Factional clan bloc voting threatened to fracture SYL on the eve of independence

Evidence

Life is beautiful, and it is quite true that man is the most beautiful, but also the most complicated, of all creatures. We have created the Somali Youth League; for it we have made all sorts of sacrifices to see the Somalis united and independent from foreign servitude, and now that we are on the verge of being completely free, we risk spoiling everything with our actions that are dictated by factional egotism… . [T]he election of the remaining five members of the office foreseen by the existing laws demonstrated the irresponsibility of certain people who decide in factional conspiracies outside the parliament, although they know that the net result of their action will divide and deepen the differences among the people. They elected the deputy whip and the secretaries, persons from the Digil Mirifle bloc who have taken the Hawiye identity, going to the length of giving one more member in the office of the presidency to the [HDMS], which has only five members in parliament, and electing as secretary an illiterate. No position was given to those they call “Darod.” — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 394

Categorization

• SEED: Osman’s lament that factional bloc identity politics threatened to divide Somalis at the very moment of independence resonates with the later breakdown of Somali democracy in 1969 - an essay angle on the deep roots of clan-based political fragmentation.