Addis Abeba — Some leaders' deaths mark the end of a chapter, while others' departures prompt a reflection on an entire era. The passing of Liben Jaldesa, the 69th Abbaa Gadaa of the Borana Oromo, belongs to the latter. I received the news of his death on 28 August, 2026, through social media, with immense sadness. But almost immediately, the news carried me back to my childhood--to the time I followed my late grandfather, Halake Bagaja, widely known as Aba-Jirma, to Dhibayyuu-Irreechaa; to the songs Borana women sang during Ijjarsaa Galmaa, praising Liben's leadership, presence, and bearing; and to the days when we lived as villagers in Ardootii, where I witnessed the ritual movements of his Ya'aa.
The announcement came from Addis Abeba after a long illness. My mind, however, travelled to Arda Jila Badhaasa, the historic ceremonial centre where the Borana gather to mark the transfer of Gadaa authority from one generation to another. Arda Jila Badhaasa can, in cultural and historical significance, be compared with Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.--not because of its buildings or physical architecture, but because of what it represents. It is a place of authority, memory, and political significance, where the Borana's highest traditional leadership is transferred. Every eight years, one generation hands responsibility to another.
For the Borana, this is not merely a ceremony. It is the renewal of an institution. The Gadaa system is a structured and egalitarian social and political order in which authority rotates among five Gadaa classes. Its roots reach deep into Oromo history, long before many of the political institutions that dominate the modern world emerged. The history is striking. While Christopher Columbus's voyages to the Americas came in the 1490s, Borana oral tradition records the election of Gadayo Gelgalo as an Abbaa Gadaa in 1458, decades before George Washington became the first president of the United States in 1789. By then, the Borana had already passed through generations of Gadaa leadership, with Wayu Wale Chana remembered as the 42nd Abbaa Gadaa in that sequence. These comparisons do not aim to undermine other democratic traditions. They remind us instead that the history of democracy is older and more geographically diverse than the conventional stories often told about it.
For the Borana, Gadaa has never simply been an idea in a textbook.
Keep up with the latest headlines on WhatsApp | LinkedIn
It has been lived.
That is the world in which Liben Jaldesa served.
Liben Jaldesa Liban was the 69th Chieftain of the Borana from 2000 to 2008, succeeding the respected Boru Madha, the son of Madha Galma Tore, remembered in Oromo cultural history as a man who refused to bow before Emperor Haile Selassie and whose story was later celebrated by poet Laureate Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin. Liben's eight-year term ended almost 20 years ago, as every Gadaa term must. But leaving office did not mean leaving public life. He remained an influential elder and adviser and, in his later years, served as an Abbaa Seeraa to Guyo Goba (70th), continuing to participate in the affairs of his people.
An Abbaa Gadaa does not merely occupy an office... he inherits a trust."
An Abbaa Gadaa does not merely occupy an office like politicians; he inherits a trust. He becomes a custodian of law, justice, convention, social order, and the moral compact binding one generation to the next. Liibee understood that responsibility deeply. He knew that the authority of an Abbaa Gadaa was not personal property. It was held in trust for the people and for generations yet unborn. At the same time, he did not believe that preserving Gadaa meant freezing it in the past. He was rooted in custom but understood that its enduring principles--consultation, accountability, justice, restraint, collective responsibility, and peaceful transfer of authority--must remain relevant to a changing world.
A leader of courage and conviction
Liben's years as Abbaa Gadaa coincided with profound political change in the Borana homeland. Modern state boundaries did not always correspond to older social, cultural and pastoral realities. Questions of territory, grazing rights, political representation and relations with government authorities therefore carried consequences far beyond administrative maps.
Liben was rarely a silent observer. During the 2004 referendum concerning regional boundaries, he raised concerns about what he and members of the community regarded as irregularities in voter registration and the referendum process. He also became a prominent voice on grievances involving customary grazing rights, alleged detention and disappearances, violence against women, and other concerns affecting the Borana. For Liben, the office of Abbaa Gadaa was not a ceremonial chair from which to watch events unfold. It carried an obligation to speak when the community believed it was being wronged. That conviction sometimes brought him into confrontation with political authorities and other actors, particularly over political and territorial questions, including disputes surrounding Moyale. Liben could be bold, outspoken and uncompromising. Some members of the Borana community disagreed strongly with him. Others admired precisely the qualities that made him controversial: his courage, confidence and refusal to remain silent.
There is a story that captures something of his character. A senior official once accused him of being mata-jabaataa--stubborn, hard-headed, and unwilling to bow his head. Liben's response was characteristically his own. In essence, he said that he was not simply stubborn for the sake of stubbornness; there was something inside him that made him stand firm.
"Mataa hin jabaannee, waan Jabduutti Mataa keessa na jira," Abbaa Gadaa Liiban Jaldeessa Liiban!
It is difficult to imagine a more fitting description of the man. He did not bend easily.
An honest tribute should not turn a complicated public figure into an uncomplicated hero. Liben was a man of conviction. He did not always seek universal approval, nor did he confuse silence with wisdom or convenience with consensus. Where he believed the dignity, customary authority, or rights of his people were at stake, he was prepared to speak plainly and stand his ground. His contribution also belongs to the longer journey through which Gadaa moved from being known primarily within Oromo communities to receiving international recognition. When UNESCO inscribed the Gadaa system on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016, Liben was no longer the sitting Abbaa Gadaa. Yet he belonged to the generation of custodians who preserved and represented the institution at a critical moment in its modern history.
Perhaps the clearest measure of his commitment to Gadaa came when succession touched his own family. Like many Abbootii Gadaa before him, Liben had hoped that his son might one day take up the mantle of leadership. But when another young aspirant gained the support of the wider community, Liben listened to the people. He set aside personal and lineage preference and accepted the alternative choice.
That decision reveals something essential about the institution he served. Gadaa is not a crown. The office of Abbaa Gadaa is not a hereditary possession passed automatically from father to son. Leadership belongs to the wider community and is governed by an institutional process of selection, preparation, age-set progression, ritual and public legitimacy. For a father to step aside when the community chooses another candidate is therefore not an act of defeat. It is an act of fidelity to Gadaa itself.
Liben understood that. He knew that the authority of an Abbaa Gadaa could never be greater than the institution that entrusted him with it.
Power has a beginning.Power has an end.And the institution must survive the individual.
The Boy Who Watched the Ya'aa
My relationship with Abbaa Liben was both professional and deeply personal. I first encountered him not as a journalist or researcher, but as a seven-year-old boy. I accompanied my grandfather, the late Halake Bagaja, widely known as Aba-Jirma, during Liben's Ya'aa--the extended, year-long ceremonial movement from the Borana-Dire area toward Liben in eastern Borana. Crossing the Dawa River along the way, moving with the people and animals who formed part of that journey. I briefly stayed at his Ya'aaYa'aa camp in Ardooti for a month.
Those memories remain vivid. I remember the movement of people, the camps, the elders, the animals, and the rituals. I remember the songs of Borana women during Ijjarsaa Galmaa, celebrating Liben's leadership. I remember Ardootii and the Dawa River. I remember the atmosphere surrounding the transfer of authority. Around the same period, my grandpa completed his Gadaa stage, shaved his head, and retired from active Gadaa responsibilities as a Gadamoji.
At seven, I could not have understood the historical significance of what I was witnessing. The meaning came much later.
Over the years, I attended numerous Gadaa assemblies and encountered many of the people who carried the institution forward. I worked with Guyo Goba Bule during his Luba stage, when we both belonged to the ruling generation. I met and worked with Kura Jarso, including through television, and later worked with Guyo Boru during his Raba Gadaa stage as a radio producer. I also had the privilege of engaging with the late Professor Asmarom Legesse, whose scholarship helped bring the Borana Gadaa system to the attention of the wider academic world. Through these encounters, I came to understand what I could not have understood as a child: Gadaa is not simply a collection of ceremonies, titles, or rituals. It is a living political and social institution through which generations have negotiated justice, authority, responsibility, morality and the limits of power.
Power has a beginning. Power has an end. And the institution must survive the individual."
My understanding of Gadaa did not begin in a university library. It began in the Borana landscape. And Liben Jaldesa was one of the people through whom that living institution became visible to me.
His generation helped carry Gadaa through a period when the world beyond Borana began to pay closer attention. He left power almost two decades ago, but the succession continued. Guyo Goba, the 70th Abbaa Gadaa, and Kura Jarso, the 71st, completed their terms and handed the authority forward. Guyo Boru followed in that long chain of responsibility.
And already, the next generation is waiting. Among them is Halake Mallicha-Halake, only ten years old and designated to become the 74th Abbaa Gadaa of the Borana. There is something extraordinary about that image: a ten-year-old boy growing toward a responsibility that extends decades into the future. He will not inherit a throne from his father. He will pass through the stages required by Gadaa, and when his time comes, the institution and the people will determine whether he is ready.
He is not simply waiting to rule.
He is being prepared to serve.
That may be the deepest lesson of Gadaa--and perhaps the most fitting tribute to Liben Jaldesa.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
For the Borana of Ethiopia and Kenya, his death crosses a modern international boundary but not a cultural one. The border may divide administrations, but it does not erase shared language, kinship, history, pastoral traditions, or customary memory. When an elder of Liben's stature dies, the loss belongs to the wider Borana nation. The best way to honour him is not merely to mourn his death but to preserve what he represented: justice before convenience, consultation before arbitrary power, responsibility before privilege, dignity without arrogance, and loyalty to an institution greater than oneself. When I think of Abbaa Liben today, I return to that seven-year-old boy travelling with his grandfather. I return to Dhibayyuu-Irreechaa, Ardootii, the Dawa River, the Ollaa Yaa'aa, the songs of Borana women, the elders and the long movement across the Borana landscape. I could not have known then that those childhood scenes would one day become part of my intellectual and professional life.
But perhaps that is how traditions survive. They are not preserved only in books. They are carried by people. Liben Jaldesa was one of those people.
The elders will remember his words. Those who knew him will remember his courage. Those who disagreed with him will remember his convictions. And those who witnessed his leadership will remember a man who believed that an Abbaa Gadaa must sometimes standalone before he could stand for his people.
His generation is now leaving us, one elder after another. But the institution they carried remains.
The songs continue.
The assemblies continue.
The Ya'aa continues.
The succession continues.
And somewhere in the Borana landscape, a ten-year-old boy is growing toward a responsibility set in motion long before he was born. That is perhaps the most fitting way to remember Yuba Liben Jaldesa: not only as a man who has left us, but as one of the custodians who helped carry an ancient institution from one generation to the next.
May his memory endure in the stories of the elders, in the assemblies of the Borana, in the wider Oromo nation, and in the generations yet to come.
May his soul rest in eternal peace. AS
Editor's Note: Guyo Wariyo (Aka Aba-Jirma) is a former journalist pursuing a PhD in Media & Communication at York University, Toronto. Ethiopia-born and Canada-based, his research focuses on press freedom in the Horn of Africa through comparative studies of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea. He can be reached at guyojournalist2011@gmail.com
