Chapter 8
The Movement Towards Schools: Between Coercion and Social Demand (1978–85)
p. 235-257
Texte intégral
1From stabilisation of the regime to the famine in the mid-1980s, the period between 1978 and 1985 saw an unprecedented convergence between rural Wolaita society and the state. This was unheard of, in the sense that previous relations between the administration and the peasant communities in southern Ethiopia could be summed up as extraction and repression. The reasons behind this convergence are a hard-to-disentangle web of voluntary movements, incitement and coercion, some aspects of which we revealed in the previous chapter. A look at formal education, especially primary schools in rural areas, will now allow us to drive our analysis forward. In 1985, a senior official of the Ministry of Education, Gudeta Mammo told UNESCO:
In Socialist Ethiopia, universal primary education has not yet been achieved. So once the literacy programme is over in a village, the people in the area are encouraged to keep the centre as a primary school, until the government finally agrees to build a school. (Gudeta 1985, 119)
2The literacy campaign was a first step towards widespread formal education under the responsibility of the farming communities, in partnership with the government. It was seen by the state as a first step in the construction of a symbiotic cultural and ideological link between the state and its citizens—an aspect of social control that went alongside supervision and repression—that formal education was intended to perpetuate. The various strands of educational policy were conceived on the basis of distinct, well-defined time-frames as parts of the same policy of mobilising the masses through education. The zemecha (1975–76) had been a major short-term point of contact aimed at responding to the political acceleration of the revolutionary years. The objectives of the national literacy campaign were medium-term. Formal education structures would ensure the permanence of the state’s educational actions in the countryside.
3This chapter seeks to understand how the people of Wolaita positioned themselves vis-à-vis the formal education policy driven by the regime, and the ways in which they engaged with it. This means looking at the increase in the school network, the management and administration of the schools and the driving forces at work in school dynamics.
1. Increasing the school network: a state move to conquer rural areas?
4In 1974, in addition to the low enrolment rate, there was also an unequal geographical distribution of educational facilities. Nationwide, 50% of primary school students were in towns, where only 11% of the population lived.1 In a document published in 1977, the Ministry of Education announced the following objectives:
a) to promote universal primary education within the shortest period of time commensurate with available resources and with the need to satisfy demands from other aspects of education; b) to reduce inequalities in access to second level education and eventually to eliminate these discrepancies, in particular, redressing the imbalance between rural and urban areas. (Ayelew 2000, 45)
5In 1982, the proposals put forward in preparation for the 1984–94 ten-year plan provided that universal primary education would be achieved up to Grade 6 by 1992, along with the eradication of illiteracy, which remained the priority.2 The Ministry of Education’s aim was to establish one primary school for every three peasant associations (each association covered 800 hectares and had about 600 inhabitants), one school up to Grade 9 per wereda and one school up to grade 12 per province. Nationally, the number of primary schools more than doubled from 2,754 to 6,600 between 1974 and 1983. During the same period, the number of secondary schools increased from 113 to 194.3 In 1972–73, 588,868 pupils or 13.5% of the 7–12 age group, were enrolled in primary schools nationwide (Teshome 1979, 170), and by 1989 this figure had risen to 3,926,700, or 35% of the 7–16 age group (Tekeste 2006, 19). This expansion reduced inequalities between urban and rural areas, as the government’s efforts were focused particularly on small towns and the countryside. In 1983, 40% of primary school enrolments were in urban areas, compared with 50% in 1973 (Legesse 1984, 334). In short, the first ten years of the Derg saw an unprecedented increase in school networks throughout the country, especially in the countryside. In Wolaita, the increase in the number of schools was greater than that observed nationwide. Between 1974 and 1983, the number of primary schools tripled from 36 to 108, and many of the older schools that had been operating up to Grade 4 now expanded to include Grade 8.4 The primary schools in the wereda towns Areka, Boditi and Bedessa became secondary schools. With the school in Soddo, the total number of secondary schools in Wolaita thus increased to four.
1.1 Building schools
6However, the post-revolutionary period did not see a significant increase in the share of the national budget devoted to education (Tekeste 2006, 19). As with the literacy campaign, the population was called upon to contribute. The ten-year plan published in 1984 stated as follows:
The institutionalisation, on the basis of democratic centralism, of the active participation of the broad masses on matters pertaining to the provision, administration and management of general education has been the most important achievement during the last ten years.5
7Participation by communities was seen as a democratic step towards involving them, making them actors and giving them a sense of ownership of and responsibility for their own schools. Before the revolution, the education tax had been a weight on peasant families, while it was the urban population who were the beneficiaries of education.6 The aim was to redress this injustice by making schools not only available to communities, but also their property. Finally, the school system under Haile Selassie’s regime was considered unsuitable because it was too centralised. Cooperation between the government and communities would allow decentralisation to better adapt education to local conditions. This unprecedented collaboration began with a mobilisation of village communities to build schools for themselves. The frequent emphasis on “democratic centralism” implied, in theory, that the administration should centralise the aspirations of the “grassroots” before formulating its policies. In reality, the collaboration methods were decided at the top, as teacher Zerihun Anebo reminds us:
There were contributions, but that contribution could not take place voluntarily. It was decided by certain individuals who were highly authorised. And there was no discussion regarding school fees, constructions, academic purpose. And they bring the decision to the community to involve it in working contribution when they are building a school. […] The communities lacked money. Due to this situation, they cannot bring money as they were ordered. So they changed money into work.7
8The regime viewed this as an inevitable constraint on the growth of the school system. The degree of community voluntary participation is hard to measure. Girma Bekele, who was at the same time a teacher, a school headmaster and a member of a peasants’ association, recalls that at the beginning of the regime, farmers “worked voluntarily for development and schools.” As he recalls, the school in Bedessa, of which he was the headmaster, was expanded to provide grades 7 and 8 following a request from the population. His task was to be an organiser and an intermediary between the governor of the region and the community. The governor came to visit the school and ordered new classrooms to be built as a condition for his consent. Girma Bekele arranged for each household to contribute a small amount of money.8 He does not say whether the construction work was carried out with contribution of labour from the villagers. However, when listing the expenses, he only mentions the cost of materials and not the wages of any masons. It is therefore likely that it was the villagers who put up the buildings, and a Ministry of Education document published in 1982 stated that almost all primary school construction was carried out by local communities. In this way, it was possible to build up to 500 new schools a year nationwide, instead of the 200 built before the revolution.
1.2 The stranglehold over Kale Hiwot’s structures
9In Wolaita, the progress of the government school network was based on the phased confiscation of the structures belonging to the Protestant Kale Hiwot Church. Proclamation number 54 of 1975 on the nationalisation of private schools specified that missionary schools were outside its scope, and Proclamation number 103 of 1976 on the “Administration and Control of Schools by the People” said the same thing. However, it said nothing about Ethiopian religious schools such as those of Kale Hiwot, which had become independent from SIM in the 1960s. But as Talemos Mana recalls: “The Derg came to power and the missionary schools were handed over to the government. All the church schools were closed.”9 When Talemos Mana speaks of “missionary” schools, he is referring not only to those that were actually run by the missionaries but also to the hundreds of primary schools that were organised, financed and operated by local Protestant churches. In terms of closures, these were requisitions. From the very beginning of the literacy campaign, as Girma Bekele recalls, Protestant churches were transformed into places of study: “The Derg arrived and decreed a basic education. Basic education was decreed and all the churches were closed. Every place of prayer became a school.”10 This was part of the general policy of the literacy campaign: these religious buildings could be used as classrooms just like any other building, especially as they were widespread and the communities were organised around their churches. They were perfectly appropriate places for placing education at the heart of communities. Then, as the literacy centres became primary schools, the temporary use of these buildings became permanent.
10Initially, the Kale Hiwot Church faithful supported the revolution. They believed that the reforms were more in line with the word of the Bible than the policies of the overthrown regime had been (Eide 2000, 169). In order to become institutionalised in the countryside, the new regime was able to rely on the large numbers of Protestant settlements as well as the support of the faithful: many of the early leaders of peasant associations were Protestant (Donham 1999, 151–76). Relations began to deteriorate in 1979–80, when young followers refused to chant slogans like: “we must destroy our enemies,” “religion is the opium of the people” and “God is dead.” In response, the government imprisoned hundreds of Kale Hiwot members in Gamo-Goffa and Kambatta. The situation was no better in Wolaita, where the congregation decided to hold their annual Bible study conference in 1983 despite being refused permission by the authorities. It was attended by 10,000 people. On the third day of the conference, the police arrested the ministers, some of whom remained in prison for over a year. The most severe actions were taken in 1984–85, however, when the government closed more than half the local churches (1,700 out of 2,791) without giving a reason. This move affected all 748 churches in Wolaita, and all the SIM’s property was confiscated (Eide 2000, 169–70).
11In order to be able to understand these measures, one must look at the Derg’s general policy towards religions, which was based on political rather than religious considerations. Despite professing to be atheist, the Derg pursued different policies towards the religions practised in Ethiopia. As a member of Qalä Haywät recalls: “Selassie Church in Addis Ababa celebrated Temqat every year and the government participated in the programme. But for us, Kale Hiwot or Mekane Yesus, they closed it.”11 “Selassie” (Trinity) is one of the main churches in Addis Ababa where national ceremonies organised by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church are held. Why this ambivalent attitude of the Derg towards religions? Although the Derg was quick to proclaim the equality of religions and freedom of worship, its attitude towards the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Islam and Protestant churches was far from identical.
12On 10 August 1974, it separated the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church from the state, causing it to lose its status as the official church, and thus its political role. The most serious attack came after the land reform. When it lost its land, which passed under government control, the national church also lost its main source of income. A strategy of control followed these attacks. Patriarch Tewoflos was arrested in February 1976 (and eventually executed on 28 July 1979), and many archbishops who were opposed to the revolution were imprisoned. Under pressure from the government, the Holy Synod elected Tekle Haymanot II, a clergyman loyal to the Derg, as the new patriarch (Eide 2000, 111–12). The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church was a key player, and the Derg needed to secure its collaboration if it wanted to govern Ethiopia. Thus, although the state was officially secular, the former official religion, while being subject to the regime, enjoyed a privileged status (Eide 2000, 162, 166). Furthermore, as the historian Stéphane Ancel has shown, the church managed to “meet the immense challenge” posed by the revolution by reforming itself to “consolidate its financial base and improve its mode of operation” (Ancel 2015, 687–88). At the same time, the Muslim authorities were also brought into line. In 1977, one of the sons of Imam Hadji Mohammed Sani Habib of the Anwar Great Mosque in Addis Ababa was assassinated, and the other was imprisoned. From then on, the imam appeared at official ceremonies alongside Mengestu Haile-Mariam, having been forced into docility (Eide 2000, 113).
13Before the revolution, the central government had believed that religious and national unity were inseparable. Professing Tewahedo Christianity was seen by the political and ecclesiastical authorities as an indivisible part of the Ethiopian identity. Protestantism, on the other hand, was an imported religion, and its proponents were suspected of not being entirely loyal citizens. The Derg inherited the previous regime’s view that Protestantism might create a distinct identity and prejudice national cohesion, but it conceived the idea differently: owing to their links with European and North American churches, the Protestant churches were accused of being agents of imperialism and enemies of the revolution (Eide 2000, 200). And, by April 1976, the NDRE’s programme made it clear that the new education was to liberate Ethiopia from imperialist cultural domination.12 This reveals a certain ambivalence around the issue of nationalities. The Derg claimed that it gave an equal place to each of them, and respected and defended their cultures, and Protestantism had been incorporated by the people of the south, whose identities it had helped to rebuild after the integration into Ethiopia. Kale Hiwot was an Ethiopian Church, and was financially independent of foreign missions. No followers of Kale Hiwot were part of any separatist movement. However, suspicions of disloyalty were supported by the old idea of the connection between Tewahedo Christianity and nationhood, while at the same time being reactivated by more recent views on the dangers of Western imperialism (Donham 1999, 145).
14According to a member of Kale Hiwot, the Derg attacked Protestant churches because they had educated the people of the south and made them fit for positions of power: attacks on their religion had the aim of marginalising them. This is in line with the view that the Wolaita always had to fight for their place in the nation under adverse conditions in which those in power, both locally and nationally, tried to prevent them from doing so.13 Did the Derg wanted to prevent people who had been educated by missionaries or in Ethiopian Protestant churches from taking up important positions because it doubted their patriotism? While it may be true that the Protestant churches had educated the rural people of Wolaita, and that this had enabled them to improve their status within the nation by partially emancipating themselves from their dominated position, the sociology of government members under the Derg does not enable us to make the claim that the Wolaita, or any other member of a southern nationality, were prevented from holding positions of power because of their identity. The attacks on Kale Hiwot are much better understood in terms of the advance of the state and its hold over the population. In 1975, SIM missionaries were operating 40 schools, and Kale Hiwot’s education network included 280 village primary schools in Wolaita, other parts of the Sidamo region, Kambatta and Gamo-Goffa (Fargher 1996, 301). Given its school project, it is hard to imagine the Derg leaving so many schools outside its control. Taking over Kale Hiwot’s schools and churches enabled the Derg to eliminate an important competitor in the field of education and to take possession of a network whose reach extended into the heart of village communities. In Wolaita, at the time of the revolution, the city was the domain of the state, while the countryside was a Protestant domain. The functions of the network of churches were worship, education and supervision of the converted populations. With more than 700 churches, which were also organised village communities, it had a continuing coverage of rural areas. The Derg systematically relied on the structures of the Protestant churches and their social seedbed to gain a hold in the countryside. Instead of the distant control of Protestant churches imposed by Haile Selassie’s regime, the Derg simply took their place. This is why the 748 churches in Wolaita were closed in 1984 and 1985 and their schools confiscated. Some were destroyed, while others were converted into government schools or premises for peasant associations and other mass organisations (Balisky 2009, 320).
1.3 The ambivalent attitude of Protestants
15How did Protestants, and teachers in particular, react to this policy? The teachers were the educated elite of the countryside, and many of them were true educational activists who wanted to uplift their community spiritually—reading gave direct access to the word—and politically within the nation. In order to understand their attitude towards the Derg, one has to take its double-edged policy—anti-religion and pro-education—into consideration.
16According to a former teacher and school headmaster, Protestants harboured a deep aversion to the form of Marxism-Leninism professed by the regime, due not only to its atheism, but also, and above all, because of the Derg’s aggressive policy towards their churches.14 At the same time, however, the Derg’s educational policy meant an end to the administrative inconveniences involved in opening schools in rural areas. Abebe Fola, a devout member of the congregation at the Kale Hiwot Church and a tireless campaigner for rural schooling, makes a clear distinction between the repression of churches and the removal of obstructions to school-building. After explaining that the Derg had been very hard on the Protestants, he recalled that unlike its predecessor, it had allowed them to spread education as far as they were able, and that they had seized this opportunity.15 Yaluse Mita, a member of the first generation of Wolaita women who attended school, and a fervent Protestant, makes the same observation: “Concerning school, nothing was forbidden, the Derg did not forbid anything.”16 In spite of the repression of their church, Protestant teachers were very active in the field of public education during the entire time the Derg was in power.
17Yaluse Mita’s journey is a good illustration of this. She completed Grade 8 at the SIM missionary school, the Soddo Christian Academy. After temporarily interrupting her studies to marry and have children, she completed Grade 12 at the government secondary school in Soddo before moving to Addis Ababa to attend the Kotebe Teacher Training College. With her diploma in hand, she returned to Wolaita to teach at Soddo Secondary School from the 1977–78 school year, as soon as the school reopened following the Red Terror. She taught at the government secondary school throughout the Derg period, and also worked in the countryside outside working hours, teaching literacy to peasant women.17 The example of Zebdewos Chama is also symbolic. He attended the Soddo Christian Academy from 1954 to 1961 and then taught mathematics there. He completed Grade 12 in 1972 by attending summer school at Addis Ababa University. In 1973, he was appointed headmaster of the junior high school in Alete Wondo, about 100 kilometres south of Wolaita. The following year, the year of the revolution, he was appointed director of the Ottona School, the former Soddo Christian Academy, which had just been transferred to the government. From 1983 to 1988, he was vice-principal of Soddo Secondary School. During the last 18 months of the Derg he was administrator of the Konta wereda.18
18In fact, Protestants were pivotal actors of the educational field in Wolaita. The Soddo Christian Academy offered a good level of education, and many former students went on to careers in the education sector. According to Yaluse Mita: “those who were educated there were brilliant. They did a great deal for education in Ethiopia.”19 Admittedly, teaching was an unpopular career route, which many chose for lack of better alternatives (Tekeste 1990, 26). However, interviews in the field reveal that teaching could be a real vocation. It was as if the Protestant work ethic had been invested in education with a view to promoting the people of the region.
1.4 Catholics: the choice of cooperation
19In 1974, Catholic missionaries were running five schools in Wolaita, led by an Italian Capuchin missionary, Abba Gino.20 Unlike the case of the Protestants, these were not a multitude of primary schools teaching the first four grades at best and living on a shoestring of contributions from the faithful, but rather a limited number of schools financed by the Catholic Church, with adequate resources and usually better-trained Ethiopian teachers than in government schools. The Catholic School in Dubbo, which provided education up to Grade 8, was one of the three prestigious schools in Wolaita, the others being the Ligaba Beyene Government School and the Soddo Christian Academy. Wolaita and Hadiya were united in the vicariate of Soddo-Hosa’enna, which had 18,000 followers in 1970. Catholic schools were attended by children of all faiths. Under Haile Selassie’s regime, relations between the Catholic missions and the administration were very good: the Catholic Church was much less independent than the Protestants and worked in symbiosis with the government. What was the state of relations between the Derg and the Catholics at the local level? This is what Abba Gino has to say:
It was hard, but… for us, for the Catholic Church […], though it was difficult, we preferred to remain here, and not to oppose the Derg system, or socialist system. Anyway, nobody forced us to teach socialism, or to teach something against our believing. […] But we started with this principle: any system has got its own good and is even bad. Even in the system of socialism, I found place for good things, for a good cooperation. And I know that so many schools were closed, even the Protestant or other people because they wanted to oppose. I myself was one of the individuals of the committee of the revolution, because I was responsible for all the youth and the sport in the wereda. I preferred to work with the government in these things which are important for us, like helping the poor. Even the socialism is concerned about that. […] There is a room for a good cooperation. And we did that, and that’s why our school continued and still, even during the Derg, we were quite well appreciated by the government. And we always, I myself always tried to be in a good collaboration with the authorities.21
20The Ethiopian Catholic father Wolde-Yesus Wolde-Giorgis paints a similar picture. He maintains that there was no tension between the Catholics and the Derg. No schools were confiscated by the government, which even encouraged them to establish new ones. In his view, the Derg did not oppose their religious teachings because they conveyed a moral sense of obedience. They were not encouraged to teach Marxism-Leninism, except by local officials who wanted to be well thought of by their superiors. In fact, special political education classes were held on Saturdays and Sundays, whereas in government schools they were a daily event.22
21Why these collaborative relationships? First of all because the local Catholics were accommodating and showed a desire to cooperate with the revolutionary regime. But the Protestants had done the same before they were subjected to the regime’s discriminatory measures, and if the concern was about the patriotism of the faithful, the Catholic Church was also a foreign church, after all. Indeed, two decades earlier, had allegations of Catholicism not been the main accusation levelled at government schools and their imported programmes by those who opposed them? But this mistrust was linked to Europe’s colonial expansion and the threat it had posed to Ethiopia in the first half of the century. In the 1970s, the enemy was no longer European colonialism but American imperialism, with which Protestants might be associated. Above all, the Catholic Church was not viewed as a competitor by the administration. It did not have the leadership capacity Kale Hiwot had in the countryside that the Derg wished to conquer. With their elite schools working hand in hand with the administration, the educational work of the Catholics was obviously not seen in the same light as the hundreds of Protestant educational centres scattered throughout the countryside, which often shunned the administration’s gaze, and which were to be used by the poor, the “masses,” whom the Derg wished to be certain to capture.
22In short, the school network grew steadily in the first decade of the Derg’s rule. Catholic schools remained in place, and collaboration with the government continued smoothly. On the other hand, the rural schools run by the local Protestant churches were requisitioned by the government in a genuine state takeover of local school structures. At the same time, Protestants remained active in education by teaching and running schools. Rural Protestant communities took advantage of the Derg’s school expansion policy to build schools under the authority of the government, something that had been far more difficult under the previous regime, which had often refused to grant their schools legal status. In general, as elsewhere in the country, peasant communities were given the responsibility of building new schools.
2. Community participation
23In order to understand the relationship between rural communities and schools, it is necessary to look at the structures put in place by the regime to ensure long-term cooperation with the inhabitants above and beyond the construction of school buildings. In a brochure published in 1984 by the Ministry of Education to mark the tenth anniversary of the revolution, educationist Geoffrey Last wrote:
The new attitude towards education and the new role of education imply new relationships between the community and educational services. Ensuring free, step-by-step education for all the masses requires a high level of cooperation between communities organised in peasant associations and the government, hence the creation of committees.23
24By the time this booklet was published, the school committees that were established in each school from 1976 onwards had over the course of a decade or so become the key institutions for the functioning of schools and their relationship with communities.
2.1 School committees: school management and administration
25Proclamation number 54 of 1975 on the nationalisation of private schools specified that every school was to establish a committee responsible for internal administration, and that this administration was to be in accordance with the directives of the Ministry of Education.24 But it was in Proclamation number 103 of 1976 on “The Administration and Control of Schools by the People” that the tasks and duties of school committees were defined in detail. They were aimed at “the integration of education into the life of the people.”25 Officially, the objective was to integrate the activities of schools into those of the communities while also ensuring close ties with the school and political authorities; in other words, it was to involve the local population and coordinate all the schools in the system. As a result, the remit of each school committee was:
to supervise generally the running of the school in accordance with the directives issued by the Minister; […] to advise and assist the school to reflect in its programmes the culture of the people; […] to co-ordinate the school and village with a view to ensuring that education is not confined to the classroom and that it is integrated with practice.26
26The pivotal function assigned to school committees applied in the first place to finance. They had to manage the budget allocated by the Ministry of Education, encourage a school to generate its own income and coordinate communities to contribute financially to the running of the schools. As teacher Afework Ayalew recalls: “There were many schools in the countryside. At the time, the government opened various schools, and considering its budget, I don’t think it could afford them all, so it handed over the expenses to the communities.” He also recalls the way expenses were shared between the government and the communities:
Under the Derg, the government didn’t give a penny to the school; it only paid the teachers’ salaries and paid for the books. But we needed pens, notebooks to prepare lessons and the annual plan. For these different expenses, it was the community, the people who paid, the families of the pupils. 27
27However, it could happen that the communities paid the teachers’ salaries where they were employed locally, without being assigned by the Ministry of Education. The committees had the power “to employ teachers and other workers using money allocated by the government or any other income generated.”28
28In reality, the state was broadly responsible for most of the expenditure. In 1989–90, the school budget for the whole of Wolaita totalled 7,502,513 ber: 6,672,283 ber from the government, 280,365 ber from student contributions, 78,659 ber from community cash contributions, 128,166 ber from estimated labour contributions, 134,448 ber generated by the school and 208,592 ber classified as ‘other’—probably international aid.29 The state thus provided almost 90% of the region’s school expenditure, but this does not mean that the contributions were not a burden for communities.
29The multiple functions assigned to the school by the government converged in the committees. A reading of their attributions and duties immediately reveals tensions that can give rise to different interpretations. On the one hand, it was necessary, to ensure that village communities took ownership of the school so that it would no longer be an alien body in society.
In the old reactionary socio-economic order, […] the creativity of the broad masses was neglected, administration was centralised with the result that the schools were made responsible to far-off administrative set-ups and teachers and students were detached from the broad masses.30
30For education to take root in the lives of the population, the committees had to involve the communities in the definition of school activities, which would both link education to production and “democratise” education. At the same time, they needed to ensure that the Ministry of Education’s guidelines were implemented. They were at the service of highly vertical top-down institutional integration. As the discourse went, this was not a contradiction in terms. In theory, the “democratic centralism” adopted by the regime assumed that information, ideas and proposals should come from the bottom up, before top-down decision-making and centralised implementation. However, the proclamations establishing the school committees were silent about any possible two-way vertical circulation or joint development of school programmes and activities by village communities and the central government. The two dynamics, democratic and authoritarian, were presented in a disjointed manner.
2.2 Educational structures: territorial coverage and social control
31The tensions that arose between the democratic and authoritarian potential of school committees were resolved in favour of the latter to make schools one of the structures of the administrative network that were set up throughout the country. In a 1986 article, education historian Teshome Wagaw referred to a gradual shift of school committees towards authoritarianism (Teshome 1986, 39). However, when we read about their composition and powers rather than their attributions and duties, we have to wonder whether school committees were ever thought of in any other way than as instruments of social control. First of all, there was their make-up: the committees consisted of representatives of the peasants’ association or the urban dwellers association, a teacher’s representative elected by his peers, the school headmaster and, in secondary schools, a student representative aged over 16, elected by his schoolmates.31 The committees were therefore composed of members of the local administration and school stakeholders. From the outset, one cannot help but note the absence of members of the “community,” unless one believes that the members of the peasants’ associations were sufficient to represent it. Surprisingly, parents were not mentioned in the article on the composition of school committees. A short article on parents stated that parents’ representatives could be members of a committee if there was no peasants’ association or residents’ association.32 The interviews revealed the absence of parents of pupils who were not leaders of peasant or mass associations. Those who sat on the school committees were all regime officials, and representatives of the school’s pedagogical team were in the minority.33 In short, schools appeared to be in a close partnership with the local administration rather than the community. The eligibility requirements meant that candidates were supporters of the revolution, and were not among the “privileged members” of the overthrown regime. They had to support the programme of the National Democratic Revolution, not have owned more than 10 hectares of land before the land reform, and not have owned any additional houses before the nationalisation of urban land.34 Finally, the committees were subject to the authority of non-educational government departments: “The peasant associations of the cantons and provinces and the central associations of the neighbourhood associations coordinate the activities of the committees within their jurisdiction.”35
32The proclamations of 1975 and 1976 defined the powers of school committees in two stages. Article 7 of Proclamation number 54 of 1975 on the nationalisation of private schools stated as follows:
The school committee shall have legal personality and the power to: 1) enter into contracts; 2) open bank accounts and draw money therefrom; 3) sue and be sued in its own name; 4) employ, administer and dismiss its own staff; 5) determine school fees; 6) operate, expand and maintain the school handed over to it; and 7) receive assistance in accordance with directives issued by the Ministry.36
33They were incorporated as legal persons for administrative acts and provided with specific powers to administer schools. They appeared to be endowed with a certain degree of autonomy. However, in Article 9, the Ministry of Education reserved the right to determine fees, which meant an overlap with the powers of the committees. In practice, by virtue of their financial powers, the committees had real room for manoeuvre, which allowed each one to adjust tuition fees to balance the needs of the school and the resources of the community.37 One year later, Article 10 of Proclamation number 103 of 1976 on “The Administration and Control of Schools by the People” greatly expanded their powers:
1) The committee shall have the following powers with regard to school workers, teachers and students: a) to give warnings; b) to suspend either from work or school for not more than fifteen days; c) to impose fines not exceeding two months’ pay; d) to dismiss from the school anyone who fails to be corrected after repeated warnings and punishments; e) to have any damaged property of the school reinstated or made good.
2) Before taking measures pursuant to its powers under sub-article (1) of this article, the committee may give every opportunity to wrongdoers to criticize themselves and to improve their behaviour;
3) The committee shall have its decisions executed by the public welfare committee of urban dwellers’ associations or by the defence squads of peasant associations or by the police, as the case may be.38
34A clear definition of an institution’s powers gave it authority while also establishing its limits, which might avoid the arbitrary practice of power. The ability to define wrongdoing and punish it was specific to the established authorities, and schools were among them. In practice, the repressive powers of the committees were very extensive. While suspensions and exclusions for misconduct were a part of the customary attributions of any institution with employees, deductions from wages—which were very extensive in this case—were rarer. In addition to being made up of a majority of members from local government bodies, the committees had the right to call on the militias to enforce their sanctions. These characteristics and powers of the committees placed schools between the ideological and repressive apparatus. This is still the case—pedagogy always involves repression to a greater or lesser extent—but here the position occupied by the repressive function was particularly extensive. School committees were endowed with significant coercive resources that made them instruments of social control associated with peasant and mass associations, three institutions that enabled a tightly-woven network of social control and multiplied their effects.
35Paragraph 2 on self-criticism and the correction of conduct immediately brings to mind individuals’ public acknowledgment of their supposed “deviations” as practised in dictatorships claiming to be Marxist-Leninist.39 It was a question of repressing political rather than professional faults. By virtue of the ideological function assigned to education and the desire to educate all the masses with a view to shaping them, it was essential to closely monitor what was happening within the school walls, to limit the relative autonomy of the school space. By placing a majority of people from outside the school and members of the local administration on the committees, the state gave itself the opportunity to look inside the school. Schools had been the main areas of contention under the previous regime, and between 1976 and 1978, during the Red Terror, the struggle for control of the school space had been a political issue of prime importance. The preamble to Proclamation number 103 of 1976 stated that the reactionary forces in schools had to be fought against, a declaration that targeted the civilian Marxist opposition to the military regime at the dawn of the Red Terror.40 Once the opposition had been crushed, this proclamation was maintained in order to prohibit any criticism of the regime in schools, which were to remain under state control at all costs.
36The repressive powers of the committees greatly limited teachers’ room for manoeuvre. It was essential to control the knowledge and attitudes transmitted by the men and women who had been entrusted with the task of educating future generations. It was largely through the circulation of young teachers in the country’s schools that the culture of political opposition had spread before the revolution. It was also those who had a school education that had opposed the military regime most fiercely in its early years: the teachers had experienced their schooling in a situation of political turmoil that the Derg needed to tame. An event that occurred at a school in Addis Ababa in 1983 gives an idea of the pressure placed on teachers.41 Bealu Germa’s novel Oromay—which rapidly became a success, and a major classic of Ethiopian literature—had just been published. During a class, a teacher of Amharic urged his students to read the new work by the famous novelist. The book was critical of the regime’s uncompromising policy towards Eritrea, however, and a few days later, the government banned the novel and ordered its withdrawal from sale. The very next day, the teacher, visibly tense, told his pupils that he had taken the wrong book and that he had intended to talk about another work by Bealu Germa, KeAdmas BeShager. Some months later, on 14 February 1984, Bealu Germa was abducted on the street and disappeared.
3. The drivers of demand for schooling
37In the space of five years, between the 1977–78 and 1982–83 school years, the number of students attending Wolaita’s primary and secondary schools increased from 42,665 to 131,268.42 The constraining and oppressive effects of forced participation in the construction and maintenance of schools, as well as the social control exercised by the schools, were mitigated by the communities’ desire for schooling.
3.1 Affirmation of demand for schools
38To explain this movement towards schools, teacher Yemesrach Alula begins by linking the literacy campaign to the people’s investment in formal schooling:
በደርግ ጊዜ ወላይታ ላይ ትምህርትን ለማስፋፋት ብዙ ጥረቶች ተደርገዋል። በመሰረተ ትምህርት ማእቀፍ የመማር እድል ያላገኙ የማህበረሰብ ክፍሎች ለምሳሌ የቤት እመቤቶች፣የአርሶ አደር ልጆች፣ የዝቅተኛ ቤተሰብ ልጆች፣ እንዲሁም ጎልማሶች ትምህርት እንዲያገኙ ተደርጓል ። ትምህርት በሕዝብ ውስጥ የሰረጸበት ውቅት ነበር። […] በተለይም በሂደት የትምህርትን ጥቅም ማህበረሰቡ እየተገነዘበ ሲመጣ ወጣት አዛውንት ሳይል በራሱ ተነሳሽነት ወደ ትምህርት ቤት መሄድ ጀመረ ።
During the Derg era in Wolaita, significant efforts were dedicated to the expansion of schooling. In the realm of basic education, segments of society previously deprived of learning opportunities—including housewives, farmers’ children, and those from economically disadvantaged families, including adults—were provided with educational opportunities. This marked a period when education began to take root within the population. […] Notably, as awareness of the benefits of education spread throughout society, both the young and the elderly initiated their own attendance at schools.43
39Yemesrach Alula is discussing a variety of intertwined subjects here, some of which have already been discussed at length in the chapter on the literacy campaign: the regime showed the greatest interest in providing education for all and education affected social profiles that were thought to be definitively excluded from any educational action. In so doing, she rightly connects the literacy campaign with formal education. When she recalls that “the young and the elder” went to school, she is referring to both literacy centres and formal schools. She thinks of education as a general phenomenon. On the other hand, while mass literacy and the large-scale construction of primary schools happened at the same time, the literacy campaign had to last for a finite period. The final goal to be achieved, beyond the eradication of illiteracy, was universal primary education. It was necessary to “equip adults with the knowledge needed to build a new society and economy, and educate young people to continue this work.”44 For some, literacy was a first step towards formal education. A literacy certificate allowed direct entry into grade 3 or 4. Many children, as well as adults, took advantage of this opportunity. More importantly, in the longer term, the pedagogues at the Ministry of Education believed that literate families would be more likely to enrol their children in primary school. Indeed, the interviews testify to the fact that thanks to the literacy campaign, families became accustomed to school education and integrated it into their social practices. Schools lost their strangeness.
40While the literacy campaign and the expansion of primary schooling were conceived jointly by the government, they did not imply the same level of commitment on the part of the population. Sending one or more children to school for long-term schooling was a far greater constraint than literacy classes, which took place for three to four months a year over one or two years. Formal education took up entire years and dramatically limited a child’s participation in a family’s economic activities. One more step needed to be taken in the investment of government policy: a more profound transformation in attitudes towards schooling, despite the economic constraints on peasant families.
41It seems that this step was taken. Although universal schooling was not achieved, as religious teacher Afememeher Allebachew recalls, “those who did not go [to school] could not … All farmers saw an interest in their children studying, even those who did not send them to school. […] But there were problems, the cows, the goats, and no one to look after them.”45 To cope with the overcrowding caused by the rapid growth of the school system, the Ministry of Education had to introduce a rotation system: half the pupils went to class in the morning, and the other half in the afternoon. This made it easier to enrol the children of peasants, who were available for half the day to fulfil their roles in their family’s economic life.
42Teacher Yemesrach Alula confirms the transformation of school representations and practices by placing the population right at the heart of the educational dynamic. This makes it possible to make further advances in an analysis of the appropriation of education by the population. In her words, communities were no longer simply “awakened” after having been “forced.” The progress of education was made possible because the population wanted it, through a convergence between voluntary state action and a social dynamic, without which no education policy can function (Prost 1992). Yemesrach Alula uses a formula in Amharic—temhert behezb west yeseretsebet weqt neber—which, for want of a better term, is translated here as “it was a time when education took root within the population,” but its evocative force is difficult to transpose. The term seretse refers to a specific sociocultural process: a phenomenon that grows within a group as the effect of collective action by its members until it becomes a regular, collective and commonly shared “social fact.”46 Yemesrach Alula therefore describes the advance of education as the result of a social and cultural fermentation in farming communities as much as state action. What were the driving forces behind this social dynamic towards education encountered by the Derg policy?
43In actual fact, the Derg’s proactive school policy reinforced and accelerated a fundamental movement towards schooling that dated back to the early 1960s, with a gap between the city and the countryside. The way some rural families began to move towards schools before the revolution has been described above. The initial impetus for this process was the increasing numbers of village schools brought about by Governor Germame Neway in 1958–59, the rise of Protestantism and the aspirations for social ascension of young Wolaita who wanted to leave the marginalisation of the countryside. In the mid-1960s, rural society began to see young people leaving their villages to study and become salaried civil servants, liberated from both the uncertainties of the harvest and the extractive and repressive violence of the state. As a result of these examples, schooling gradually began to attract more attention. While opportunities for upward social mobility began to diminish from the mid-1960s, the effects on school practices lagged behind. Anjulo Agago was an illiterate peasant who became moderately literate during the literacy campaign. However, when the campaign arrived in his village of Dubbo, his son Arjo was already in Grade 8.47 This poor peasant family—who had not converted to Protestantism, which was one of the main driving forces behind schooling—enrolled at least one of their sons in school in the early 1970s. This shows that demand for schooling was in the making in the countryside before the revolution, and was beginning to include non-Protestants. These were the embers on which the Derg’s literacy campaign, school-building and education propaganda began to blow.
44This increased ownership of schools must also be understood in the light of the transformation of power structures. Power had always been exercised in an authoritarian manner, but it had changed its face. Institutions were no longer seen as instruments at the service of the lords, whose lands had been expropriated by the agrarian reform. Greater proximity to the organs of power, of which schools were a part, was achieved—at least temporarily. While the policy of bringing rural people in closer contact with schools by mobilising them was achieved with a certain amount of coercion and school committees were instruments of social control, feelings towards the institutions changed, and they became less alien. In addition, the discourse around the promotion of peasants and nationalities, which was based on a broader and more inclusive vision, initiated a shift in the way rural communities viewed the nation. School was still the school of power, but it was no longer the school of the “Amhara” alone. The boundary that delimited the legitimate space of belonging to the national political community became easier to cross, as did the doors of the school.
45Finally, it does seem that schooling was encouraged by the broader spread of an aspiration for progress. Teacher Abraham Worku testifies to this:
The general feeling [that education was important] came in the reign of the Derg. The Derg established a school in every village. […] So, at that time, everybody sent their children. There were literacy courses, there were formal schools. Formal schooling was highly developed during the Derg. And people stood for education. They were away from technology and other worlds. Here, there was no communication, after we learned… your country has gone through many developments… European countries… we learned. We didn’t see but in our minds, we learned about Europeans, Western countries and Eastern countries. What are we? What are we this time? We are too late!48
46It was a desire to improve living conditions more than just an aspiration to imitate the “Europeans.” Abraham Worku is, of course, a teacher who has been around schools since the 1960s. However, he seems to be bearing witness to an expansion of this idea to a wider section of the population. It had been promoted by Governor Wolde-Samaet Gebre-Wold, albeit with less intensity, as early as the 1960s. The Derg then carried out an unprecedented intensification of the discourse on “development,” in which education occupied a central place. The advance of schools and the speeches that accompanied it showed possibilities for improving living conditions and attractive prospects for escaping poverty that had not been envisaged until then. Before the famine of 1985, these prospects seemed accessible, even though their contours may have remained blurred.
3.2 The more problematic schooling of girls
47In 1977, the Ministry of Education announced that one of its priorities was to significantly increase participation in the school system by girls and women (Ayelew 2000, 45). Nationally, between 1978 and 1988, girls increased from 32% to 38% of primary school enrolments, and from 24% to 38% of secondary school enrolments, revealing a limited increase at the primary level compared to the regime’s announced policy of promoting girls’ education. The increase was more significant at secondary level, although the statistics collected in Wolaita are difficult to interpret because of apparent inconsistencies. Firstly, the percentage of girls enrolling appears to be slightly below the national average. In 1977–78, girls accounted for 20% of primary school students.49 In 1989–90, the rate was higher, at around 35%, but still slightly below the national figures. For the same school year, the statistics are more precise: they distinguish between towns and rural areas, and show important differences. In the wereda of Soddo Zuria, girls made up 46% of the school population in the cities, against 29% in the countryside. The same percentages are found in the neighbouring wereda of Damot Gale.50 Conversely, the number of girls taking the primary school leaving examination appears to be much higher than the national average. In 1985–86, at the school in Soddo Ber, 264 girls out of 545 pupils took the national examination, comprising 48% of the candidates. This was a significant increase, as in 1978–79 only 21% of the candidates were girls. The rate in 1985–86 was higher than the national rate of 38% (Gennet 1991, 92).
48In spite of some inconsistencies, these statistics allow some general trends to emerge. During the first five years of the Derg, the increase in the number of girls attending school was significant throughout Wolaita. During the 1980s, the differences between urban and rural areas remained noteworthy; however, almost a third of pupils in rural areas were girls, a significant proportion compared to the pre-revolutionary situation, when girls were simply not a presence in schools. Teacher and headmaster Girma Bekele recalls that in the small town of Bedessa, the first girls came to school in the late 1970s. Even though there were only a few of them, it was a major precedent. For teacher Kassech Mulugeta, the Derg period saw a marked improvement in girls’ schooling, as “there was nothing under Haile Selassie’s regime.” Her colleague Zeritu Buche says the same.51 For her part, Yemesrach Alula adds some nuances:
በደርግ ጊዜ ይሻላል፣ ሴቶች ይማራሉ ፣ እኩልነት ፣ ብዙ ነገሮች ነበሩ። ሴቶች በደርግ ጊዜ የተሻለ የትምህርት እድል ነበራቸው። ሴትና ወንድ እኩል ናቸው ይባል ስለነበር ብዙ ሴቶች ወደ ትምህርት ቤት ይሄዱ ነበር። ችግሩግን በየደረጃው ቁጥራቸው እየተመናመነ ይሄዳል። ያም የሚሆነው በተለየ ጎጂ ባህሎች ምከንያት ትምህርታቸውን እያቋረጡ ትዳር ውስጥ ስለሚገቡ እና በማህበረሰቡ በሚደርስባቸው ጫና ነው።
During the Derg era, there was an improvement; girls were receiving an education, promoting equality, among other positive aspects. Girls had enhanced opportunities for learning under the Derg. The principle of gender equality encouraged many girls to attend school. However, a significant issue arose as, at each educational level, the number of girls dwindled. This decline was attributed to the interruption of their education due to certain harmful customs, early marriages, and the societal burdens placed upon them.52
49While girls and women were strongly affected by the literacy campaign, where they made up half of the students, the transition to formal education was more difficult. The main problem was continuing with their studies. Like Yemesrach Alula, Belaynesh Antonios, who was a teacher at Soddo Secondary School during the Derg, explains that while girls were more easily able to attend primary school, the issue of marriage was an obstacle to secondary education. She illustrates this by relating that secondary school students were being challenged with these words: “Where are you going to find a husband? Get married instead!.”53 Long-term schooling ran counter to the envisioned future social role of girls as wives and mothers, a widespread phenomenon that has been observed and studied in many parts of the world (Lange 1998; Rogers 2007; Barthélémy 2010). For this reason, a significant number of girls dropped out of school between grades 9 and 12, at an age when marriage was the norm. In 1989–90 in Wolaita, 47% of Grade 9 students were girls, but only 21% in Grade 12.
Conclusion
50The case of Wolaita offers an interesting and original example of the progress of the state in the countryside through its schools. As in the case of the literacy campaign, the available means were exploited by using pre-existing structures—the network of Protestant churches—and mobilising the population. This time, however, the aim was to create sustainable cooperation through permanent structures at the heart of village communities. Schools found themselves in a pivotal position at the crossroads of state and societal dynamics, the bearers of potentialities under tension, a space where convergent and contradictory objectives and aspirations intersected. In many respects, a combined analysis of the expansion of the school network and the movement towards schools makes it possible to identify part of the complexity of these early years of the Derg. Schools were one of the instruments of the policy of social control deployed by the new regime, but they were also a place that seemed to offer a way out of marginalisation, a legitimate place within the nation and a better future. How long did this political and educational convergence between the new regime and the rural population of Wolaita last? Enthusiasm quickly gave way to weariness as authoritarianism became more and more apparent and it seemed that the regime’s promises would not be fulfilled. Famine, villagisation, displacement and civil war brought the momentum to a halt in the second half of the 1980s. However, the brief period between 1978 and 1985 is essential for understanding the history of education in Ethiopia, and more broadly the country’s contemporary history. It saw an unprecedented acceleration in the appropriation of schooling by rural populations, which was the result of a true collective effervescence.
51The relationship to school is a relationship to political power, but also to schooling as such: to the knowledge, values and behaviour it transmits and the aspirations it conveys. School representations and practices partly reflect the relationship to power, but they are equally independent of it. Society distinguishes between what is inherent in a school itself and what makes it an extension of the state. In fact, the Derg’s first reforms and egalitarian discourse met the aspirations for recognition and progress that nourished schooling. It remains to be seen whether this improved appropriation of schooling could survive disaffection with the regime. Before the last chapter attempts to answer this question, it is now a matter of looking at the “black box” in the history of education: the school space. How did the Derg’s political and economic project translate into a school culture? What were the curricula and pedagogical practices? What activities took place in the schools, and how were they effectively linked to the community?
Notes de bas de page
1 MOEFA, Report on Educational Development in Ethiopia: 1973–74 and 1974–75 (prepared for the 35th session of the International Conference on Education, Geneva), 2.
2 MOE, Information Paper on the Education System in Ethiopia (1982), 6.
3 PMGE, Ten-Year Perspective Plan, 1984/85-1993/94 (1984), 136.
4 WZEO, የትምህርት ተቋማት ዝርዝር ፣ መቼ እንደተሠሩ የሚግልጽ መረጃ (List of establishment of schools, clarifications on their date of construction, 2010).
5 PMGE, Ten-Year Perspective Plan, 1984/85-1993/94 (1984), 136.
6 MOE, Information Paper on the Education System in Ethiopia (1982), 3.
7 Zerihun Anebo, interview, December 2010.
8 Germa Bekele, interview, December 2010.
9 Talemos Mana, interview, November 2010.
10 Germa Bekele, interview, December 2010.
11 Abebe Fola, interview, December 2009.
12 Programme of the National Democratic Revolution of Ethiopia, in MOE, Basic Information on Education in Ethiopia (1977), 4.
13 Abebe Fola, interview, December 2009.
14 Elias Damtew (teacher, school headmaster, expert at the Department of Culture of the Wolaita area), interview, Soddo, 11 October 2009.
15 Abebe Fola, interview, December 2009.
16 Yaluse Mita, interview, November 2009.
17 Ibid.
18 Zebdewos Chama, interview, November 2010.
19 Yaluse Mita (teacher), interview, Soddo, 2 November 2009.
20 Catholic Vicariate of Soddo, Details of Schools under Soddo-Hosanna Catholic Church Diocese.
21 Abba Gino (Capuchin missionary), interview, Soddo, 12 December 2009.
22 Abba Wolde-Yesus Wolde-Giorgis (Catholic priest), interview, Soddo, 10 October 2009.
23 MOE, Education in Socialist Ethiopia… (1984), 16.
24 “Public Ownership of Private Schools, Proclamation no. 54/1975", in MOE, Basic Information on Education in Ethiopia (1977), 14–15.
25 “Administration and Control of the Schools by the People Proclamation no. 103/1976”; in ibid., 27.
26 Ibid., 29–30.
27 Afework Ayalew, interview, February 2007.
28“Administration and Control of the Schools by the People Proclamation no. 103/1976”; in MOE, Basic Information on Education in Ethiopia (1977), 29–30.
29 Soddo Zurya wereda, የወላይታ አውራጃ የትምህርት የትምህርት ስታትስቲክስ ማጠቃላይ ጥራዝ (School Statistics of Wolaita Awraja, 1989–1990).
30 “Administration and Control of Schools by the People, Proclamation no. 103/1976,” in MOE, Basic Information on Education in Ethiopia (1977), 25.
31 Ibid., 27–28.
32Ibid., 29.
33 Tesfaw Derebe, interview, February 2007; Mantagosh Eshete (teacher), interview, Lalibela, 14 February 2007.
34 "Administration and Control of Schools by People’s Proclamation no. 103/1976", in MOE, Basic Information on Education in Ethiopia (1977), 33–34.
35 Ibid., 34.
36 “Public Ownership of Private Schools Proclamation no. 54/1975", in MOE, Basic Information on Education in Ethiopia (1977), 15.
37 Afework Tadesse (teacher), interview, Lalibela, 10 February 2007.
38 “Administration and Control of the Schools by the People, Proclamation no. 103/1976,” in MOE, Basic Information on Education in Ethiopia (1977), 30–31.
39 A scene of public self-criticism can be found in Ethiopian director Haile Germa’s film ጤዛ (Téza), released in 2008, which looks back at the early years of the Ethiopian revolution.
40 “Administration and Control of the Schools by the People, Proclamation no. 103/1976,” in MOE, Basic Information on Education in Ethiopia (1977), 25.
41 An anecdote reported by Minale Sissay, who was an eyewitness of the event as a pupil (interview, Addis Ababa, 18 November 2010).
42 WZEO, ከ1967ዓ. ም እስከ 1975ዓ. ም ድረስ በወላይታ በወላይታ አውራጃ የተማሪዎች ብዛት (Number of pupils in Wolaita Awraja from 1974–75 to 1982–83).
43Yemesrach Alula, interview, December 2009.
44 MOE, Education in Socialist Ethiopia… (1984), 16.
45 Afememeher Allebachew (history teacher in the school system of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church), interview, Lalibela, 9 February 2007.
46 I am grateful to Kidane-Mariam Wolde-Giorgis who clarified for me the meaning of this expression.
47 Arjo Anjulo, interview, December 2010.
48 Abraham Worku, interview, January 2011.
49 WZEO, በ1970ዓ. ም የትምህርት ዘመን በየአውራጃው በየአውራጃው በምንግስት በሚስዮን በሕዝብ በቤተክህነት አንደኛ ደረጃ ትምህርት ቤቶች የተማሪዎች ብዛት (Number of pupils in government, missionary, community and national church primary schools in Ethiopia, school year 1977–78).
50 Soddo Zurya wereda, የወላይታ አውራጃ አውራጃ የትምህርት ስታትስቲክስ ስታትስቲክስ ማጠቃላይ ጥራዝ 1982EC (School Statistics of Wolaita Awraja, 1989–1990), not paginated.
51 Zeritu Buche (teacher), interview, Soddo, 7 December 2010.
52 Yemesrach Alula, interview, December 2009.
53 Belaynesh Antonios, interview, November 2009.

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