Kairedin Tezera

Ye Siltie Serra:the Local Governance System of the Siltie People Kairedin Tezera

The Siltie are one of the ancient south Semitic societies in Ethiopia. The people were known in the medieval period as Hadiyya,and some scholars such Braukhamper as mentioned them by various names; Hadiyya, Adea, East Gurage or Hulbareg. The Siltie were also mentioned in chronicle of fourteenth century Ethiopian king Amdesion as "Siltiege people" . The Siltie are an agrarian societies in countryside,while the well known business men in the urban parts of Ethiopia. Urban migration and migration to Gulf states have now become the culture of the Siltie. The people have developed an indigenous system of governance that regulates the day to day activities of its members. They employed the system until the late 19th century when the expanding forces of the central state overrun the local chiefs and introduced the so called the modern system. Since then,the customary mode of governance has lost its potent as a viable political system ,and reduced to ritual. Nevertheless, the system is working partly concomitantly with the formal one. YeSiltie Serra as a traditional system can be explicated as what anthropologists call Segmentary System.