By 
A book review
Book title: Land to the Tiller: An interview with Zegeye Asfaw
Publication date: 2020
Author: Ann Oosthuizen
Publisher: Morfa Books
Paperback (136 pages)
“To understand the politics of land, one has to understand Ethiopian history,” says Zegeye Asfaw, the former Minister of Land Reform and the key architect behind the 1975 “Land to the Tiller” proclamation, in a new book by Ann Oosthuizen.
“‘Land to the Tiller’ was a reinstatement to give justice to those who survived Emperor Menelik’s invasion. So, it is economical but also social, and at the same time political. On the delivery end, the land reform was like a renaissance for the Oromo peasants—for everyone in the south. There were small kingdoms and principalities—that used to have their laws, and their kings—that were smashed, conquered, and their people reduced to serfs.”
The issue of land ownership in Ethiopia was entrenched in the formation of the empire on the one hand and the intergenerational agrarian economy that has never changed over centuries on the other. This debate forms the foundation for Land to the Tiller, a memoir based on Zegeye Asfaw’s life, focusing on the role he played in drafting and executing the historic land proclamation.
The book highlights how Zegeye devoted his life to implementing the bill when he was appointed Minister of Land Reform, then Minister of Agriculture in the early years of the Ethiopian revolution of the 1970s. The book begins with a brief account of Zegeye’s family background, his formative years as a child in the countryside, his schooling in Addis Ababa as a teenager, and the adventures of his university days. The story expanses into the narrative of his accomplishments in various public positions, the decade-long peril he underwent in the notorious Derg prisons without due legal process, and how he was released when no credible evidence was found to justify his detention.
Oosthuizen seems to have interviewed Zegeye in one sitting at a certain café in Addis Ababa. The book is not organized in an interview format as there is no author intervention or interruptions in the storytelling. The merit of the interviewer’s omission is that the story takes a natural course as if it is directly told to the reader from a first-person perspective. But that is also the book’s main shortcoming since the style does not allow for follow-up or clarification questions that a reader expects.
Land to the Tiller provides a vivid account of Zegeye’s immense agency and diligence from youthhood to adulthood, then at an old age, in reinstating the land to its historic owners: the much-disadvantaged southern majority in Ethiopia, who were dispossessed from their land by northern invaders.
Zegeye pronounces the historical factors that shaped the dichotomy of north-entitlement vs. south-debarment to land ownership in Ethiopia.
“Emperor Menelik was a small king in the Amhara region,” Zegeye reminds us. “He built up his power by invading all around him. Whenever he faced resistance in his expansion southwards, the land was confiscated and given to Menelik’s supporters. This is how many people lost their land and their lives. So what the youngsters [who protested opposing the feudal land tenure] were calling for was the reinstatement of the land to its original owners.”
The Derg regime dealt a severe blow to the feudal system through the land reform bill. Zegeye was an indispensable agent in the preparation and execution of the bill. He put the final nail in the feudal system’s coffin with the subsequent proclamation of “Government Ownership of Urban Lands and Extra Urban Houses,” which he drafted and submitted to the Derg government. Ironically, Zegeye himself comes from a landlord family. Like Zegeye, his mother, the only person he informed about the imminent land proclamation, was happy to hear that the land, including her own, will be transferred to tenants.
Zegeye is mindful of this irony:
I had to keep the land reform law secrete. I never told anybody that it was coming, but I told my mother. I said, ‘Mom, you listen, you are going to lose everything that you have next month. Do you know what she said?
‘Who are the ones who are going to take my land? Are they the same boys that have been helping me over the years?’
I said ‘Yes,’ ‘in that case,’ she replied, ‘God bless you!”
In the post-Italian occupation period, several peasant uprisings in Ethiopia and a nonstop outcry in the student movement culminated in a revolution. The military government should be credited for the decisive step it took to end the brutal serfdom that deprived the peasantry of the right to land ownership.
Zegeye is a fortunate person to defend his “Land to the tiller” program even during the constitutional conference of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which deposed the Derg and ruled Ethiopia until 2019. He tried to make the land reform law part of the new constitution.
However, it was clear that the constitutional guarantee was wearing down with time.
Zegeye describes the change to the interests of the peasantry in the EPRDF-era as follows:
“Under the Eminent Domain, the land could be taken by the government if it was used for a public purpose like a road or a school. It was a matter for the court to decide if it was a public purpose. You would dispute the matter in court if your land was taken. But now, the government has given the authority to the administration [Zegeye seems to refer to lower structures like zonal and municipal bodies who are authorized to evict farmers in the name of development]. They can take over the land and give it to an investor. This is the biggest crisis in land reform. There is land grabbing Indian, Pakistani, and Saudi governments who want to grow food for their food security.” (Underline added by writer of this article)
In close to half a century since the “Land to the Tiller” decree was enacted, the land issue has remained to be contentious political agenda. Suppose we had the chance to conduct a free and fair election. In that case, a serious debate is framed around whether the land is to be considered as a sellable commodity or only a possession that be inherited to one’s offspring, whether the misleading constitutional statement that stipulates the appropriation of land as a “government-public” venture remains intact, whether the government is to get out from meddling in the land issues and if a cap is to put on investment in land, etc.
Zegeye has not hidden that one of the severe criticism he received from those who saw his land reinstatement project as a threat to the northern advantage over the south was that he deliberately established the land as a “public property” instead of “government” in the proclamation. Later, when the Derg drafted its constitution, they changed the term “public property” to “government.” In the 1995 constitution, the EPRDF skewed it to “public-government ownership,” a term loaded with a very tricky conceptual ambiguity.
In Land to the Tiller, one could observe that Zegeye is not only a freedom fighter, rights restorer, and change agent but also a humble, inclusive, soft-hearted, pro-poor, and exemplary leader.
Land to the Tiller illustrates that Zegeye started his quest for justice as a student of law when he filed (alongside his friend, Abebe Worke) a habeas corpus to the high court, the first of its kind in Ethiopia, to defend their arrested revolutionary comrades Berhanemeskel Reda, Zeru Kihshin, Gebru Mersha, and Mesfin Kassu. The court ruled in their favor. Three of the brilliant revolutionaries were executed later by the Derg regime during the Red Terror.
Zegeye’s testimony about Mengistu Hailemariam, who jailed him for a decade, may come to readers as a surprise. Zegeye recalls how the life of Gamachu Magarssa, a university professor, was saved because Mengistu accepted Zegeye’s plea to hide the young man.
Zegeye also speaks about other qualities of Mengistu.
If you confined anything to him, Mengistu would listen. Maybe historians will also start to investigate instead of being swayed by the propaganda of today…I really admired him as a determined leader, but I disapprove of his human rights record.
Reading Land to the Tiller, one may realize how Ethiopia has regressed over the years. For instance, the judge who set the revolutionary students free during the habeas corpus case did not have government minders dictating how to do his job. Compare it with the current situation where the judiciary lacks the freedom to defend its rulings: judges release suspects on bail, police refuse to execute court orders.
Land to the Tiller leaves one waiting for follow-up questions. There were many missed opportunities. For instance, Zegeye should have been asked if he tried to send mediators to Mengistu to claim his innocence. Besides, Zegeye could have been probed more to share from his vast experiences about Ethiopian politics. Another question that comes to mind is why the book’s draft was kept on the shelf for about a decade? The author interviewed Zegeye in 2012. That is fine, and there could be multiples of reasons. Why was it not updated? Zegeye could have added some more stories with the recent turn of events.
Still, the book doesn’t do justice to Zegeye’s stellar contributions. I have heard much about Zegeye from people who were imprisoned with him and worked with him. I am not satisfied with a book that feels like only a summary or a chapter of his enormous contributions. For me, Zegeye is an unsung hero. I believe something more will come out by Zegeye himself or other people who value his contributions.
However, Oosthuizen should be thanked for taking the initiative to write about the story of land reform in Ethiopia, with Zegeye as its main protagonist.
Regarding witnesses of those who testified about Zegeye, one would expect cross-cultural and gender-inclusive reflections. Zegeye has worked with many people from different ethnic groups, but except Tesfaye Habisso, who wrote a beautiful foreword, those who witnessed about him are his fellow Oromos. In terms of gender, Zegeye invested his knowledge, time, and energy to empower women through Hundee. But there is no account of women in the testimonies.
The conversation between Zegeye and Abba Biyya Abba Jobir about their prison life is so interesting. It reads like a fictional dialogue. At some point, Zegaye confides in Abba Biyya about the moral dilemma of healing a victim of torture since that would motivate the torturers to conduct another round of anguish on them, believing the victim could bear it. To leave the victim in pain to avoid the next torture while still agonizing was a possible option. From the two men’s conversation, one can view the whole picture of the infernal situation in the Derg prisons.
In short, Land to the Tiller is an eye-opener, yet it only scratches the surface both about the issue of land ownership in Ethiopia and one of the significant agents of land reform: Zegeye Asfaw.
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