|
Beneath Mount Yerer, a majestically imposing sight
to Addis Abeba, on its southeast side, lies hidden a
vast plain, endowed with remarkable weather and lush
fertile land for farming. Native farmers such as
Wondu Hundiessa, 36, feel very blessed; they produce
wheat, teff and lentils all year-round. Neither are
markets too far; after two hours’ walk to Meri, on
the west side where Ayat Real Estate is today, or
three hours walk to Kaliti, farther to the
southwest, they can easily sell their produce – at a
good price.
Wondu was born here at the Bole Lemi area where he
has spent his entire life. As his contemporaries on
the city side would have done, so too did he grow up
marvelling at aircrafts landing and taking off from
Bole International Airport. He got married here and
has two sons – ages seven and four. Many of his kin
and kith live around this vast land, bordering the
Oromia Regional State, but separated by the rivers
Akaki and Bole Bulbula.
His village, so close to the capital, and a few
kilometres away from the airport but part of the
Addis Abeba City Administration (Wereda 17, Kebele
21) might have been impenetrable to urbanities for
generations. Now a road that will connect the
north-eastern part of Addis Abeba to the Addis-Modjo-Adama
(Nazareth) highway is to cut through Bole Lemi, and
a new asphalt road beginning at the roundabout near
Shola Real Estate, passing through what is known
today as Yerer Sefer, will lead to a patchy gravel
road that passes through a kilometre or two from
Wondu’s house.
It
has become clear to Wondu and the many farmers in
Bole Lemi that they will not keep up their lifestyle
for too long. Following the designation by the City
Administration that their fertile and vast land will
be marked for an industrial zone, they have been
told by local authorities that they will soon be
relocated to another area. Indeed, they have been
promised full compensation.
Wondu is pleased with the amount, for it has shown a
significant increase from three Birr per square
metre to 11.75 Br, now.
For a farmer like Wondu, all this may be inevitable.
He only farms close to a hectare, as land that has
not been redistributed in the area since the Derg
era. The small plot he received from his father.
Although a quintal of wheat or lentils earns him and
other farmers 800 Br and more, they think that the
rising cost of living has eroded the increases from
their produce.
“When you consider the cost of fertiliser, seeds,
cooking oil, coffee, sugar, soap, and kerosene,
whatever price we sell at will not help us save
cash,” said Wondu on Friday morning, while waiting
for his neighbours to go attend the funeral of a
person he described as “an old lady.”
Other farmers are also pleased with the
compensation. Some of those who have already been
paid have consumed a large portion of it. Few of
them have wisely spent the money to buy trucks, for
example.
Bekele Jeru, 56, a father of 10, looks forward to
the relocation and, of course, the compensation.
Winnowing piles of harvest (wheat, teff and lentils)
on Friday, his wife, Zenebech Tessema, 46, along his
side, he nonetheless is worried about his future
prospects. Little does he know what he would do once
he received compensation money and a small plot of
land as a replacement to build his residence.
“I
have always been a farmer,” Bekele said, while
meshing between his hands an ear of wheat. “What
will we do once we have given up our farmland?”
This is the sort of question – although not limited
to this – that he will be asking come a few weeks
later when candidates of contesting political
parties swarm his village, trying to win votes.
Indeed, he shares the demand Wondu has about the
need to have a clinic nearby and a school as well as
the provision of water near their village. Although
they live in the immediate outskirts of Addis, their
children have to endure walking one and a half hours
to a private school, Shumu Ejersa, a little more
expensive than the public school, Goru, located
two-hours away by foot.
The only school in the village, which resembles a
preschool playgroup, has one teacher, Nigist Alemu,
22. A mother of two, she teaches 58 kids in a small
room covered with corrugated sheet metal. She covers
subjects such as Amharic, English, the Environment,
and Math.
Herself having completed 10th Grade but having been
married before moving onto preparatory school,
Nigist is not only a teacher of the Bole Lemi
farmers’ children. Since the first week of January
2010, she has been chosen as one of the two election
officials (together with Assefa Melka), in charge of
administrating the electoral business of four
kebeles – 16, 18, 21, and 22 – in Woreda 17 of the
Bole Constituency.
One of the 1,717 voters’ registration centres in
Addis Abeba Nigist has been registering voters in a
station made of corrugated sheet metal, sandwiched
between the tiny school and her private residence.
Although unable to attend the orientation for
national electoral officials given back in January,
Nigist said she has tried to catch up by reading as
much as she can from the manual. And she sees the
business of voters’ registration conducted
satisfactorily, judging by the number of voters she
has on the two electoral rolls (registration books).
Although electoral officials projected close to 600
people would be eligible to register for votes in
the four kebeles of Bole Lemi, Nigist has already
passed that mark, having 374 voters in one of the
books and 376 on the other electoral roll.
These voters in the Bole Lemi area, including Wondu,
Bekele, Zenebech, as well as their neighbour Tesfaye
Tamiru, 39, are among the 1,015,335 voters that were
registered in Addis Abeba by February 14, 2010,
according to Mohammed Abdurahiman, public relations
head of the National Electoral Board.
With voters’ registration scheduled to come to an
end today, February 21, 2010, national electoral
officials had projected this number to grow even
higher over the past six days.
For those in charge of the nation’s electoral
business, the result so far has not been all too
bad, although they have yet to achieve what they had
projected and pass the threshold from last election;
it is lower by 90,000 from the highly publicised
2005 election, and 200,000 voters less from what
eligible voters in Addis Abeba were projected at for
this election.
The National Electoral Board of Ethiopia projected
that eligible voters on the national level would be
over 30 million voters. This did not include those
in the Somali Regional State and a few other
specially designated registration centres, according
to electoral officials. By Sunday, February 14,
2010, a little over 27.1 million voters had been
registered across the country, by over 41,000
registration stations. Electoral authorities bank on
voters’ culture of rushing to polling stations at
the deadline.
Registration centres had not been places of
hyperactivity up until Friday night, though.
Once such hushed polling station was Kebele 10 of
the Adama Woreda, in the Eastern Shoa Zone of the
Oromia Regional State. Over 100,844 voters have been
registered in this constituency which comprises four
registration stations. Although this figure is
larger by 57,914 voters from the national elections
held in 2000, and the 85,238 in 2005, the local
electoral officials still expect more to come. Yet
they were out of registration cards and thus were on
hold Friday, according to Tsegie H. Mariam, public
observer of the election from the A-3 Substation in
Adama.
Although the impartiality of these public observers
has been contested by opposition leaders, Tsegie is
one of the five electoral observers that voters
chose to place in each station, to serve alongside
five electoral officers.
Deginesh Deresu, staffer of the Eastern Shoa Zone
Electoral Office, is one of these officers. She
accepts the shortfall of voters’ registration cards
as a result of the National Electoral Board’s
postponement of the registration date, twice, from
the originally scheduled deadline. Local electoral
officials have been trying to solve the problem by
moving cards from one station to another, until
their superiors re-supply them, Deginesh told
Fortune.
Many of the electoral officials in these stations
have been waiting idle for voters to turn up; they
seem to have had little success.
“Many of the youths are either busy, or they are
waiting until the last minute,” said Deginesh.
Some voters, such as Girum Alemu, a voter in the
Tabour District of Hawassa (Awassa) Town, the seat
of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples
(SNNP) Regional State, have been undecided because
they saw no possibility of an exciting contest among
the various political parties, as was the case
during the last national elections. Nonetheless,
Girum changed his mind after voters’ registration
was extended. On Friday, he was registered as the
13,736th voter at a station named “Megenagna,” one
of the 139 registration centres in the town, which
comprises eight districts and 32 kebeles.
With an estimated 308,000 residents, the town of
Hawassa was projected to have 108,907 eligible
voters for the forthcoming national elections. Up
until Friday, electoral officials had reported
registering close to 130,999 voters, a figure not
only much larger than the nearly 80,000 voters
registered in 2005, but up by nearly 20.3pc from
what they had projected for the upcoming election,
according to Brehanu Dukamo, coordinator for the
Electoral Office of Hawassa Town, in the Sidama
Zone.
Unlike Girum in Hawassa, whether or not voters will
turn up in Adama at the last minute today, as many
of the electoral officials would hope, the Oromia
Regional State has already passed the threshold of
10,703,371 voters in the middle of last week,
earning title of the place where the largest numbers
of voters have been registered.
A
registration station across the border in Addis
Abeba, the substation where Nigist serves, in Bole
Lemi, was very quiet on Friday morning. Nearly an
hour passed when no one had appeared to get
registered.
“It is because almost all have already been
registered,” Nigist told Fortune, gazing toward a
middle-aged woman standing next to her.
Hirpa Seifu, 36, was recorded in one of the
electoral rolls as the third voter to get
registered, back in January. Other voters such as
Wondu, Bekele and Tesfaye, too, all registered much
earlier during the start of registration.
For these farmers, there is nothing political about
registering or not registering to vote. It was what
they were told to do by committee members of their
kebele: the election has come and they ought to be
registered, which they seem to have done obediently.
At best they appear to be indifferent.
Some of the farmers in Bole Lemi may or may not have
fears of the consequences of not registering or that
the failure to possess voters’ cards could have the
potential bring them harm, unknown and in the
future. Nevertheless, neither have they appeared
politically charged to get registered or otherwise.
It appears as simple as authorities from kebeles
asking them to do what the government asks and they
seem to be happy to comply. They insist that there
has been no pressure, intimidation or coercion
during the period of registration.
Many of these farmers do not have TV sets in their
homes to follow the electoral debates among the
various political parties. Although located on the
immediate outskirts of Addis, exposed to the sea of
light that the capital appears awash in from a
distance, farmers of Bole Lemi have always been
condemned to light from lamps their entire lives.
“We are used to it,” said Bekele, with a sense of
resignation.
A
few however, such as Tesfaye and Nigist’s husband,
have TV sets in their homes, powered by generators.
“But I do not use it daily,” said Tesfaye, showing
off his mud house pained with bold green nearby
where the Bekele family’s harvest piled up. “I only
switch it on for special occasions and whenever I
have guests. The price of fuel is very expensive.”
Not many read newspapers, either, whether private or
state owned. They say they do not have disposable
income worth spending on newspapers, although Wondu
reads, once in a while, a newspaper written in
Oromiffa.
Many farmers in this area depend on radio for their
information, although they appear to be not very
enthusiastic to talk about politics as much as they
would about their family life or farming.
Their strong desire to be heard regarding their
problems in the area of healthcare, such as the need
to pay over 80 Br to get a minibus to transport
patients to Meri; their deprivation of clean,
potable water and forced use of streams nearby the
Akaki River; the recent restructuring of kebele
offices that compel them to travel to Meri taking
over two hours; and most fundamentally their
uncertainty of getting farmland ever again could not
be matched by their lack of interest to discuss
political parties or their leaders.
Farmers such as these know little about which
candidates of the over 1,500, for Federal
Parliament, and over 3,000, for regional councils,
or which of the 55 political parties registered by
the National Electoral Board for this election will
be running to win their votes. Neither was Daniel
Fekrie, chief of the Woreda 17 Electoral Bureau,
certain about the parties and the candidates they
will field in Bole Lemi.
It
seems early; the debate has just begun, and fielding
candidates, particularly by the incumbent, has yet
to be completely filed.
Ironically, very few political parties or
politicians of national stature, are even recognised
by farmers in Bole Lemi.
The incumbent and its leaders are, perhaps not
surprisingly, top on the list of recognisable
political figures. Farmers nod their heads when the
EPRDF or OPDO are mentioned. But not all leaders of
the ruling party are equally known. Meles Zenawi and
Kuma Demeksa may be familiar names but not many
others.
Many of the prominent political leaders in the
opposition, such as Merera Gudina (PhD), chairman of
the Forum for Justice and Democratic Diologue,
a.k.a. Medirek; Lidetu Ayalew, president of the
Ethiopian Democratic Party (EDP); Seyee Abraha, vice
chairman of Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ);
and Beyene Petros (Prof), chairman of the Ethiopian
Social Democratic Party (ESDP) are all figures
unknown to voters in this village.
“People from the Kinijit [Party] were here a few
days ago,” Nigist, the electoral official, and with
an appearance of more a politically enlightened
persona among the villagers, told Fortune. “But,
they have not talked to anyone. They simply toured
the village and left.”
Not only was she unable to make a distinction
between the loose electoral front that was the
Kinijit of 2005 and today’s party of the Coalition
for Unity and Democracy (CUD), the name of its
chairman, Ayele Chamiso, did not ring any bells.
Farmers in Bole Lemi seem to have familiarity with
politicians such as Hailu Shawel and his party, the
All Ethiopian Unity Party (AEUP). They were not also
confused with the mention of names such as Bulcha
Demeksa, chairman of the Oromo Federalist Democratic
Movement (OFDM) or Negasso Gidada (PhD), former
president of the nation under the EPRDF government,
now joined with the UDJ as an opposition figure.
“We hear about them on the radio,” said Bekele.
Few appear to be familiar with the word Andinet, the
shortest Amharic name for the UDJ. Are they familiar
with this party’s jailed leader, Birtukan Mideksa?
“I
am not sure,” said Bekele.
Tesfaye smiled, yet he turned his back, pretending
that he was squashing an ear of lentils. A little
pressed, he rather made his remarks framed in the
form of a question.
“Was that not the lady who refused to ask for an
apology, thus ending up in jail?”
Bekele seemed unable to understand why anyone would
languish in jail unable to ask for an apology.
However, he would rather express his amusement to
Tesfaye, in Oromiffa, than push the discussion any
further.
He
was not alone. Many farmers here would prefer to
avoid talking politics to a stranger, even to a
declared reporter. They all appear to be
apprehensive.
This apprehension about political conversations
evident among farmers of Bole Lemi does not seem to
be an isolated case. If not salvaged by the
forthcoming series of debates among the various
political parties, the nation will likely enter its
important political phase with such moods as those
shyly displayed by farmers such as Wondu, Bekele and
Tesfaye.
|
