COMMENTARY: THE INTEREST THAT IS NOT SO SPECIAL: ADDIS

ABEBA, OROMIA, AND ETHIOPIA

Tsegaye R. Ararssa

Addis Abeba, Jan. 18/2017 When Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn indicated
last week that a draft law was prepared on the special interest of Oromia in Finfinnee
(aka Addis Abeba), discussions have resurfaced on the issue of the status of the city
and its relations with Oromia. Last week, I had the privilege of discussing the matter in a
couple of radio interviews where, inter alia, I was asked what the content of the special
interest is, what I anticipate the content of the draft law will be, and whether passing the
law would address the concerns raised in the Oromo protests that has rocked the
country for over two years now. What follows is a set of reflections on some of these
issues.[1]

This announcement about the draft being prepared on the special interest comes at a
time when the country is under a state of emergency the end of which is indefinite even
according to the Prime Minister.[2] The announcement comes at a time when, in the
wake of the Oromo protests against the Master Plan, at least over 700 people are killed
by the regime and thousands more are injured. In particular, it comes after key Oromo
political leaderssuch as Bekele Gerba and Dr Merera Gudinaand tens of thousands
of protestors have been sent to jail and military detention centers, respectively, for
demanding the right to ownership of their Oromo land including Addis Abeba. The
announcement comes at a time when the Oromia and Amhara regions are chiefly being
administered by the Command Post in charge of implementing the state of emergency
law. The Master Plan, which was once said to be repealed, is reportedly being
implemented within Addis Abeba. The boundary between the city and its Oromo
suburbs that are still within the administrative jurisdiction of Oromia is not delimited. The
repression of all forms of dissent continues. This immediate political context is not
without a precedent. In fact, one can say that it is only the continuation of a long-drawn
historical context.

Before the advent of Art 49(5)

Historically, it is now a well-known fact that the notion of Oromias Special Interest
entered the Ethiopian legal universe in 1992 through the instrumentality of the
Proclamation that established National/Regional Self Governments (Proclamation No. 7/
1992). This is the proclamation that set the blue-print for what came later to be the
constituent units of the Ethiopian Federation. Adopted to give effect to the
decentralization that was envisaged in the Transitional Charter and to valorize the
right of ethno-national groups to self-determination it established 14 self-governing
national regions. Accordingly, Oromia became one of the 14 self-governing States.
Addis Abeba, like the City of Harar, was also a region in its own right. Oromias special
interest over both cities was first recognized in this piece of legislation (1).In Article 3
(4), it is provided that:

The special interest and political right of the Oromo over Region Thirteen [Harari] and
Region Fourteen [Addis Abeba] are reserved. These Regions shall be accountable to
the Central Transitional Government and the relations of these Self-Governments with
the Central Transitional Government shall be prescribed in detail by a special law.

Very much like the provision in Art 49 (5) of the Constitution that came later, it envisaged
a special law (meant to clarify the relation of accountability to the Central Government),
but such a law was never promulgated. It is interesting to observe that, unlike in the
constitution, in this transitional period law, the Oromo has not just a special interest but
also a political right over the two self-government regions. It is also important to observe
that there is no attempt to delimit the boundary of the city. As a result, it was not clear as
to where exactly the jurisdiction of the government of Addis Abeba ends and that of
Oromia commences.

While it looked like a city-state in a federation, Addis Abeba was also seen as a city
within a larger state, i.e., Oromia. In other words, administratively, it was an enclave
falling outside of Oromia while also housing the Government of Oromia as its capital. In
a sense, Addis Abeba is in Oromia, but not of Oromia. Oromia was a State governing
from Addis Abeba without, however, governing Addis Abeba itself. While the meaning of
special interest was understood to mean much more than having a seat for the Oromia
government in the city, for the entire period of the transitional times, this remained to be
the only interest Oromia could obtain.

The concept of Oromias special interest was thus injected into the language of public
law in the country accompanying the shift away from a formerly unitary state to what
was subsequently to become a multinational federation. Acutely sensitive to the rights
of sub-national groups (called Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples) in Ethiopia, this
ethno-federalization was a reaction, and a push back, to the goings-on in history. We
can thus see its immense historical import in its potency to speak both to the past and to
the future. The special in the special interest phrase hails not only from the mere fact
of geographic location of Addis Abeba in Oromia but also from the implicit recognition of
the essentially Oromo identity of the city. Historians have routinely described the fact
that, until it was violently raided and occupied by the forces of the Shoan Kingdom in the
19th century, the city was inhabited by the Oromo.

When it was founded as the capital of the modern Ethiopian Empire in 1886, it was set
as a launching pad for the campaigns of imperial conquest on the peoples of the
Southern, South-Eastern, and South-Western peripheries. With a violent beginning
marked by conquest and occupation of the land; raid, massacre, and displacement of
the population; and transformation of the cultural and environmental terrain by the
soldiers, it started as a garrison town. A cursory glance at writings by William Harris[3],
Alexander Bulatovich[4], and even Evelyn Waugh[5], indicates that the State operated in
Addis Abeba as an occupying force of settler colonialists bent on pushing out and
displacing the indigenous Oromo peoples. Because the settlers generally spoke
Amharic and confessed the Ethiopian Orthodox faith and because of the
disproportionate concentration of modern urban facilities in Addis Abeba, it became
increasingly different culturally from its surroundings.

Consequently, it projected a cultural life that is different from that of the Oromo. The
culture, identity, and language of the Oromo became the constitutive outside of the
cultural life in the city. In time, the Oromo were effectively marginalized and otherized.
For most of the 20th century, the Oromo, although historically the host, was forced to
live like the alien and the guest in what was their own homeland. Informed by this
memory and propelled by years of national liberation struggles, the politicians that
negotiated the Transitional Charter (Proc. 1/1991) and made the law (Proc. 7/1992)
sought to emphasize the need to acknowledge the Oromo presence in the citys affair
through the special interest. The special interest package was thus a way of making
up for the artificial (created or intentionally produced) absence of the Oromo. In other
words, it was a method of presenting the absent, a way of bringing back the Oromo to
its own.

What does the Law Say about the Special Interest?: The Legal Context

When the constitution of FDRE was finally adopted in 1995, the special interest clause
was more or less carried over into art 49(5). To understand the full textual context of the
special interest package in art 49 (5), it is important for us to reproduce the entirety of
article 49 in full. Accordingly, the provision in art 49 reads as follows:

Addis Abeba shall be the capital city of the Federal State.

The residents of Addis Abeba shall have a full measure of self-government.
Particulars shall be determined by law.
The Administration of Addis Abeba shall be responsible for the Federal
Government.
Residents of Addis Abeba shall in accordance with the provisions of this
constitution, be represented in the House of Peoples Representative.
The special interest of the state of Oromia in Addis Abeba regarding the
provision of social services, or the utilization of natural resources and other
similar matters, as well as joint administrative matters arising from the location of
Addis Abeba within the State of Oromia, shall be respected. Particulars shall be
determined by law.

Owing to the unclarity of the clause in art 49 (5), coupled with the lack, to date, of the
law constitutionally envisaged to enunciate the content, it became imperative for people
to ask just what is the special interest? And what is so special about it? In this
section, we make a close reading of the provision to explore what could be in the
package.

Developments: Toward Articulating the Content of the Special Interest

It is important at the outset to underscore that Addis Abeba is a Federal capital city
within a State. In this, it is more like Berne (of Switzerland) or Ottawa (of Canada). It is
not a city-state (in the style of Berlin or Brussels). Nor is it a federal capital territory or a
federal district (in the style of Abuja, or Canberra, or Washington DC). Once that is
recognized, i.e., that Addis Abeba is a city in Oromia, one should have an explicit
discussion and mutual understanding about what it means to be a federal capital
because that automatically indicates that the Federal Government does not have a
natural right to be in the city. Unfortunately, that discussion did not happen. That was a
historical blunder about a city mired in several historical misdeeds and mistakes.

That it was made accountable solely to the Federal Government was the second big
blunder committed at the time of adopting the constitution. Given the fact that the city is
Oromia and that it is also a natural capital of the government of Oromia, it should have
been made accountable to Oromia. Or, at the very least, it should have dual
accountability to both the Federal and Oromia Governments. That did not happen.
Commanding exclusive say on the administration of the city (in the name of ultimate
accountability), the federal government banished the Oromia government at will in
2003 and allowed it back into the city in 2005. In this, the federal government expanded
and re-enacted the original violence of dispossession and displacement of Oromos from
the city thereby perpetrating a new wound before the historical wounds could heal. Had
it not been for this contemporary constitutive mistake, this original sin of constitutional
drafting in 1995, there wouldnt have been anything special about the special interest of
Oromia. If there would be special interest, it would have been that of the Federal
Government or the non-Oromo residents of the city. These twin mistakes of recent
history led to events of dire consequence that continue to claim lives and limbs to date.

The Host made a Guest

Having made a guest out of the host through the legal fiction of excision, i.e., by
excising the city out of the political and administrative jurisdiction of Oromia, it became
necessary for Ethiopia, almost as an afterthought, to concede a lame special interest
to Oromia in Art 49(5). Over the years, the government of Oromia and Oromos in
general hung on this provision more as a symbolic rallying point to interrogate Ethiopia
for what is actually beyond the specific content of the Oromo interest in the city.

To the Oromo public, the city became the metaphor for what Ethiopia has made of the
Oromo in general: an invisible, non-speaking, non-acting other who inhabits the interior
of the territory but the exterior of the polity. It became the concentrated expression of
the life and the agony of the Oromo in the Ethiopian polity: their present-absence and
their absent presence at a time.

Today, the Federal State presided over the coalition of four parties that make up the
EPRDF became the new empire in a federal form, and the leaders became the new
emperors in a democratic-republican garb. This forced the quip from many
commentators that in Ethiopia plus ca change, plus cest la meme chose (the more it
changes, the more it remains the same).

Hence, the wide Oromo discontent over the whole arrangement with regard to Addis
Abeba. Taking advantage of the historic asymmetry in power, the city administration,
mostly prompted by the federal government, has consistently acted in complete neglect
or wilful defiance of the interests of Oromia and Oromos.

Legal Silence Exploited

Taking advantage of the undefined territorial boundary of the city, the administration
continued to expand its competence over the suburbs surrounding Addis Abeba.
Routinely, the Federal and the City Governments exploited the legal silence on the
matter of special interest. Thus, the Addis Abeba Land Administration office often acted
as the authority in charge of land administration in areas such as Labbuu, the Laga
Xaafo-Marii continuum, Bole-Bulbula, Buraayyuu, Sabbata, Sululta, and districts beyond
the Aqaqii-Qaallittii corridor (such as Galaan, Dukam, etc). The Federal Government
continued to implement its industrialization policy by reserving Industrial Zones,
Recreation Parks, and designated investment sites (much like Special Economic
Zones). In doing all these things, the Federal Government and the city never took the
trouble to consult with Oromia, much less the Oromo people. Evictions of farmers with
little or no compensation became a routine practice.

Pollutions, Waste, Deforestation, Evictions

Pollutions from industrial emissions were sustained with no sense of accountability from
the part of the city. Waste was dumped recklessly causing massive health risks.
Deforestation and soil degradation was intensified in the neighboring districts, especially
after the rise of investment in flower farms, dairy farms, and poultry farms.
Homelessness of the evicted farmers and residents started to be felt among the people.

Oromia and Oromos Respond Resentfully: #Oromorprotests Emerges

The response from the Government of Oromia was late, but it did come in the form of a
2009 Caffee Oromia proclamation that established a Special Zone of 17 districts and 36
towns in the area. Its attempt at legislative articulation of the Constitutional Special
Interest of Oromia over Addis Ababa remained a draft to date. Its demand for
enunciation of the content of the special interest by the Constitutional Inquiry Council
(CIC) was rejected on the ground that the CIC and the House of Federation do not give
an advisory opinion in the absence of litigation.

Also, Oromo residents of the inner city resented the absence of Schools and cultural
centers that operate in Afaan Oromo. The fact that the city has become anything but
Oromo over the years made Oromo residents lament the complete cultural insensitivity
to the needs of the Oromo in the city. Increasingly, the demand for schools in Afaan
Oromo and cultural centers began to be vocally expressed in the last decade or two
(resulting in efforts to construct an Oromo Cultural Centre and to open public schools
that operate in Afaan Oromo)[6].
While such demands were gaining momentum steadily over the years, the Integrated
Regional Development Plan (alias the Master Plan) was announced to the public in
2014. Immediately, it provoked a resistance in all corners of the Oromia region.

The day-to-day encroachment of Oromias jurisdiction with the informal expansion of the
city; the general spill over effects of the city; its becoming the dumping ground for Addis
Abeba waste for no gain; the pollution of the rivers, the soil, and the general
environment of the surrounding districts and towns; the evictions with compensations
whose lower limits are legally left unregulated; the insensitivity to the cultural and
linguistic needs of Oromo residents; the temperamental behaviour the Federal
Government showed vis--vis Oromias claim to Addis Abeba as its capital city; these
and other resentments fed the anger that emerged in the wake of the revelation of the
Master Plan.

Apart from its violation of the principles of federalism and a healthy intergovernmental
relation that should exist in a working federation, one of the reasons given for resisting
the Master Plan was that it liquidates the special interest of Oromia. As was noted
above, the particulars envisaged to be determined by law were never determined.

Giving Content to the Special Interest

According to art 49 (5), the articulation of the content of the special interest is hoped to
revolve around the meaning of four broad phrases:

1. Provision of social services

2. Utilization of natural resources
3. Joint administrative matters
4. Other matters similar to provision of social services or utilization of natural
resources.

In the endeavor to give content to the special interest clause, one is expected to
interpret these phrases in a judicious manner that can also satisfy the popular
discontent that was ignited into full manifestation in the protest to the Master Plan.
Social Services

In particular, we must identify the kind of social services that Addis Abeba should
provide to Oromia. Normally, social services connote services such as access to
housing, education, health, water, transport, and other matters needed for achieving
adequate living standards. From experience, we know that one of the unmet needs of
Oromia in Addis Abeba is access to public buildings and properties for their offices and
residential places for their officials and civil servants. And the need for designated plots
of land on which to build houses for the employees of the state.

Organizing public schools that operate in Afaan Oromo is another kind of social service
seen as a pressing need. Related but not often articulated is the need for building or
making spaces for public libraries run in Afaan Oromo, exhibition centres, concert halls,
theatres, museums, galleries, cinema halls, printing presses dedicated to the nurture
and development of Oromo cultural lives, shows, performances, plays, memories,
arts/paintings, movies, books, etc. This need to give attention to culture also requires
the need for memorializing personalities and historical moments of the Oromo through
naming streets, places, squares; and erecting statues. In addition, subsidizing Oromo
arts and printing and publications as part of making the Oromo presence felt to anyone
who comes to and inhabits the city is an important aspect of social service. In other
words, the provision of social services also extends to the cultural representation of the
Oromo in the life of the wider city.

Similarly, health facilities and other utilities such as public transport services that
operate in Afaan Oromo should be considered part of the social services to be provided
to Oromos. One way of addressing this could be making Afaan Oromo the co-equal
working language of the City Government. The move to make Afaan Oromo and other
languages to become working languages of the Federal Government will also help curb
part of the problem of access to social services and facilities such as public transport,
celebration and registration of vital events (birth, marriage, death, certification,
authentication, licensing, etc).
Natural Resources

The proposed law must also clarify the type of natural resources Addis Abeba has,
resources that Oromia uses, and identify the modes in which it continues to use them.
The effort to give content to this phrase becomes confounding when we note the fact
that there is hardly any natural resource that the city offers to Oromia. Anything natural
in the city is ipso facto that of Oromia because the city itself is of Oromia anyway. The
city actually is dependent on the natural resources of Oromia. Water, forest products,
hydroelectric supply, minerals, sand, cement products, precious stones, food products,
and everything else that Ethiopia (beyond and above Addis Abeba) needs come from
outside of the city, Oromia and the other regions.

In the course of articulating this interest, one needs to consider the benefits Oromia
should get from the delivery of these resources. One way of doing this is to agree on the
percentage of income that should go back to Oromias revenue based on what is often
called the principle of derivation in federal countries. If the federalism was properly
functioning, this would have been handled through a negotiated channel of financial
intergovernmental relations.

Joint Administration

The proposed law to be prepared must determine the scope and method of exercise of
the envisaged joint administration. For this, we will first need to identify what tasks are
matters for joint administration. Secondly, we need to decide who is responsible for
what aspect of the administration. In the area of inter-jurisdictional roads (say
maintenance); border management; managing trans-boundary forests, rivers, etc.; inter-
jurisdictional legal cooperation (whose police takes responsibility for cross-border
criminal activities); these and some such activities need to be spelt out.

One obvious area of joint administration is management of land. Because legislative

power over land issues is a matter for the federal government and administration is for
the States, issues such as town planning, mapping, cadastre, land redistribution among
residents, designing construction regulations, etc should have been a matter for states,
districts, and local/municipality governments. And in these areas, local governments of
Oromia and the city administration (i.e., sub-cities and districts) could find some
collaboration. Accordingly, the government of the state of Oromia and the government of
the Addis Abeba City could coordinate their activities as they have overlapping
jurisdictions (i.e., Oromia has a territorial jurisdiction while the city has a self-
administrative jurisdiction) because the city is also the capital city of Oromia.

Ideally, joint administration could have happened if the city was made accountable to
the Government of Oromia rather than to the Federal Government. At the very least,
joint administration could have been achieved through making the City government
accountable to both the Federal and the Oromia governments. Settling on one of these
options would mitigate the injustice of the original constitutional arrangement that: a)
made Addis Abeba the capital city of the Federal government without the consent of
Oromia and Oromos; and b) made the citys self-government accountable exclusively to
the Federal Government.

Other issues

The meaning of the other issues over which Oromia has a special interest is to be
decided contextually on the basis of issues that rear their head in the course of day-to-
day life experience. One cannot be definitive about the list of things to be included in
this category.

However, twenty years of experience should have brought forth several such issues that
may need to be specified while leaving others to the discretion of administrators subject
to judicial review.

Who Takes Initiative?

Even assuming that the content of the Special interest is clear, there is another issue
left for us to determine: who comes up with the law that determines the particulars?
Is it the Federal Government, the City Government, or the Government of Oromia? So
far, the federal government had hesitated to legislate on the matter even in the face of a
repeated demand by the government of the state of Oromia. That is of course because
the federal government wants to exploit the ambiguity that remains because of the legal
vacuum.

Legal silence is strategically deployed by the Federal and Addis Abeba Council to avoid
their part of the obligation and to continue to enjoy what doesnt rightfully belong to them
in the absence of a law that proscribes it. Oromias attempt in the past (2006) to
legislate on the matter could produce only a draft piece of legislation that couldnt
ultimately be presented to and passed by the Caffee Oromia.

Beyond the Content: Reconciled Relationship between the City, the Region, and
the Country-Redemption via Relocation?

If there was an inclusive participatory constitutional moment that acknowledges the

presence of the Oromo in the polis-to-be between 1992 and 1994, one or more of the
following scenarios might have been negotiated:

a) Find a (new) site that is commonly agreed upon by all the constituent members of the
Federation to be the Federal District Territory;

b) Designate another city in another State or in Oromia as the seat of the federal
government accountable to that state;

c) Designate different cities that can serve as seats for the different branches of the
Federal Government;

d) Agree to have a roving capital city for the federal government every decade or so;

e) Designate Addis Abeba as the capital city with a self-governing council ultimately
accountable to Oromiaan essentially Oromo city in which the federal government may
have some form of special interest

f) Designate Addis Abeba as a federal capital city whose self-governing council will be
accountable to both the federal and the Oromia governments.
Towards a Redemptive Discourse

We all know that the constitution-making process was less ideal than one would hope
for. It was marked by lack of legitimacy on procedural and substantive accounts.[7] The
work required now, while attending to the immediate needs of giving content to the joint
administrative issues, is to identify potential areas of constitutional amendments that
would overcome the problems caused by original flaws in the constitution. This will force
us to engage inand engage the public withwhat I called, elsewhere, a redemptive
constitutional discourse, a discourse that overcomes the deficits in original legitimacy, a
discourse that corrects the imperfect beginnings of the constitution by also attending to
the trauma caused by inaugural violence with which the city was incorporated into, and
made the capital of, the modern imperial Ethiopian state.

Relocating the Capital

While that is being done, the search for a lasting solution to the violent Ethio-Oromia
relations, especially regarding Addis Abeba needs to begin and continue. In particular, it
is imperative that we consider the possibility of relocating the Federal Government
elsewhere. Removing the Federal government will help undo the trauma of the violent
occupation at the moment of founding and subsequent displacement of the Oromo
through the settlement of others. Relocation has the advantage of:

1. Dissolving the altercation over ownership of the city;

2. Securing the socio-cultural interests of the Oromo in the city;
3. Restoring full jurisdiction of Oromia over its territory;
4. Rescinding the legal excision of the city from the administrative jurisdiction of
Oromia through the provision of article 49;
5. Enhancing the Oromos right to exercise of ultimate political power in the city;
6. Restoring the host, the Oromo, to its rightful position and securing the rights of
the guests, the non-Oromo inhabitants, in a context of mutual recognition;
7. Arresting the continued lawless expansion of the city and the concomitant land
grab, eviction, and ethnocide thereof;
 8. Responding to, and thereby dissolving, the question of the so-called special
interests within the context of Oromia and Oromia alone;
9. Comprehensively responding to the demands of the #Oromoprotests whose
rallying cry has been Finfinnee belongs to Oromo (Finfinneen kan Oromooti!).

The legal relocation of the Federal capital has more transformative potential for the
entire polity than the obvious advantages outlined above. It is a restoration of Oromo
agency and authority over the decision on what matters to their life in their land and in
the wider country. The issue of choosing a negotiated site for a federal capital city is an
opportunity to help the wider country to agonize over its history, its state system, its
capacity to deal with historical injustice, and its hope of re-building the state on a fairer,
more just, and more plural foundation. In short, it allows for a redemptive constitutional
discourse to emerge.

It has to be explicitly stated however that to remove the Federal Government is not
synonymous with removing the inhabitants of the city. The inhabitants will be part of
Oromia and like all other people living in the wider Oromia, their rights shall be
respected. Yes, there may be some people who work for the federal government
institutions that may have to commute to and from work if they choose to continue living
in Addis Abeba after the relocation of the capital. Yes, there will also be people who
might move to the new capital altogether. But they dont have to. No one has to. It is
important to remember, incidentally, that not all the inhabitants of the city are employees
of the Federal Government as such. The federal Government is merely its institutions,
agencies, and its workers. That is not the (entire) population of the city.

Pending RedemptionShift Accountability

Until that is done through constitutional revision or amendment, it may be necessary to

consider the shift of accountability of the city government from the Federal to the
Oromia government. It may be imperative for the Federal Government to start paying
rent to the Oromia government as a token of acknowledgement to their being hosted by
Oromia.
The quest for a lasting solution should start with identifying unconstitutional laws and
policies that violate Oromias rights and special interests. Laws such as the one that
promulgated the Addis Abeba Charter of 2003 (Proc. 361/2003, especially its article 5),
the Investment Amendment Proclamation of 2014 (Proc. 849/2014, especially its
provisions regarding Industrial Development Zones), and projects like the World Bank
sponsored Industrial Zone Projects (such as the Resettlement Action Plan [of] the
Qilinxo Industrial Zone (April 2015) should all be rescinded.

New laws may need to be issued. An example is a proclamation that governs the lowest
threshold for rates and modes of compensation awarded to a farmer in the event of
eviction from her/his land. To be sure, there was a 2005 Proclamation (Proc. 455/2005)
that provides for expropriation of land holdings and compensation. However, this
proclamation, apart from enhancing the dispossessive regulatory and police powers of
the Ministry of Federal Affairs, federal and local governments, and of several other
agencies, it says little about the substance of the compensation, especially for collective
landholdings (about which it says nothing). Needless, to say, as the actual practice of
expropriation has routinely demonstrated, even the normative gesture in the law of
providing a replacement remains to be more a legal rhetoric than an actual reality, more
a juridical promise than a political practice.

Not so Special

Recognition of special interest is exception-making. Through a special interest

package, a rightful entity extends some rights, as part of underserved acts of grace, to
another that cannot lay claim to these rights. To Oromia and Oromos, there is hardly
anything special about the special interest. The city is naturally and intrinsically part of
Oromia. As such, Oromos and Oromia have pre-eminence over the city. They lay claim
over the city as their own natural territory. Oromo interests are not supposed to be
granted to them by others as some kind of favor. They have the more fundamental right
of an owner. As such, they do not need others to make exception in their favor in order
to guarantee the protection of the interest of the Oromo in the city. If anything, it is the
Oromo that should make exception to the other inhabitants in granting them, for
instance, the right of self-government at the municipal level. In other words, if anything
was to be special, it was the interest of other peoples who live in the city that should
have been so designated as to constitute the special interest of non-Oromos in this
inherently and primarily Oromo city.

However, owing to the legacy of imperial conquest and violent occupation of the city and
the consequent dispossession and displacement of the Oromo from the city, it is now
the guests that are extending (and so far denying) the special interest of the hosts. This
is a testament to the total lack of self-awareness on the part of the Federal and City
Governments about the land they stand on. It is a testament to their moral blindness
and (and the consequent incapacity) to pay attention, to see the original owners of the
land, and to recognize their natural rights thereof. The result is the failure to understand
the pain of dispossession and relentless quest of the Oromo for restoration.

The more consequential result is that this moral blindness is blocking the redemption of
the relationship between the city (Addis Abeba), the Region (Oromia), and the Country
(Ethiopia). That is why it comes as no surprise that the contestation over the city is
pivotal to the making or breaking of the Ethiopian state in our own time. AS

EDs Note: Tsegaye R Ararssa, Melbourne Law School. Email: tsegayer@gmail.com.

Cover Photo: Partial view of Addis Abeba

Photo Credit: Dereje Belachew

End Notes:
[1] The substance of most of these reflections were extensively discussed elsewhere.
Here, in most sections, I present a rehash of those reflections. See Tsegaye Ararssa,
The Special Interest in Addis Ababa: The Affirmation of Denial, Addis Standard (Jan
18, 2016) available at http://addisstandard.com/the-special-interest-the-affirmation-of-
denial/.

[2] Technically speaking, this government which needed a specialemergency

measures to secure peace and stability, does not have a legal mandate to enact a law
before repealing the emergency declaration and calling the army back to its barracks.
Nor does it command a moral authority to make a legislation for the people it killed,
maimed, arrested, detained, and tortured unaccountably only because they protested.

[3]William Harris, The Highlands of Ethiopia (1844).

[4] Alexander Bulatovic, Ethiopia through Russian Eyes: A Country in Transition, 1896-
1898 (Richard Seltzer, Tr), (2000).

[5] Evelyn Waugh, Waugh in Abyssinia (1936).

[6] Note that the Oromo Cultural Center in Addis Abeba was built and inaugurated only
in 2015.

[7] See, for example, Ugo Matei, The New Ethiopian Constitution, Cardozo Review
(1995), http://www.jus.unitn.it/cardozo/Review/constitutional/Mattei2.html; and Tsegaye
Regassa, The Making and Legitimacy of the Ethiopian Constitution, 23 (1) Afrika Focus
(2010), 85-118.