Clamor of Indignation against Abyssinian Colonial Exploitation of Sidama National Resources

Better clarifying issues pertaining to the most appalling forms of economic tyranny, illegal exploitation of the Sidama National resources by the Abyssinian colonial elites, and racist and discriminatory approaches, practices and strategies pursued by the Amhara and Tigray murderous and criminal regimes, this article, sent to me by Kambata Xoola, Chairman of the Sidama National Liberation Organization, demonstrates the real face of Africa’s most loathed, dictatorial realm: Abyssinia, ludicrously and fallaciously re-baptized ‘Ethiopia’. I immediately publish it integrally.

By Kambata Xoola, Chairman of the Sidama National Liberation Organization

Contrary to the organic development that accompanied modernisation elsewhere in the world where it helped notably improve the living standards of the average people, modernisation in Ethiopia was pursued by the administration in order to help preserve the imperial state, and what it came to represent (S. Hamesso, 2006 pp98)

I. Background and Introduction

The Sidama people whose modern business knowledge and expertise are limited remain underdeveloped due to neglect, marginalisation, absence and lack of commitment from the part of Abyssinian government. Sidamas are currently constrained to pay unnecessarily high prices for various commodities, while Abyssinian colonial settlers are scrambling for the valuable Sidama resources. The Sidama Nation had never experienced in the past such ultra poverty that has befallen on them as a consequence of the economic exploitation carried out by the Abyssinian administration and the colonial settlers.

Although, the predecessors of the current Abyssinian regime didn’t have good will to support Sidamas’ potential development, let alone help establish Sidama based business, the Sidamas were not exposed to such blatant, systematic and technologically updated exploitation of their national resources. In addition, the Sidama people are dictatorially prevented from rightfully taking ownership of their own national destiny; the means of this deliberate obstruction are many and its practice has been generalized.

The Sidama Land is known to be potentially rich for all round development. Contrarily to what Sidama Land could be if independent, Sidamas are constrained to underdevelopment because neither past regimes nor the present have been willing to allow native Sidamas to prosper by pursuing their own ways. Instead, the successive Abyssinian regimes and their henchmen masterminded all business activities in Sidama Land to be to the exclusive benefit of their peoples, the Amhara and the Tigray, who alien to Sidama Land. Currently, there is also no industrial development in the region apart from very few, limited and marginal cases that serve exclusively the Abyssinian colonialists’ purposes.

A Sidama economist underlined the following with respect to the economic situation prevailing in Sidama Land:

‘Sidama is characterized by a very low level of industrial development. There are very few manufacturing factories in Sidama Land. A very few factories available in the area are all located in Awassa town and its environs. The government owned textile and ceramic factories are the only notable manufacturing activities in Sidama. A chip wood factory built in recent years and a meat processing factory in Malga Wondo are the only major private manufacturing activities in the entire Sidama Land. Small scale manufacturing activities are highly underdeveloped because of the inimical government policies. No attempt has been made by the government to develop industrial sector to create jobs for the massive redundant labour force in the rural area’ (Wolassa L Kumo, June 2007).

The incumbent regime and their predecessors have adopted similar policies of undermining and depersonalising the Sidama people and their all round potential while exploiting their resources. Moreover, at the moment, Meles Zenawi’s tyrannical regime implements a discriminatory policy of systematic removal of the name Sidama from all administrative structures within Sidama Land itself.

The Tigray tribal totalitarian regime implements this plan by using surrogates such as Shiferaw Shugute, the Southern Regional Government’s president, a simple marionette of Meles Zenawi, and others whom they dare consider as ‘representatives’ of the Sidama people.

This article focuses on Sidama economic development issues with a particular interest for the deliberate Abyssinian effort of marginalizing the Sidamas in their entirety, keeping them far from the business game, and uprooting them from their capital city, Hawassa (Awassa) and its vicinity. This policy was launched in the aftermath of the May 24, 2002 massacre of hundreds of Sidama demonstrators by the totalitarian Tigray regime’s security forces. This inhuman and forgotten massacre was the racist Tigray government’s ‘answer’ to Sidama people claim for regional autonomy – which is recognized as their fully accredited constitutional right.

II. History of Business in Sidama Land and the Present Situation

Sidama economic history predates the Abyssinian Axumite kingdom. The indigenous people are known to have developed commercial exchanges with Africa, parts of the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean coasts, (J.D.Fage et al 2002).

However, recent anecdotal history of the Sidama nation demonstrates that the said trade skills and expertise have been diminished since the Sidama loss of sovereignty and the imposition of the tyrannical Abyssinian colonial power; the annexation of the Sidama Land to Abyssinia spread ignorance, backwardness, and economic isolation and marasm.

Since the conquest, few Sidamas have been engaged in modern business activities; this fact is due to various reasons. Under all the successive tyrannical regimes of Abyssinia (monarchical, communist, and pseudo-republican), the very few Sidamas involved in business had to be either allies of the occupation forces and the tyrannical regime or Amharinised / Tigreanised affiliates.

The first and foremost reason for Sidamas’ minimal involvement into the business world is due to the discriminatory and inhuman policies of the successive Abyssinian regimes towards the Sidamas, the subsequent absence of favourable conditions, and the tyrannical regimes’ criminal strategy to prevent enslaved nations from any engagement in business.

Secondly, the successive regimes did their best to deliberately undermine and marginalise Sidama Land that had turned to be an Amhara colonial territory. The Amhara pernicious target was to manage the occupied Sidama Land in a way that all businesses, ranging from small to large scale, be owned by the Abyssinian colonial settlers and their representatives. To make the situation worse, at the moment, all the existing in the Sidama Land businesses are either state-owned companies or private companies owned by the few Amhara and Tigray settlers. In either case, the same negativity and rejection are expressed towards the Sidamas who are not hired as managers, are not trained in a way to progress in a career, and are not allowed to launch their own business.

Therefore, since the conquest, the average Sidama’s appetite to acclimatize themselves with modern business started diminishing due to such deliberate and systematic persecution. The Sidama people have therefore been used to also link business with oppression, due to the brutal treatment of the Abyssinian colonial administration and settlers and the hardships that the Abyssinian ruling elites have imposed on them. This link made Sidamas reluctant towards the business world. In a social environment whereby all business are owned by the brutal, alien rulers, it is normal for an oppressed people to make assumptions like that. Having long been compounded with these realities, the Sidama Nation was obliged to depart itself further and further from the business world.

Due to lack of awareness, the Sidamas, cut off the rest of the world, didn’t have a notable reason or stimulus to possibly seek alternative means of higher income or envisage a better and technologically more comfortable life until as recently as the 1990s.

Firstly, as they were self-sufficient, due to the traditional agricultural society structures, and full of resources and means for survival. Secondly, the regime didn’t want them to know how to be involved in modern business, namely the secondary and the tertiary sectors that help a young nation diversify its livelihood, and achieve real development, instead of depending on small scale subsistence farming.

As a result, Sidama people remain forgotten, whilst Amharas / Tigreans and a handful of Gurages are competing for the exploitation of the natural resources in the Sidama region. Traditionally, the Gurages (other Abyssinian settlers in the South) held the upper hand in small-scale business in Sidama Land, but at present time, they face fierce competition from the Tigreans as the incumbent minority Tigrean regime supports their henchmen by all possible means. This made traditionally small-scale business skilled Gurages very nervous and restless throughout the country, and more particularly in the Sidama Land.

As the Abyssinian settlers did not wish to observe native Sidamas reaffirming their property right over their natural resources and legitimising their constitutional rights, they started exchanging insults and hostile words. At the same time, they glared at each-other as vultures and scavengers fight over carcases.

Meanwhile, the Sidama Nation continued being uprooted from their capital city and its vicinity under the pretext of federalising the capital of the region, Awassa. In this systematic uprooting of the Sidama nation from their land, Meles Zenawi’s regime already erased the name Sidama from the regional map. All the districts in Sidama region are planned to be accountable to the southern regional state, thus confirming the totalitarian strategy for total absence of the Sidamas from the Abyssinian books.

III. Sidama Eonomy

At present time, native Sidamas are made politically, economically and socially strangers in their own soil. As the rights of the Sidama Nation have been totally disregarded, the discontent among the various Abyssinian settlers for the natural resources of the Sidama Nation has reached its climax. Very few are those who are alternate in the leftover business, and they all have to bow to the regional and the departmental political cadres, as well as the federal Abyssinian rulers.

For further details on the Sidama Economy, see Wolassa Kumo’ Ph. D. (June, 2007), and various articles published online in the American Chronicle and THE Sidama Nation Online (news page). The same situation concerns most parts of the Abyssinian ‘empire’, including Oromia, Ogaden, Afar, Benshagul and Gumuz, and Gambella. In the latter, Anuak natives were massively and deliberately massacred in 2003, whereas large numbers p the survivors were displaced so that Abyssinian settlers be possibly re-located in their land.

IV. Why do Abyssinian rulers focus on Sidama people and land?

The Sidama Nation and their land have been on the spotlight of all the successive Abyssinian rulers for three main reasons. Firstly, because the Sidama Nation is the only nation in the Southern Region of amalgamated nations that has constantly rebelled, struggling for National and Cultural Identity and Self governance.

Since the times of Menelik’s conquest to date, the Sidama Nation didn’t rest; they never surrendered, they never gave up their Freedom and Cultural Identity. Since the onset of the colonialism, they have repulsed the invading armies, defeating them on various occasions. The Sidamas were defeated only when the colonial armies came up with new weaponry granted to them, during the period of Scramble for Africa, by their European colonial counterpart, notably England. This struggle of the Sidama Nation for the Quest for their Identity continued unabated to date, while others without their will surrendered their identity. To kill such a feeling and the bravery of the Sidama nationals, the successive Abyssinian rulers exert their full potential on the nation.

Secondly, the Sidama Land is full of natural resources and richness. It has got very favourable conditions for agriculture, tremendous potentialities to grow cash crops, great opportunities for business, brilliant prospects for mining, and possibilities for other lucrative activities. It also has all weather conditions – which is not the case in the Abyssinian rocky regions. Sidamas want consequently to take the maximum benefit from all these opportunities for themselves exclusively, depriving the alien Abyssinian nation from accessing their own resources in their ancestral lands.

Thirdly, the Sidama region’s geo-political importance is truly great as it offered the colonial powers the possibility to keep a close eye on all the other colonised nations of the South. The Sidama region was and is a point of reference for the communications between the central regime and their regional authorities. For instance, since the conquest, most of the successive Abyssinian regimes used the Sidama region as their southern capital. The Abyssinian regimes also used the region for external relations, including Kenya and Uganda whereby they supported the construction work of the highway driving goes from Addis Ababa (Fiinfine) through Hawassa to the Kenyan border that stretches up to port Mombassa.

V. Conclusion

Currently, the Sidama Nation doesn’t have any one to speak on its behalf, let alone genuine political representation at the federal and the regional levels. If there is no political representation, there will inevitably be subservience. As a result, there will not be a political and economic autonomy for the Sidama Nation. Decision makers are those who are on power. On the other hand, the people on power are Abyssinian elites and/or their loyal affiliates who don’t even articulate what they are doing against their own nations. The pretext of representation remains pathetic and absolute confusion.

The Sidama Nation is the only nation without regional autonomy, given the size of the population even according to Ethiopian Meles Zenawi’s pseudo ethnic federal standards. All Southern Ethiopia regions are also the places were successive Abyssinian rulers have experimented their brutish system in addition to other cruelties carried out against other nations of the empire.

In 1991, when Meles Zenawi’s Tigrean regime came to power, his plan was to name all the Southern Ethiopia nations, ‘Rift Valley States’ altogether to erase the identities of approx. 45 nationalities of Southern Ethiopia. However, the resistance of the Sidama representatives (during Meles Zenawi’s transition regime) against such eradication at the time raised serious questions among all the involved parts. This obliged tyrant Zenawi to call the regions once again ‘Southern Ethiopia nations and nationalities’. Because of the totalitarian character of the system, the Sidama Nation doesn’t accept and continues its struggles until the Day of the Liberation. The Sidama quest for liberty shall continue despite barbed wired Abyssinian bewitched system and other hindrances until we realise our independence.

The Sidama nation will continue its struggle for independence under the leadership of morally sound Sidama intellectuals and of course gallant Sidama elderly, namely all those who preserved our identity despite torture, brutality and ordeals of all kinds, coming from successive Abyssinian regimes. Whether the Abyssinian rulers like it or not, the Sidama Nation will continue its resistance until the Sidamas reach the level of freely deciding on their own issues without Abyssinian colonial administrators admonishing them what to do.

Wolaphpho Sidaamahona Borrojiimate uusurantino Dagaraana !!

VI. References
1. J. D. Fage et al (2002 pp112-119) State and Trade in north-East and Bantu Africa
2. S. Hamesso, (2006 pp98) Arrested Development in Ethiopia
3. Wolassa Kumo, 2007, Sidama: An Overview of History Culture and Economy

Note
Picture: Young Sidamas in the Fish Market in Lake Awassa shore; a difficult life expects them.