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

Awra Amba, a current experiment of utopian socialism
with the community values and lifestyle. They fully participate to the institutions and their
behaviours comply with the values they defend (At05/64). In the future, it will not be necessarily the
case, either if the decision to live here is not recent, or if the members are born in the village: the
agreement could be less strong. If today the rare people who disagree leave deliberately the
community or are thrown out, will it be even possible if they are more? Won't the children of the
current members be perfectly legitimate to stay in their village of origin, regardless of their
behaviour?
But in our opinion, Awra Amba did not develop any reflexion and mechanisms to deal with the
heterogeneity of its members, except the expulsion.
Ossification through the myth
Zumra, the founder and leader, is almost seen as a prophet, an extraordinary man revered by the
community, and whose heroic childhood deeds have no doubt been slightly embellished. So, from
the age of four, he allegedly started wondering about unfairness, maltreatment or dishonesty; Atnafu
(2005/1) even talks about Zumra's age of three or four years as an historical step in his vision of an
ideal society. In our opinion, all that seems rather astonishing and close to a myth.
Simultaneously, adults and children idolize Zumra according to Me09/73, which worries him for the
future (Me09/80): the death of such a charismatic and influential leader, without any visible
successor, poses severe problems to the community.
This behaviour could be compared to religious veneration, a widespread phenomenon in the
Ethiopian culture. We consider that this attitude is quite dangerous as it is in complete contradiction
with the values advocated by the Awra Amba community, which reject veneration of the past or of
an elsewhere and look toward the future. The future transformation of Zumra into a secular prophet
whose more or less presumed behaviours are more worshiped than the values, and the transformation
of an emancipatory project into an uncriticizable myth, leading to ossification, are really liable to
happen. The flexible, open, and inventive nature of this running utopia would disappear to the benefit
of an almost religious veneration in total opposition with the today project. This raises the question
of the values of Awra Amba – which should be maintained as these are essential, and of the
behaviours and policies which are the translations of these values at any one time – and which can
change. The risk is to abandon critical thinking, which alone will allow the descendants to possibly
challenge the social organisation of Awra Amba in order to stay true to their values.
Research items
Several research topics could allow improving the present knowledge we presented in this report:
- Study in detail the history of the community. We have seen that a lot of items are not accurate,
even contradictory. Since there are very few written and therefore sustainable sources available,
it is urgent to interview the stakeholders still alive. In addition, as most of the historical data
provided by the different authors come from Zumra interviews, it is necessary to widen the set
of internal witnesses to all of those still living, in order to compare the points of view. Moreover,
number of stakeholders and witnesses are external to the community, for instance the people
who met the founders of the community in the Amhara region and during the exile, the political
or economic leaders with which the community has been in contact, or the neighbours in the
neighbouring communities. The first aim is to establish a chronology as accurate as possible; the
second aim is to compare the points of view of the various stakeholders and the reasons given to
their actions.
- Compare the experiment of Awra Amba with the worldwide experiments of utopian socialism,
most of them have been listed in the introduction. What are the common features? What is the
originality of the Awra Amba community? What can learn Awra Amba from the other
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