Continued from last week

By E. R. Turton ‎
University of Zambia ‎
Source: WardheerNews ‎
Kenya has always regarded the Somali as either an infernal ‎nuisance or embarrassment’. ‎
Glenday to Beckett, 21 June 1941 ‎
November 05, 2005‎

The failure of the Poll Tax Movement

It was one of the main weaknesses of the Isaq movement that they failed to gain the support of two important groups of East African Somalis who could have contributed significantly towards the successful achievement of their goals; these were the Herti Darod and the NFD pastoralists. There were many good reasons for the hostility that often prevailed between the Darod and the Isaq. In the first place, many of the supporters of Muhammad Abdille Hassan (better known perhaps as the Mad Mullah) had been Darod, while most of the Somali who had fought on the side of the British against him had been Isaq. The legacy of this conflict was a long-standing blood feud between these two groups. Secondly, this blood-feud was compounded by the actions of Abdurrahman Mursaal of Serenli, who led an uprising in 1916 in which a number of Isaq were murdered by Darod. Finally, most of the Herti Darod came from Italian Somaliland and there was little point in them supporting the Isaq claim to Asiatic status since the claim was based so firmly on their alleged place of birth being Aden .

At the same time, there were equally important reasons why it was most desirable for the Isaq to win the support of the Herti. Ultimately, it was a question of numbers: Herti support would have doubled the size of the Isaq movement. During the last months of 1937, therefore, the Isaq made every effort to get the Darod to participate in their agitation, but without success. Realizing that co-operation was not possible at that stage they changed their tactics and began to violently denounce the Herti. They declared that all the Mijjertein Herti (a sub-clan that lived in Italian Somaliland ) and most of the Dolbahanta Herti were Italian agents and they openly pressed for their expulsion from the Colony. Such allegations were naturally impossible to prove and the Herti were not slow to bring similar charges against the Isaq. Accusation and counter-accusation for theft, sedition and espionage followed; but after a time, the pressing need for some form of co-operation once again made itself felt.

In March 1938 it was reported that the Isiolo Isaq were trying to persuade the Herti Darod there to present a united front with them. They used, as intermediaries, men who had Darod fathers and Isaq mothers. But the failure to achieve a rapprochement led in May 1938 to renewed and more violent bitterness. Writing of this hostility one of the leaders of the Isaq movement at that time claimed that ‘the latter hates the former like hell’ and it took many months for feelings to calm down. A final attempt in January 1939 to secure a joint Isaq and Herti protest over the appointment of Glenday as Governor of British Somaliland failed partly because of bad timing. The approach was made after the Herti had already sent a congratulatory telegram.

Equally important was the failure of the Isaq to gain the support of the NFD pastoralists. This was due largely to the fact that these pastoralists attached little significance to the objectives of the Isaq. Thus, while the Isaq wanted to gain continuing access to Asian hospital wards, the NFD pastoralists merely wanted a hospital in their Province, for none existed, and there was no experience of Asian wards. Again, the Isaq wanted to be able to send their children to Indian schools, but during the 1930s there is no evidence of any desire amongst the Somali pastoralists for a Western-type education for their children. More­ over, until the Second World War there was not even one school in the whole of the Province.

At the same time, the Isaq were willing to pay a higher rate of taxation in order to secure these privileges. Indeed, this insistence on voluntarily paying higher taxation lay at the very centre of all their campaigns. Yet, it is clear that the Somali pastoralists had no desire to pay any more tax. At the beginning of 1933 there had been a certain amount of resistance to the introduction of poll tax. The Muhammad Zubeir had paid slowly and reluctantly, while the Habr Suleiman and a group of Abd Wak under Kuni Jibrail had absconded to Italian territory without paying anything. Later, when the principle of individual taxation was introduced into Wajir District in 1936, the Digodia stated that they would refuse to pay. This was because communal agreements had previously let the Digodia off very slightly, some sections only paying between one or two shillings a head. Yet the Isaq were campaigning at this very time to increase their per capita tax from 20s to 30s. Naturally they could hope for scant support from pastoralists who baulked even at paying a few dozen pence.

Not merely were the Isaq unable to gain any support from Somali pastoralists, but those Isaq who resided in the NFD found their position there extremely precarious, and this made it difficult for them to participate fully in the policy of non-cooperation or of civil disobedience laid down in Nairobi or Isiolo. The Isaq had no prescriptive right to be in the NFD and at the slightest hint of agitation or recalcitrance, the administration could, and at times did, expel them from the Province. Both their continued presence there and their authorization to trade depended on their continuing good behavior. Moreover, there was a natural bias amongst all the Provincial administrative staff against them. And Reece, for many years the officer in charge of the Province summed up this attitude observing that by ‘disseminating propaganda and Islamic ideas of a crude and fanatical nature they often do much harm. ‘

Furthermore, during the 1930s the Isaq in the NFD experienced a number of economic problems that hardly gave them the opportunity to endanger their position still further. During the early years of the 1930s the stringent application of Quarantine Regulations meant that the stock trade, which was their livelihood, practically disappeared. And when that trade picked up, especially after 1935 when there was a flourishing export trade to Italian Somaliland , the Isaq and other ‘alien’ Somali found themselves discouraged from participating in it.

The inability of the Isaq to co-operate with the Herti also made itself felt in the NFD. At Mandera, at the end of the 1930s, there were 12 ‘alien’ Somali of whom only two were Isaq. Their numbers were generally so small as to make them totally ineffective. Thus, although the Isaq at Moyale and Wajir were urged not to pay tax in 1938, there were few defaulters. ‘Their attitude’, according to a Moyale Intelligence Report, ‘appeared to be that they were only a small community in Moyale and that a demonstration by them would be quite ineffective, especially as they do not have the sympathy of the other alien Somalis, and that should they give unnecessary trouble to the Government it would undoubtedly react to their disadvantage later.’

Lastly, the start of the Second World War and the evacuation of the NFD in 1940 dealt a conclusive blow to any possibility of Isaq agitation in the Province. Their impact remained purely on the intellectual level, as the disseminators of new ideas. ‘Already one or two NFD tribesmen who have gone down country are reported to have tried to pay non-native poll-tax in Nairobi, Gerald Reece noted in 1938, and he continued: ‘The prominence at the present time of the Isaq Association and their efforts to exalt themselves by making contemptuous remarks about other Somali is probably responsible for the beginning of a feeling of tribe consciousness amongst the Somali of this District.’

But, if a key weakness of the poll-tax agitation movement lay in the failure of the Isaq to win sufficient support from other Somali clans and clan-families, their own internal disunity also played an important role in their relative lack of success. Not all Isaq sections had participated with the same amount of enthusiasm in the movement, and, even more important, not all sections contributed equally to the campaign funds. From the very start the Habr Yunis were at the forefront of the agitation, closely supported by the Ediagalla and the Arap (these three sections made up the Habr Gerhajis Isaq clan). The second main Isaq clan, the Habr Toljaala, closely supported the agitation but was anxious to hide its activity. On the other hand, the third Isaq clan, the Habr Awal, did not participate in the movement for several years and at best were lukewarm supporters of the agitation.

Moreover, the arrest of over 100 Isaq in 1938 for non-payment of tax began to put a mounting strain on the financial resources of the community. Isaq who had been imprisoned necessarily suffered a financial loss and they began to demand assistance from the Association. In January 1939 it was agreed to levy 10s. from each member and the amount collected to be placed in a special fund to be used for the benefit of ex-prisoners. But this was not enough. At the National meeting in July 1939 it was stated that at least 10,000s. in cash were needed and a few months later the Association was heading towards bankruptcy. By November there was no money in the bank, and the President was attempting to borrow 200s. to pay for a trip to Isiolo, the money to be repaid out of future annual subscriptions.

Pressure on the different Isaq clans to increase the level of their contributions intensified competition between the different sections for posts. Already, at the beginning of 1939, the Habr Yunis were insisting that the Treasurer and the Secretary should belong to their sub-clan, since they contributed the largest share of the Association’s funds. Rivalry became so intense that at the July national meeting each sub-clan was asked to swear an oath of fidelity to the move­ment. The President tried to restore calm by grandiloquently announcing: ‘We have telegraphed our London legal adviser and Mr. Aby Farah about this, they both said we should be cool.

But when at the beginning of 1940 it was announced that the Association needed a further 12,000s. the movement split asunder. The Habr Yunis, Habr Awal and Eidegalla refused to contribute because they maintained they did not have a large enough say in the disposal of funds. The delegations from Tanganyika and Uganda claimed that large sums had been paid to Nairobi and they demanded to know how they had been spent before contributing any more. By March 1940 only the Habr Yunis were willing to continue with the campaign of civil-disobedience and the centre of the movement gravitated to Kitale where Habr Yunis influence predominated and where they tried to consolidate their position as the controllers of the movement’s policy and funds. What ultimately brought the poll tax agitation to a close was the very rapid increase in the level of taxation as a result of the war. In 1940 it was decided to levy non-native tax according to wealth instead of race. Those with an annual income of over £120 were to pay 60s. a year; those earning between £60 and £120 were to pay 40s. and those earning less than £60 were only to pay 20s. The Kenya administration, however, used a very much easier rule of thumb for assessing the Somali: Isaq shop-keepers were taxed 60s.; Isaq stock-traders were taxed 40s. 63 By the end of the year, the Isaq found that their level of tax had either doubled or trebled and there was no desire to increase the level still more. Equally, the new tax system was no longer linked indirectly to a whole series of related privileges. The Second World War, moreover, dealt a crushing financial blow to the Isaq. Lack of money ensured that in the post 1945 period there would be no revival of the earlier agitation. As the Provincial Commissioner of the NFD noted in 1950, ‘the older men, who in earlier days caused trouble as a pastime, have now quietened down, their standard of living has fallen and they no longer have the spare cash to indulge in worthless litigation.’ 64 What he might have added, equally appositely, was that the sort of goals which had inspired the Isaq in the 1930s no longer inspired the mass of the Somali in the 1940s.

Conclusion

Though in Kenya the practical achievements of the Isaq had been limited, they had not been entirely unsuccessful. In 1942 they succeeded in getting themselves classified as Asians for the purpose of rice rationing. Rather more important, they got themselves classified as Asiatic by the Commissioner of Labor in 1947. Yet the watchful eye of Sir Gerald Reece and Sir Richard Turnbull ensured that these aberrations were either limited or erased. The real success of their movement, however, lay outside Kenya . For in Kenya they had been recognized as being non-native since 1919, but this had not been the case in Uganda and Tanganyika . In the 1940s, on the other hand, the administrations in both these countries agreed to reclassify the Somali so that they became non-native. Whether this was a really significant advantage is of course another matter altogether. The common formula adopted was to say that the Isaq was not a native of East Africa , but, nevertheless, he was a native of Africa ! In practice, this meant that according to the various Definition of the Term Native Acts he was clearly classified as being non-native, though at the same time and incongruously almost all native legislation was made to apply to him.

Yet the significance of Isaq agitation in the 1930s needs to be viewed within a broader perspective. Where the Isaq had shown themselves to be particularly innovative had been in their appeal to a diaspora; and where they have been politically most mature was in the way they attempted to put pressure on the government in Britain by lobbying for support amongst sympathetic MPs, and in their attempt to co-ordinate their activities in Kenya so that where possible pressure was applied simultaneously in the outlying regions and in Nairobi. Most subsequent political movements tried to emulate this aspect of the Isaq poll-tax agitation.

However, the development of mass Somali nationalism in the post-Second World War period challenged the traditional goals of the Isaq for the latter had always aimed at improving their status within the colonial framework and had never aspired to overturn it. The result was a split amongst the Isaq: one group, initially consisting mostly of members of the younger generation, joined the nationalist movement; while a minority remained faithful to the Isaq Association, which continued to exist under a new name, and to its old ideals. The Association continued to pay for the services of a Cardiff solicitor and continued to press for improvements in their status. Yet, while emphasis on Isaq clan superiority had had its positive advantages in the 1930s, it proved to be a heavy liability in the 1950s greatly diminishing the appeal of the Association and providing an example of the tribal chauvinists. Its membership declined drastically and its political influence disappeared. As far as the administration in Kenya was concerned its members acquired a new aura of respectability by dissociating themselves from the main branch of Somali nationalism. It was indeed ironic that the Association which had a long tradition of striving for an improvement in the status of the Isaq in Kenya should have found itself so out of sympathy with the more energetic and popular nationalist movement which attracted the support of the great mass of the Isaq themselves precisely because it seemed to offer a real chance of improved status.

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1. V. Glenday to Beckett, 21 June 1941 , CO.535/138 Pt 11/46219.
2 G. Reece to Chief Secretary, 9 May 1944 , PC/GRSSA/23/1.
3. DC Isiolo to Reece, 4 April 1938 , and Mattan to Reece, 19 May 1938 , PC/NFD/4/7/2
4 The position of the Arabs and Swahili in Kenya was similar to that of the Isaq.
See A. I. Salim, Swahili Speaking Peoples of Kenya’s Coast, 1895-1965 (1973), pp. 182ff
5 For further details see E. R. Turton ‘Somali resistance to Colonial Rule and the development of Somali political activity in Kenya, 1893-1960 \ Journal of African History, XIII, 1 (1972).
6 Second Quarterly General Meeting, 11 July 1939, Shariff Ishak Community, Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika, PC/NFD/4/7/2 7 Grigg to Lord Passfield, 15 September 1930; Kittermaster to Passfield, 10 September 1930, CO.533/402.
8 He first became politically active around 1920 and as a result of his agitation was later exiled to Aden where he established the Somali Islamic Association which often sent petitions to the British Government, see: Saadia Touval, Somali Nationalism (1963), p. 65.
9 Especially Sheikh Abdillahi Aden, leader of the Qadiriyya tariqa, and Sheikh Muhammad Hussein and Sheikh Nabih Muhammad of the Anderawiyya tariqa.
DO Berbera to Ellison, 15 August 1938 , encl. in Lawrence to Macdonald, 18 August 1938 , CO.535/129/46062.

10 DO Burao (R. H. Smith), Minute, 10 September 1938 , and DO Hargeisa (N. Park), Report, 10 September 1938 , encl. in Lawrence to Macdonald, 17 September 1938 ;
R. E. Ellison, ‘Memorandum on Education Policy in Somaliland ’, CO.535/129/46062.

11 Ahmed Ali to Nadi Burao, encl. in CID to G. Reece, 2 August 1939, PC/NFD/4/7/2
12 Governor Kenya to Secretary of State, 9 February 1939 tele., CO.533/506.

13 R. E. Ellison to Secretary for Government, 14 July 1938 , in Lawrence to Macdonald, 20 July 1938 , CO.535/129/46062
14 Report of Commission of Enquiry into the Causes of the disturbance at Burao on 20 May 1939 end. in Glenday to Macdonald, 7 October 1939 , CO. 535/132/46036.

15 Somaliland Protectorate, Annual Report, Education Department 1938; Glenday to Dawe, 9 January 1940 , CO.535/133/46036.

16 Haji Farah Omar, Habr Toljalla and Hassan Dahri to whom it may concern, 2 August 1938; R. H. Smith to Secretary for the Government, 9 September 1938, CO. 535/129/ 46036.
17 Haji Farah Omar to Secretary of State for Colonies, telegram 5 August 1938 ,
CO.535/129/46036.

18 E. N. Park (DO Hargeisa) Report, 14 September 1938 , CO.535/129/46036.

20 Lawrence to Macdonald, 17 September 1938 , CO.535/129/46036.

21 Petition to the Marquess of Duffering and Ava from Akils of Berbera District, n.d., CO.535/128/46021/8
.22 Wynne Grey to Secretary of State, 2 December 1938 , CO.535/134/46171. See also
Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff, Djibouti and the Horn of Africa (Stanford, 1968),
pp. 31, 152, 220-1.
24 Somaliland Protectorate Intelligence Report for the quarter ending 31 December
1938 , encl. in Acting Governor to Malcolm Macdonald, 21 January 1939 , CO.535/130/
46076/2.

25 Much of my information about Jama Siyad comes from Ahmed Ismail Abdi whom
the author interviewed in July 1971. See also Somaliland Protectorate Intelligence
Report, 31 December 1938 , CO. 535/130/46076/2.

26 This is the last occasion of an attempt to connect Isaq grievances in Kenya and
British Somaliland . Increasingly, Isaq agitation in the Protectorate such as Haji Bashir’s resistance to disarmament in 1938 and Isaq resistance to the anti-locust campaign in 1945 was purely local.
27 Somali cafes and hotels were also known as Habdi and Husseini houses. There is a
description of Somali immigrants in Britain in Ras Makonnen, Pan-Africanism from
Within, as recorded and edited by Kenneth J. King ( Nairobi 1973).
28 The second largest group of Somali lived at Barry Dock and very small numbers
were to be found in Hull , South Shields , Swansea and Lime Street in London . Chief
Constable Cardiff to Home Office, 2 December 1930 , HO.45/14299 Pt. 11/562898/72.

29 The majority of destitute Aden Arabs and Indians went to Cardiff and South
Shields from the early 1920s. At that date they totaled over 3,000. G. Demster to
New Scotland Yard, 29 August 1921 , MEPO (Metroplitan Police) 2/1803.

30 ‘Rules of Joint Registration and Engagement of Somalis and Arab Seamen’, 1 Aug­ust 1930 , HO.45/14299 Pt. 1/562898/22.

31 Sir E. N. Bennett, Mr. J. Edmunds, Mr. Arthur Henderson Jr., minute of meeting,
29 November 1930, Mr. Short; Arthur Henderson to Prime Minister, 21 November 1930,
HO.45/1499 Pt. 11/562898/54.
32 J. J. Pascin, Position of British Ishak Community of Kenya : note on an interview at
the Colonial Office on 19 October 1938 , CO.533/491.

33 Fletcher to Macdonald, 4 July 1938 , CO.533/491; P. M. Fischer to Macdonald,
6 June 1939 , CO.533/506.

34 Sir Richard Acland to Hall, 26 July 1940 , CO.535/135/4601/8. 33. In 1935 he had also been an office holder on the committee of the International African Friends of Abyssinia. The only other office holder from Africa on the com­mittee was Jomo Kenyatta. See Roderick J. Macdonald, ‘ Some reflections on London in the 1930s as a focus for Black anti-Imperial agitation and ideological development’, 1971 Makerere Social Sciences Conference Paper. Hall to Creech-Jones, 6 August 1940 ; Lambert, Memorandum, 30 January and 8 July 1940 , CO.535/135/4601/8.
35 Much of the information in this and succeeding paragraphs comes from CID
reports which are to be found in PC/NFD/4/7/2.

36 Superintendent CID Nairobi to DC Nairobi , 11 January 1938 , PC/NKU/2/200;
Superintendent CID to Commissioner Police, 6 July 1938 , PC/NFD/4/7/2.

37 Nakuru Ishaak Association to Chairman British Ishaak Association, PC/NKU/2/200.
38 PC Rift Valley to DC Nandi, 30 December 1937 and 22 July 1942 , PC/RUP/6A/2/3/2

39 Superintendent CID to Commission

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