Ethiopianness, and the others of ' narrow nationalism,' implying a less than
total commitment to the national state.
The organization whose anniversary is celebrated today emerged during that phase
and bears the marks of it. It sprung from the ashes of the Ethiopian Peoples
Revolutionary Party, the main advocate of the class struggle. It original name
was the Ethiopian Peoples Democratic Movement ( EPDM), and its envisaged
constituency then was not simply an Amhara region, but the country at large.
Some years later, it changed its name to Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM)
to fit the federalist design of the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic
Front (EPRDF), of which it had become a part. Its constituency then became the
newly delineated Amhara region. With the name came the burden discussed above.
In the new constitutional arrangement, Amhara is one of several regional states,
it is no longer politically dominant, nor is it synonymous with Ethiopia. While
Amharigna remains the official language of the state and lingua franca of
Ethiopia, the process of 'amharization' is overtaken by the emancipation of
other cultures and languages in the country. This downgrading has not produced a
homogeneous Amhara political response.
Another political organization - All-Amhara Peoples Political Organization (AAPO)
- emerged to challenge the ANDM on its home region. Once more, Amhara appears
with a split political personality. The new organization shared the burden that
comes with the name Amhara, but this does not make it easier to bear for either
party.
The AAPO later mutated into the All- Ethiopia Unity Party, a move that was
interpreted as an attempt to shed this burden. It also became the core member of
the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), the coalition that presented the
EPRDF with a major challenge in the elections of 2005. It was in this contest
that the ghost of ' Amhara chauvinism' reappeared as a slogan with significant,
albeit ambiguous, political resonance. Consistent with its history, the name and
the slogan attached to it carry different meanings depending on the audience,
and this makes it difficult to assess its true impact.
------------
*Presented to the symposium organized by the Organizing
Committee of the 25th Silver Jubilee of the Amhara National Democratic movement
- ANDM.
Sidama Music
|
Sidama Times |
Sidama Coffee