The Politics Of The 1969 Somali Coup

The military thus assumed power with the declared aims of cleaning out the Augean stables and restoring Somali virtues. They brought new energy and dynamism, and also a much-wanted sincerity, to public affairs. In the ministries headed by civilian secretaries, military officers were posted as watch-dogs, and close inspection of ministry accounts revealed an impressive if unedifying list of malpractices; this led to the arrest of many former civil servants who were tried and sentenced for embezzlement, tribal nepotism, and other allied offenses.

The large floating urban population of tribal `drop-outs’, accustomed to living by their wits and at the expense of their more fortunately placed kin in the civil service and the national assembly, were rudely shaken to find themselves faced with the alternative of engaging in useful but strenuous public works or returning to the interior. A strong endeavor was thus made to clean-up the towns, both literally and figuratively, and to make the social services operate more effectively and fairly.

In the interior itself, district and provincial administrative officials were recalled to the capital for re-training in development and discipline, and replaced by military personnel. Abroad, diplomats were recalled and posted to new stations immediately after the S.R.C. had assumed power. Further measures were taken in 1971 when senior members of the diplomatic corps were summoned home for a period of military training and familiarization with the socialist ideas and aspirations of the leader of the revolution, General Siyad.

Despite the very explicit emphasis on efficiency, self-help schemes, and the value of work, and despite repeated appeals and threats to all and sundry on the part of the new President, the military have found the task of social reclamation arduous and unrewarding. Although it can dispense with the scruples of previous parliamentary governments and has the power to command obedience for its directives, the S.R.C. has, like its predecessors, come to recognize the intractable character of the problems which it faces: poverty, climatic uncertainties, limited natural resources, and a turbulent, predominantly nomadic population whose divisive clan and lineage attachments are as stubbornly unyielding as the stark physical environment.

In attempting to deal with these impediments to progress, General Siyad has developed his own rough-and-ready brand of socialism, which he sees as the necessary alternative to these parochial conservative forces. Thus, on the first anniversary of the revolution on 21 October 1970, the Head of State publicly declared that henceforth Somalia would be dedicated to socialist goals and to the complete eradication of ‘tribal­ism’: the positions of government-stipended tribal chiefs and headmen would be abolished, the practice of paying blood-money (dia) would be forbidden, and those who indulged in tribalism’ would incur serious penalties.¹²

These exhortations were later followed in December 1970 and early in 1971 by demonstrations in the Republic’s main centers when tribalism, corruption, nepotism, and misrule’ were symbolically buried and thus eliminated, and in some cases, effigies representing these evils were also burnt. More pragmatically, the regime promised to provide funeral expenses for those who died in the towns without relatives at hand who could perform these services. This innovation was realistically aimed at providing an official substitute for one of the functions served by lineage ties in the urban centers.

The regime’s unremitting struggle against traditional conservative forces in Somali society (including many of its religious leaden) is accompanied at a more intimate level (and one much less directly accessible to observation) by General Siyad’s personal battle with the hidden tribal’ enemy within the Supreme Revolutionary Council itself.¹³ For, of course, as the new President has himself scornfully de­clared, the general public (both rural and urban) tends to regard the S.R.C. as it did previous civilian governments, and expects it to be equally representative in lineage composition.

Thus the Council is largely assessed in terms of the lineage identities and assumed loyalties of its members, and changes in its ranks are interpreted in the light of this all-pervasive lineage logic. If, for example, as was said to be the case initially, the S.R.C. dealt less strictly than might otherwise have been expected with former politicians of the Digil and Rahanweyn groups, then that was reportedly because they were under-represented on the Council.

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