Orality, power and resistance: reconstructing the social history of Hararge tenants, Ethiopia (1887-1975)

Abstract

Hararge was one of the regions where tenancy was predominantly practiced as a form of rural production relation during 1887-1975.Since the hardship of tenancy was difficult to bear, tenants were resisting the landlords and the state who sought to extract meager products from their labor, rent, food and taxes in different ways. One of the mechanisms through which opposition against the system articulated through oral poetry was ‘weapon of the weak’. This paper deals with the resistance of Hararge peasants against the exploitative landlords by employing oral songs, sayings and proverbs in the form of verse and prose. Taking oral poetry as a resistance weapon performed mainly in the form of songs by Hararge tenants during social gatherings and cooperative works, this paper argues that Hararge tenants have been constantly expressing their grudging and oppositions against their landlords’ insatiable appetite for resources. The paper privileges tenants as historical actors having their own power and oppositional culture and identity rather than mere victims of historical processes. Data for this work is generated through an extensive interview conducted with Hararge peasants, most of them are former tenants. These oral data are crosschecked and validated with available literature collected from different libraries. It argues that topical and political songs with authorship being associated with the mass are one arena through which the weak express their resistance and defiance to the system.