Abstract:
This study assessed the ethnic interaction between peoples of Kafa, Yem and Dawuro with
Jimma Oromo in Jimma from 1880s to 1974. Jimma ethnic diversity and its neighbours are
popular for their substantial diversity in religion, language, culture, socio-economic activities
and traditional governance structures. Jimma on its own has been famous for diversity. Ethnicity
can lead people to go back to their own culture as a last resort for resisting the pressure of the
modern life and the repressive successive states governed them. On the other hand, the class
manipulation and mobilization of the ethnic sentiments for purely narrow and self-serving
interests of a small minority of the elites who continuously struggle for positionsand some other
ethnic manouvers. Culturally, one ethnic group shares others’ language, religion, wedding,
mourning ceremonies, dressing style, hair style, feeding style and others with other ethnic
groups. Iddir, iqub and mahber are the natural outgrowth of a common historical background
and the process of assimilation and acculturation among the diverse ethnic groups in Jimma.
Jimma had experienced a process of special ethnic interaction since the 1880s due to the
continuous influx of immigrants. This occurred because of coffee and other peasants, migration
due to population pressure, famine and land degradation in the north in 1964/5. Jimma was the
center of slave trade centers especially at the place called Hermata. Jimma and Kafa had
substantial interactions through trade through local and long distance trade route. The conflict
between Jimma and Kafa from 1880 to 1897 was very serious. The existence of Yem people in
Jimma zone were due to geographical proximity, the effect of the elongated war between the two
states, the absence of difficult natural barriers like big rivers, high mountains between the two
states, the existence of cash crop like coffee in Jimma, and the existence of fertile land in Jimma
that attracted not only the Yem immigrants but many others as well.
