Abstract
This chapter presents a semiotic analysis of the role of sacred sites and other physical features and objects in key political/religious rituals of the Oromo people living in the Horn of Africa. Theoretically, it builds on Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of the concept of ‘archive’ as an intersection of the topological and the nomological of the place and the law. For Derrida, the place of the archive is not a locatable place, but a topos, the marking of a discourse. In contrast to the European tradition based primarily on archives inscribed in writing and summarised in a codified law, for the traditional Oromo society, laws were part of the oral tradition – a mixture of religion, law and social custom – inscribed in ritual practice and the landscape. This made the aspect of consignation especially crucial: due to their inherent character oral laws must be systematically re-enunciated and revised. The power of consignation was reinforced by the iterability of ritual, which turns it into a repeatable chain of marks. The fact that there is no archive without an outside has been the basis for the survival of the key institutions of the Oromo: whilst the ritual practice provided a technique of repetition, it was the landscape which provided the topos, the commencement and an inexhaustible repertoire of signs which would carry the normative principles and practices (nomos) to new times and places. This chapter is divided into four parts. A discussion of the politico-juridical system and livelihood of the Borana Oromo, who have maintained the traditional Oromo politico-juridical system in a relatively coherent form, gives the background for an analysis of topography in the politico-religious rituals. The rituals, on the other hand, form the basis for the politico-juridical system. A brief return to Derrida concludes this chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
Oromo (Afaan Oromoo) is, after Arabic, Hausa and Swahili, one of the most widely spoken languages in Africa. Along with such languages as Afar-Saho and Somali, it belongs to the Cushitic group of languages. Other groups belonging to the same Afro-Asiatic or Hamito-Semitic language family include Semitic, Berber, Egyptian and Chadic (Ali and Zaborski 1990, ix).
A Latin alphabet and orthography (called Qubee) for writing Oromo was formally adopted in Ethiopia in 1991, but other orthographies are also used. In this chapter the orthography used commonly in the written sources has been maintained.
- 2.
During the Derg period, a relatively high number of Borana occupied positions in the local administration. They were, however, individuals with some formal education who had been converted to Coptic Christianity. Their nontraditional background excluded them from seeking a traditional office, and the relationship between the two systems remained distant if not strained (Bassi 2005, 8-15; cf. Helland 2001, 64–65).
- 3.
The Gumi Gayo is the political forum for restating what, essentially, it means to be a Borana. In 1972, for example, the assembly is said to have made the following edicts: (1) the Rendille (a Cushitic-speaking neighbouring pastoral group, which has some characteristics of both Oromo – e.g. a modified gada system – and Somali culture) are brothers of the Borana and should henceforth be called Borana and be accorded the privileges a Borana enjoys; (2) all Borana and all brothers of Borana must henceforth refrain from wearing the loincloth (a typical Somali garment), and any man who is found wearing such clothing shall be treated like a Somali (Dahl 1996, 165). The political history of the region is replete with examples of changing alliances between the Borana and the neighbouring ethnic groups and/or subgroups (see, e.g. Bassi 1997; Schlee 2009; Tache and Oba 2008).
- 4.
For Macha Oromo, ayana is something of Waqa in a person, an animal or a plant making them the way they are: a particular manifestation of the divine, of Waqa as creator and as source of all life (Bartels 1983, 118). Among the western Oromo, the relationship of respect is known as saffu, meaning respecting one another and respecting one’s own ayana and the others’ ayana.
- 5.
According to Antoine d’Abbadie, a European observer from the late nineteenth century, the Oromo custom concerning assemblies resembles the Basque tradition of holding parliament sittings under the Oak of Guernica, which also has strong ethno-political connotations (Bassi 1999, 27).
- 6.
Bokku is a kind of knockberry, a short stick with a heavy head. It is carved from a suitable root and decorated. It is a traditional weapon but is also carried as a ritual object by the gada leaders. In some Oromo groups, the equivalent of the Borana abba gada is known as abba bokku (Bassi 2005, 48–49).
- 7.
In the Oromo ritual universe, death and vitality, killing and generation are metonymically related (Hultin 1991, 107). Traditionally, a man had to kill an enemy – or later a big-game animal such as buffalo – before he was allowed to beget children. Among the Macha Oromo, after the killer’s death, the trophies were taken from the house and hung on a stand erected near the roadside (Bartels 1983, 273–74). Among the Guji, the killer of an enemy was honoured by a specific song and entitled to carry an ivory ring on his right arm. The hero himself was called kut’na, the killer (Van de Loo 1991, 48).
- 8.
- 9.
According to Guji myth, when the first qallu came to earth from Waqa, he brought with him the rules of the social order, including gada (Hinnant 1978, 232–35).
- 10.
There are, for example, important similarities between the Oromo pilgrimages and Muslim pilgrimages to the tomb of Sheikh Hussein of Bali, these including many restrictions and signs. A corresponding intermingling of muda tradition with Muslim forms of pilgrimage may also have taken place among the Islamised Oromo in the former Gibe states (Hassen 2005, 150-56; Knutsson 1967, 155).
- 11.
Whilst the zar and other such cults are common throughout northern and north-eastern Africa as well as the Middle East, they are usually described as external to the sternly monotheistic ‘great’ religions of Semitic origin. They are syncretist, that is, combining elements of Judaism, Orthodox Christianity and Islam with different non-Semitic religions such as the Oromo religion (which is also monotheist) (see, e.g. Dafni 2007 and Westermarck 1926, 50–51). Possible links between Sufism and religious practices of Cushitic-speaking peoples in the Horn of Africa have been discussed by Ioan Lewis (1984) and Thomas Zitelman (2005), among others. For a possible Hebraic influence on the abdari/adbar ritual, see, for example, Aspen 1994, 151–67.
- 12.
- 13.
The political history of the so-called Gibe kingdoms has been extensively studied by Mohamed Hassen (1990).
- 14.
A similar process appears to be taking place currently among the Borana, where the trust and confidence in key elements of the gada institution such as the community wealth redistribution system is rapidly waning among settled Borana households, especially in peri-urban areas (Berhanu and Fayissa 2009). It will be interesting to see what kind of new combinations will emerge in the new socio-economic and political context.
- 15.
According to Ingold (1986, 147–48), there are three logically distinct kinds of tenure/appropriation of space: zero-dimensional (of places, sites and locations), one-dimensional (of paths or tracks) and two-dimensional (of the earth or ground surface).
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Virtanen, P. (2014). Saying the Saffu and Beating the Law: The Changing Role of Sacred Sites in the Oromo Politico-Juridical System. In: Wagner, A., Sherwin, R. (eds) Law, Culture and Visual Studies. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9322-6_24
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