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Triggered by the land and condominium scandal under Takele Uma, Justice for Addis Ababa demands a response from the government.
borkena
September 3, 2020
Ethiopian activists launched a two-day digital media campaign in what appears to be a response to the disclosed land and condominium scandal.
Using the hashtag #JusticeForAddisAbaba, he is demanding justice for the residents of Addis Ababa whose right to residential condominium units was stolen in broad daylight.
However, what triggered the campaign has something to do with recent development.
A report released Monday by the Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice Party (EZEMA) revealed that 213,000 square meters of land were illegally appropriated in the capital Addis Ababa in the form of land grabs, and more than 20,000 condominium units were transferred to individuals. who are not believed to be residents. Those condo units were supposed to be transferred to residents on the waiting list who had been saving for more than a decade to buy them.
Former Addis Ababa mayor Takele Uma, who was appointed Minister of Mining and Petroleum last month after holding the city’s top post for nearly two years, is said to be a key player in the scandal.
He was not an elected mayor which is where the problem begins. And it was appointed at a time when what was then the Oromo Democratic Party (it was a member of the central committee) was officially claiming exclusive ownership of the city of Addis Ababa. The claim is based on a politically charged historical narrative that depicts Addis Ababa as a land taken from Oromo speakers shortly after Menelik II became the Ethiopian monarch. A recently published book under the title “berera” deconstructs the radical Oromo claims to the city. He argued that there was already a settlement in what is now Addis Ababa before the Oromo expansion and settlement in the area.
Information leaked sometime in 2018 revealed plans to alter Addis Ababa’s demographics through a massive settlement of Oromo speakers in the city, something that Lemma Megerssa, then president of the Oromo regional state, denied.
The land and condominium scandal that was made public this week, however, seems to suggest that the claim about demographic change cannot be discounted.
The former mayor defended his actions saying they were aimed at addressing the plight of the farming communities surrounding the city, as they were displaced from their lands for development projects. He affirmed that the Condominium units were transferred to the “descendants of displaced farmers.”
The #JusticeforAddisAbaba campaign, among many other points, conveys the message that displacement of the farming community was a government program and that city residents should not pay for government crime. In fact, many of the activists who are not precursors to the #JusticeforAddisAbaba campaign were at the forefront in opposing the displacement of farmers when it occurred several years ago.
A city with more than five million inhabitants, more than the population of Toronto, is not electing its mayor. That is also something activists want to change.
For radical Oromo nationalists, both within and outside the federal and regional government structures, altering Addis Ababa’s demographics by favoring the Oromo ethnic population is something of a prerequisite before Addis Ababa has the right to elect its mayor.
However, that position does not appear to be tenable, as more and more city residents are alarmed by the project and by asserting their rights, as they should.
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