Abstract:
A history of Anywaa people is not well studied. This encouraged me to reconstruct the historical
background of the society.Some of the historical studies that were carried out in the region have
mostly concentrated on conflicts and anthrolopogical works.The objective of this thesis, basing
on qualitative analysis of oral traditions, written sources and few archives,is to present the
historical background of the Anywaa. The difficulity of getting archives are among the problems
faced during this research work. In addition to this, the vast area and shortage of written sources
are the problems that the researcher experienced in an attempt to come up with this final work.
The Anywaa are a Nilotic people who lived in the Gambella Regional State (formerly an
Awraja,, of Illubabor province) in western Ethiopia and in eastern part of the Republic of South
Sudan. Gambella and its people fell under Ethiopian Empire in 1898. Imperial Ethiopia had two
main rewards in the Gambella and Upper Nile regions. Diplomatically, it wanted to out-compete
the British colonial establishment in the Sudan with a desire to expand to the western highlands.
Economically, it was involved in protection the profitable ivory and trade of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. For the Ethiopia’s King Menelik II, it was not only the inclussion
of Gambella to Ethiopia politically, but it was also to be the first Ethiopian King that
incorporated all Anywaa of southwestern Ethiopiain history. But they came under the effective
occupation of the central government after 1941.After this year,conflicts were reduced, raiding
against them from their neighbors, taxation was also imposed on the Anywaa during the reign of
Haile Sellasie. It was after the down fall of Haile Selassie, that the Derg government came to
power in 1974, the people of Gambella, like other oppressed ethnics and nationalities in
Ethiopia, hoped for a better government to come that would end their suffering. To the contrary,
political conditions got worse. Instead, the Derg regime began to eliminate the few enlightened
educated Anywaa of Gambella in secret and openly. It also destroyed the traditional
administration, rules, and system of the indigenous people, and socio-cultural ways of life that
was inherited for centuries.
