Book Review: Unearthing Apartheid in the horn of Africa
Somalia has a long history of marginalization and discrimination, to the point of labeling fellow Somalis as a lesser Somali, and Somali Bantu, alias Jareer, falls under this category. This community have suffered from psychological damage due to the hatred, abuse and the harassment they received from the so-called ‘majority clans’ of Somalia. The author stated that Somali Muslim scholars dodged and neglected this issue and that they never give efforts to tackle against this alarming discrimination against the Somali Bantu community.
Abdulkadir
Sheikh Sakhawadin who is from the Jareer community co-initiated SYL-freedom
fighting movement, but unfortunately his people never enjoyed the country he strove
for and Jareers never felt the fruits of the nationalism and patriotism he
stood for. Alas, to make matters worse, his legacy is never celebrated the same
way as is he case with his fellow SYL freedom fighters.
This community is
engaged in doing menial jobs and live in the lowest ranks ever in Somalia and
the reason is that they have been denied the opportunities unlike their
counterparts – the other ‘ennobled’ clans. They have also been subjected to
gang rape, conscription, and expropriation in different eras of Somali history
and they have never received justice.
The whole apartheid
story of Somalia went to another level when the national Reconciliation
conference in Kenya was adopted and institutionalized - the 4.5 system which
states that Jareers and other outcast communities will get 50% of what other
clans get in politics.
Professor Enow
stated that the whole conference was a jileec affair along with warlords, IGAD,
and some frontline neighbors including Ethiopia, Djibouti, and the host
country-Kenya. He said that Jareer and other outcasts plus Somali scholars
didn’t get the chance to have their views expressed in the conference.
By using the
terms “New colony/civilian regimes”, the author blamed both president Abdirashid
and Adan Adde for looting agricultural land owned by Somali Bantu. In the book,
it is stated that Siad Barre also took a land owned by Jareer community; he has
also demoted Jareer top officers in the military, and drafted many jareer youth
for the 1977 war.
In his book,
Professor Enow criticized I.M Lewis for exaggerating the pastoral democracy of
Somalia. He also criticized Nuradin Farah for praising Hawa Taka in his Naked
Needle masterpiece without making mention of two other jareer martyrs who died at
the same scene with Hawa. He also rebuked Maryan Arif Kasim and Abdi Ismail
Samatar for calling Adan Adde’s government a democratic one albeit all the
tragedies it had committed.
Excerpts from
the book including some poems
“Equality
for all poses threat to the beliefs of supremacy and nobility of oppressors”.
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“shiiq ii
sharaf-kiina sheegataa tihiin
Minaa ishumeeynin
waa nii shawihaa”
“Mugii Aradneedoo
Afkaada Uraayi
Aboow Ileheed Adoon
ma aheen”
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“The Bantu
Jareer people were caught in the middle of a dilemma between two devils-from
Somali African repression to white Italian oppression”
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“A Somali does not ask another Somali where he is from, but who he is from”
“in 1990
several elders approached Barre to save the country from turmoil but the
dictator stood by his word that only by the barrel of the gun would he step
down, since that was the formula by which he came and not by election or
elders’ negotiation”.
“sawjaa kufsateen,
siifna waadhacdeen
Salaama caleykum
ma igu sireysid”
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“By this notion, ethnic qualities and physical appearance play a role in being
[a] Somali. It is inadequate to be just an indigenous born and bred in the
country. A somali has therefore to possess certain physical qualities and culture
unrelated to negritude or agrarian mode of production. For one to fall in the
category of Somaliness one has to be slender, not stout, has to have a pointed
nose, not a flat or broad one; has to have soft hair, but no hard, thick or
curly; and after all one has to subscribe to the culture of nomadic pastoralism
as the right properties to Somaliness”
“When a proper
census is conducted, believe me the .5 (point five) community will be 1.5”
“in the Somali
myth, the Isaq and Darod consider themselves as the ordained “super-nobles”
while the Hawiye and Digil-mirifle take their places at the subsequent “lower”
levels in that order but above the reer Hamar (Banadiri)and Barawaans who rest
in almost the same place, atop of the Jareer at the bottom-most”.
“As has become common
knowledge, a Somali and his Somali nation are easily
separable, but a Somali and his tribal nation remain inseparable”
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