Civic ethnicity vs political ethnicity: in defense of Metcha Tulema Association
By Dr.
Maimire Mennasemay (Aug 5, 2004)

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Established more than 40 years ago, Metcha Tulema is an ethnic civic association devoted to the social welfare and cultural development of the Oromos. Neither the Imperial government nor the Derg, arguably the most repressive Ethiopian regime of the twentieth century, saw in Metcha Tumela political threats serious enough to warrant legal actions against it. The Meles regime, which trumpets nationally and internationally its democratic credentials, did what the Imperial and the Derg regimes did not see fit to do: it officially dissolved the Metcha Tulema Association and confiscated its assets and property. To make sense of the incongruity of a self-proclaimed democratic regime acting more repressively than the Derg against a civic association requires that we step back and try to understand why the EPRDF regime felt obliged to dissolve the Metcha Tulema Association.

The EPRDF’s action against Metcha Tulema expresses a profound difference in the principles that animate these two. The EPRDF is based on political ethnicity, an all-embracing ideology that imposes an ethnic reading of history, while Metcha Tulema is based on civic ethnicity, an approach that considers ethnicity as one of the civic dimensions in society. These two radically different ways of dealing with the now unavoidable ethnic question in Ethiopia are irreconcilable.

Political ethnicity assumes that ethnicity is a total identity and that ethnic diversity is the ultimate political horizon. From this perspective, space is ethnicized and self-determination means ethnic government. Ethnicized territory and political institutions are made to coincide such that political boundaries must also be ethnic boundaries, thus hardening ethnic identities. Accordingly, political representation is not a question of a politics of ideas and interests but a matter of being represented by a member of one’s own ethnie. In this practice lurks the notion of ethnic purity insofar as it suggests, intimated by the 1994 Constitution, that representation has legitimacy only if there is an ethnic identity between the electorate and the elected. One may call this ethnic fundamentalism or ethnic purism, but whatever one calls it, it is a principle that inevitably leads to the creation of ethnie-bound institutions. It gives primacy to ethnic political parties and makes ethnic territorial imperative the basis for creating states. The outcome is an ethnicstan-based federation and the legalization of ethnic secession. In a nutshell, ethnicity is destiny according to political ethnicity.

Civic ethnicity recognizes what political ethnicity denies: that people have multiple identities that allows them to think, live and act beyond their ethnic identity. Neither the Imperial regime nor the Derg felt threatened by Metcha Tulema precisely because, unlike political ethnicity, civic ethnicity does not consider ethnic diversity as the ultimate horizon of politics. By making membership a voluntary act that in no way infringes on one’s other social identities, civic ethnic associations make ethnicity a partial identity, comfortably articulated with other identities. Civil ethnicity is thus compatible with the democratic idea that politics is a legitimate quest for unity within complexity and that its objective is, in a multiethnic society such as Ethiopia, the construction of a “trans-ethnic we” in a context of ethnic diversity.

In addition, civic ethnicity contributes profoundly to the creation of a democratic culture in at least three ways. First, when one becomes a voluntary member of a civic ethnic association such as Metcha Tulema, one moves from an ascriptive to a freely-chosen self-description; one asserts oneself as a self-defining individual – a necessary condition for democracy – and works for an association without denying one’s other identities. Second, civic ethnic associations contribute powerfully to a deeper understanding of one’s own culture and history, creating therefore a sense of self-worth, a quality fundamental for democracy. Third, civic ethnic associations, in promoting the cultural development of their ethnies, educate other Ethiopians about these cultures and thus break down the walls of ignorance and bias that separate Ethiopians from each other, a condition essential for the development of a democratic culture in our country.

Associations such as Metcha Tulema are necessary to give life and unity to the mosaic of cultures that Ethiopia is; they make us see that each one of us is a reflection of this wonderful and complex mosaic. We drink coffee, we join “equibs”, we wear “shema”, we eat “kitfo”, – and one could list a multitude of items we have borrowed from each other – but do we know the histories, cultures, hopes and aspirations of those who have given us these wonderful elements of our national culture? Civic ethnic associations educate us in these matters and give our country the moral density, the cultural unity and social capital that democracy needs to become the natural inclination of our society.

Ethiopia is not alone in such an endeavor. One can see the rejection of political ethnicity and the embrace of civic ethnicity in the South African Constitution. The South African federation eschews the notion of ethnic self-determination and rejects the idea of demarcating regions for the purpose of creating ethnic units. But the Constitution recognizes the cultural plurality of the country from a civic perspective. It institutes a National Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, and encourages the flowering of civic ethnic associations. South Africa sees in such associations not only the development of the various cultures but also the creation and empowerment of a culture of democracy, that is, a culture that expresses freely chosen acts, self-knowledge, and the knowledge of each other. India, another multiethnic society, embraces civic ethnic associations but rejects political ethnicity.

We can now see why the political ethnicity of the EPRDF and the civic ethnicity of Metcha Tulema are mortal enemies. Metcha Tulema was a living proof of the fact that the ethnic question in Ethiopia could be resolved without resorting to the destructive ideology of political ethnicity, and that the road to democracy and unity passes through the creation and flourishing of ethnic civic associations.

No wonder, Metcha Tulema, an association that neither the Imperial regime nor the Derg saw as a political menace, appeared as a fatal threat to the EPRDF, an organization conceived in political ethnicity and suffering inevitably from a deadly allergy to democracy. With the dissolution of the Metcha Tulema Association, with the relentless attack against the Ethiopian Teachers Association and the freedom of the press, even the Tony Blairs of the world must recognize that Meles’s decaffeinated democracy is a worn-out veil that can no longer hide the authoritarian nature of his regime.