Earlier this month, prominent Ethiopian politician Lencho Leta spoke to local media about his political journey. An edited video of his interview was shared with a text overlay claiming Lencho said his former political party had always renounced Ethiopian nationalism and continued to do so. However, this is misleading: in the interview Lencho merely said that historically there had been no consensus on what nationalism meant in the multi-ethnic state of Ethiopia, but that there were signs that the situation was changing.
The post was published on Facebook on November 5, 2024 and was shared more than 220 times.
It includes a TikTok video of more than six minutes and shows Lencho being interviewed outside by a journalist.
“As OLF, we have never wanted Ethiopian nationalism and we still don’t today.” reads the video’s Amharic caption.
Screenshot of the misleading message, taken on August 19, 2024
The video was viewed more than 16,500 times on TikTok (archived here).
Lencho was a founding member of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), founded in 1973 and one of the oldest political movements in Ethiopia (archived here). OLF is a political organization that advocates for the right to self-determination of the Oromo people – Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group.
Lencho co-founded the Oromo Democratic Front (ODF) in 2013 after a falling out with the OLF leadership (archived here). The ODF, which merged with the Oromia region’s ruling party in 2018, now wants to democratize what Lencho calls the “Ethiopian federation” rather than create a separate Oromian republic.
“At that time [when the OLF was founded]we were very motivated by what constituted Ethiopian nationalism. Yet we have not yet agreed on what Ethiopian nationalism really means,” Lencho says at the beginning of the clip.
“We did not agree on the unity of Ethiopia or Ethiopian nationalism. We have not found our identity in Ethiopian nationalism. We were not part of it.”
He then talks about the Gojjam uprising, which took place in late 1960, and the Ethiopian feudal system (archived here).
At 3:40 p.m., the journalist asks Lencho what motivated him and his colleagues to create the OLF and whether their political goals have been achieved.
In response, he mentions two “successes”, namely “the land reform policies implemented during the Derg regime and the multi-ethnic federalism formulated by the Ethiopian transitional government in 1991”.
Ethiopian nationalism
There are conflicting views on Ethiopian nationalism (here and here). For some, Ethiopian nationalism helped create a unified, sovereign nation-state regardless of ethnicity (archived here and here).
But opponents see it as a tool of manipulation through which a single ethnic group, the Amharas, historically imposed their identity on Ethiopia’s other ethnic groups (archived here).
Lencho has on several occasions called for a negotiation on Ethiopian nationalism so that it can lead to equality among the country’s ethnic groups (archived here).
However, the fragment does not show Lencho’s outright renunciation of Ethiopian nationalism.
Edited video
AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to perform reverse image searches on key frames from the video.
The search led to a longer version of the video published on YouTube on November 2, 2024 by Addis Maleda, a digital news organization (archived here). The original video is over 27 minutes long.
In the first 25 minutes, Lencho discusses historical trends in Ethiopian politics from the 1960s onwards in the feudal context and the rise of political movements, including the OLF and the Gojjam uprising.
AFP Fact Check determined that the TikTok clip contained portions of the original video.
From 22:40 Lencho responds to the journalist’s question whether OLF’s political objectives have been achieved.
“Most objectives have not been achieved. Only two major things were accomplished. The land reform policies implemented during the Derg regime and the multi-ethnic federalism formulated by the Ethiopian transitional government in 1991,” he says.
“At that time, we were very motivated by what constituted Ethiopian nationalism. Yet we have not been able to agree on what Ethiopian nationalism really means. We did not agree on the unity of Ethiopia, nor on Ethiopian nationalism. We have not found our identity in Ethiopian nationalism. We were not part of it.”
The journalist asks Lencho: “What were your criteria to measure that?”.
Lencho responds: “Ethiopian nationalism did not include any element of our culture, language and history. Multi-ethnic values are ignored by Ethiopian nationalism, which promotes the identity of a single ethnic group.”
“I believe this is being corrected in the current Ethiopian political context. Ethiopian laws and policies can help improve Ethiopian nationalism challenges.”
Contrary to claims, Lencho never mentions renouncing Ethiopian nationalism in the original video or in the Facebook clip.
