Chapter 2
From Homogeneity to Diversification of School Pupils in Wolaita: Classes, Genders and Generations (1941–1974)
p. 75-100
Texte intégral
1The first school in Wolaita, the Wollamo Soddo Elementary School, opened its doors in October 1941, just six months after the liberation (Demeke 1985, 2); this was quite early if one considers that the school system did not begin operating until February 1942 (Teshome 1979, 55). Forty pupils attended on the first day. They were at varying levels—some had been educated at Orthodox Tewahedo Church schools or the Italian School during the occupation—and so they were immediately divided into four separate classes, which were known as grades 1-4 (Demeke 1985, 4–6). In 1950–51, the school provided a complete elementary curriculum up to Grade 8, at the end of which the first national examination was held. At that time, the school had 500 pupils, a number that had risen to 1,300 by 1963–64 (Demeke 1985, 20). In 1964–65, the creation of a Grade 9 class marked the beginning of secondary education. After Grade 12 opened in 1969–70, pupils were able to take the Ethiopian Secondary School Leaving Certificate. Two thousand students were enrolled at that time (Demeke 1985, 32–33). In the 1940s and 1950s, 14 government primary schools were established in the small urban centres of Wolaita.1 Rural areas were neglected until the late 1950s, when Protestant primary schools tied to the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) were established in villages. There were 140 of these schools in 1974 (Elias 2004, 13). From the mid-1960s, the Wolaita school system thus consisted of a secondary school in Wolaita Soddo, government primary schools in the little towns and Protestant schools in the countryside. There were links between governement and Protestant schools, which resulted in a relatively tight school network. The data, which on the surface show significant development, actually conceal a far more mixed reality. Enrolment rates remained low: they were 13.5 percent nationally in 1973 (Teshome 1979, 170), and probably a little higher in Wolaita because of the missionary schools. It took some time for the institution of schooling to take hold. In the 1940s and 1950s, the first to engage with it were urban families, settlers and Wolaita state employees, a situation that was transformed from the late 1950s onwards by the ambitious policies of two governors, Germame Neway and Wolde-Samaet Gebre-Wold, and by the spread of Protestant schools. Schooling for girls, on the other hand, remained extremely marginal in both urban and rural areas until the end of the regime.
2Schooling a child means looking to the future. It depends on what the social world allows and what we believe we can expect from it. Actors have developed their uses of schools within both local power configurations and national political transformations. This does not mean, however, as Maurizio Gribaudi points out, that it is appropriate to postulate that “each group secretes a coherent and widely-shared model which guides the overall behaviour of its members” (Gribaudi 1996, 117). It is simply a matter of circumscribing the reasons for schooling embedded in power configurations that constitute both constraints and resources. This chapter examines the driving forces behind the transformations that have taken place in the social composition of schoolchildren as a group.
1. Resistance
3From acceptance to hostility or indifference, there was a broad spectrum of representations and attitudes towards the new school institution. In western countries, universal, free and politically-controlled education developed with the nation state. While this particular type of school has since taken on a natural force, it is not at all self-evident. This methodological precaution is mentioned here a priori so as to avoid positive or negative value judgments of the various representations and attitudes towards school. In particular, distrusting or refusing to attend school must not be treated as an anomaly. In 1941, the state school was a novelty in Wolaita. The churches and monasteries that had been established after the conquest had a monopoly over transmission of the written word, which they exercised very sparingly. The missionaries who arrived in the late 1920s had opened literacy centres to teach the Bible, but they were a marginal presence. Social actors in Wolaita perceived school from their own social position.
1.1 Wolaita peasants against the school of the conquering power
4The distance between peasant farmers and schools was a wide one, due on the one hand to the economic constraints imposed by subsistence farming and the high level of taxation, and on the other to the negative representations brought about by the close relationship between the written word and power:
በኛ ጊዜ ወደ ትምህርት ቤት የሚመጡ ልጆች ብዙ አልነበሩም። እና ሲመጡ "ለምን ትምህርት ትማራላችሁ" ይባሉ ነበር ። እኔ አሁን ለምሳሌ ወደ ሳባተኛ ክፍል በምደርስበት ወደ ቤት ለመሄድ ጥያቂው ይሰለቸኜ ነበር። እዛ ስሄድ በምንገድ ያለው ሁሉ አያስኬደኝም። ሰላም ይለኛል "ደህና ነህ ከየት ነው የምትመጣው ? ከትምህርት ቤት። "ሆሆ ትልቅ ሰው ሆነህ እስካሁን ትምህርት ተማራለህ እንዴ! ለምን ወደ አባተህ መሬት አትመለስም ? ለምን ሚስት አግብተህ አትቀምጠም ? ምን አንተ ? ልብህ እንደ ሰው አይደለም! " ይሉኛል።
In our time [the early 1950s], only a few children used to come to school. And when they did, they were scolded, with people asking, “Why do you go to school? What’s the use?” For example, when I was in grade 7, every time I returned from school, I grew weary of hearing the same question. Those I passed on my way home wouldn’t let me go in peace. They would greet me with a “hello,” to which I would reply, “hello.” Then they would inquire, “How are you? Where are you coming from?” “From school,” I would answer. Following that, they would remark, “Uh-oh! You’re all grown up and still going to school? Why don’t you go back to your father’s field? Why don’t you get married and settle down? Who do you think you are? Your heart is not a man’s heart.”2
5Schooling was initially viewed as an unnecessary luxury, a waste of time at the expense of agricultural work. For peasants who were subjected to the necessities of an economy of scarcity, schooling was incongruous, and the top priority was to ensure subsistence for the family. What was taught at school was too far removed from the future social obligations expected of young men, which were to marry, have children, feed their families and help their parents. Going to school was perceived as an abandonment, and the demonstration of an amoral attitude. If in the eyes of the former school actors the peasants of the time “did not know the usefulness of school,”3 it was because they did not perceive it as a possible means of social advancement. The peasants’ hostility to school was also based on political arguments, however: their experience of the written word was limited to the administrative and fiscal practices of the conquering power. Dominated peasants could therefore only look with suspicion on a literate civil servant produced by a school. To know how to write was to participate in domination. This is a dialogue between Desalegn Tanga and Gebre-Mikael Kuke, both pupils in the early 1950s. It is taken from the same interview and follows on immediately from the previous excerpt:
Desalegn: ሌላ ደግሞ የሀያ ጸሐፊ ልትሆን ነው ወይ!
Gebre-Mikael: አዎ! እሱ እንዳለው የሀያ ጸሐፊ ማለት መጻፍ እና ማንበብ የሚችሉ ልጆች ትልቅ ገበያ ሄደው ገበሬዎች ከብት ሲገበያዩ ውል ያፈራርማሉ፤ ያቺን ውል አፈራርመው ከገዢም ከሻጭም ሀያ ሀያ ሳንቲም ይወስዳሉ። ያቺን ሳንቲም ለመውሰድ ገበያ ለመሄድ ነው ይላሉ ።Desalegn: And on top of that, you’re going to become “one who writes 20!”
Gebre-Mikael: Yes! When he says “one who writes 20,” he is talking about young people who knew how to read and write, who used to go to the big market and made farmers sign contracts to trade cattle. And they took twenty cents from both the seller and the buyer. They said, “You go to the market just to earn that 20 cents.”4
6The insulting expression “one who writes 20” expresses the idea that the written word taught at school was used to exploit the fruits of peasant labour. When construction of a bureaucratised administration began in the 1940s, civil servants gradually replaced the armed settlers, but their task was still to maintain order and collect taxes, and they may also have had the right to collect the fruits of peasant labour. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that an educational institution organised by the government to train these people—the civil servant viewed as a predator—might arouse suspicion. Schoolchildren would fall into the same camp as the new masters. In the particular context of the Wolaita, hostility towards school overlapped with a rejection of the occupying authority and its practices.
Figure 5: Ligaba Beyene School

Photograph by Pierre Guidi, 10 September 2009.
1.2 Priests of the National Church against the “Catholic” school
7Another criticism, this time from the Orthodox Tewahedo Church priests, was primarily religious in nature. The suggestion here was that the government school was a roundabout way of introducing Catholicism:
ዘመናዊ ትምህርት የኮቶሊክ ትምህርት ነው ይባል ነበር። “የኮቶሊክ ትምህርት ትማራላችሁ? ሀይማታችንን ለማጥፋት ነው አይደለም ? ሃይማኖት ለመተው እኮ ነው”። መጀመሪያ ላይ ማህበረሰቡ በተለይም ሃይማኖተኞች ዘመናዊ ትምህርት እንዲስፋፋ አይፈልጉም ነበር። ምክንያቱም ዘመናዊ ትምህርት ከተስፋፋ ወጣቶች ሃይማኖት ይተዋሉ ብለው ስለሚያስቡ ነው።
It was said that the modern school was a Catholic school. Do you go to Catholic school? Isn’t it to destroy our religion? It’s to abandon your religion. In the beginning, people and especially the religious people did not want the modern school to expand. They said that young people were going to abandon religion.5
8Until the 1974 revolution, Tewahedo Christianity enjoyed its status as the official religion, and was a pillar of the identity of the Christian kingdom. The accusation of Catholicism levied against government schools was aimed at its exogenous character as a school of the farenjoch (whites) that would undermine the cultural foundations of Ethiopia. Did the priests really believe that a government school might be able to destroy Ethiopian identity? Certainly, some of the knowledge was imported, the English language was important and the stated aims were not religious. But in Wolaita, as in other schools in the country, what was taught in the first three years was almost exactly the same as what was taught in religious schools, and moral education was provided by priests of the Tewahedo Church. In short, Tewahedo Christianity had the status of a state religion in state schools. It is more important to draw attention to the fact that the government school appeared to threaten the political balance that ensured the position of the church in the apparatus of power, a position that was based on a monopoly over the use and transmission of the written word, with which the government schools competed.
9In all the regions that had been incorporated by the end of the 19th century, churches and monasteries symbolised the cultural domination of the (Christian) conquerors over the conquered (“pagan”) peoples. Priests also feared that schooling the conquered populations would call the distribution of power into question:
ሰዎቹ ይህንን የኮቶሊክ ትምህርት ከተማሩ ሃይማኖት ይተዋሉ የሚል ስጋት ነበርባቸው ። በተለይ በአማሮቹ ላይ። ኢትዮጵያ 85 ብሔረሰብ እኮ ነው ሥልጣኑ በአማራ እጅ ነበር። ባለሥልጣኑ አማራ ብቻ ነው። እስከ ቀበሌ ባለሥልጣን አማራ ነው ። ሌላ ሰው ሥልጣን አይሰጥም ነበር።
They were afraid that people would abandon [their] religion if they learned in this Catholic school. Especially the “Amhara.” Ethiopia is 85 nationalities! But the power was in the hands of the “Amhara.” The one is power was only the “Amhara.” They didn’t give power to other people.6
10Within the societies of the south, priests were also members of the group of settlers whose domination over the defeated populations was legitimised by the assertion of their cultural superiority. In the long run, educating the dominated meant that they would no longer be able to justify their subjugation from an ideological standpoint. The clerics’ opposition to government schools was thus to some extent similar to that of the civilian settlers and their Wolaita employees, as we saw in the previous chapter.
1.3 A girl’s place is not at school
11Similarly, the attitude towards schooling girls oscillated between indifference and hostility.7 Between 1941 and 1945, there was a boys’ school and a girls’ school in Soddo. The girls learned the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic and household management—cooking, sewing and hygiene. Since the knowledge and skills being taught were already being passed on within the family, why send a daughter to school? As a future wife and mother, she learned everything she needed to know by helping her mother at home, and mothers had no interest in depriving themselves of valuable support for the many tasks in daily life. In this respect, therefore, schooling was considered unnecessary and counterproductive. In addition, the co-educational school established in 1945 conflicted with the rules of male and female socialisation. School was a public space where by being with boys and men all day, girls would undoubtedly develop bad habits, and suspicions and accusations of prostitution were frequent until the 1970s.8 While girls were expected to be virtuous, they were also considered to be weak and vulnerable.
12Many mothers shared this general opinion, including Ayelech Tekle-Mariam’s mother, who sent Ayelech to school after refusing to send her eldest daughter because “it [was] not right to go to school with the boys.”9 School was no place for a respectable young girl. Ayelech went on to say that it was thanks to the pugnacity and authority of her father, who was a teacher, that the second daughter and her younger sisters went to school. Some mothers who were in favour of their daughters having a school education were not happy with the pressure exerted by the community. They worried about gaining reputations as bad mothers as much as their daughters as bad girls. It was they, rather than their husbands, who were blamed. Belaynesh Antonios, who was also at school in the 1960s, remembers the criticism levelled at her mother about her schooling. She reports that when her mother went to the river to wash clothes, the other women would tell her: “Your daughter goes to school. What is a girl worth who spends all her days walking the streets surrounded by boys?”10 This attitude stemmed not only from the most widely-shared opinion on the harmful effects of coeducation, but also from the disconnection between school and society. Within the school walls, the teachers were attentive to the morality of their pupils, and discipline was strict, but the population had a very distant relationship with the school as an institution: the reality of what was happening there was then turned into fantasy by imagining the worst. In addition, a school education had a reputation for making girls arrogant, lazy and temperamental, thus socialising them in a way society would not expect. Once at school, they would no longer be discreet and obedient, they would no longer want to carry out the burdensome daily tasks of a wife and mother and they would have expensive tastes. A proverb that was very widespread at the time bears vivid witness to this idea: “An educated woman and an overly well-fed mule develop bad habits” (ሴት ከተማረች በቅሎ ከተገበች አመል አወታች ሴት ከተማረች በቅሎ ከተገበች አመል አወታች) (Seyum 1986, 9). Finally, in the context of a school system designed to train civil servants, being educated meant gaining access to a position of power, which was unthinkable for a woman.
2. The first generation: the children of settlers and Wolaita state employees (1941 to the mid-1950s)
13In the 1940s and 1950s, as a result of the peasants’ negative perceptions of state schools, opposition from local elites to schooling the dominated and the very presence of schools in urban centres, the pupils who attended were from families which were a part of the power structure. Alula Anjiyo, who belonged to the first generation of schoolchildren in the early 1940s recalls: “Kegnazmach11 Wadelo Merid came on a mule […] escorted by his servants. And there was also one called Kegnazmach Lemma. They were balabbat sons, with all the typical behaviour of spoiled children.”12 Alula Anjiyo came from a Wolaita family, and his father was a judge. Gebre-Mikael Kuke, who is himself a Wolaita son of a cheqa shum (village chief), remembers that at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, the pupils were “children of the town, some of them children of civil servants, some of them children of balabbat and some of them children of high officials.”13
14For these groups, schooling was part of a strategy of reproduction, or upward social mobility. From the time he came to power, and especially from 1941 onwards, Haile Selassie’s plan was to replace the feudal lords with educated civil servants. For the aristocrats, not taking over the school meant losing their social status. Teshome Wagaw is only partly right when he writes that the nobles considered school to be useless for their children, who were destined for power by birth (Teshome 1979, 31): in fact, some members of the aristocracy adapted to the changes in policy and engaged with schools in order to remain in power. Christopher Clapham showed that aristocrats still made up the majority of senior central government officials in the 1960s (Clapham 1969, 72). They had gone through the capital’s elite schools, and some had studied abroad. The same practices were followed in the provinces. Many pupils from the very first generation were members of the aristocracy, and as in the schools of Addis Ababa before the Italian occupation, they went to school with all the pomp and circumstance of their class, with a mule and an escort (Rebaud 1934, 138).
15Those civil servants who were not members of the aristocracy owed their status solely to their education, whether it was government or religious. Since their functions necessarily implied mastery of the written word, transmission of their social status required that their children attend school. This was even more imperative for the children of village chiefs, who had auxiliary status, and had not attended school.14 They were appointed by the local elites, and depended on them entirely. Lacking the ties of kinship from which the aristocracy benefitted, and deprived of the educational capital of civil servants, their position was all the more precarious, and was subject to the goodwill of their superiors. Schooling allowed these families to free themselves from this situation by becoming civil servants rather than mere auxiliaries. In this way, they secured their position of power upon the more solid foundations of educational capital.
16Efforts of the school administration to enrol children from poor families were not entirely in vain. Their numbers were small, but they were not totally absent from classes.15 Wanna Wagesho, who helped Bogale Wallelu found the first school before becoming its principal, remembers the methods they used in the 1940s: “We set up the student police, we sent the student police to gather children they found in the market or in the fields, and then we taught them. […] We tried to convince their fathers, and that’s how we did it.”16 They also encouraged poor children by donating clothes, soap and school materials:
በዚያን ጊዜ ድሆች ነበሩ ። ድህነታቸው ተመሰክሮ ልብስ፣ ደብተር፣ እንዲሁም መጽሐፍ፣ ይሰጣቸው ነበር። አዲስ ልብስ ተሰጥቷቸው የለበሱትን ተማሪዎች ከተማም ገጠርም ሆነው የሚያዩ ልጆች ትምህርት ቤት ለመምጣት ይጓጓሉ። ደብተር እና መጽሐፍ በነፃ በሚሰጣበት ጊዜ ልጆች ለትምህርት እንዲጓጉ ያደርጋል ።
During that period, there were impoverished individuals. Once we confirmed their poverty, they received donations of clothes, exercise books, and textbooks. Observing children, those who were not attending school, witness their peers adorned in new attire, their enthusiasm to enrol in schools surged. Offering exercise books and textbooks for free serves as a motivation for children to pursue education.17
17This practice attracted poor children who saw a change in status, although they still needed to live in the city or close to one of the few schools in the small towns. Others owed their schooling to their own desire to go to school or to a combination of circumstances. The case of Lemma Didana, who entered the government school in 1949, is interesting in this respect:
ከ ዋንዳራ ለመጀመሪያ ጊዜ ዘመናዊ ትምህርት የጀመርኩት እኔ ነኝ። ምክንያቱም ታላቅ ወንድሜ ዲያቆን ስለነበር በሱ ምክንያት እኔም ቄስ ትምህርት ጀምሬ ነበር ። እሱ ከአንድ መሪጌታ ጋር ከ ዋንዳራ መጥቶ እዚህ ተክለ ሃይማኖት ገዳም የቤተክርስቲያን ትምህርት ጀመረ ። ከዛም ታላቅ ወንድሜ የመስቀል በአልን ለማክበር ወደ ቤተሰብ በመጣበት ወቅት ከሱ ጋር ጠፍቼ መጣሁ፤ ከዛም የቄስ ትምህርት ጀመርኩና ዲያቆን ለመሆን ዜማ ጨረስኩ። አንድ ካሳው የሚባል ቄስ ሲቀድስ ዜማው ደስ ይለኝ ስለበር ቄስ ለመሆን እፈልግ ነበር በዚህም ምክንያት የግዕዝ ቋንቋን እወድ ነበር ። የቄስ ትምህርት ተማሪዎች እዛው ቤተክርስቲያን ነው የሚያድሩት ። ወደ ቤተሰብ አካባቢ ከሄደ የስጋ ምኞት ያስባል መንፈሳዊነትን ይተዋል ተብሎ ይታሰባል ።ስለዚህ… በመቃብር ቤት እንዲያድር ይደረግ ነበር። እኔም ስድስት ወር በመቃብር ቤት አድሬያለሁ ። ወላጅ አባቴን በሞት ያጣሁት ነፍስ ሳላውቅ በመሆኑ እናቴ ብቻዋን ነው ያሳደገችኝለእናቴ ዲቁና ለመማር ወደ አዲስ አበባ መሄዴ ነው ብዬ ነገርኳት ። "ወደ አዲስ አበባ ልሄድ ነው" ብዬ ስነግራት "ለምን?" አለችኝ "ዲቁና ለመማር" አልኳት "አትሄደም" ብላ ተቈጣች "አትሄደም እዚህ ዘመናዊ ትምህርት ተከፍቷል እዚህ ዘመናዊ ትምህርት አለ አይደለም?" አለች። በመጨረሻም አዲስ አበባ ሄጄ ድቁና መማሩን ትቼ ዋንዳራ አላላ ትምህርት ቤት ሄጄ ትምህርት ጀመርኩ።
I am the first person from Wandara to have attended a modern school. I initially began my education at the priests’ school because my older brother held the position of a deacon. He arrived in Wandara with a merigeta (head of religious singing) and started attending Kes TemhertBet (a religious non-formal school) at the Tekle Haymanot monastery. During the Meskel holiday, when my brother returned home, I decided to run away with him and come here. I enrolled in Kes Timihrt Bet and progressed to a level where I could graduate as a deacon. There was a priest named Kassaw whom I admired for his rendition of religious songs, and he inspired me to become a teacher. He also instilled in me a love for the Geez language. Students attending Kes Timihrt Bet stayed overnight in the nearby church. It was believed that if a student returned to their family, they might be tempted by worldly things and forsake spiritual life. Therefore, students were compelled to sleep in small houses or caves built in the church cemetery. I spent six months sleeping in one of these cemetery houses. Since my father passed away when I was a young boy, my mother raised me as a single parent. When I informed her of my intention to go to Addis Ababa to study and become a deacon, she objected, stating that a new modern school had opened locally, questioning the need to travel so far for education. Faced with her opposition, I abandoned my plan to go to Addis Ababa and instead enrolled in the modern school in Wendara Alala.18
18Lemma Didana, a future teacher with a Master’s degree in English, went to the government school because it was close to his family home, and his mother refused to let the last child she still had living with her go to study in a faraway monastery. He was attracted to religious school because of his fondness for the liturgy, and ended up going to the “modern” school by default, for lack of anything better, because it was not far from his home. Ultimately, however, few children from poor families attended school until the end of the 1950s. It was not until the administration of Governor Germame Neway that a large-scale education campaign aimed at the children of peasants took place.
Figure 6: School children at work in the 1950s

Source: Ministry of Information, Education in Ethiopia (Addis Ababa: Patterns of Progress, 1964).
3. The educational action of Governor Germame Neway (1958–59): schooling the dominated
19Known in contemporary Ethiopian history for organising the failed coup against Haile Selassie in 1960 with his brother Mengestu Neway, Germame Neway was the first governor of Wolaita. Because the collective memory, which is still very vivid today, made him a local hero, it is not easy to separate the myth from the reality (Guidi 2013). His educational work remains very much alive in the collective memory:
Germame Neway came, appointed by the emperor. He was a very educated person and he came […] to the very remote countryside. Even at that time […] he tried to change the country. He was a very good person, and he tried to change by education. Education was the means. […] He rearranged the structures of the whole of Wolaita and in each village, he created a non-formal education centre. There were about three hundred of them throughout Wolaita. The education centre means that he employed young people with a third and fourth grade education as teachers for thirty ber [the Ethiopian currency]. And… the people made this kind of room from grass and wood. Everything was done by the people, and they were very happy. ‘This is for your children to learn, to be educated,’ and the people came… they did it quickly. And then, one teacher for… no number was decided because there could be a hundred or fifty or whatever, children from the village. They learned the Amharic alphabet.19
20It would be helpful to take a look at Germame Neway as a character. He arrived at his post as governor at the age of 34, and was a young intellectual and a progressive administrator (Bahru 2007, 237). Born into the high Shoan aristocracy, he was first educated at the Tefari Mekonnen and Haile Selassie I schools in Addis Ababa. He then moved to the United States, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin and a Master of Arts degree in Social Sciences from Columbia University in 1954. The pan-African atmosphere there had a lasting influence on him (Bahru 2007, 241), and he came to believe that the educated elites had a duty to guide the nation along the path of progress (Greenfield 1965, 340–41). Three years after his return to Ethiopia, he was appointed governor of Wolaita (1958–59), and then of Jijiga20 (1959–60). In both these assignments, his reformist ambitions aroused opposition from the local elites and led to his being dismissed by the emperor. These disappointments led to the attempted coup d’état and his suicide after the coup failed. In 1958, governors of this type were rare, and it seems that the emperor deliberately gave him the mission of reforming Wolaita in order to better integrate it into the central state.
21Germame Neway’s actions in the education field were therefore part of a more general project to rationalise local government. He initiated reforms in the areas of political representation, infrastructure, access to land and education. At his first meeting with about a hundred local leaders, he announced that elections would be held so that the villagers would be able to choose their representatives, with whom he would hold regular meetings (Wanna Wagesho 2003, 140–41). There were various reasons behind this: to bypass the balabbat and the village chiefs, whose arbitrary practices were all too well-known, to acquire a good knowledge of the region, to be in direct contact with its citizens and to organise reforms as efficiently as possible. These regular meetings were accompanied by daily tours throughout the province. This showed a willingness to put an end to abuse of power, as well as to centralise in order to ensure enhanced control, in the tradition of authoritarian modernisation under state control. His second action was to settle day labourers on vacant government-owned land in the less-populated Wolaita lowlands. His 1954 Columbia paper on the Kikuyu land grab by English settlers in Kenya demonstrates his great interest in the links between land issues and social justice (Greenfield 1965, 341–42). The policy involved breaking the peasants’ dependency on their lords without paying them any compensation. In the truck used to take them to their new place of residence, the peasants sang a song, dreaming of an inverted world: “Oh my master, shave off your hair and go to your field. Oh my mistress, take off your beautiful dress and prepare kotcho to feed your husband.”21 This action contributed greatly to his great popularity in Wolaita. Finally, he set up hundreds of literacy centres where the Amharic alphabet and arithmetic were taught. Young people with a primary education were employed as teachers. Equipped with a blackboard and chalk, they had to go to villages and bring children together in churchyards, in small, rapidly-built thatched wooden houses or in the shade of a tree to teach their classes. The aim was to provide education to as many people as possible at the lowest possible cost. It seems that at first the children were taken to literacy classes against the wishes of their parents, who did not see the point of a school education when they needed help to support the family. Abraham Worku, who later became a teacher, remembers how he entered the classroom:
When children reached school age, they entered […] every home. […] They looked at the boys and girls, mostly boys, who should be taken to school, they said. The parents did not want to send their children to class because they had no idea about education at that time. So the government school forced them. […] I myself went to class in this way.
Question: Your parents were not happy…
Abraham: They were not happy!
Question: Because they wanted you to work there, on the farm…
Abraham: They wanted me to help them.22
22It is hard to know how much authoritarianism and how much voluntary participation by the population was involved, but at least Germame Neway’s policy left a very positive memory among the peasant population: “Germame was the first official to enter each village… He pushed us to be partners. Everyone contributed by working on roads, bridges and schools…. Even though he stayed for only a few years, it made us aware, gave us a social and moral conscience. It was a mass mobilisation.”23 The reforms it brought were seen to benefit the most marginalised sections of the population, whose lot was to be improved through greater integration into central government, as shown by its educational policy of spreading Amharic. In fact, it was against the interests of the local holders of power, who led a campaign in Addis Ababa, accusing him of acting against the government and seeking to stir up the population, and succeeded in having him removed from office.24
23Despite the short period of time of a year and a few months, Germame Neway left deep traces in the local collective consciousness. He is seen as the first senior civil servant from the centre to have carried out reforms that favoured the dominated against the local elites. For the first time, a representative of the central government included the exploited rural population in a political project. His popularity reflects the ambiguous relationship of marginalised groups with the central state, which is perceived as both an oppressor and a resource, and which both attracts and repels. Germame Neway was also a source of contradiction in Haile Selassie’s government, which combined the semantics of progress through bureaucratic rationalisation with maintaining the feudal structures of local power. In the end, after sending a governor to integrate Wolaita more effectively into the central state, the emperor agreed with the competing local potentates.
24How was this school experience sustainable? First of all, there were links between these centres and formal education. Literate people equipped with a certificate could enter government schools. According to Abraham Worku, of the approximately one hundred pupils who went to school with him, about fifteen went on to continue their education.25 Access to education was also encouraged very soon thereafter by the policies of Governor Wolde-Samaet Gebre-Wold between 1963 and 1973, to which we shall return. But the main driving force behind rural schooling was the missionary schools linked to the Sudan Interior Mission, which multiplied from the late 1950s onwards.
4. Protestant schools, the alternative path for the dominated
25The spread of Protestantism under Haile Selassie’s regime was a peculiar phenomenon in southern Ethiopia. In 1960, the Sidamo, Arsi and Wellega regions alone accounted for 7,829 of the 10,090 pupils enrolled in missionary schools across the country.26 Wolaita, from where Protestantism spread to Sidamo, had nearly 140 missionary schools in 1974 (Elias 2004, 13). It was through these schools that rural children entered the school system. Because of their geographical proximity—they were the only schools in rural areas—and because of the religion’s greater cultural proximity, Protestantism represented an element of identity regeneration in the face of the domination exercised by the conquerors. They were rural schools and the schools of the dominated at a time when government schools were in cities and were an expression of power, and they played the role of bridges to the government schools. In fact, the network of Protestant schools was not completely separate from the government system, and it provided an important part of primary education.
4.1 Wolaita Protestantism: moral and political regeneration
26Barbara Cooper, who has studied the activities of the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) in southern Niger, recalls that it belongs to the “fundamentalist” branch of North American Protestantism (Cooper 2006). As its name suggests, the SIM’s objective was to evangelise the people of “Sudan,” which as far as missionaries were concerned was an area covering the vast African region between southern Sahara and the equator. The first team arrived in Addis Ababa in 1927, and in Wolaita in 1929. Its leader, Dr Lambie, had been in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan since the end of the 19th century, entering Ethiopia via the Wellega in 1919 and arriving in Addis Ababa in 1922. There, armed with his medical knowledge and determined to use it to gain the trust of the authorities, he forged close ties with the future emperor, Haile Selassie, who was then Regent Teferi. Wishing to make the best use of the missionaries’ skills, the regent entrusted Lambie with the task of raising funds to build a hospital, which opened in 1926 with the name Teferi Hospital (Tibebe 1999, 33). In exchange, following bitter negotiations with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the SIM missionaries obtained permission to establish posts in the “pagan” regions of the south.
27Leaving Addis Ababa for Jimma, the missionaries arrived in Wolaita in April 1928 and decided to settle there (Elias 1987, 21). The number of conversions they made between the time they arrived and their expulsion from Ethiopia by the Italian occupiers in 1937 was limited: just 48 Wolaita were baptised. But a major surprise awaited them on their return in 1943: according to the missionary and academic John Spencer Trimingham, at the time of the liberation, 20,000 people claimed to be Protestant and between 150 and 200 village communities had been formed, out of a Wolaita population he estimated at the time to be 50,000 (Trimingham 1950, 34–36). In the absence of the SIM missionaries, the new religion had spread at an impressive rate, and conversions continued to multiply thereafter.
28How can we explain these rapid conversions, which were the result of the actions of local actors, and not foreign missionaries? It is an undeniable fact that the decentralised concept defended by the North American missionaries facilitated the new converts’ move towards religion. In accordance with SIM policy, local churches functioned autonomously. A convert who had been baptised and trained in the basic precepts of Christian faith and practices formed a church, of which he then became the leader. The missionaries ensured that the doctrine was not distorted and that the converts were sincere, but they were not involved in organising or financing the parishes. Who were these converts? According to Tibebe Eshete, the SIM focused exclusively on the rural population (Tibebe 1999, 39–40). Missionaries were forbidden to compete with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church or to attempt to convert the settlers or Wolaita families who lived in the cities, most of whom had converted to the official religion (Elias 1987, 27). To do so would have been viewed as a serious provocation, and would most certainly have led to the missionaries being expelled. On the other hand, the politically dominated, economically exploited and culturally despised peasant communities, who were also considered by the missionaries to be followers of demonic cults, were a formidable breeding ground for evangelisation. It is therefore more than likely that the first converts came from the poorest groups in Wolaita society (Elias 1987, 36), who would have liked this new teaching, which inspired strength and confidence.27
29The adoption of Protestantism by the Wolaita is an example of the appropriation of an external cultural element that is then reinterpreted by local actors for whom the Protestantism brought by the missionaries was a resource that enabled them to thwart Abyssinian cultural domination. In this respect, it is interesting to note that in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Lambie and his colleagues were a long way from achieving similar success. There, the religion they offered to the colonised was that of the colonial power, while in southern Ethiopia, the religion of the “colonial power” was that of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (Donham 1999, 91). As the former Wolaita teacher Bogale Gesamo points out: “The people were very much oppressed and humiliated. Therefore […] [they] hate Christianity and the “Amhara.” They consider it as the Christianity of the “Amhara,” and the oppressed and the oppressor cannot worship the same God […]. A chance to overcome was […] Protestantism.”28 Ironically, “it took some time before the first converts realized that their religion had some relationship with that of their conquerors” (Donham 1999, 91). For the SIM missionaries, conversion implied a “rebirth,” which meant an individual transformation and liberation from the past (Tibebe 1999, 40). For the dominated Wolaita, “rebirth” meant a psychological break from a situation of moral decay and ridding themselves of the “psychology of the vanquished”.29 As Elias Awato explains: “The social, political and cultural subjugation seems to have made the people seek for a release in [the] spiritual realm” (Elias 1987, 52). Donald Donham goes further: “What Christianity offered to [the peoples of] southern Ethiopia was a way of […] repositioning themselves in relation to local and global forces, a way of becoming Ethiopian with links to a powerful world religion—but without adopting the religion of their conquerors” (Donham 1999, 95). Wherever it sent its missionaries, the SIM’s goal was the establishment of industrious and self-sufficient local churches (Cooper 2006, 8). In Wolaita, the adoption of Protestantism was accompanied by the reorganisation of communities around local churches, providing an alternative to the past social structures that had been destroyed by the conquest. As a new kind of community cement, its appropriation allowed rural Wolaita to regenerate their identity, culture and politics based on foundations other than those of a conquering power. Since everyone was equal before God, it was possible to obtain a dignified place in Ethiopia by affirming one’s own identity and dignity without falling into the mould of the conquerors. At the same time, the converts never failed to remind the missionaries of the need to respect the autonomy of their churches. While the missionaries were among the organisers of the national conferences of Ethiopian Protestant churches until the early 1960s, they were mere spectators at the Wälliso conference in 1965 (Tibebe 1999, 50).
30The adoption of a religion based on the Bible, and therefore on writing, was to have a significant impact on the relationship of the Wolaita with school. From the mid-1950s, Protestant primary schools represented the first step into the national space for hundreds of rural Wolaita youth. In many ways, this change in attitude towards school from indifference or hostility to tactical engagement reflects a transformation in the relationship with the central government and its official language.
4.2 The rural population goes to school
31As soon as they arrived in 1928, the missionaries set about translating the passages from the Bible that needed to be known for conversion purposes into the Wolaita language. This led to the publication in 1933 of a pamphlet titled Tosay Yotis (God has spoken), which contained 140 quotations from the Bible (Balisky 2009, 113). In the early 1940s, 900 gospels translated into the vernacular and 100 translated into Amharic were distributed in Wolaita (Fargher 1996, 171, 272–73). The missionaries taught the leaders of the converted communities a rudimentary level of literacy that was sufficient to enable them to read a biblical text and transmit it orally. Although literacy was not a prerequisite for baptism (Fargher 1996, 113), Protestantism led to an unprecedented spread of the written word in the Wolaita countryside. Hundreds of texts circulated and gave rise to collective readings, and tens of thousands of people were in direct or mediated contact with the written word. This time, however, it was no longer the instrument of an external power but the vector of an intimate conversion and collective reconstruction.
32Evangelisation in vernacular languages had been authorised by the central government before the Italian occupation, but it was banned after liberation because of the official policy of Amharisation (Abebe 1998, 170). From the 1940s, only Amharic was tolerated, and from then on, converts were literate in the national language. Familiarisation with Amharic in its written form had effects that went beyond its strictly religious use. It led to a broadening of the political imagination by opening up the national space, although the extremely limited distribution of national media in the provinces, and even more so in the countryside, suggests that this phenomenon should not be exaggerated. While knowledge of the official language may not have been be enough to enter the national imagination with a single step, it did confer a cultural capital that made it possible to be less powerless when moving into the place of the dominant. Also, because of the material constraints that hampered the construction of the school system, Haile Selassie’s government decided to make use of missionary societies, and as early as 1944, an official decree established a ministerial committee to oversee the educational activities of foreign missions (UNESCO 1971, 425). Permits to establish missions were made contingent on the construction of primary schools that had to follow the official curricula of the Ministry of Education while being financed by the churches. Although they were reluctant to engage in a task that was not directly related to evangelism, the missionaries were obliged to comply with these conditions. The policy began to bear fruit at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1960s, “Government schools […] were limited to certain small towns and urban centres. But these church schools are available here and there at that time.”30 Until the 1974 revolution, primary education was shared between government schools and missionary schools: in the cities, it was government schools that taught the children of families close to the government, and in rural areas, the church schools were responsible for educating rural youth. However, it was not enough for schools to be available in order for them to be automatically populated with pupils; families also had to decide to engage with them, and the birth of rural school dynamics was gradual. In the 1940s, the literacy courses in Amharic organised by missionaries and converts had no official character. Institutionalisation arrived with the creation of the Soddo Bible School in 1947 (Elias 1987, 45). At that time, literate people were content with the rudiments of Bible reading. As Talemos Mana, a student at Protestant schools between 1967 and 1975, recalls:
Being educated is beneficial for reading the Bible and becoming a leader in [the] local church area. So, with this in mind […] our fathers, tried to, at least, attend up to grade 2, until they were able to read the Bible […]. Their goal was mainly to be able to read the Bible, in Amharic, to interpret the Word, to preach the Word, to read the Word. So it did not go beyond that; most of them just quit their education from grade 3, grade 4.31
33It was members of the next generation, first and foremost the children of these first literates, who were educated in the SIM schools. The process was therefore completed over two generations. The first learned to read and write for two years or just a little longer. Biblical mediators acquired a local reputation in the newly-structured communities around the Protestant churches as an alternative to that of the central government. From this newly-acquired social position, strengthened by the prospects opened up by familiarisation with the school concept and knowledge of Amharic, they pushed their children to attend school:
The older people, […] our fathers were highly oriented towards the advantages of modern education. […] So later on, our fathers, our […] grandfathers encouraged us [to] create awareness, to attend class and to go further, until we completed primary education, and so on. Some of them [the students] are from educated families, I mean… when I say “educated” it is relative. I said earlier that most of them have been educated up to grade 3 or grade 4 […]. So some are from educated families and some from non-educated families. But most of the students who have been attending class were from an educated family. For instance, my father attended up to grade 4 at the Christian Academy here. During their time, there was not even grade 1 or grade 2 in the local areas. Then he came to Soddo, the Ottona Christian Academy, and attended from grade 1 up to grade 4 in Ottona. So that is why you see, he motivated me, pushed me to go to school.32
34Fathers and grandfathers were able to become aware of what school made possible, and to measure the possibilities offered by the acquisition of educational capital. The prospect of being able to escape dependency on the peasant condition through access to wages meant emancipation from domination; after a spiritual liberation through the adoption of Protestantism came material liberation through school. Abebe Fola, who entered a Protestant school in 1956, gives two reasons to explain why his father sent him to school: firstly, he came from a Protestant church family, and secondly, his father said that those who knew how to read had become their oppressors.33 Since the conquerors dominated because they knew how to read and write, his son had to do the same. Abebe Fola generalised his situation to cover the whole of Wolaita:
Why did our people become more conscious about education? The ruling class that came from the Shawa government to administer or govern the Wolaita people knew how to read and write. That was a miracle for our people. And everybody became eager to write. They could easily understand Amharic without writing or reading, and they spoke it. But they couldn’t write or read. Because the Amhara were reading and writing, our people became angry, and wanted to educate their children, and everybody wanted to send their children.34
35This generalisation seems excessive: not everyone understood or spoke Amharic, and not everyone wanted to read and write. But Abebe Fola undoubtedly points to a key argument about mastering the official language in its written form as a resource and a way of obtaining a stake in power for oneself. Speaking Amharic was one of the indispensable criteria for “becoming Ethiopian,” with complete assimilation being characterised by the simultaneous adoption of an Amharic first name and membership of the national church. Although rural children who attended school had “Amhara” first names whether they wanted them or not, they did not adopt the official religion. They entered the nation in their own way, without fully complying with the conditions of the conqueror. Protestantism as an alternative endowed them with a strong, regenerated collective identity that gave them the confidence and foundation they needed to advance within the political and cultural framework that had been imposed on them without feeling lost. Paradoxically, it seems that the schools that were run jointly with missionaries were not perceived as being foreign: the missionaries were seen as allies in a context in which the direct dominant power was the Ethiopian central government.
36On the path from villages to the town’s secondary school and on to obtaining paid employment in the service of the state, Protestant schools represented an intermediate place. Because the curriculum was the same, it was easy to move from one school to another.35 The only difference was moral education, which was based on Ethiopian Christianity in government schools and was taught by priests from the national church, whereas in missionary schools it was the morality of Protestant fundamentalism that was taught.36 The missionary schools also had other specific attributes, however. Although they were officially controlled by the government, they still enjoyed a high degree of autonomy. They were jointly financed by the local, regional and national churches, but had limited means, which meant that they had to use all available resources. Thus, as was the case in the literacy centres set up by Germame Neway, the teaching staff was made up of young people who, after completing the early grades in towns, had to interrupt their studies to go back to teach in the villages for a while. It took Abebe Fola nine years to complete grade 6: six years of study interspersed with three years of teaching.37
5. Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold: education, planning, integration
37Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold has become a true local personality, and he is a complex character. A tireless and authoritarian worker with an almost total devotion to both the regime and the people, and convinced of the merits of uncompromising assimilation and the need for top-down reforms, he has worked hard to provide Wolaita with new infrastructure. In his recent detailed testimony in a collective book edited by Shiferaw Bekele, the former governor explains that the emperor entrusted him with the task of “making the Wolaita Ethiopians” (Wolde-Semaet 2013, 421). He places particular emphasis on the notions of unity, prosperity, security and justice. The policy he implemented to achieve these objectives can be summarised under three headings: rationalisation, centralisation and mobilisation, all used as levers for authoritarian development.
38Before taking office, Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold visited Wolaita anonymously, observing and interviewing the population so that he would be able to develop an action plan. Once in office, he had a map of the area drawn up with the support of the national mapping body, the Central Mapping Authority, and conducted a statistical survey to find out the number of households living in Wolaita. In the same spirit of rationalisation, he imposed an orderly administrative culture. As soon as he arrived, he had the administration offices reorganised so that everything could be archived. Civil servants were required to put everything in writing, otherwise they would have to pay fines. Convinced that centralisation and development went hand in hand, he established administrative centres in each canton and had roads built to connect them to Soddo. To bring Wolaita closer to Addis Ababa, he brought in the telephone and improved the airstrip for aircraft. In the economic sphere, he established banking services and settled farmers on vacant land to develop cash crops (Wolde-Semaet 2013, 451–52, 458–62).
39This structural work was accompanied by a great mobilisation effort. For Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold, the population had to be encouraged to participate in the reforms initiated by the government:
They participated in kind. For example, when we built a school, they brought the timber. They worked as day labourers. In addition, each family contributed 1 ber. When they paid their taxes they also paid 1 ber as a contribution to development. Within two years, all the cantons were connected by roads. Not built by the government, but by the people themselves! When they saw a lorry pass by their house selling bananas or coffee… there was no need to go to Soddo… They were volunteers… even the children, even the women… Everyone contributed to the construction of the roads.38
40The governor imposed this mobilisation and it is difficult to understand the actual level of public support for these compulsory working days. Nevertheless, Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold was driven by the idea of working for the people. Like Bogale Wallelu and Germame Neway before him, this represented a break from the practices of previous governors, who had been content to maintain order and punish the population. With him, the Wolaita discovered governmentality. Indeed, he made “a major change in the conception of power. It no longer stemmed from domination by war and the capacity to levy taxes on the dominated territories,” but rather was based “on the development of wealth through activities structured by the political authority” (Lascoumes 2004, 4).
41In his recent written testimony and in an interview he gave me, he insisted on the idea that the administration must be at the service of the population, and not the other way round. He therefore wanted the population to have confidence in the state and the administration so that they could be better integrated into the projects of power and in order to facilitate centralisation. To this end, he fought against wrongful imprisonment and took complaints by the population against representatives of the authorities seriously:
When I arrive in a wereda, the first thing I do is visit the police station. I take their book, I look at it. When someone makes a complaint to the police, they file it. But sometimes they don’t… they put anyone in jail. The first thing I do is go to the prison and count people, then I go back to the book and I check. Counting and checking. If there is even one person in the prison whose name is not written down, I take action immediately. And if someone comes to my office to complain to the canton governor or the village chief or the police, I immediately take him with me, and we go there and I check.39
42If a police officer or member of the administration was found to be at fault, the governor would send a letter to Addis Ababa asking what action should be taken against him, and would suspend him from duty pending a reply (Wolde-Semaet 2013, 436).
43He paid a great deal of attention to school education as a tool for integration and discipline. As soon as he arrived in Wolaita, he undertook the construction of schools in the new administrative centres he created in the various cantons. In order to do this, he collaborated with the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), which is very active in financing school buildings throughout Ethiopia. The SIDA’s financial contribution amounted to 50%, with the rest being paid for by the population.40 Fourteen new schools were established in this way.41 On the other hand, Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold’s nationalism and a desire for unity led to arm-wrestling with the Protestant schools:
They had schools up to grade 4, to learn to read the Bible. So I said to them, ‘Teach your religion, that’s fine, you have the right, but don’t just teach reading the Bible, teach how to read and write!’ The students couldn’t even write properly. So, every year, add a grade: grade 5, grade 6 etc. or else I told them, I’ll close your schools, everywhere!42
44The Protestant schools were academically limited, and were mostly too independent in the eyes of the governor. By pushing them to open higher grades, he required them to align themselves with the curriculum of the Ministry of Education, and worked to implement the official policy of the central government.
45There is an evident continuity between Bogale Wallelu in the 1940s and 1950s, Germame Neway in the late 1950s and Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold between 1963 and 1973. All three embodied the advance of the state and the idea of progress through centralisation, assimilation and “enlightened authoritarianism.” All three men were promoters of Amharisation through education. Their work, together with that of the Protestant communities, provided the Wolaita with an educational seedbed that made it possible for a section of the dominated population to appropriate a legitimate culture. Rural youth completed the first two, three or four grades in their village schools before going to the school in the nearest administrative centre established by Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold or to the missionary school in Ottona, and then received their secondary education at the government school in Soddo. The school in Ottona, a familiar place because it was Protestant, is situated on the edge of the town of Soddo, and was often a link between the countryside and the town, and between the small village schools and the secondary school in the capital of Wolaita.
6. The timid dynamics of schooling for girls
46In the 1943–44 school year, about 20 girls were enrolled in Soddo, compared with 240 boys (Demeke 1985, 6), about 10% of the total. This was roughly in line with the national average of 9.9 percent of female enrolment in 1944–45 (Teshome 1979, 68). Until the late 1950s, the number of girls in school remained negligible, and none finished primary school,43 but a new, very timid, dynamic emerged in the final decade of Haile Selassie’s regime. The first generation of girls who completed secondary school had entered primary school in the early 1960s. In 1959–60, national female enrolment was 22% in primary school and 7% in secondary school;44 in 1974, on the eve of the revolution, it was 27% and 17%, respectively.45 These figures show a relative stagnation in primary school enrolment, but indicate that more girls were attending secondary school. However, while enrolment rates show that one-quarter of secondary school students were girls, very few left with a Grade 12 diploma: in Soddo in 1974, only 4 out of the 350 students who completed twelfth grade were girls.46
47In small provincial towns, the first girls to finish secondary school in the mid-1970s were part of a relatively homogenous and newly-formed social group: they were mostly daughters of teachers or civil servants from the first generation of men who had attended school in the 1940s and 1950s. These fathers were educational activists at a time when school was far from being a mainstream institution.47 The 1940s and 1950s were a period when the political socialisation taught at school that linked education to progress was functioning. But fathers did not just want to educate their daughters for specifically political reasons: they were thinking about their futures, and they subscribed to a discourse of individual emancipation that linked social promotion and the rebalancing of gender relations within the couple and the family. By acquiring a job and financial autonomy, their daughters would not be dependent on their future husbands. The development of education in the second half of the 20th century was aimed at training people to take on new functions in the tertiary sector. Within this movement, “women’s occupations” (Perrot 1987) emerged in Ethiopia, particularly teaching and nursing, which, together with secretarial work, were almost the only outlets for women graduates (Tsehai 1984, 18).
48Fathers working as priests or teachers in Catholic schools also schooled their daughters. This was a condition laid down by the Capuchin missionaries so that they would be able to carry out their duties. Thus, Belaynesh Antonios and his sisters attended school although neither their mother nor their father, who was a priest and teacher in a Catholic school, were particularly in favour of it. However, Wolaita Catholic priests and teachers were few in number, and the number of girls taking classes in Catholic schools was not significantly higher than it was in government schools. Belaynesh Antonios recalls that she was the only girl in her class when she started school in the early 1960s.48 There were also very few girls in rural Protestant schools.49 The first converts, who had been summarily taught to read and transmit the word of the Bible in their communities, sent their boys to school rather than their girls. In this respect, they were no different from the rest of society, especially since the form of Protestantism conveyed by the SIM, which sought to preserve and recreate “ideal” patriarchal-type structures (Cooper 2006, 22), did not particularly encourage them to send their daughters to school.
49The positions taken by mothers varied: some were in favour of their daughters’ education, others less so. The first argument put forward by the latter group, as we have already mentioned, was the loss of valuable help with domestic labour. This was also why girls whose fathers were teachers were able to continue their education. Although working conditions and wages deteriorated later on, the generation that began their education in the 1950s were paid good wages. As a result, their daughters were very much released, if not actually excused, from domestic chores by the presence of female servants in their families. Other mothers were outspoken in their support for their daughters’ schooling. Tsehai Zerihun, for example, remembers her mother saying to her: “If you are not educated, you will be someone’s wife. They will beat you and insult you, and your life will be dark.”50 Mothers who had never been to school themselves supported the emancipation of their daughters from unequal gender relations within the couple and the family. They were the daughters of teachers, civil servants and willing mothers—the sociological profile of this generation of female pupils closely resembles that of the first girls who had attended school three decades earlier in French West Africa, whose trajectories have been well analysed by Pascale Barthélémy (Barthélémy 2010).
50At the end of the regime, from the mid-1970s, society was slowly becoming used to girls going to school and, through the value of examples, negative prejudices were gradually fading. Women were beginning to tell young students how lucky they were to be able to go to school, so that they would not have to share their own lives later on. This is what Tsehai Zerihun says about a neighbour: “You are lucky, a lucky girl. You’re successful, you go to school, at least you’ll be able to defend yourself. When you grow up, when you get married, nobody will beat you. If he suits you, you’ll stay together, if he doesn’t suit you, you’ll feed yourself, because you’ll have a job, you’ll be educated.”51
51So it seems that on the eve of the revolution, the idea that education did not make “bad girls” but less dependent wives, and therefore less vulnerable, was slowly gaining ground. But it was a timid phenomenon, and until the revolution, the schooling of girls remained extremely insignificant, and was condemned by the community.52 In 1974, schools were still a male space.
Conclusion
52Between 1941 and 1974, the sociology of pupils was gradually transformed. The first to attend school were children from the towns where government schools were concentrated. Most were the children of notables, settlers or Wolaita auxiliary workers who had already been assimilated into the culture of the centre to varying degrees. Because of their connections with the government, their families were aware of the bureaucratic centralisation of the state, of which schools were a key instrument. Being from families from the north or simply having grown up in a city, these children were closer to the school culture. Their knowledge of Amharic and their inclusion in the national collective imagination gave them a sense of belonging that brought them politically, culturally and emotionally closer to school. For these children, educational capital complemented this inherited cultural capital; it consisted in learning the administrative and technical skills that had become necessary in order to maintain or develop within positions of power. For the local elites, schooling meant adapting to political transformations, to the development of the administrative state and to these written practices. Rural people began to attend school later, through the literacy centres set up in the countryside by Governor Germame Neway and the SIM schools. Because they lacked the cultural capital the urban dwellers had inherited, schooling also meant first bridging the gap (political and cultural) that separated them from school. However, although school sociology diversified in terms of social classes, it remained openly masculine, even though a new movement was beginning to emerge in the early 1970s
Notes de bas de page
1 WZEO, የትምህርት ተቋማት ዝርዝር ፣ ፣ መቼ እንደተሠሩ የሚግልጽ መረጃ (List of schools and construction dates) (2010).
2 Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga (retired teacher and agricultural engineer respectively), interview, Soddo, 12 November 2010.
3 Wanna Wagesho (founder of the first government school in Wolaita, teacher and school administrator), interview, Soddo, 3 November 2010; Girma Bekele (retired teacher), interview, Bedessa (Wolaita), 9 December 2010; Abraham Worku (teacher), interview, Gesuba (Wolaita), 2 January 2011.
4 Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga, interview, November 2010.
5 Lemma Didana (retired teacher), interview, Soddo, 14 December 2009.
6 Ibid.
7 Wanna Wagesho, interview, November 2010.
8 Belaynesh Antonios (teacher, in charge of women’s affairs at the Soddo town hall), interview, Soddo, 2 November 2009.
9Ayelech Tekle-Mariam (teacher), interview, Soddo, 19 November 2010.
10 Belaynesh Antonios, interview, November 2009.
11 A military title meaning “commander of the right wing.”
12 Alula Anjiyo (retired teacher), interview, Soddo, 15 December 2009.
13Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga, interview, November 2010.
14 This is the case, for example, with Gebre-Mikael Kuké.
15Gebre-Mikael Kuké, interview, November 2010.
16 Wanna Wagesho, interview, November 2010.
17 Gebre-Mikael Kuké, interview, November 2010.
18 Lemma Didana, interview, December 2009.
19 Abebe Fola (teacher), interview, Soddo, 18 November 2009.
20 A city in the east of Ethiopia, on the border with Somalia.
21 Zebdewos Chama, interview, November 2010.
22Abraham Worku (teacher), interview, Gesuba, 2 January 2011.
23 Mana Madibo (farmer), interview, Gesuba, 6 December 2010 (in Wolaita; translation: Asela Gujubo).
24Wanna Wagesho, የወላይታ ሕዝብ ታሪክ (History of the Wolaita People) (Addis Ababa, Berhanenna Selam Printing Press, 2003), 147–48. Abebe Fola, interview, November 2009; Zebdewos Chama, interview, 3 November 2010.
25 Abraham Worku, interview, January 2011.
26 MOEFA, Government, Mission, Private, Community and Church Schools 1959–60 (1961), 6.
27 Asela Gujubo, recorded discussion between him and Zebdewos Chama, 2 November 2010, Soddo.
28 Bogale Gesamo (a retired teacher, was a student in missionary schools in the late 1950s), interview, Soddo, 3 December 2010.
29Ibid.
30 Talemos Mana (teacher and school administrator), interview, Soddo, 9 November 2010.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Abebe Fola, interview, November 2009.
34 Ibid.
35 Paolos Sorsa (civil servant at the Ministry of Justice), interview, Addis Ababa, 21 December 2010.
36Talemos Mana, interview, November 2010.
37Abebe Fola, notes taken during a conversation, Soddo, 2 November 2010.
38 Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold (Governor of Wolaita from 1963 to 1973), interview, Addis Ababa, 15 January 2011.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 WZEO, የትምህርት ተቋማት ዝርዝር ዝርዝር ፣ ፣ መቼ እንደተሠሩ የሚግልጽ መረጃ (List of schools and dates of their construction, 2010).
42 Wolde-Semaet Gebre-Wold, interview, January 2011.
43Gebre-Mikael Kuke and Desalegn Tanga, interview, November 2010.
44 MOEFA, Government, Mission, Private, Community and Church Schools 1959–60 (1961), 7.
45 World Bank, Education in Ethiopia: Strengthening the Foundation For Sustainable Progress (2004), 117. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7434. The figures used by the World Bank for this period are the same as those produced by the Ethiopian government.
46 Kassech Mulugeta (pupil from 1960 to 1974, teacher), interview, Soddo, 31 December 2009; Yemesrach Alula (teacher), interview, Soddo, 15 December 2009. Both were among the first four female secondary school graduates.
47 Tsehai Zerihun (civil servant at the Ministry of Agriculture, school principal), interview, Addis Ababa, 7 January 2011.
48 Belaynesh Antonios, interview, November 2009.
49 Talemos Mana, interview, November 2010.
50 Tsehai Zerihun, interview, January 2011.
51 Ibid.
52 Yemesrach Alula, interview, January 2010.

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Educating the Nation in Ethiopia
State, Society and Identity in Wolaita (1941–1991)
Pierre Guidi Simon Dix (trad.)
2024