The SYL removed its own president for refusing to abandon militant tactics

Evidence

Shortly after deliberations began members of the assembly endeavored to introduce electoral redistricting, which had been resolved in an earlier period. Haji Mohamed was incensed by this attempt and walked out of the meetings. He organized a demonstration against the party and said that the party had ceased to be a liberation movement and that Somali nationalists should spill blood for independence rather than accept independence sanctioned by the colonialists. Conference participants were enraged by this behavior and recognized that the party could not survive if its president behaved so cavalierly. Accordingly, the matter was debated on the same day, and conferees decided to remove Haji Mohamed from the presidency and revoke his membership in the CC, but they gave him the opportunity to appeal their decision. Haji Mohamed ignored the disciplinary measures imposed on him and took his seat at the head table in the congress hall the following morning as if he were still the SYL’s president. The chairman of the congress told him that he no longer belonged to the party’s leadership and should take his seat among the other members. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 356

Categorization

• QUESTION: What became of Haji Mohamed Hussein after leaving the SYL in 1958 — did he found a rival nationalist movement?
• SEED: Angle: the 1958 SYL coup against its own president as an early African case of a party choosing pragmatism over militancy to secure negotiated independence.