ABSTRACT
This chapter is dedicated to conditions that led to the outbreak of the revolution and its aftermath. The sources used for the reconstruction of this chapter of the book are archives, oral (participants and eye witnesses) and literature, including official sources and scholarly ones. They were largely gathered between 2007 and 2008 and exposed to necessary criticisms. The 1960s and early 1970s were times when the imperial government gave just a lip service for land reforms and other changes. Calls for reforms were also expanded. The “Land to the Tiller” slogan was chanted by students and later by others since the early 1960s. CADU’s activities in Cilaaloo undesirably evicted tenants. Tenancy became in favour of landlords as CADU’s education and inputs were first given to all kind of peasants. CADU’s solution for this was land reform, which it called for persistently in vain. In response, the government moved tenancy bills from office to office (1963, 1970 and 1972) and finally rejected them. Agriculture itself could not get the necessary attention it deserved. On the eve of the revolution, its growth rate was as low as 0.5% and budgetary allocation was 2% in 1967. Natural calamities in the north added to the already bad situation. Land litigation, conflicts on land and evictions were intensified. In Arssi, there were demonstrations led by CADU workers and students calling for change. Taking the advantage of the presence of CADU’s workers, opposition in Arssi became stronger and stronger. Attacks on the investors’ firms or commercial farms and landlords’ property became common. One such attack provoked the government to use airplanes to attack peasantry’s homesteads. So, the finding of the chapter is that peasants of Arssi rebelled against Haile-Sellassie’s regime. The memory of Waaqoo Guutuu’s rebellion in Balè was still fresh in their memory. The outbreak of the revolution was thus greeted with disbelief, joy and euphoria. The land reform proclamation No. 71/1975 had even evoked more jubilation among the broad masses of Arssi and other southern areas. This author argues that the land reform was paramount in the long history of Ethiopia. Scholars belittled its importance. But it is one of the findings of this author that its impact should not only be measured in terms of economic gains, but also in psychological and emotional sequels. The broad masses felt for the first time in the country’s history a sense of humanness, citizenship and equality. For the Oromo it was their second birth. The same was true throughout the south. Others described it as “a lost and found truth.” The formation of PAs to effect land reform was followed by the formation of ASCs and APCs. Through AMCs, peasants were forced to supply their yield according the assigned quota at a fixed low price. These Därg policies were the anti-thesis of agrarian development. But this should not discredit the psychological reverberation of the revolution and its sequel. Still peasants remember the Därg, among others, for its land reform, awareness raising and the rhetoric of equality despite its many negative edges.
