He was the younger brother of Reverend Gudina Tumsa and later joined the Oromo Liberation Front after being expelled from Finfinne by The Dergue.
[1] The Macha and Tulama Self-Help Association (an organisation which was banned in 1966, and some of its leaders were jailed or killed) attracted Oromo students from Haile Selassie I University, including Tumsa (the Chairman of the University Students' Union), Lieutenant Mamo Mazamir, Ibsa Gutama, Mekonnen Gallan, Taha Ali Abdi, and many others.
Tumsa, as the Chairman of Ethiopian Student Union, and his fellow Oromo, the President of the Parliament secretly arranged for the staging of the first ever 'Land to the Tiller' demonstration against the Haile Selassie regime.
Tumsa, cognisant of the fact that the Oromo were usurped from their ancestral land by the colonial settlers, is credited for the coining of the slogan 'Land to the Tiller'.
From that day until the unseating of the imperial government, this slogan was never missing from the almost annual event of student anti-government demonstrations (Lata 1999: 191-192).
According to Olana Zoga, the author of History of Macha and Tulama Association, under the leadership of Tumsa, underground members of the Association which gave rise to the OLF took advantage of the February 1974 Revolution and contributed to the overthrow of Haile Sellassie's regime in four ways: First, its members effectively used the limited freedom of the press, which flourished in Ethiopia from March to June 1974 for the purpose of exposing Oromo colonial experience.
Fourth and most important, the underground members of the military police forces were instrumental in organizing the committee of the men in uniform (Derg or Dergue in Amharic) that overthrew the Emperor in September 1974 Zoga 1993: 301- 302).
Consequently, it can be said that the emergence of a national movement indicates that a population or social group has reached a new stage on the road to nationhood: the transition to political action.