A documentary on seven ethnic groups making peace in the southern Ethiopian Rift Valley is captivating audiences in the capital Addis Ababa, as the peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea teeters on the brink of collapse.
The documentary film Bury the Spear! made by social anthropologists Ivor Strecker and Alula Pankhurst focuses on the 1993 peace-making efforts of the Abore, Borana, Konso, Tsamai, Hamar and Dasanach to end decades of ethnic war among themselves.
Premiered at the Goethe Institute to a packed audience, the documentary showed delegations of all these ethnic groups coming together at Abore, near the border with Kenya, to jointly curse war, bless peace and promising never to fight with one another again.
The institute plans a second screening for the many who were turned away from the premiere.
Scenes in Bury the Spear!, filmed by Pankhurst, an associate professor in Addis Ababa University, showed the elders sitting in front of a sacred shade and uttering curses as they used stones to blunt the blades of spears belonging to the different groups that had been at war with each other.
The spears were then carried to a termite mound where they were broken and then placed on the mound for the ants to devour.
After the instruments of war were destroyed, tools of peace like hoes for gardening and whips and sticks for herding were given to all participants. Holding their tools of peace, the elders then chanted for good fortune to ensure the peace between themselves lasted.
Ironically Pankhurst’s footage was never made public until last year when he participated in a project organised by Germany’s Mainz University. He transcribed and translated the dialogues with the help of an Ethiopian team and then edited the film in collaboration with the staff of Addis Ababa University and Mainz University.
”Initially we were sceptical and wondered what this story would have to tell, because we did not want to come out and say, ‘Look these people know how to make peace and others don’t know!’,” said Pankhurst.
But all that changed when Strecker, a professor at Mainz University, who was also at the 1993 ceremony, decided to visit Arbore again late last year to get a deeper meaning of peace-making that Pankhurst had filmed.
In attempting to get current film footage, he also sought out Grazmach Surra, an elder who had been the main initiator of the peace process. As it turned out, Surra had a premonition of Strecker’s visit and was waiting for the German anthropologist.
As soon as Strecker arrived, he said: ”German son, people are all the same, only the colour is different. The foreigner is white, people like me are black. Being human, how can they spill each other’s blood? This disturbs me. Therefore I now want to reach the whole world.”
Speaking about Surra, Strecker said: ”This is a very wise man from Africa who has a strong and articulate way of speaking about the need for peace and he’s very similar to the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan”.
”The film is dedicated to the possibilities of creating peace, not a romantic or sentimental kind of peace but a realistic one. It must balance the realities on the ground and possibilities in the mind and heart,” he added.
Said Strecker: ”The film’s intention is to provoke questions like ‘How can people be so unjust as to want to wage war with one another?’ and ‘Why war when there are other alternatives?”
The social anthropologist said that though there was a constant temptation of going to war in the world today, there were also many voices calling for a review of the factors that caused people to kill one another.
”These are the positive voices calling for peace and the aim of the film is to promote these voices,” said Strecker.
Commenting on the current impasse in the peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Strecker said he hoped Bury the Spear! could help break the deadlock between both neighbours.
”The more times this film is screened, especially at these tense moments, the greater the number of people will be conscientised.
The message will become known to many. Leaders can gain more glory from creating peace than making war and this will move into the consciousness of people,” he said.
Added Strecker: ”This film features a man (Grazmach Surra) who dedicates himself into saying good is good and bad is bad and he does not allow people to turn bad into good and good into bad. That in itself is a very powerful message”.
The Ethiopian-Eritrean war was the biggest in the world at the time, clearly surpassing the Kosovo war in the number of casualties, troops involved and displaced civilians. The number of dead and wounded was estimated at 100 000 with an involvement of about half a million troops and the displacement of about 600 000 civilians.
The heart of the matter is the border town of Badme, where the war first started. It is currently under Ethiopian administration, but under the ruling by the Hague-based Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission (EEBC) — made in April last year — the town lies in Eritrea.
Both Ethiopia and Eritrea committed themselves to be bound by the decision of the EEBC in the border demarcation between the two countries, as spelled out in the Algiers Agreement that ended the war in December 2000. After being postponed twice, the demarcation of the 1 000-kilometre border was scheduled to begin this month.
But Ethiopia, last month, said it would not accept the EEBC ruling on Badme and warned the decision was a recipe for continued instability, and ”even recurring wars”.
The United Nations last week described the Ethiopia-Eritrea peace process as being under ”severe stress”.
Bury the Spear! is scheduled for regular screenings in Addis Ababa and other major towns this week. – Sapa-IPS