Preface

By taking the challenge of writing this book, I have learned immensely more about the Gadaa System. Since I achieved self-consciousness, I have been a student of the Gadaa System, but I have learned more about it in the last five years. What I had known about the system came from the fact that I am a native Oromo: I belong to the System. I have observed multiple Gadaa ceremonies since childhood: admiring, marvelling, questioning, learning, and analysing. These were not enough to fully understand the Gadaa System. I have recognised that the Gadaa System is a school that one joins at eight but graduates at eighty. I took the audacious initiative to write this book, not because I was the conventional authority on the Gadaa System but because I wanted to know more. Through the systematic study of the Gadaa System and the writing of this book, I have asked people who knew aspects of the system; I have studied the readily available literature. Also, I have conducted rigorous analyses during the last three years. These years of systematic study of the Gadaa System have enabled me to understand it better. The entire process of writing the book was a greater understanding of the Gadaa System that was worth all the effort.

Even so, what I have understood has not given me the authority to write about the Gadaa System singlehandedly on behalf of the Oromo nation. The work can only be a comprehensive introduction to the Gadaa System, written for all-purpose readers. The Oromo people are the inventors and the source of genuine knowledge and wisdom on the Gadaa System. I cannot stand for them all, nor is the Gadaa System a subject one could impart at once. Gadaa System is a collective wisdom of the Oromo nation to which one could only become a lifetime student. This book, therefore, could only be considered a faint shadow of the profound knowledge about the Gadaa System that is among the great Oromo nation of East Africa.

Nonetheless, I can share what I have learned and understood thus far to advance my knowledge and understanding of the Gadaa System. I may do so in a more organised and structured manner that could facilitate uniform understanding. From the start, I intended to share what I know about the Gadaa System. I also wish that every competent Oromo imparts knowledge about the Gadaa System to everyone. If every interested Oromo does so, the world will learn about it. I understand that not much knowledge about the Gadaa System has been made available to the public on the international stage, even as introductory work. I also accept that there is no uniform understanding of the Gadaa System, not even among the not-so-many Gadaa scholars. Both suggest that there is a pressing need to build a standardised body of literature that would be accessible to everyone.

The primary aim of this book is, thus, to contribute to the groundwork for the standardization of literature, which could be accessible to everyone interested in the Gadaa System. I intend to encourage traditional and modern Oromo scholars to commit to developing standardised comprehensive literature on the Gadaa System. Also, it is an invitation for the new generation of Oromo people who reside in big cities and abroad, separated from their traditional communities, to educate themselves more about their unique socio-political system and enlighten the rest of the world by sharing the readily available standardised knowledge about it. Besides, it is also an invitation extended to the Gadaa scholars to make the educational fragments of knowledge about the Gadaa System more public knowledge by adapting it for general-purpose readers and school textbooks. In this regard, I hope this book serves as an introductory textbook very well.

I envisage seeing that there would soon be a comprehensive knowledge base, an extraordinary collection, about the Gadaa System. For now, achieving this vision may seem to be shooting for the stars. A few decades later, the standard collection could be ready for the world. Everyone would acquire traditional and uniform knowledge about this true ‘heritage of humanity’ from that knowledge base. In the humble process of authoring the book, my effort was only marking the beginning of what, I believe, could become a comprehensive knowledge base on the Gadaa System. I am humbled to have contributed an exceedingly small part in this regard. I hope that others will build upon it. Gadaa System: Heritage of Humanity is a very humble contribution to that vision. Everyone is invited!

I hope the book will soon be available in multiple Ethiopian languages (Amharic, Afaan Oromoo, Tigrigna, Somali, etc.) and other languages (Kiswahili, Hausa, Arabic, etc.). I chose the English language because the written resources at the international level were available in that language, and it is the preferred language for disseminating knowledge about the Gadaa System globally. A secondary consideration for the choice was that it could be more accessible to translate to other languages. Otherwise, being in a state of restricted liberty, it was challenging to write the book singlehandedly in a second language, unaided. I kindly invite competent translators to translate the book into any germane language within the applicable laws and conventions.

Deribie Mekonnen Demmeksa
May 31, 2018
Horten, Norway