The Politics Of The 1969 Somali Coup

THE NATION AND ITS TRADITIONAL SUB-DIVISIONS

If then, as I argue here, the Somali people are to be considered a nation, part of which has achieved independent statehood in the Republic, is the implication that their national, cultural homogeneity has saved them from the vicious tribal factionalism which plagues the political life of other African states? Somali nationalist politicians certainly do not think so. Indeed, since the birth of modern political parties in the early 1940s, these leaders have consistently, if in the nature of things vainly, inveighed against the sectarian evils which have so often jeopardized their efforts to unite.

These divisive and constricting forces are identified as ‘tribalism’ and equated with similar particularistic attachments in other African states. If, however, the effects are much the same, the institutions which produce them differ. The linguistically and culturally distinct divisions that threaten the fragile cohesion of most African stalwarts here replaced by kinship-based ties which, if they lack the trappings of cultural uniqueness, are arguably even more deeply entrenched and paralyzing in their effects.

It is thus ‘clanship’ in the technical sense, rather than tribalism, which commands allegiance and frustrates the achievement of much that is in the national interest. Strictly, all the units referred to here are conceived of by the Somali as lineages based on common descent, traced in the male line, from an eponymous ancestor. I use the terms clan-family’, ‘clan’, and ‘lineage’ for convenience to indicate groups of descending size and, to emphasize, however, that these analytical distinctions refer to essentially relative levels of lineage activity.

These ties, moreover, are the more crippling in that they are embedded within the existing structure of nationhood. They represent the price which Somalis have to pay for their pre-formed ‘ national identity, for their traditional cultural unity is founded upon these very divisions. The position is further complicated by the fact that each individual is bound not merely to one specific clan group, but to an almost infinite series of such groups; and his loyalties ebb and flow between different levels of lineage allegiance according to the context in which he is acting.

The patrilineal genealogies which record these kinship ties are thus not conserved simply for antiquarian or historical reasons: their significance is primarily political, and their function is to ‘place’ the individual socially and politically in a world of transient and shifting loyalties. Clan and lineage genealogies that define friend and foe and the character of the relations between people is in principle a direct reflection of their closeness or distance in genealogical space — of the number of ancestors counted apart’ as Somalis express it.

At the highest level, the genealogies which each child learns at his father’s knee converge in a single national pedigree. Hence the entire Somali nation can ultimately be represented on a single all-embracing family tree. This is one aspect of traditional Somali nationalism.

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