Awra Amba RJ 300612 EN - Contacter un comité local d'Attac

Awra Amba, a current experiment of utopian socialism
was created in February 1986 by the 19 remaining members under the name "Awra-amba
Community Cooperatives' Association". Such a cooperative paid his members in proportion to their
work and not in an egalitarian way as did want Zumra and his followers (Me09/35; Awraamba, nd).
The relations deteriorated however and Zumra was thrown in jail on September 5, 1986 without
charge and without trial, before being released after six months, on February 30, 1987 (Question 8 in
Annex). During these episodes, the community declined from 66 to 19 people, whom no one is able
to read or write.
In the final days of the Derg regime, when they heard that Zumra could be jailed, even that people
from the nearby villages were planning to massacre them, Zumra and his thirteen followers left their
homes in the middle of the night on February 28, 1988 (or 1989: Question 9 in Annex) and walked to
Bonga, avoiding settlements, in six weeks, or in only a week by using also vehicles according to
sources (Crespo, 2011; 2012). Bonga is a quiet small town near Jimma (south-west of Addis Ababa),
at 560 km as the crow flies from Awra Amba; they spend here five years. However, Mekonnen
(2009/35) points out that the community delegated twelve out of its members to go with Zumra, in
order to make the travel easier and safer, and therefore that a part of the community stayed in the
village; Crespo (2012) points out that less than twenty people left, but that about thirty died during
the travel (Question 10 in Annex).
After the change of government in 1991, as the members of the community, reduced to about thirty
people (Jo10b), had difficulties in integrating Bonga society especially due to the difficult local
language – Kaffitcho, they came back to Awra Amba (Crespo, 2012). Zumra came back firstly in
1993 with about ten people to prepare the settlement. But people of the village who were not
members of the community were opposed to this comeback for reasons of way of life, but also of
competition for land usage (Me09/36), because the community land had been taken by those people
who were against their life style. The members of Zumra community struggled fiercely to get their
land back and they finally succeeded by contacting the local media, which put pressure on the
authorities (Calvino, 2009). They have managed to get back only 17.5 hectares of land out of the
original fifty or sixty – not enough to feed their growing community. However, Atnafu (2005/28)
and Yassin (2008/51) point out a surface of 43 ha by quoting non published data by ORDA (nd)
(Question 11 in Annex). Most of other members, about sixty, came back from Bonga six months
later, in 1994 (Awraamba, nd) (or 1995: Question 12 in Annex), for establishing the present
community of Awra Amba.
The community size from 1988 to 1995 is therefore quite varying according to authors.
The difficult situation with the neighbours explains that the leader and founder of Awra Amba needs
round-the-clock protection by an armed guard due to decades of hatred and death threats (Tervo,
2009) – see Picture 1 – and that during the night the village is guarded by villagers by rotation in four
guardhouses, an unusual phenomenon in Ethiopia (Jo10b/2).
No sooner was Zumra back, he reconstructed the community dismantled during his absence. Diverse
buildings were built with local materials, especially the small school, the first weaving machines, and
then mills (Crespo, 2011; 2012). Local government and NGOs supported him in terms of food,
agricultural equipment, rehabilitation and construction of infrastructural and social facilities
(Me09/36).
The status of the community was however not clear around 2000: a simple union of local farmers
and handicraftsmen, as the government considered them to be, or a wider entity responsible for
cultural renewal and fighting for its official recognition, as the community understood. The
community sent a petition in that direction to the head of the regional government. The director of
the Regional cooperatives' promotion agency, Ayenew Belay, assured that the confusion ended when
the community was officially registered in 2006 as a Multipurpose cooperative of farmers and
handicraftsmen, enlarged to business activities in 2007 (in 1999 and 2000 according to the Ethiopian
calendar) (Me09/36).
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