"GOD SPEAK TO US"

Performing Power and Authority in Salale, Ethiopia

Asafa T Dibaba

atdibaba@indiana.edu

Indiana University
Bloomington, USA

ABSTRACT

Using folkloric and historical approaches, this study posits that, in order to understand the choices people make, it is vital to see the world as they see it. In scholarship, I argue, we need to incorporate these perceptions of reality in our interpretations of the actions of those we study. Contrary to the skeptical postmodernist understanding that modernity is a period of decay and a move toward a final collapse and oblivion (Rosenau 1992), traditionalism is revitalized in this paper as a strategic primitivism, as a cultural resistance that continues to manifest itself and to relocate the past in the present (Blank and Howard 2013). In the present study my aim is to examine Salale traditional legal performances as narratives of resistance against domination. Through the three theopolitical counter-discourses identified in this study, i.e. guma (blood feud), araara (peace-making), and waadaa (covenant), the interaction between theos (god) and politics is apparent. Hence, the oath “God speak to us” is a belief that nagaa (peace) is a presupposed will of God that humanity is privileged and obliged to guard.  The study concludes that such oppositional traditional practices constitute the Salale cultural resistance against the mainstream culture and offer more hope for challenging the dominant social discourse and constructing a strong sense of Oromummaa, i.e. Oromoness.   

Key Words:

Salale Oromo. Tradition. Authority. Waadaaa. Resistance.  Power. Oromummaa.      

    

INTRODUCTION

In this study, based on ethnographic examples from Salale, Ethiopia, I theorize that waadaa (covenant) ¹ is a basic non-violent principle of the traditional legal system at the centre of Salale Oromo resistance culture. The folkloric and historical approaches used in this study are used to develop a general conceptual framework which is called ethnography of resistance poetics. This poetics draws on the Foucauldian notion of resistance (Foucault 2000; 1976; Hoy, 2004) which, like many other contemporary arguments fails to distinguish among different types of resistance to power. That is, whether Foucault’s theory considers the specificities of nation, ethnicity, and religion, or region and whether or not, from Foucault’s perspective, resistance is emancipatory or reactionary, it is not clear (Anderson 2013).

The basic premise here is that the resistance poetics and action of ordinary people is not just through economic (materialistic) means. Unlike James Scott’s (1985; 1990) notion of “hidden transcript” centered on “deterministic economism” and “pragmatic resignation” (Gutmann, 1993:78) of the subordinate to the dominant class, I argue, an emancipatory resistance act is equally a spiritual engagement and necessitates a poesies of “making,” “transforming,” and continuing the struggle through “words” and “praxis”. The aim here is to sustain resistance as an emancipatory act (Hoy, 2004:2). James Scott’s ‘hidden transcript’ focuses more on actions such as breaking tools, sabotaging share cropping etc. secretly and less on overt actions and poetics or folkloric means of resistance. The notion of “hidden” resistance is also contested (Gutmann, 1993). For the purpose of this study, I introduce ethnography of resistance poetics as the analytical framework used to interpret and analyze the collective shared experience of the people, more specifically, the traditional legal performance constituted into the local history. Against the academic and traditional political history, ‘history from below,’ focuses on the experience and perspectives of ordinary people. The local history, i.e., “history from below” (Hobsbawm in Krantz 1986), takes the ordinary people and their experience as its subject, and serves the understanding of features of resistance against the historically unjust power relations.

Why an ethnography of resistance poetics? Over the years the main objective of Western ethnographic research has been the “descriptive account of native culture and the provision of basic reliable information for Western audiences” (Owusu, 2009) about the so-called “primitive” peoples in Africa or in the Amazon basin. This study exemplifies data from traditional bearers ² and users in Salale as an attempt to understand the people and their world of power relations. In so doing, the aim here is to sustain resistance as an emancipatory act under a disempowering situation (Hoy 2004:2). The study draws on the Foucauldian premise that power is only power when it is exercised or performed (Hoy 2004; Foucault 1976). Hence, the present study is a move towards ethnography of resistance poetics as a critical stance that epitomizes emancipatory acts through examining performances of tradition in Salale and revisits “antimodernism” in folklore in the guise of revivalist strategic primitivism. The central argument here revolves around at least three interrelated questions: 1) how can one be critical of a dominant social order and its discourse under a disempowering situation, in what context?  2) what traditional resources can be delineated (stand out) as something culturally distinct and recurrent theme that runs through folklore as critical expressive action in Salale? 3) in addition to the fear of being usurped by the dominant culture what other limits threaten Salale Oromo traditions? how does tradition challenge those forces?

Unlike James Scott’s (1985) “everyday ‘hidden resistance’” I argue that everyday forms of resistance must not be necessarily hidden. Contrary to the fictitious double digit economic growth report by the government, "half of Ethiopia’s 85 million people live below the poverty line and 10 to 20 percent rely on food aid every year" (Human Rights Watch Report/Ethiopia, 2010). This growing disenchantment of the poor, I posit, is leading to new forms of social protest and resistance against the organized violent structure of police force, media, and local official’s intrusions. Though there is no organized overt resistance and rebellion in Salale at present but there is a continuing sporadic social banditry, internal migrations and flight, and the accompanying poetics of singing resistance, commemorating ethnic heroes, and revivalist tendency toward tradition.

In an attempt to explore those folkloric and historical enquiries this study is organized into three sections. In the first part I make an attempt to construct a historical and theoretical framework for the study of unequal power relationships in Salale. I argue that the idea of tradition follows the global (national) scheme while its understanding and practices in the process are local. The interaction between the notion of “god” and “politics,” i.e. the idea of theopolitics, implies the traditional Abyssinian common belief that “politics” is determined by the supposed will of God and rulers are elects of God, against the Oromo egalitarian view of gada (Legesse 2000; 1973) and waaqeffanna religion (Bartels 1983). In the second part, using one ethnographic case example from Ethiopia, I demonstrate the cultural traditionalism of Salale Oromo performances (of power and authority) sanctioned under a solemn oath, waadaaa (covenant) and under other symbolic rituals. In the final section, towards the interdisciplinary analysis of the ethnographic case example a “legal narrative” model   (Richland 2008) is applied in line with the indigenous legal model. The aim is to closely examine the actions of Salale elders who serve to construct a symbolic reformulation of traditionalism as an act of strategic primitivism intertwined with a broader set of meanings embedded in folkloric legal data pertaining to justice, legitimacy, and agency.  

Salale: the Setting

Salale, as the North Shawa Zone is generally called, is one of the 17 administrative zones of Oromia Regional State in Ethiopia. The Salale share borders with the Amhara Region (Orthodox Christian) to the North and a small bit of border to the Northeast with distinctive blend of cultures. According to the regional statistical data about 91% of the population is engaged in agriculture with 95% of Orthodox Christians (Oromiya 2010) following the occupation by Shawan Amhara rulers in the first half of the 19^th century, mainly since Sahle Selassie’s rule (r1813-1847) (Ege 1996). Historically, the Salale became a seat for Abyssinian princes and princesses as it is closer to the capital city, Addis Ababa (Informant, Gurmu B, 2010; Tsegaye 2003). The Salale Oromo have been suffering inequality under the Orthodox Christian Abyssinian domination mainly since their encounter with Ras Darge, who represented the royal family in the second half of the 19^th century. Earlier than any other Oromo clans, the Salale became subject to assimilation, political oppression and economic exploitation due to their geographical proximity to the historically Shawan Kingdom. Consequently, under the Abyssinian rule led by Haile Selassie (r1931-1974), Amharic language became the official (and therefore court) language and Orthodox Christianity became the dominant state religion. Instead of the traditional egalitarian gada system, the hierarchical Shawan supremacy became the rule in the region (Tsegaaye ibid; Informants: Ragassa, Gurmu, Sime).

Until very recently Oromo historiography has been scant and/or inaccurate (Jalata, 1996). In the process of reconstructing Oromo history, the case of Salale Oromo needs a special attention mainly because of their close geographical location and proximity to the Shawan Orthodox Christian community. Present day Ethiopia was created by highland rulers and settler colonizers with the military leadership of hounded Oromo warlords in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries during the conquest by Menelik (r.1889-1913) and enmeshed with different ethnic groups under one imperial rule (Tsegaye 2003). Perhaps most relevant in this respect is Svein Ege’s (1996) description of the unequal historical relationship between the Salale Oromo of the  Tulama branch and the Shawan rulers in the 1840’s and after. Among other factors that fumed Oromo resistance,  the threat of invasion and building garrison towns (such as Fiche/Commando in Salale), the assimilation often provoked resistance as the Oromo “sought to defend their own culture as long as possible” (Ege, pp195, 196).

The nature of the government established in the area was determined by the “means of control for the Shawans and means of resistance for the Oromo” (Ege, p191), which includes assimilation to conquer and cultural resistance to subvert the conquerors’ power. Justice was one of the means of political control for the Shawans and it had ideological importance for the king to hear the most disputed cases first brought to the administrative high court (wambaroch) and only later to be taken to the king’s hearing (Ege, p 133, citing Rochet, 1841b, and Isenberg and Krapf, 1843). Given the awful situation under conquest and assimilation, throughout the unequal historical relationship under the successive Abyssinian rulers, the Salale traditional law was dysfunctional. Following the conquest and the Ethiopian modern/official law that claimed sovereignty and dominion over its subjects, the Salale (Oromo) came to practice two legal systems, i.e. traditional law and state law. The assimilative power of the Imperial state law was immense as it decreed Amharic language a national language and Orthodox Christianity a state religion, both used as a state machinery to incapacitate the ethnic identity of minority groups in Ethiopia.

The new Ethiopian Constitution (1995) assigns supposedly extensive powers to the newly-created regional states divided sub-regionally into zones, districts (woredas), and kebeles. Kebeles or literally villages are products of the previous Derg regime overthrown in 1991. In many ways kebeles are considered as the fundamental unit and the smallest recognized division of local government having parallel administrative and judicial structures with districts. In practice kebeles serve as the primary level of institutions with local officials called cabinets.

Through those lower local entities such as kebeles “initially designed to control the population in a system of centralized rule” (World Bank, 2004:2), the centralized “authoritarian ethnic federalism” tightens its control over the lower orders of governance. Thus, the government remains “a de facto one-party State, where the EPRDF, i.e., the ruling party, has spawned local ‘ethnic’ variants, which act as relays for the central power” (ibid, 3). In the face of such political and sociocultural challenges, the people strive to revitalize waadaaa (covenant) as a means to sustain justice and peace in a non-violent way and as resistance against disintegration and social/moral alienation. Hence, a local institution such as traditional court helps to reenact waadaaa and address “problems of access to justice by the poor and other vulnerable groups” (World Bank, 2001, p.19). Though the Ethiopian empire is said to have a long history of legal framework, i.e. fetha negest or law of the kings compiled in Arabic partly from the Byzantine rulers, religious and customary laws remain functional throughout the country, and the Salale traditional court is the case in point. Next, I turn to illustrating the conceptual framework and methodology.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODS

Information for this particular project comes from the fieldwork carried out in Salale, Ethiopia, in March 2010. The fieldwork consisted of observations, discussions and interviews with community elders, ritual leaders, the traditional judge, and various actors including local officials. From a revivalist perspective, a scholarly work is believed to be culture-based and “our approach must be grounded in experience, our own and that of the subject of our study” (Guigne 2008:15). The cultural elements selected for a scholarly study “often have a local or ethnic base and are called traditions” (Siikala and Ulyashev, 2011: 320), which are the bases of their assumptions. It is important to note that the need to closely study oppositional discourses and unequal power relations in general has been impaired by the lack of appropriate theoretical and methodological tools. On the other hand, the humanistic point of view emphasized the “lore” using literary approach to the recorded texts (Dundes 2005; Brunvand 1998; Jackson 1971). For the present purpose, ethnography of resistance poetics is proposed as an interdisciplinary analytical tool to examine folklore performance as an expressive event and to critically explore what goes on among the people in the oral context. The Salale performance of traditionalism as cultural resistance reminds us of the power exercised by the least privileged citizens in the reconfiguration of   national culture and identity in Ethiopia.

Among other traditional approaches used to maintain justice at local level, legal empowerment³ (LE) is a trend that encourages the poor to take charge of their lives. It is an alternative “use of legal services and related development activities used to increase disadvantaged populations’ control over their lives” (Golub 2003). LE seeks to use law as a tool to protect and advance the interests of the poor and marginalized, and represents a paradigm shift from previous top-down justice sector reform policies (such as the Western-led law and development approach and the rule of law tenets). The LE approach is employed as a bottom-up approach focusing on four comprehensive principles: access to justice and the rule of law, property rights, labour rights, and business rights (Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, 2008:27). Human rights are at the center of LE, the aim of which is to reconfigure the relationship between the state and citizens at the national and local level (ibid, p29) in conjunction with local institutions. Human rights violation by oppressive state structures pose a serious challenge, though as a broader notion LE extends beyond legal processes and aims to capitalize on the transformative, enabling potential of law to assist poverty reduction and safeguard rights. Thus, conceptually, under a LE approach, access to justice and the rule of law are considered to be an “enabling framework” through which it is possible to achieve the full realization of rights to which local legal institutions flourish. In relation to multiple legal voices, Nina and Schwikkar (1996)  maintain that “the existence of multiple 'legal' orders in any one particular community is a manifestation of legal pluralism” (p69).

Ethnography of Resistance Poetics

The poetics of resistance interprets and analyzes the collective shared experiences “constituted into local history” and serves as a reference point to direct attention to understanding the features of “resistance from below” against the historically unjust power relations. Jeff Conant (2010) writes about the Chiapa’s resistance experience in Mexico, that for the Chiapas “resistance is a strategy for cultural survival” (p34). That is, the struggle of the ordinary people is not just economic (material) but also spiritual and social and necessitates a more subtle action, a poiesis, of “making,” “transforming,” and continuing the struggle through “words” and “praxis” to sustain the resistance as an emancipatory act. The “word” is a testimony for the re-existence of the oppressed person who tells the oppressor he resists therefore he exists.  The reality of the re-existence of the oppressed is beyond his collective imagination, beyond the forceful homogenization of the nation-state. It is the truth to be materialized through performing, fighting and fiercely defending, wording, naming and re-creating (re-storying) the social reality, and reconstructing it into various histories (from below), not just the monolithic single history of domination. The struggle is partly to fit this world of the oppressed into many other such worlds elsewhere through resistance poetics which the ethnographer’s role is to excavate it, analyze and connect it to other uncharted terrains.

Hence, the study of the facts necessitates an interdisciplinary method, which is the focus of the   resistance poetics model in the present study. This study draws on the postmodernist view of resistance as an emancipatory act, that is, deconstructing the status quo through deconstructing modernism, unlike a mere resurrection of lost traditions set against modernism (Hoy 2004; Foucault 2002).  The basic assumption here is that ordinary people turn to words and performances as emancipatory social praxis when they are put indefinitely in unequal historical power relationships and dominant culture. They turn their wretched conditions into folklore (expressive actions), into jokes, stories, myths, songs, festivals and rituals, and dance to all that is overtly incommunicable. Through such strategic primitivism, the oppressed critically and creatively communicate what happened to them and propel their cause by artistically articulating their demands (justice, work, land, food, freedom, rights, and all that humanity cannot survive without) among themselves and also to the oppressor. They may also simply practice tradition for its own sake.

The concept of folklore as a conveyer of “antimodernism” can be theorized by the semantic notion of resistance embedded, though implicitly, within the word ‘folk’ (volk) as “marginal or subaltern peoples” (Klein 2001:5712). Klein insists that rather than a mere collection and ethnography, “the role of folklorists today is to assist people who lack political power in their quest to gain a public voice” (ibid). The historical development of folkloristics also shows that folklore scholarship was rooted within nationalism and the idea of a nation. One can note in this connection the Grimm brothers’ works (1812) and Eliyas Lonnrot’s Kalevala (1835), an assemblage of Finnish songs about their dire situation under 800 years of Swedish and Russian domination (Leach 1984).

When Bill Ivey exclaimed at the American Folklore Society conference (2007) that “antimodernism is a central motivating engine that runs through all folklore” the claim was as much about folklorists as it was about folklore and its resurgent mission (antimodernism). In Ivey’s view, “antimodernism” gives folklorists a critical stance and revivalism a path to action and reform” (cited in Blank and Howard 2013:3). Revivalism favours the historical importance of vibrant traditions as a representation of new sociocultural context in the face of domination (Guigne 2008). In this view, an ethnography of resistance poetics is a constructive schema to help folkloristics in redefining itself vis-à-vis those constitutive relationships emerging between “folklore as a counterhegemonic postmodern culture” (Warshaver 1991) and the ever stifling postmodern social and economic systems. The task is not unproblematic, however. As part of the move from the “hegemonic academic folklore theory and practice” toward a challenging search for “cultural product and professional activity of a different instance” (Warshaver 1991:219), the process involves theorizing on both paradigmatic (conceptual) and methodological levels.

In what follows I theorize waadaaa (covenant) as a fundamental non-violent principle of Salale Oromo resistance culture. Traditionally, waadaaa among the Salale is the best example of legal pluralism, as I shall demonstrate below. 

The Waadaaa Principle

Each culture is likely to have developed traditional rationalizations for its positions. The assumptions and worldviews of the people we study are built around those rationalizations.  Non-violence” (araara) is not about the absence of conflict in the lives of Salale Oromo; it is about the presence of the will to peace and mutual interdependence in spite of it. Based on the waadaaa (covenant) principle, the Salale have been institutionalizing such a “law avoidance” ideology about how people should behave when problems arise in absence of formal legal institutions, the phenomenon also called “harmony ideology” (Starr and Goodale, 2002:87), or when the state law is coercive and human agency is in danger. Against external pressures and internal degeneration, waadaaa served as an effective non-violent mechanism since in the region “a system of ...‘ranked' ethnic groups emerged, and an explosive combination of ethnic and class contradictions was the result, creating the potential for massive conflict” (Etefa 2012).

Among the Salale Oromo in Ethiopia, waadaaa (covenant) is the will to peace (nagaa), and nagaa is the establishment of it in the daily life experiences of the people where it is restored through rituals and traditional practices. However, where there is no sovereignty and human agency is hampered, it is problematic to perpetuate waadaaa as an unconditionally embedded process of social/moral engagement and a non-violent principle informed by the past, oriented toward the future while reenacting in the present. In Salale, waadaaa is about merging identity, i.e., engaging in a real unity made by covenant of every person with every person.

The Salale practiced “waadaaa” or “covenant” as a means by which they were synthesized and socially cohered as a people particularly in times of rapid change, calamities, social dislocation, economic crisis, or political breakdown (informants: Sime, Gurmu, Tolasa, 2010). According to my Salale informant, Magarsa Robi, a ritual leader, waadaaa has been a social contract or pact used against treachery, theft, false witness, murder, and other social evils (Magarsa, 2010). It is a non-violent means to keep intact the social bond, to maintain peace and harmony and stand in unison against disintegration and aggression. To violate waadaaa is considered as a threat to the wellbeing of the community and to risk severe human and/or divine punishment. Theo-politically speaking, every ritual performance and dispute settlement, therefore, requires a waadaaa renewal by calling upon Waaqa (God), the only benefactor, and summoning the spirits of the ancestors for appeasement and mediation. According to my Salale consultants and traditional chiefs, such performances follow certain patterns to be strictly followed on Traditional Courts and similar other ritual performances (Informants: Sime; Haile).

Waadaaa affirms the sense of community and “social cohesion,” the “We the people,” not simply, “We the individuals.” Preceded by a plea, yaa Waaq nutti dubbadhu, i.e. “God speak to us,” waadaaa as a means of social reciprocity presupposes a history of mutual giving and receiving. From a legal perspective, whether written or oral, waadaaa involves consent as well as a binding promise for life which is handed down for generations. Thus, it is highly significant in maintaining peaceful relationships between different groups and peoples. Thus it t is highly significant in maintaining peaceful relationships between individual groups and peoples. As a legal covenant, waadaaa fulfills the general requisites of proper parties, words of agreement, a legal purpose, and a proper form.  That is, for the waadaaa to be sanctioned, the committed parties should be competent to legally bind themselves, the consent must be mutual and complete with no party withholding his/her assent or consent, that it is not against “any positive law or public policy”. To rule the waadaaa as a covenant, it must be by “deed or under seal… of any words”⁴. From the Salale perspective, the legal binding of waadaaa is commensurate with its  theo-political theorizing. That is to say, it is performed by referring to religious beliefs involving a promise sanctioned by an oath accompanied by an appeal to a deity or deities, a Holy Grail, and ritual acts and libations. In Salale, a criminal is sworn by deities to surrender to the community in just a few days, compared to the case where it may take state police months or even years to search and capture such a person. Thus, as to be analyzed next, waadaaa is about performing restorative justice rather than retributive justice. Practically, the focus of waadaaa is mainly on maintaining interpersonal relationships rather than on the abstract notion of Ethiopia’s state law without justice.

DATA PRESENTATION & ANALYSIS

In this part of the study, the traditional court case of guma, a blood feud, will be presented and analyzed. The guma case of the blood feud presented below was performed and led by a judge, community elders, and ritual leaders. The ritual leaders enacted waadaaa (covenant⁵ under a solemn oath at the ritual site called Dhiiga Boolla (Holy Spring), near Saldhe Aroge, about 55 miles northwest of Addis Ababa (Finfinne).Traditionally the concept of resistance and nonconformity is embedded in the word “saldhe”. During the gada system, those who did not abide by the gada rule were referred to as “saldhe,” to mean mutineers and therefore “impolite” (Derribi 2011:40). If the Abba Gada of one clan interfered in the internal affairs of another (Oromo) clan outside of his own political boundary, the authority of his bokku (scepter) was banned as saldhe (ibid, 441). This notion of “resistance,” and “rebel” or “dissenter,” as embedded in saldhe/salale needs further study to pin down if the concept of “resistance” is rooted in the etymology of the word(s) “saldhe” or “salale” and to explore resistance culture of the people identified as Salale.

Salale traditional court is composed of Abba Malka (Head of the Holy Spring), that is Magarsa Robi, who customarily acts as the traditional judge, and two assistants one of whom is Abba Qe’e/Abba Qunna (Head of Homestead) selected by the Abba Malka for the court council (Informant: Magarsa R., 2010). A member of the council is considered among the countrymen as “baha,” meaning, successful, knowledgeable, conversant, and persuasive, since, among the Salale, it is by persuasion than coercion that peace is believed to be maintained.  The headmen are also respected for their sincere social and cultural commitments as tradition bearers, a role which is now under pressure from external religious and political forces. They have the power to hear and rule on issues of borders, marriage disputes, inheritance, guma blood price or homicides, monetary compensations, and other matters of small claims. In rulings related to criminal offences such as guma, the major tasks of the traditional council include: how to compensate the victim, how to rehabilitate the offender, and how to facilitate for a peaceful social relations (Tom Tso in Sack, 1992:435). To rule on every serious matter the plea “God speak to us” is a key mantra. Let us follow the two case examples below and observe how power and authority are performed locally.  

The Guma Traditional Court Hearings and the Waadaaa Principle

(The following data came from my participatory observation followed by interviews, and focus-group discussions. In the present study the full range of the data is not included).

My Field Note, March 3, 2010 at about 10am

On March 3, 2010 at about 10am I came to Dhiiga Boolla, to observe the guma case of one eight years old girl hit by a privately owned public mini-bus coincidentally at the same site also called bakka waadaaa (Covenant Site). Both the owner of the mini-bus and the victim were Salale and not too far from the ritual site, and where the incident occurred.

It is important to mention that the Traditional Court Judge and the Heads of Homestead were also affiliated members of village (local) administration and lived a few miles away from the ritual site (bakka waadaaa). The community elders and traditional legal actors who led the proceedings and performed the ritual were Magarsa R. and Araddo T. of Goraa Kataba, and Sime A. of Suqu, near Saldhe.  See the Text appended at the end. The Elders’ utterances are represented first in Oromo language using Oromo script, and then translated with a looser English gloss which appears in italics. Only some portions are analyzed in this paper. The major part of the narrative is a communication between the Traditional Judge and the victim’s family.⁶

The Setting:  Dhiiga Boolla (Holy Spring)

Dhiiga Boolla (Holy Spring) is also called bakka waadaaa, at Saldhe. It is a ritual site of guma and waadaaa performance to settle dispute about homicide in Salale. Saldhe is an old rugged town of the district of Salale before Fitche was established in early 1840s (Tafla, 1987: 271). There are three important sites near Saldhe. First, the debris of Ras Gobena’s military base, Menelik’s warlord from the same district, is located in the northeast on the outskirt. Second, Dhiiga Boolla is about a mile east on the gateway to the small town, Saldhe Aroge, on the highway to the capital. The third is a mountain, another ritual site, found about two miles to the southwest, opposite the Kidane Meheret church.

Next, in an effort to offer a historical and contemporary context to understand the Salale Oromo traditional performances of power and authority, I first present a brief account of the ritual site and other related facts. Dhiga Boolla, traditionally also known as Bakka Waadaaa (Covenant Site) is a place where disputed issues involving blood price (guma) is settled and contesting parties are pacified and swear to forgive and forget for the sake of Waqa (God) and Lafa (earth). The place is unique as a meeting point of four lands/directions (and therefore four winds): Saldhe Aroge on the north, Ejeru on the northwest, Machalla Harkiso on the south and Machalla Andode on the east. My consultant, Haile Bulcha of Ejeru said, in Salale tradition there was Tullu Guma (Mount Guma), a historical ritual site far to the east on the way to Gaba Robi (and Insaro) where the sacred tree is Ejersa Tajjab. My another informant (Gurmu B.) also confirmed that near St Gabriel church there was also an eela (hot spring) called Eela Kuyyu, after a traditional chief (Abba Malkaa) called Kuyyu Dullume, Gurmu’s maternal kin, and the place was used as another  ritual site of gumaa and waadaaa.

According to Gurmu B. whom I asked why the old ritual site, Mount Guma, was abandoned, he said, a Muslim community called Tigri Tarraca came from Wollo in the north and settled near the site at Gaara Ali (Gaara Warxu) north of Jamma valley and later defeated by the Oromo clan called the Warra Alla (of Kuyyu Dullume) and they abandoned the site. Relying on the fundamental premises of such Salale oral tradition, the old traditional court and ritual site at Tullu Guma was said to be occupied by Satan and therefore abandoned until the present Dhiiga Boolla was sanctified by ritual leaders. 

Performing Power and Authority

In the traditional court, patterns of waadaaa performance includes: gathering of the local chiefs for blessings (and curses), a brief speech by the ritual (traditional) leader why required to enter into waadaaa (e.g. the guma case), setting witness formula, pronouncing the waadaaa sanctioned, and prayers (to Waaqa, i.e. God, and to ancestors). Those patterns are knotted in the plea, “God speak to us”. The major task of the traditional judge is to testify the case with an unequivocal language.

Testifying the Case

As in guma dispute settlement in this study, the narrative of waadaaa renewal also includes testifying the case after thorough prehearings and listing/repeating the terms of the waadaaa to be entered into.

The traditional judge thus speaks,

...yaa Waaq nutti dubbadhu  

...oh God speak to us

-warri kuni

-these people, (the offender party)

-qotiyyoo xamadanii, fardas luugamanii, taabotas dawwalanii, tulluus,
malkaas dawwalan 

      

-they yoked oxen, muzzled horse, summoned holy grails, plead mountains, rivers, all to appease for life…

-lubbuu nu maaraadhaaf, dawwalame.

-hey plead for forgiveness…for appeasement

[text 1]

The metaphor of yoking oxen but not to plow, muzzling horse but not to ride, and calling upon mountain and rivers gods and goddesses and Saints is an indication of indignity, guilt and readiness to seek forgiveness both from Waaqa and Lafa (God and Earth). Also among the Wanbara Oromo, Tsega Etefa (Etefa 2012, 2002) observed, michu is a similar non-violent principle used as a covenant and enforced by symbolic rituals including an oath between parties by breaking the “yoke” (p11): 

-yoo isin ganne

-if we [betray] you

-dhalli keenya

-may our descendants

-akka qambara kana haa cabu

-be broken/destroyed like this yoke.

[text 2]

Repetition and Witness Formula

Through repetition and using witness formula in the narrative discourse the traditional chief makes the people witness the waadaaa. As waadaaa is sanctioned, the guma dispute is settled once and for all at the center of the event taking place. Repetition is used to authorize waadaaa and appealed to the attention of the witnesses on the victims’ side. In the following conclusive verses, the word “waadaaa” is repeated several times. The elder connects waadaaa to the irreversible law of the land renewed at Oda Nabe, as irrevocable words of the ancestors, and, above all, as the eternal words of Waaqa (God):

...yaa Waaq, nutti dubbadhu!

 ...oh God, speak to us!

…in fudhattan ‘gaa (eew, edha)

…so you do concede, say yes

-waadaaa ‘gaa

-to the Covenant of the Land

-waadaaa Jahan Galaan

-to the Covenant of the six ancestors of Galan

-waadaaa Shanan Jiddaati

-to the Covenant of the five ancestors of Jidda

-waadaaa Afran Abbichuuti

-to the Covenant of the four ancestors of Abbichu 

-waadaaa Sadeen Oboriiti

-to the Covenant of the three ancestors of Obori

-waadaaa Goraa Kataabaati

-to the Covenant of Gora Kataba

-waadaaa dha egaa…

-it is the Covenant of the Land… Word of words as ever…

…waadaaa Odaa Nabeeti….

..covenant of Oda Nabe

…ishii, Waadaaan haa aga’u

…may Justice prevail, the Law overrule, and

the Covenant remain intact as ever

[text 3]

The words of waadaaa were recorded including the names of those who entered into waadaaa and read aloud to the public hearing as evidence that the waadaaa had indeed been silently entered into and valid.⁷

The underlying rationale for the traditional court proceedings is to hear the lawsuit, to pacify and guarantee forgiveness and maintain not just the legal congruence but also the social bond.  It is believed that the relationship between the parties shall continue and social cohesion remains intact. The recurring rhythmic refrains in the proceedings below are not haphazardly used but have some discursive function of emphasis and leading towards coda. The traditional judge purposefully repeats,

...amma egaa, eega tole nuu jettanii,

…now you thoughtfully agreed,

wanna seerri jedhe,

to what the law of the land has ruled

waan dhugaan jedhe,

to what justice prevailed, truth triumphed

waan Caffeen lallabe,

to what the Traditional Council judged

[text 4]

The purpose of this proceeding is to consolidate the legal rule on the free will of both parties and to formally and carefully go through the hearing. Such a commitment and seriousness observable in the oral text is lacking in the written record. The phrases that “the law of the land,” that “justice prevailed,” that “truth triumphed,” and the “traditional court judged”⁸ were words of power used to sanction the ordinance open for further approval by any concerned legal body and for the contentment of both parties.⁹ 

The traditional court leader calls upon Salale ancestors in order of their precedence as Galan, Jidda, Abbichu, and Obori.  He refers for help to the transcendental power “out there,” to consolidate waadaaa as an “inalienable gift” between “the living” and “the dead”:¹⁰

-waadaaa Jahan Galaani

-to the Covenant of the six ancestors of Galan

-waadaaa Shanan Jiddaati

-to the Covenant of the five ancestors of Jidda

-waadaaa Afran Abbichuuti

-to the Covenant of the four ancestors of Abbichu

-waadaaa Sadeen Oboriiti

-to the Covenant of the three ancestors of Obori

-waadaaa Goraa Katabaati

-to the Covenant and Words of Gora Kataba

[text 5]

The elder relocated the event back in the context of the distant past by calling upon the ancestors, from the realm of their “collective immortality” (Menkiti, p175). In so doing, the aim of connecting the past with the present is to renew, to reconstruct events as historical reflections about the lives of the previous generations and to build confidence about the future.

Waadaaa (irbuu) has been a serious word of covenant among the Oromo. Traditionally, it is used to build collaboration and sense of solidarity between unmarried men as fraternity (michuu) and unmarried women as sorority (addooye). It is also used to reinforce sense of comradeship among colleagues engaged in nationalist political struggle. 

Waadaaa as a form of “Social Reciprocity”

In the ethnographic examples presented in this study, waadaaa unfolds as a covenant renewed and continued through an inalienable gift exchange. The gift exchange ranges from giving animals (cattle, sheep, horses), things such as bars of salt, food and more to markevents such as child-birth and new year (soogidda cabsuu), to clothes (uwwisaa), and tying up firm family alliances through marriage, and through giving (or taking) a child for adoption. An exchange of commodities aims at objectification, “the establishment of boundaries” or alienation and property rights invested more than the reciprocal elations continued through waadaaa. Gifts also create a sense of community beyond boundaries and values. The “gift” can be “things” or “words” and “promises”. Generally, waadaaa and “gifts” of waadaaa is ritually enacted, among others, by breaking bread together, and drinking from the same bowl of mead or milk.  Both parties engaged in gumaa, araara, and waadaaa finally share bread, mead and milk together with the people attending the ritual. Eating and drinking together symbolically represents peace and harmony, accompanied by blessings and prayers for the wellbeing of all including the land, and a curse on ill-beings.

Coda: Narrative of Blessings/Curses

Finally, since waadaaa involves both benefits and obligations, curses and blessings are episodic narratives and recitations to close the court ceremonially. The point in opening and closing the court by blessings is to stress that the breaking of waadaaa would bring curses, just as breaching contracts entered risks serious consequences. However, sticking to waadaaa rewards as the traditional judge concludes the case with the blessing below:¹¹

-…yaa Waaq nutti dubbadhu

-God speak to us…

-tan baddalamte san,

-of the victim (thus we pray)

-namsee ishee isinii haa maaru…

-may her soul rest in peace

-fakkaattee ishee isinii kennee,

-may God bless you with her likes

-Waaqni garaa warra kanaa haa fayyisu

-may He restore your loss with grace and abundance,

-and your woe with happiness   

…Waadaaan haa ragga’u

…may the Covenant remain intact for ever.

...yaa Waaq nutti dubbadhu!

...God speak to us! 

[text 6]

To sum up, in Salale Oromo worldview there are rules not to be violated and there are rules for revocation(s) if rules are violated. By the non-violent principles of waadaa, guma, and araara reinforced by ritual leaders and elders, evil doers are not evil; they are victims themselves. Among the Salale a violator is forced to feel guilt and indignity, and is encouraged to seek forgiveness both from the victim and Waaqa (God). According to those examples of traditional legal performances, it is against the tradition to resist guma, or araara and to break waadaaa, to hold a grudge and to contemplate revenge.  To break waadaa is believed to inflict a huge damage both on the individual and the community, and also markedly affects the collective identity, Oromummaa, Oromoness. Hence, among the Salale, as there are war leaders there are also peace leaders operating with the consent of all who swear, God speak to us!  

CONCLUSION: Authority of Tradition

In this study I have made an attempt to reveal the oppositional stance of Salale Oromo folklore in Ethiopia. I showed that such oppositional traditional practices constitute Salale cultural resistance and offer more hope for challenging and changing the dominant social discourse than the elitist conventional resistance culture. I argued that tradition fosters social justice and ensures emancipatory acts among the local community unlike the ephemeral conventional legal model subject to serving the status quo.

It is important to note that the study of oppositional discourses and unequal power relations has been impaired by the lack of appropriate theoretical and methodological tools and by divergent trends in activist scholarship. I argued in this study that, from asocial sciences point of view, historically folklore research tended to focus on the functionalist approach to examine cultural significance of traditions in anthropological perspective. Conversely, the humanistic point of view emphasized a literary approach to interpret recorded texts. By merging both approaches from a constructivist stance, one benefits from an interdisciplinary analysis of folklore events. Thus, in this study, an ethnography of resistance poetics has been used as an interdisciplinary act to examine folklore performance as an oppositional expressive event among the Salale in Ethiopia.

We have seen that folklore provides a canon of traditional materials about contentious issues that matter to the people. The contentious nature of folklore is exemplified by Salale tradition bearers and users who act as symbolic mediators of strategic primitivism. The paper showed that the people of Salale Oromo in today’s Ethiopia present such a seeming paradox. They perform traditionalism as a means of ethnic self-awareness, distinction, construction and a representation of the self. Those traditional activities negated by Abyssinians and elites alike as outmoded and old-fashioned are revived among the Salale to help the people take charge of their lives in a disempowering situation. By way of strategic primitivism, the Salale make firm connections between mythic tradition and real life situations. The acute need for peace (nagaa), living in harmony with nature, humankind, and Waaqa (God) is also studded in the general social contract, waadaa (covenant), a symbol of Oromummaa, Oromoness.

 ENDNOTES

1. Other equivalent words for waadaaa among other Oromo ethnic groups include: irbuu and kakuu, as among the Borana and Macca Oromo branches respectively.

2. This is an attempt to approach “revivalism” as a strategic turn toward “tradition,” as a “conscious act motivated by the need of the group for self-definition … during social upheavals and when cultural boundaries are threatened”  (Siikala and Ulyashev 2011: 20).

3. Stephen Golub (2009:105) presents the definition of Legal Empowerment proposed by the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor as “the use of legal rights, services, systems, and reform, by and for the disadvantaged populations and often in combination with other activities, to directly alleviate their poverty, improve their influence on government actions and services, or otherwise increase their freedom”. It is believed that this definition is favored by the Commission because it emphasizes, inter alia, that “legal empowerment can work through different legal systems (including traditional, administrative or judicial) to address various rights and issues” (ibid). Hence traditional courts are encouraged since official laws can fail the poor. Golub notes two crucial ways in which law fails the poor: first, the inadequate law reform worsened by elite attorneys’ ignoring or rejecting the actual practices of the disadvantaged and left excluded from legal protection. Second, “laws that actually embrace and seek to formalize those practices are not properly implemented” (ibid, p107).

4. For the Salale waadaaa is a morally-informed agreement and culturally engraved principle bound based upon voluntary consent (Informant: Gadise B; Abba Dalacha). It is established by mutual oaths or promises that involve some transcendent higher authority to witness, hence, the Traditional Judge and other ritual chiefs and Headmen. Thus, waadaaa provides a foundation for the institutionalization of relationship based on mutual recognition and common good.

5. Thus at peace, the Salale trust in a divine judge than in feud, and at war, as one young man told me, if he could not defend his home, literally, his homeland, by the ancestors’ bones, he would lose his manhood, he swore! This is didhaa, swear, that to betray one’s home is to step on the ancestors’ bones. The Salale stories and songs are thus of heroes and heretics, of bandits and pundits, but the Salale also sing of honor to humanity, nature, God, law and peace.

See also the Church of God World Missions’ Project currently among the Salale Oromo, Ethiopia:

http://www.cogwm.org/upg/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=41&Itemid=59

6. The other two Heads of Homestead, Sime Adunya and Arado Tullu, repeated after the Traditional Judge in line with the proceedings to further consolidate what the Judge ruled and to bring the dispute to a conclusion through sound judgments.

7. Of silence and undisputed concession to the waadaaa I should add the following. Unlike an express covenant between parties where one expresses openly ‘I oblige;' ‘agree,’ or, ‘I bind myself to pay so much,’ in an implied covenant such as waadaaa of guma, “the law intends and implies, though it be not expressed in words,” but accepted in silence (see “Covenant” on Lectric Law Library's Lexicon: http://www.lectlaw.com/def/c323.htm).

 However, the amount is generally agreed upon and customarily demarcated for human, animal or similar damages categorized as guma. As silence rules on both parties, the Traditional Judge overrules the silence and the unheard voices but meticulously turning the grudge and grief into peace and forgiveness.

By the Salale epistemology of non-violent resistance, evil doers are not evils but victims. Hence, forgiveness rather than revenge, peace rather than conflict rule the ontological daily life experience of individuals both “inside” and “outside”. Like among the Hopi Indians, interaction “marks the horizon of belonging” and “locates the power ‘out there’ as Waaqa (God) rules throughout such serious matter as guma from the onset up to its coda. Silence on the side of the victims when politely asked by the Traditional Judge “eew jedhaa” / “please say “yes” to show consent to the “blood price” they deliberately kept quiet as this is a norm.  Here the refusal to speak is not “a failure to communicate,” unlike Richland’s the Hopi case (2008:2). The Traditional Judge approvingly agrees to their silence as taken as “consent” and he leads on to make decision.

8. The Traditional Judge speaks often by making direct reference to tradition through terms and phrases such as “Caffee/Court,” “Seera/Law,” “Dhugaa/Justice,” and mainly “Waadaaa/Covenant” which are difficult if not impossible to directly translate them into English without risking their embedded contextual meaning(s).

9. Among the Hopi Indians in USA, Justin Richland (2008:56) observed that “the instances of talk about cultural identity and tradition that emerge in … interactions reveal a wide diversity of form, content, and distribution of speaking rights (who can say what, and how, about Hopi tradition)”. Similarly, in the discourse of the Salale Traditional Court discussed in this paper, the Traditional Judge controls the pace of the proceedings to give no chance to any distractive attempt whatsoever and uses repetitions, refrains, norms of salutation and conversation, and apologetic formulas and repeated references to traditions from the onset through the procedures up to coda.

The emphasis is made to achieve harmony norm (“harmony ideology”) and encourage pro-social behavior called safuu through internalizing it as everyday means of social control. The assumption is that based on such a voluntary compliance as a democratic orientation, people turn to norms of social control operative in the community against external pressures and internal degeneration. Hence, waadaaa (kakuu)/covenant allows a ritualistic affirmation of community. However, the mainstream liberalist values underpinning litigative process of the official (federal) law are disruptive of social expectations, and have potential to exacerbate rather than relieve social tensions. Hence, the reason for Banditry / Resistance among the Salale Oromo like many other oppressed peoples in the world is to defend oneself, one’s family, and one’s community and safeguard the waadaaa principle as a symbol of sovereignty (see also Duska 2008). 

10. at this point the Traditional Judge apologetically spoke to me twice to step back while recording: once at the beginning and again at the end. The main reason, then I thought, was to keep on track the hearing and make decision before performing the ritual, and in part this was true. However, as I talked later to the traditional judge, I was told that no effort had been made to represent the Salale law and (resistance) culture by ethnographers who conducted research in the region and rather the Salale history and life had been left tainted by misappropriations and misrepresentations. The degree to which the Salale Oromo felt exploited by such practices, I inferred, must have left them indifferent and skeptical whether any research work should cease altogether unless it can respond to the specific concerns of the people.

11. It is important to note that the decision was made but the ritual was not performed because the compensation was not finalized until some bureaucratic procedures, like insurance claim on the mini-bus, were complete. However, the record of the proceeding of the day was taken by a local official. To my assessment, the record revealed a rather fussy and unclear data out of the well patterned and structured proceedings and narratives ruled by the meticulous, articulate Traditional Judge. In this case, it appears that the offenses and ordinances enforced by the local traditional courts are not free from the regional and/or the federal scrutiny. I thought that the presence of the local official at the Traditional Court and documenting the hearing was to make sure that the traditional proceedings were on a par with laws set out in the Code of Federal Regulations and Regional States.

References

Abbas Haji Gnamo. (2002). “Islam, the Orthodox Church and Oromo Nationalism (Ethiopia)” in Cahiers d’Études africaines, 165, XLII-1, 2002, pp. 99-120.

Abbink,  Jon. (2006). Discomfiture of democracy? The 2005 election crisis in Ethiopia and its aftermath, in “African Affairs”, 105/419, p. 173-199, 2006.

Advocates for Human Rights: Violations of the rights of the disadvantaged ethnic groups protected by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 48th session of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 30 April – 18 May 2012

Bartels, Lambert. (1983). Oromo Religion: Myths and Rites of the Western Oromo of Ethiopia : an Attempt to Understand. (Collectanea Instituti Anthropos, 8.). Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1983. DM 78.

Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor. (2008). Making the Law Work for Everyone. Volume I

Derribi Damissie Bokku. (2011). Oromo Wisdom in Black Civilization. Addis Ababa (Finfinne). 

Gemmechu, Dajane. (2002, 2007). Conflict and Conflict Resolution among Woliso Oromo of Easterm Macha: the Case of the Guma. Addis Ababa University Press.

Duska, Susanne Aranka. (2008). “Harmony Ideology and Dispute Resolution” a legal ethnography of the Tibetan Diaspora in India.” a PhD Dissertation submitted to the University of British Colombia.  

Ege, Svein. (1996). Class, State, and Power in Africa: a Case Study of the Kingdom of Shawa (Ethiopia) about 1840. Harrassowitz Verlag-Wiesbaden.

Elechi, O Oko. (2006). Doing Justice Without the State: The Afikpo (Ehugbo) Nigeria Model. N.Y.: Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group.

Etefa, Tsega. (2012). Integration and Peace in East Africa: a History of the Oromo Nation. Palgrave Macmillan.

Etefa, Tsega. (2002). “Conflict Resolution Through Cultural Tolerance: an Analysis of the Michu Institution in Metekkel Region, Ethiopia.” OSSREA 2002. Africa Portal Library (Online Collection).

Foucault, Michel. (2000). Power. Ed. J. Faubion. New Press.

_____________. (1976/1990). The History of Sexuality: an Introduction. Vintage.

Freeman, Gordon M. (1980). “The Process of Covenant”  In Publius, Vol. 10, No. 4, Covenant, Polity, and Constitutionalism (Autumn, 1980), pp.71-81.

Golub, Stephen, (2009). “The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor” in the Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, 1: 101–116. Asser Press.

Haile, Alemayehu. (2009). Gada System: The Politics of Tulama Oromo. Vol. 1. Finfinne/Addis Ababa.

Hobsbawm, Eric. (1969, 1981). Bandits. New York: Pantheon Books.

Hoy, David Couzens. (2004). Critical Resistance: from Post-structuralism to post-critique. The MIT Press.

Human Rights Watch Report/Ethiopia: Development Without Freedom (October, 2010).

Jackson, Bruce. (1971). "Folklore and the Social Sciences." Folklore Forum Bibliographic and Special Series, No. 8, pp14-21.

Jalata, Asafa (1996). “The Struggle for Knowledge: The Case of Emergent Oromo Studies,” in African Studies Association, Volume 39, Number 2, pp95-123.

Leach, Maria, and Jerome Fried, (eds.). (1984). Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. NY: Harper & Row Press.

Lectric Law Library's Lexicon. “Covenant,” retrieved  April 2012 from  http://www.lectlaw.com/d-c.htm

Legesse, Asmerom. (1973). Gada: three Approaches to the Study of African Society. The Free Press.   

Legesse, Asmerom . (2000). Oromo Democracy. Red Sea Press.

Menkiti, Ifeanyi. (1984). “Person and Community in African Traditional Thought.” In Richard Wright (Ed.), African Philosophy: an Introduction 3^rd edition (pp171-181). New York: University Press of America.

Nina, Daniel, and Pamela J. Schwikkard. 1996). “The ‘Soft Vengeance’ of the People: Popular Justice, Community Justice and Legal Pluralism in South Africa.” Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 36 (1996): 69-87.

Richland, Justin. (2008). Arguing with Tradition. The Chicago Series with Law and Society.University of Chicago Press.

Rosenau, Pauline Marie. (1992). Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions. Princeton University Press.

Sack, Peter and Jonathan Aleck, (eds.) (1992). Law and Anthropology. New York University Press.

Scott, James. (1992). Domination and the Art of Resistance. Yale University Press.

Scott, James. (1985). Weapon of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Yale University Press.

Siikala, Anna-Leena and Oleg Ulyashev. (2011). Hidden Rituals and Public Performances: Traditions and Belonging among the Post-Soviet Khanty, Komi, and Udmurts. Folkloristica 19. Finnish Literature Society.

Starr, June and Mark Goodale. (eds.) (2002). Practicing Ethnography in Law: New Dialogues, Enduring Methods. Palgrave Macmillan.

 Tafla, Bairu. (1987). “The Historical Notes of "Liqä-Ṭäbbäbt" Abbäbä YeräfuAuthor(s)” in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 50,No. 2, pp. 267-300

Tan, Kok-Chor. (2004). Justice Without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Patriotism. Cambridge University Press.

Tamanaha, Brian Z. (2007/2008). “Understanding legal pluralism: past to present, local to global.”  [The Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence, Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, The Julius Stone Address 2007, 5 July 2007.] [online]. Sydney Law Review, v.30, no.3, Sept 2008: (375)-411. 

Trainor, Brian. (1985). “The Politics of Peace: The Role of the Political Covenant in Hobbes's Leviathan,” The Review of Politics. Volume 47 / Issue 03 / July 1985, pp 347-369.  University of Notre Dame.

Vanderschraaf, Peter. (2007). “Covenants and Reputations” in Synthese, Vol. 157, No. 2 (Jul., 2007), pp. 167-195.

Warshaver, Gerald E. (1991). “On Postmodern Folklore” in Western Folklore, Vol. 50, No. 3, pp. 219-229.

Zeleke, Tsegaye. (2003). "History of the Salale Oromo, Ethiopia". Unpublished MA Thesis. Addis Ababa University. History Department.

_____________
Coming soon in Journal Of African Cultural Studies (JACS), 26.2.