Founded in Memory of the ‘Good Old Times’: The Clan Assembly of Hiddii, in Eastern Shewa, Ethiopia

Abstract

Dealing with questions of the transmittance and transformation of social institutions and organisational patterns throughout history, this article describes an Ethiopian clan assembly which was founded in 1992 in eastern Shewa by members of the Oromo ethnic group, in response to ongoing changes in the ethno-political arena that went along with previous government changes in Ethiopia. The notion of ‘nostalgia’ is introduced as an analytical tool to explain the foundation and growth of this institution. Nostalgia, in this context, is understood as a non-derogative, dynamic concept, and recognised as a powerful motivating force for social action with at times direct effects on social structure. The article shows that, although the official designation of the assembly was to re-install old, traditional patterns of Oromo social organisation and to establish a counter-force to Amhara dominance in the region, the Oromo clan assembly relied to a significant degree on organisational patterns and ‘know-how’ deriving from modern-day contexts and spheres of interaction with the Amhara, such as jointly-run burial associations, NGO capital-raising, and market-oriented projects. The question about the relationship between a possible recognition of ‘tradition’, or continuity on the one hand, and innovation, or ‘invented tradition’ on the other, is thus raised.

Notes

1. Lewis, ed., History and Social Anthropology, ix.

2. Halbwachs, The Collective Memory.

3. Douglas, ‘How Institutions Think’, 70.

4. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, 119, 231–240, 246. Hutchinson speaks even more directly of ‘chains of memory’ that bind Nuer families together: Hutchinson, ‘Death, Memory’, 60.

5. Middleton and Edwards, eds, Collective Remembering, 1.

6. Cole, ‘The Uses of Defeat’, 105.

7. The term nostalgia has, in earlier works, been used to denote homesickness or a mental illness, but has since then undergone a fundamental transformation in meaning: it is now seen as basically a sociological phenomenon, and not a disease. See Davis, Yearning for Yesterday, 2.

8. van Dijk, ‘Pentecostalism’, 160.

9. Boyer, Tradition as Truth.

10. Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition.

11. Tafla, ed., Asma Giyorgis; Asserate, Die Geschichte; Ege, Class, State and Power, 191ff.; Pankhurst, Ethiopian Borderlands, 279ff.

12. Salole, ‘Who are the Shoans?’; Asserate, Die Geschichte, 34ff.; Ege, Class, State and Power, 197ff.; Pankhurst, Ethiopian Borderlands, 316ff.

13. Bahrey, ‘History of the Galla’, 116ff.; Hassen, The Oromo of Ethiopia, 18ff.; Pankhurst, Ethiopian Borderlands, 279ff., 324ff.

14. Asserate, Die Geschichte, 23ff.; Tafla, ed., Asma Giyorgis, 491ff.; Ege, Class, State and Power, 18ff.

15. Ege, Class, State and Power, 192ff.

16. People in eastern Shewa, like historians, tend to subdivide history into reigns. Changes in government usually bring with them changes in political slogans, and certain policies can indeed intrude on the lives of ordinary people. Where not too much change has occurred, people tend to summarise governments that followed one another, or to leave out some of them, especially when a reign was short, or when it had no significant impact on their lives. Thus, the Shewan people conceive the recent historical order as one chiefly divided into the era of the Amharic emperors, and the socialist Dergue period that followed it.

17. This is a reference to the Amhara.

18. This is a later version of the original text. When the first ‘record book’ was full, all necessary information, including the introductory passage, was copied into a new file, and the book-keeping was continued on the empty pages. The original could not be found at the time of my research. I am very grateful to Dessalegn Kebede for his help with the translation from Amharic and the transcription of several of the assembly meetings’ speeches in Oromo. During 2000–02 Dessalegn and Lamma Kebede accompanied me to meetings of the assembly and assisted in recording them.

19. This means many more people being integrated into the conciliation and payment system, since every member, usually advanced in years, is a family and household head who represents the more junior members of that family. The ten villages are: Hiddii, Hora, Karfee, Ofuu, Borora, Borora Xinnaa, Dhadhaa, Qaaxillaa, Siree Qaalluu and Qaallittii.

20. Initially they met three times a year. Each time, they had to pay 4 Birr. Later, it was decided to hold the meetings once a month, with a 1-Birr fee at each meeting. Either way, payments do not exceed 12 Birr per person per year. This is not an enormous sum, but for people who are accustomed to counting every Birr, neither is it insignificant.

21. This is referred to as rakkoo naanoo, a ‘problem of the surroundings’.

22. So, for instance, at one meeting a man complained about the lack of discipline in the discussion at the previous meeting, when people ‘just came to drink’, failing to formally request permission to stand and speak, instead simply sitting and talking amongst themselves. The case was formally discussed afterwards in the assembly.

23. Being ‘Oromo’ is paraphrased in the paper as anyone ‘having the Oromo law’.

24. The tree is situated in front of an Orthodox church compound dedicated to St. Giyorgis. Some say that Boxora Adii founded the church, which was claimed (in 2002) to be 168 years old. Others say that the tree was there long before the church.

25. Although the people of Shewa use an Orthodox Christian calendar – 30 days for each of 12 months and a 13th month of 5 days – the use of the 27th day of the month does not necessarily indicate deep Christian faith, but might in fact be interpreted as harking back to a long-vanished Oromo lunar calendar, in which a month ideally consisted of 27 days. Some sources indicate that at some point in the past Oromo lineage representatives gathered at the end of the lunar month, and, spending the night together, awaited the appearance of the new moon.

26. These ‘other people’ belong, for example, to the Galaan or to the Gumbichu. The Galaan, who share with the Illuu a wider group solidarity as descendants of the Tulama ancestor, are senior to the Illuu in the descent system.

27. Even the anti-Amhara polemics in the introductory passage of the assembly's foundation paper, cited above, was written in Amharic.

28. Iddir probably evolved in the twentieth century, or perhaps the late nineteenth, in Addis Ababa, where migrants had to cope with urbanisation and the monetarisation of the economy. It may have been developed by a group of Soddo Gurage traders. See Pankhurst, ‘The Role and Space for Iddirs’, 6, 8.

29. An adult son is expected to take out ‘insurance’ for himself, his wife and his children through his own iddir membership, even if he should still live in his father's compound. A daughter who is married and/or lives elsewhere is not, in the case of her own death or that of her children, usually taken into account for any payment to her father by his iddir.

30. The widening of entitlement to payment from sole household dependants to the broader category of relatives is explained by the fact that whole families are at risk from retaliation. Their interest in reconciliation is thus publicly recognised by the assembly.

31. The association can, for example, decide to fix membership payment at 2 Birr in the months after harvest, and to reduce it to 0.50 Birr for the duration of the rainy season. In the other months, a fee of 1 Birr can be levied, with the aim of maintaining the annual subscription at 12 Birr.

32. An individual who, due to personal misfortune, is unable to pay his membership fee to an iddir must write a letter of explanation; this is then read to the gathered members at the next meeting, when the individual must stand up and beg the crowd for understanding. Sometimes he is subject to verbal abuse, and in general only severe hardship is accepted as an excuse. The clan assembly is much more flexible in this context.

33. Every member is a shareholder of the assembly's common property. Whenever someone wants to join the association, the entire current assets of the group is calculated in monetary terms, and divided by the number of current members. The figure that comes out is the amount of money which the applicant must bring in as his share or investment. Conversely, however, when someone leaves, he is not paid his share; his investment stays with the group, and thus he makes a loss. Even a person whose membership lapsed, for whatever reason, has to pay a new deposit as with any newcomer. These regulations are quite successful in preventing a frequent coming and going among members.

34. Younger people constituted another ‘target audience’. However I did not observe any such teaching of the younger generation. Remarkably, some of the elders charged with teaching the law were not themselves wholly expert in it (there are only three elders in the committee altogether).

35. One NGO which is very active in the area supports exactly this kind of activity. In order to strengthen the economic position of women, the latter are given large amounts of credit to buy grain at times of low market prices. They store the crops and sell them when the price is high. Afterwards they must pay back the NGO but may keep the profits. During the socialist era this kind of activity was prohibited.

36. In the other committees, members are only changed after an individual failure has occurred.