How to Build Common Identity in a Fractured Nation

President Mulatu Teshome recently highlighted the need to build an ethical and civic minded generation.

The fact is, building engaged citizens is more important than producing ethnically divided society. Civic mindedness is democratic glue for a diverse society to develop social trust, tolerance, civic participation, civic responsibility and engagement among many.

Democracy remains robust when individuals have an increased likelihood of reaching beyond close ties such as, narrow primordial ethnic, religious, cultural, kinship lineages and loyalties.

In Ethiopia, where nationalism and ethnicity collide, democracy and economic growth are linked, and group and individual rights compete, different and unique priorities produce different results. Democracy and justice are paramount instruments not only to build up trust among different nations, nationalities and peoples but also in the effort to bring about people-centered solutions.

Thus, the president’s announcement of building an ethical and civic minded generation is crucial, in its proactive manner to change in democratic political culture.

It is also timely when debates on important subject need informed and civic minded citizens.

Now that the President has announced readiness, the question comes down to “what is the fertile ground to create the civic minded citizens?” Prima facie assessment of the Ethiopian context indicates that building civic minded citizenry is in a civic-ethnic dichotomy of Catch-22.

But there is a third way too. This can be expressed in terms of the constitution’s aspiration of building one political and economic community.

Cultural and social bonds are the ways to depoliticise ethnic identity and ethnic nationalism.

Conventionally, ethnic and civic nationalism are foundations through which generations’ loyalty and sentiment to the multi-nation state is created. Civic mindedness is founded on civic-nationalism, depoliticising and privatising ethnic identity. Such in turn would complicate the process of building civic mindedness, in a context where ethnic politics is the anchor of the federal constitution.

Elites in Ethiopia are divided on the beliefs, world views and historical understanding of the dominant (ethno) cultural groups of the current Ethiopia. They are divided on Ethiopia’s common past which could have been able to bind the loyalties of the future nation and help create a foundation for civic nationalism.

Civic nationalism in Ethiopia is alleged to be a mask for hegemony of the endeavour of an ethnic-centered and one-religion dominated culture trying to superimpose its vision of past, present and future on the other ethnic groups.

Some also argue that, citrus paribus, civic nationalism could fairly work well in ethnically homogeneous and economically developed society. But Ethiopia is not such a nation. Thus, civic nationalism, up on which civic mindedness could have thrived, has no socio-economic, religious-cultural, politico-historical foundation to establish itself in Ethiopia.

As it stands, in Ethiopia’s political landscape, ethnic and primordial values are relegated to secondary position in the process of state formation and nation building. Ethnic politics, in Ethiopia, at times results in strained relations among members of the federation. The prevailing ethnic politics is, therefore, not a fertile ground for building civic mindedness either.

Liberal values and the principles of the constitution can be the foundation for invigorating ethical and civic mindedness through the mobilisation of the youth around the implementation of constitutional principles and values. The nation building project that the federal constitution alluded to is a platform to garner the youth and the rest of the people for civic participation and engagement.

Nation building project in contemporary Ethiopia as political strategy to sustain the viability and survival of the multi-nation state is approached in what our federal constitution referred to as building a political and economic community. The preamble of the constitution lays out building a political community founded on the rule of law and capability of ensuring a lasting peace and guaranteeing a democratic order, and advancing economic and social development as important pillars of nation building. The full respect of individual and people’s fundamental freedoms and rights, determination to live together on the basis of equality and without discrimination of any sort, building up common interests and contributing the emergence of common outlook through continuous interaction on various level and forms of life, promoting shared interests are identified to be pre-conditions /foundation to establishing a political community.

Building one economic community is necessary to create sustainable and mutually supportive conditions for ensuring respect for fundamental freedoms and rights, for the collective promotion of shared interests, the constitution reiterates. An economic community is necessary to create sustainable and mutually supportive conditions for a political community. This would not only facilitate inter ethnic communication and interaction but also create middle income and ethnic transcendent generation.

The nation building project implemented as suggested by the constitution would also not just provide the new generation with practical experience of building their nation thereby endowing them with belongingness and sense of ownership to their multi-national state but also in due course inculcate social trust, social altruism, equality, tolerance, humanitarianism, civic participation, civic responsibility and civic engagement which are at the heart of civic mindedness.

The other mechanism which inextricably linked with the nation building project is the role of universities. Universities in Ethiopia have mushroomed in unprecedented manner for the last two decades, though the quality of education in those universities is still an open question. These universities could play a constructive role, in what Martha Nussbaum, referred to as “cultivating humanity and citizenship” in students by creating the ability to critically examine their own traditions and beliefs; enhancing the recognition of their community and fellowship with human beings around the world; and building the ability to consider what it might be like to walk in another person’s shoes. Education should create universal meaning of their multi-nation (Ethiopia) and local (ethnic) significance to the student that it would ultimately serve as a means to a higher end.

Attributes such as compassion, critical thinking and a sense of responsibility which come about through quality education enable students to contribute towards “civic reconciliation and transformation’’; vital for democratic state formation and nation-building.

The government’s endeavour to integrate the effort of creating civic minded and ethical citizens with the nation building project and ensuring quality education is therefore, part of the way out to the ethnic–civic Catch-22.


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