Jon Abbink

‘Land to the foreigners’: economic, legal, and socio-cultural aspects of new land acquisition schemes in Ethiopia

The Ethiopian government is an active partner in the general trend in Africa to hand out large tracts of land to foreign companies and governments for big commercial farming in order to enhance national development and growing energy needs. Projected enclave enterprises take off on lands of low density and use but often inhabited or used by a variety of local peoples that have no legal title to their land, despite their customary and usufruct rights, because all land in Ethiopia is state property (since 1975). The economic impact of these enterprises (export crop farms, biofuel enterprises) is expected to be mainly on the national level (land lease fee income, export product growth), and to a lesser extent on that of the regional governments. While there are precedents to these land deals in Ethiopia, doling out local lands without much consultation of local inhabitants or land users (e.g. in the large-scale resettlement schemes and state farms), this time the controversy is augmented by insecurity about long-term ecological and food security effects and the generation of friction and counter-discourses that will make the schemes foci of conflict. National territory – ‘the motherland’ – and culturally significant locations are also being leased out, threatening social systems and cultural identities of local groups. Apart from the issue of food insecurity effects, economic dependency on foreign sources may increase. Nationalist issues thus may mingle with social, economic, and cultural heritage issues in emerging concerns on the large-scale leases. Critical discourse and protest on this topic is discouraged by the authorities. The paper will discuss a number of arguments in this debate, comment on some incipient large-scale land acquisition projects, and sketch a research agenda, focusing on the legal and social issues.

Ethnic-based federalism and ethnicity in Ethiopia: reassessing the experiment after 20 years

Abstract One of the core principles instituted by the post-1991 government in Ethiopia that took power after a successful armed struggle was ethnic-based federalism, informed by a neo-Leninist political model called revolutionary democracy. In this model, devised by the reigning Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (later EPRDF), ethnic identity was to be the basis of politics. Identities of previously non-dominant groups were constitutionally recognized and the idea of pan-Ethiopian identity de-emphasized. This article examines the general features and effects of this new political model, often dubbed an “experiment”, with regard to ideas of federal democracy, socio-economic inclusiveness, and ethno-cultural and political rights. After 20 years of TPLF/EPRDF rule, the dominant rhetorical figure in Ethiopian politics is that of ethnicity, which has permeated daily life and overtaken democratic decision-making and shared issue-politics. The federal state, despite according nominal decentralized power to regional and local authorities, is stronger than any previous Ethiopian state and has developed structures of central control and top-down rule that preclude local initiative and autonomy. Ethnic and cultural rights were indeed accorded, and a new economic dynamics is visible. Political liberties, respect for human rights and economic equality are however neglected, and ethnic divisions are on the increase, although repressed. Ethiopias recent political record thus shows mixed results, with positive elements but also an increasingly authoritarian governance model recalling the features of the countrys traditional hierarchical and autocratic political culture. This may produce more debate on the need for “adjusting the experiment”.

An historical‐anthropological approach to Islam in Ethiopia: issues of identity and politics*

Abstract The study of Islam and Islamic populations in Ethiopia has been relatively understudied since the great survey of J.S. Trimingham published in 1952. Ethiopian Islam is interesting both because of its antiquity (since the inception of Islam itself) and because of the particular patterns of interaction and symbiosis with an, until recently, predominantly Christian culture. A socio‐cultural and historical explanation of patterns of tolerance of Islam and Christianity since the 16th century deserves to be developed. In addition, the relationships between religious and ethnic identification among Ethiopias diverse populations are not well known and need further scrutiny. In the last decade, new issues of religious identity and communal political identity of Muslims in Ethiopia emerge in the wake of the political and socio‐economic reforms in federal Ethiopia and the impact of ‘globalization’ processes in the cultural sense. While Ethiopians Muslims have in recent years gone through a phase of revival...

Election observation and democratization in Africa

Preface G.Hesseling Introduction: Rethinking Democratization and Election Observation J.Abbink PART I: THE CONTEXT OF ELECTIONS IN AFRICA Democratization in Africa: The Role of Election Observation O.van Cranenburgh Elections in Africa in Historical Context S.Ellis Stability or Democracy: On the Role of Monitors, Media and Miracles I.van Kessel Elections and Civil Strife: Some Implications for International Election Observation B.de Gaay Fortman PART II: CASE STUDIES African Multipartyism and the Quest for Democratic Alternatives: Ugandan Elections Past and Present M.Doornbos Of Election, Manipulation and Observation: The 1992 and 1997 Elections in Kenya D.Foeken & T.Dietz The Organization and Observation of Elections in Federal Ethiopia: Retrospect and Prospect J.Abbink Secret Worlds, Democratization and Election Observation in Malawi R.van Dijk The 1996-1997 Elections in Chad: The Role of the International Observers R.Buijtenhuijs Elections in Mali (1992-1997): Civil Society Confronted with the Rules of Democracy M.F.Lange PART III: NEW PERSPECTIVES? POLICY ISSUES AND ELECTORAL OBSERVATION IN AFRICA International Election Observation: A Discussion on Policy and Practice W.van Binsbergen & J.Abbink Election Observation: Policies of the Netherlands Government 1992-1997 O.van Cranenburgh The Kenyan General Elections of 1997 Implementing a New Model for International Election Observation in Africa M.Rutten Index

Love and death of cattle: the paradox in Suri attitudes toward livestock

Livestock herding peoples are known for their close involvement with their animals, valuing them in multiple ways. This paper addresses the issue of the nature of emotional or moral commitment to livestock animals, particularly cattle, among a group of southwest Ethiopian livestock herders, the Suri people. From certain cases of cattle and sheep sacrifice it could be concluded that the Suri exercise particular cruelty towards their animals on certain ritual occasions. How do they see the issue of ‘affection vs. cruelty’ against stock animals themselves? How do attitudes toward animals relate to attitudes toward humans, notably neighboring ethnic groups with whom they are in conflict and who accuse them of using excessive violence? This paper argues that notions of affinity and equality indeed define human-animal relationships among the Suri but that these do not resolve the tensions inherent in their cattle being both economically useful and emotionally/aesthetically rewarding. Comparisons are made with the relationship of humans and animals as found in industrial societies.

Introduction : Rethinking democratization and election observation

This book brings together studies of the broad theme of elections and democratization in Africa since roughly 1989. In this year, the so-called ‘Third Wave’ of global democratization, which is held to have started in the 1970s (see Huntington 1991), entered a new stage in Africa. A movement of mass protests and demonstrations then emerged against the authoritarian regimes (Engel et al. 1996: 1) that had installed themselves after an initial period of multi-party or single-party politics in the post-independence era. While this tide of popular unrest partly coincided with the end of the Cold War — after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 — its origins predate it, and are rooted in socio-economic and political problems of African societies.

Religious freedom and the political order: the Ethiopian ‘secular state’ and the containment of Muslim identity politics

The 2011–2014 controversies between the Ethiopian Government and Muslim communities on the role of Islam in Ethiopia have highlighted the precarious nature of religious relations in Ethiopia. Statements by public figures and religious leaders recently have drawn attention to the nature and scope of the Ethiopian secular state order. This paper describes the recent Muslim protest movement and the response to it by the government in the light of the secular state model. While the challenges to it also extend to the large Christian community in Ethiopia, the problems became prominent mainly in the case of the Muslims, who contest perceived ‘government interference’ in their community life and self-organization. I present an overview of key recent events and of factors inducing conflict between state and religion. The discussion makes reference to more general debates on the ‘secular model’ in Ethiopia and to the familiar though somewhat worn-out paradigm of ‘identity politics’. State repression of Muslim civic protest in Ethiopia revealed insecurities of the state: rather than an instance of the process of ‘othering’ a religious community, we see a case of political crisis, and a search for new modes of governance of diversity and communal religiosity in Ethiopia. As a result of the contestations, however, the secular order of the country will not be threatened, but modified.

Comparing Cultures in Southern Ethiopia: From Ethnography to Generative Explanation

This special issue of Northeast African Studies is an exercise in comparative ethnography and theoretical exploration. It starts with the following question: Why is there such remarkable regional diversity in the cultural traditions and modes of life in the societies of southern Ethiopia, and with what kind of theoretical and ethnographic understanding can we explain it? The question has often been posed as to what extent these small-scale societies with their notable linguistic commonalities (being of the Omotic, Cushitic, and Surmic language families and thus per group suggesting a common “origin”) have shared social and economic traits, political institutions, ideologies, and ritual complexes, and what has generated their paths of differentiation. Apart from evoking fascinating ethnographic questions, this issue also raises theoretical problems, of wider significance outside the Ethiopian ethnographic context, related to structural comparison, societal change, and the import of underlying ecological and socioeconomic factors or processes that fuel cultural differentiation. Regional comparison is a well-established research tradition in anthropology and has many forms. There is the school of statistical comparison and correlation, going back to the now largely ignored work of Harold Driver and his group (Driver 1973; Jorgensen 1974), and which is partly continued in the electronic journal World Cultures and in the large number of studies of the Human Relations Areas Files at Yale University. The work of

Conflict and social change on the south-west Ethiopian frontier: an analysis of Suri society

Abstract This article examines changing configurations of regional conflict in south-west Ethiopia around the Suri people, a “beleaguered” ethnic group of about 24–25,000 people living on the Sudanese–Ethiopian border. The question will be asked around why the Suri, a small agro-pastoral people at the margins of state power centres, failed to develop solutions to growing problems of group conflict, challenges of state policy, the spread of small arms (since the late 1980s), and the lack of forming new local alliances with neighbouring groups. Social and cultural effects of violence are fragmenting Suri society and their regional position is weakened, in contrast to, for instance, the Nyangatom or Anywaa, neighbouring ethnic groups of comparable size, but who are more successful in the ethno-federal political structure of post-1991 Ethiopia. In addition, while the Suri are affected by new globalizing influences like tourism and evangelical Christianity, there is only a very slow movement towards, respectively, more inclusive identification – e.g., by religious conversion – or through the incorporation of new elements into their mode of life. The reasons for the present crisis of Suri society, which is partly one of livelihoods decline, failing identification and insecurity about the future, will be explored and the conditions of inter-ethnic instability in the region described. The role of the Ethiopian state as a political model largely incapable of accommodating difference and diversity will also be discussed in assessing the “fate” of smaller ethnic groups such as the Suri in politico-economically marginal zones with high levels of insecurity.

Famine, Gold and Guns - the Suri of Southwestern Ethiopia, 1985-91

Over the past few years, the Suri have lived through a deep ecological and social crisis without substantial external aid from either the Ethiopian government or international aid agencies. They have experienced drought, cattle disease and an increasing level of violent conflict with their neighbours, leading to the severe disruption of their traditional agro-pastoral subsistence system and settlement pattern. Through migration, the exploitation of gold resources and investment in automatic weapons, however, they have managed virtually a full recovery of their economy and society.