June 24, 2014
addisstandard
A
recent plan to build a fantastic Addis Abeba is complicated and has
turned deadly. It is not terribly late for a u-turn, but the first step
may be the hardest: bringing justice to the dead
Kalkidan Yibeltal
For a number of universities located in Ethiopia’s Oromia regional
state, the largest state in the country, the month May was no ordinary
month. It was a month marked by extraordinary exhibition of solidarity
by the country’s ethnic Oromo students who protested the coming into
effect of a master plan by the Addis Abeba City Administration (AACA).
As is always the case with Ethiopia, the protests resulted in the
regrettable (and unnecessary) loss of lives, destruction of properties
and disruption of the academic schedule. If one is to stick by it, the
government’s own account put the number of deaths at 11, of which seven
were in Ambo, a town 120 km west of the capital Addis Abeba. Other
deaths occurred in Meda Walabu University in Bale, 320 km southwest of
the country; and in one of the oldest state universities, Haromaya, in
east of the country, a bomb explosion at the campus’s stadium during a
European soccer match screening injured 70 students, killing one. The
spiral of dissent didn’t leave the grand Addis Abeba University in the
capital untouched either. A looming protest by the campus’s Oromo
students sparked a massive deployment of the Federal Police in and
around the campus. Soon other towns in the regional state, among others,
Dembi Dolo, Adama, and Gimbi followed suit, not without the usual
unfortunate causalities. Although the riots have since subsided, sources
say the work of picking up and jailing by the security officers of
those students whom the government blames are behind the arrest is in
full swing. These sources also put the number of death way higher than
the government’s.
The making of a giant city
Oromo students in these campuses have reacted angrily when learning
about a new plan by the Addis Abeba City Administration that wanted to
integrate the capital with its surrounding localities. Indeed, the
ill-fated master plan was no ordinary plan; it sought to incorporate the
eight of the neighboring towns inhabited mainly by the country’s
largest ethnic group, the Oromo, and currently administered under a
special zone by the Oromia Regional State. Many of them feared the plan
wanted to bring these towns into one giant administration under the
AACA.
Their demands for further explanation on the master plan was quite a
legitimate one, as even some senior government officials within the
ruling EPRDF, such as Abba Dulla Gemeda, Speaker of the House of
Peoples’ Representatives and former president of the Oromia Regional
State, would later concur, although he didn’t approve of the way the
protests have gone and were handled.
In its 126 year long history of serving as a capital of the nation,
Addis Abeba has certainly passed through tremendous changes. The last
two decades, however, have seen a significant increase in population as
well as spatial expansion on all directions. According to data from the
now infamous ‘Addis Abeba and the Surrounding Oromia Special Zone
Integrated Development Plan’, in the last two decades alone the city,
currently home to between three to four million inhabitants, has
witnessed an 80 per cent population growth while the total built up area
of the city has increased by at least 25 per cent in the past ten
years.
Indisputably, the areal extension and the significant increase in the
number of inhabitants compel city administration authorities to prepare
a formidable plan B on how to run the city and provide its people with
the much needed services such as housing, water and transport. In an
attempt to address this dilemma, the 9
th City Master Plan,
adopted in 2002 and implemented as of the following year, restructured
the Addis Abeba city into 10 sub city administrations. It went as smooth
as restructuring a city deprived of essential provisions in the past
can go. The problem started surfacing when its successor, the 10
th
Addis Abeba and Oromia Special Zone Integrated Development Master plan,
which was in the making for the last two years, finally came off as
‘Addis Abeba and the Surrounding Oromia Special Zone Integrated
Development Plan’ (please see commentary on
How not to make a master plan).
It was the first sign of a city master plan that went a lot further
than its predecessor by aspiring to incorporate the neighboring areas.
“Developing an internationally competitive urban region through an
efficient and sustainable spatial organization that enhances and takes
advantage of complementarities is the major theme for the preparation of
the new plan,” says Mathewos Asfaw, general manager of the project
office.
Ethiopia wants to join middle income countries in a decade from now
but this will not happen if one is to go by its current level of
urbanization. The overall economic tale of the country, particularly its
relative success in attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), is
strongly tied to the investment performance of Addis Abeba city and its
surrounding areas under the Oromia regional state. It is a reality that
may have ignited a soaring ambition by the authorities who commissioned
the disputed master plan, which wanted to cover a size of 1.1 million
hectares, and has incorporated a number of overambitious,
Cinderella-like proposals from water to transport to housing provisions
that, given how plans go down to earth in this country, one has to
consume with a grain of salt.
Constitutional gaffe
When the integrated master plan came into public scrutiny a couple of
months ago, it was met with fierce criticism from the middle and lower
level politicians of the Oromia Regional State. The master plan’s
questionable legal provisions were put under scrutiny but were
recklessly dismissed by the authorities who commissioned it. Mathewos
Asfaw, as were the other higher level politicians of the Oromia Regional
State, was quick to play down fears by some of the Oromia regional
state officials about the constitutionality of the plan in nature. He
told a local newspaper that it was not his or his office’s authority to
deal with that. “They are not compatible with the project office,” he
said.
Article 49(5) of the Ethiopian Constitution
clearly states that “the special interest of the State of Oromia in
Addis Abeba …shall be respected….in terms of provision of social
services, utilization of natural resources and joint administration
matter”. Mathewos may be justified as this is clearly beyond the mandate
of the project office. However, “spatial plans do not operate in a
vacuum,” says Ezana Haddis, a lecturer at the Ethiopian Civil Service
University Institute of Urban Development Studies. This was further
exacerbated by absence of any proclamation that could define and assure
the state’s privileged right over the capital, Concordia to Ezana.
Of language and identity: back to square one
Art. 46 (2) of the country’s constitution guarantees “States shall be
delimited on the basis of settlement pattern, language, identity and
consent….” For the Oromo whose right over the land under discussion is
constitutionally guaranteed by the federal system the country says it
governs itself with, any spatial expansion is more of a question of
identity, of right over the land and of justice than a mere economic
gain, which is what the Addis Abeba City Administration officials wanted
them to believe.
Historically Addis Abeba city was a land of the Oromo with an
original name in Oromiffa: Finfinnee, one of the many factors that make
the draft metropolitan master plan a delicate matter than a political
choreography.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time the federal government has
imposed its unorthodox political might in the control over the capital,
and the protesting Oromo students and those who closely indentify
themselves with the cause of the Oromo in the country knew it all too
well. In 2003, the federal government’s decision to relocate the seat of
the Oromia Regional State from Addis Abeba to Adama town, 100km east of
the capital, resulted in another protest that ended up with the
killings of more than a dozen students and the imprisonment of hundreds
by the federal security apparatus. “The dramatic return of the seat of
the Oromia Regional State back to Addis Abeba two years later had much
to do with the total victory by the opposition of the Addis Abeba city
administration than any bureaucratic jargon the federal government
wanted the Oromo people to believe”, says an Ethiopian professor of
anthropology at the Addis Abeba University. “This too, didn’t pass
unnoticed.”
In 2008 eight towns surrounding Addis Abeba - Dukem, Sebeta, Burayu,
Gelan, Sululta, Holeta, Sendafa and Legetafo- and are administered by
the Oromia Regional State were assembled to form the Finfinee Special
Zone. Awol Abdi, head of Oromia Special Zone Land Administration and
Environmental Protection Office, told a local newspaper then that the
rationale behind such a move had to do with halting the overflowing
demand of land by the Addis Abeba City Administration. But for the
watchful eyes of those who closely follow the federal government’s move
not just since 2003 but since the beginning of 2000 following the
establishment of the Ministry of Federal Affairs (MoFA), this was not a
good explanation. “Since the establishment of the MoFA, constitutional
interpretation of the rights of nations and nationalities has taken a
more centralized form with more power coming back to the federal
government to decide on issues that have more economic impacts such as
land and other natural resources,” said the professor at the Addis Abeba
University who wants to remain anonymous. “The federal government is
in almost absolute control of the political and military power. What is
missing is the economic power and this master plan is nothing but an
attempt to establish the missing economic primacy over that of the
constitutionally guaranteed right of the ethnic Oromos over their land.
We are back to square one.”
When one scratches the surface of the new master plan it becomes
clear that it “proposes the surrounding localities to keep on providing
landfill site, waste treatment, housing as well as water resources to
the capital with no mention of what the Oromia regional administration
could get in return”, Ezana says. He also sees another trigger in the
corridor: the boundary between Addis Abeba and Oromia regional state has
never been officially demarcated.
The project office, which was originally set up to come up with the
master plan only for the capital Addis Abeba but was subsequently tasked
to create a metropolitan master plan is unquestionably staffed with
experts whose knowledge and experience makes them super qualified for
the job, and yet there was no attempt to incorporate the special
interest of the regional administration and that of its people, Ezana
added, “that was the fault line.”
Beneath the layer of wrath
In an article titled “A Tragic Consequence of the ‘Addis Ababa
Integrated Master Plan: Warning for the Future’,” Dr. Negaso Gidada, a
prominent Oromo political elite and a former president of the federal
government-turned an opposition leader, says, as the official seat of
the Oromia Regional State, the Federal Government and the African Union,
Addis Abeba should expand enough to become a decent metropolitan city.
But this is not a tale of development without cost. In a 2009
research titled “Urban Expansion in Addis Abeba : Effects of the Decline
of Urban Agriculture on Livelihood and Food Security,” Mara Gittleman
of Tufts University, says in an effort to build a globally competitive
city “[e]ntire agricultural communities are moved and left with very
little compensation for their land, with no other skills to rely upon.
[.. .] This process of rapid urban development is working both to
increase the populations of unemployed and homeless peoples and to
decrease the supply of fresh produce available.”
According to Dr. Negaso, “the Oromo are not opposed to the extension
of infrastructure to the surrounding towns but want a guarantee that
Oromia has jurisdiction over them. They want that the identity of the
Oromo be preserved, that the Oromo farmers should not be evicted or if
their land is needed that they get proper compensation; that Addis Ababa
pays for the services it gets from the surrounding areas…and do
something about the depositions of waste substances (domestic and
industrial).”
EPRDF sympathizers and naysayers alike argue that this riddle would
have been avoided if simple and transparent procedure, such as
consulting with the legitimate constituency, were followed in the making
of the master plan. “There is no half way to federalism; a country
follows either a federal system or a central one,” says the professor at
the AAU.
But a senior expert at the AAU’s Center for Federal Studies says the
ethnic, religious and language diversity inside the country leaves the
country with no other option than to adopt federalism. “The ethnic based
federalism we follow certainly has its own discontents,” he says, “but
most of it can be tackled by ensuring good governance and implementing
the words of the constitution.”
As a long lasting remedial measure, Dr. Negaso recommends a fresh,
honest and transparent public discussion on various crucial subjects
including federalism and ethnicity. That may be a fundamental change
that needs to come around, but for those who have lost their loved ones,
the immediate remedial measure is nothing but “holding those who
commissioned and executed” the recent killings of the students who
protested against the master plan accountable, says the professor at the
AAU, “that should be the first step followed by the release of the
students who are being hand-picked by the police as we speak.” He also
believes that the federal government needs to stop labeling the
protesting students as extremists supported by “anti-Ethiopia peace
elements” when the master plan is “infested by countless legal and
constitutional holes” and everyone “knows about it.”
Mahelt Fasil contributed to this story
June
28, 2014 (Oromo Liberation Front) — It is with great pleasure that we
announce to our people and the supporters of our struggle for freedom
the good news that, based on the accord they made in Kampala, Uganda, in
November 2012, the two organizations of the Oromo Liberation Front
(OLF) known as OLF Shanee Gumii (”OLF National Council”) and OLF Qaama
Ce’umsaa (”OLF Transitional Authority”) have resolved our differences
and agreed to combine our two leaderships, unify our members, merge our
organizational structures and inaugurate a reunified OLF. Although OLF
has encountered many obstacles during the last forty years, there was no
time when it has stopped the struggle that it was established to lead.
No one can deny the fact that the national struggle led by the OLF has
scored many victories and made many significant achievements that have
taken the Oromo people a long way toward the national goal of
independence. Among these great achievements is the level of political
awareness of our people.
