Social Exclusion of Marginalized Minorities in Kaffa, Ethiopia

Abstract

This article examines the situation of marginalized minority groups
in Kaffa Zone, Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Regional
State. It critically reflects on the aspect of social exclusion of two
social minority groups, the Mano (tanners and potters) and Manjo
(descendants of former hunter-gatherers and wood workers). The
article examines how long-lived practice of social exclusion affects the
groups in a wide range of ways preventing them from participating
in social, economic and political life, and enjoying their basic rights.
The Manjo and Mano are discriminated in every aspect of human
interaction and are excluded from mainstream social life of the society.
They are economically disadvantaged, politically disempowered,
socially excluded, culturally subordinated, and spatially segregated.
This in turn, contributed to their abject poverty and destitute life
as aptly captured in this article. It is argued in this article that, the
problem of exclusion of minority groups in Kaffa Zone has structural,
socio-economic elements that tend to be trivialized often escaping the
attention of policy makers. Consecutive visits made to five woredas of
the Kaffa zone over the last fifteen years allowed the writer to get rich
insight and on the issues under discussion