The Politics Of The 1969 Somali Coup

The remaining two groups in the national genealogy are the Digil and Rahanweyn, who occupy the comparatively fertile area between the Juba and Shebelle Rivers — the only permanent water-courses in this otherwise largely arid land. They practice a mixed economy with an emphasis on cultivation. Their region provides Somalia’s other main export — the plantation banana crop.

These two clan-families speak a distinctive dialect of Somali and retain special cultural features which set them somewhat apart from the rest of the nation. They constitute in fact the only division with sufficiently developed cultural differences to warrant the term `tribalism’. But the significance of their regional distinctiveness is offset since, unlike their nomadic countrymen, they are of very mixed origin. They represent in fact a synthesis of old cultivating stock and more recent and once nomadic immigrants from the other Somali clans.

Almost every other Somali lineage has some off-shoot living amongst them. This mixed constitution gives the Digil and Rahanweyn potential ties with the other four clan-families. And such unity as their heterogeneous structure possesses has been further eroded by legislation (adopted in 1960) maintaining the right of every Somali to live and farm where he chooses, irrespective of his relationship with other local people. This official abolition of the status of client-tenant has thus encouraged many partially assimilated lineage fractions to assert their original identity and to participate on this basis in national politics.

These are the main units within the nation. In their traditional setting, however, these entities were generally too large and too widely dispersed to act as effective political units. They represented a largely unrealized political potential. Within them, individuals identified with and acted as members of smaller units which we can usefully distinguish as `clans’, these having a maximum population of some 100,000 and being often considerably smaller.

Clans, in turn, did not exist on a permanent footing; rather, in Chinese-box fashion, they comprised a series of smaller lineage sub-divisions which might be mobilized at any level of grouping. This fluid pattern of shifting loyalties, well adapted to the exigencies of the nomadic life which discouraged the formation of permanently established units, was accompanied by an equally loose and highly democratic process of government.

Whenever, at any point in the series of segments, a lineage was mobilized, its policy was determined in ad hoc assemblies attended by all the adult men concerned, or their representatives. Men of energy, valor, and wealth, as well as sagacity and wit, were highly respected; and these and other factors enabled certain individuals to build up temporary followings and spheres of influence.

Some clans, admittedly, had leaders (sometimes dignified with the Arab title ‘Sultan% but these were essentially mediatory and ritual figure-heads; and with the general exception of the southern Somali cultivators (the Digil and Rahanweyn), there was no clearly defined hierarchy of established chiefly offices. This, of course, did not prevent the colonial administrations from appointing salaried headmen and chiefs’ at various levels of lineage division.

[su_button url=”https://saxafimedia.com/politics-1969-somali-coup/7/” style=”soft” size=”12″ wide=”yes” center=”yes” text_shadow=”0px 0px 0px #FFFFFF” rel=”lightbox”]CONTINUE READING ON THE NEXT PAGE >[/su_button]