Haji Mo­hamed Hus­sein Hamud was one of the 13 founders in 1943 of what was then known as So­mali Youth Club (SYC). When the SYC be­came a fully-fledged po­lit­i­cal party in 1947 with the name of So­mali Youth League (SYL), Haji Mo­hamed was cho­sen as the Leader of the new party, a po­si­tion he kept in suc­ces­sive years up to Au­gust 1952. In that year he left for Egypt to pur­sue higher ed­u­ca­tion. Be­tween 1952 and 1957, the lead­er­ship of the party was taken up in suc­ces­sion by Haji Farah Ali, Aden Ab­dulla and Ab­di­razak Haji, Dur­ing his stay in Egypt, which lasted some five years, he used the po­lit­i­cal plat­form of­fered to him by the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment in Cairo, then un­der the dic­ta­tor­ship of Colonel Nasser, to ac­cuse the So­mali gov­ern­ment of be­ing too close to the West, and to Italy in par­tic­u­lar, and do­ing al­legedly lit­tle to re­al­ize the na­tional goal of cre­at­ing Greater So­ma­lia. This hos­tile pro­pa­ganda against the So­mali gov­ern­ment, at vari­ance with the of­fi­cial party pol­icy con­ducted in a for­eign coun­try, pre­dictably an­noyed the rul­ing party and rep­re­sented a source of em­bar­rass­ment to the So­mali gov­ern­ment and to the Ital­ian Trustee­ship Ad­min­is­tra­tion alike.

Haji Mo­hamed Hus­sein Elected Leader of the Party in Ab­sen­tia 

In spite of his mav­er­ick at­ti­tude, re­ferred to above, Haji Mo­hamed was elected pres­i­dent of the party in 1957 while he was still in Egypt. The first fric­tion be­tween the cen­tral com­mit­tee of the party and the newly elected pres­i­dent came to the sur­face im­me­di­ately when, af­ter his elec­tion, he was in­structed to re­turn to Mo­gadis­cio. He replied by say­ing that he needed some time to take ex­am­i­na­tions in the stud­ies he had been pur­su­ing and also that he would like to go to Syria and Bahrain and to other coun­tries in the Mid­dle East on be­half of the party in or­der to get funds, etc. He was granted only the time ab­solutely nec­es­sary to take his ex­am­i­na­tions (a month or lit­tle more), and was re­quired to re­take the oath of of­fice and be­come pres­i­dent be­fore go­ing any­where, in the name of the party or of So­ma­lia. Not only did Haji Mo­hamed not re­turn to So­ma­lia un­til De­cem­ber 4, 1958, four months af­ter he had been elected, but con­trary to the party line, he also trav­elled to the coun­tries he had said he would visit. “He fi­nally ar­rived on De­cem­ber 4, the day af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter and the Pres­i­dent of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly had left for Ad­dis Abeba, to re­ceive an up­roar­i­ous wel­come from a clearly or­ga­nized crowd in which anti-Amer­i­can ban­ners were promi­nent.” (TNA FO 371/​125676 monthly sum­mary Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber 1957)

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Avail­able records in­di­cate that, prior to his de­par­ture for Egypt, his at­ti­tude to­wards the new Ital­ian ad­min­is­tra­tion (Afis) had seemed to be show­ing all signs of mod­er­a­tion and open­ness. In fact, on May 26, 1950, dur­ing an of­fi­cial re­cep­tion held at the of­fi­cial man­sion of the chief ad­min­is­tra­tor to wel­come Giuseppe Brusasca, Un­der­sec­re­tary of Ital­ian Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, Haji Mo­hamed, speak­ing on be­half of his party, made the fol­low­ing re­marks: “Your Ex­cel­lency, on be­half of the Lega dei Gio­vani So­mali, I have the ho­n­our to ex­tend to you our most sin­cere wel­come to So­ma­lia an­tic­i­pat­ing that your visit will mark the be­gin­ning of an era of peace and un­der­stand­ing be­tween So­ma­lia and AFIS. Your Ex­cel­lency, the Lega would like to point out that it has as its prime ob­jec­tive the in­ter­est of So­ma­lia and the So­ma­lis and con­se­quently AFIS may fully count on the Lega’s sup­port in all what is be­ing done for the in­ter­est of the ter­ri­tory. Once more, you are wel­come.” (Cor­riere della So­ma­lia, Mag­gio 27, 1950)
By the time Haji had re­turned from Egypt, the coun­try had changed a great deal. There was a func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment, led by his own party, in charge of the do­mes­tic af­fairs of the ter­ri­tory; his party held the ma­jor­ity of seats in the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly; the process of So­ma­l­iza­tion had gone faster than many had pre­dicted and the po­lit­i­cal at­mos­phere be­tween AFIS and the SYL party was one of co-op­er­a­tion, with a fo­cus on a smooth trans­fer of power even ahead of the date orig­i­nally sanc­tioned by the United Na­tions.

Haji Mo­hamed had re­turned from Egypt a much-changed per­son, at odds not only with the Ad­min­is­ter­ing Au­thor­ity, but also with mem­bers of his own party who had elected him as their leader. “His 5 years in Egypt had left a deep mark on him and, for the time be­ing, he was un­able to see things ex­cept through Egypt­ian-made glasses,” (TNA FO 371/​131462, of March 1958). The newly elected pres­i­dent of the SYL was clearly out of step with the main­stream of party pol­i­tics. The tense re­la­tions be­tween the party and its leader have even­tu­ally brought about the ex­pul­sion of the lat­ter from the Party in May 1958.

The Cab­i­net split on Clan Line

On his re­turn to Mo­gadis­cio, Haji Mo­hamed con­tin­ued launch­ing vi­o­lent tirades against the gov­ern­ment and the Ad­min­is­ter­ing Au­thor­ity in the same way he used to do in Egypt, putting a strain on the unity of the Cab­i­net Tak­ing ad­van­tage of the ab­sence of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Pres­i­dent of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly, on mis­sion abroad, Haji Mo­hamed de­manded that Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter, Sheikh Ali Giu­male, Min­is­ter of So­cial Af­fairs, con­sult him on all State af­fairs. The Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter re­fused to have any­thing to do with him and, af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with Haji Farah (Min­is­ter of Eco­nomic Af­fairs) and Mo­hamoud “Juju” (Min­is­ter of Gen­eral Af­fairs), went to see Haji Mussa Bo­gor, the Min­is­ter of the In­te­rior, to en­list his sup­port against in­ter­fer­ence from Haji Mo­hamed. The Min­is­ter of the In­te­rior plead­ing sick­ness, de­clined to in­ter­vene, and asked not to be dis­turbed, “al­though he had spent three hours the pre­vi­ous evening with Haji Mo­hamed”, (TNA FO 371/​131459 of De­cem­ber 23, 1957). Sheikh Ali then called on Act­ing Ad­min­is­tra­tor, Dr. Piero Franca to ten­der his res­ig­na­tion; the Min­is­ters of Eco­nomic Af­fairs and the Min­is­ter of Gen­eral Af­fairs fol­lowed suit, al­beit re­luc­tantly. Franca asked them to stay on in their posts un­til the Prime Min­is­ter and the Pres­i­dent of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly re­turned to So­ma­lia.

On re­turn­ing to Mo­gadis­cio, the Pres­i­dent of the Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly Aden Ab­dulla has­tened to meet with the Min­is­ter of the In­te­rior, who had been ‘hid­ing in hos­pi­tal’ since 3 De­cem­ber, and de­manded his writ­ten promise of sup­port for gov­ern­ment pol­icy, a re­quest the Min­is­ter re­jected. Ac­cord­ing to British sources in Mo­gadis­cio, the Min­is­ter, at the last minute, de­cided against trav­el­ling with the Pres­i­dent of the Na­tional As­sem­bly and the Prime Min­is­ter to Ad­dis Abeba at the in­vi­ta­tion of His Majesty the Em­peror of Ethiopia, giv­ing med­ical rea­sons as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for not show­ing up.

The Prime Min­is­ter, on his part, de­manded and ob­tained loy­alty pledges from his other min­is­ters; all agreed ex­cept the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Salad Abdi, a rel­a­tive of Haji Mous­sa’s. Haji Moussa came un­der pres­sure to re­sume his du­ties or tend his res­ig­na­tion; bur he pre­ferred not to take ac­tion. The Prime Min­is­ter, re­act­ing to the at­ti­tude of the two min­is­ters (Salad Abdi and Haji Moussa) took per­sonal con­trol of the in­ter­nal and fi­nan­cial af­fairs and, with­out con­sult­ing the Min­is­ter of the In­te­rior, pub­lished in the of­fi­cial news­pa­per an or­der for the dis­missal or trans­fer to re­mote provinces of all pre­fects and sub-pre­fects known to be sym­pa­thetic to Haji Mo­hamed and Min­is­ter Haji Mussa (TNA FO 371/​131459, De­cem­ber 23, 1957) The Pre­fect of Be­nadir, Has­san Nour Elmi, was trans­ferred to Migiur­tinia Province (now Punt Land), while Nour Ahmed ‘Castel­li’, Pre­fect of Lower Juba, was put on re­serve.

It was not easy, but per­suaded by a group of tra­di­tional chiefs closed to him, Haji Moussa fi­nally agreed to re­sume his du­ties, pro­vided there was no in­ter­fer­ence in his de­part­ment by the Prime Min­is­ter and that the Pre­fects of Kisi­mayo and Mo­gadis­cio whose trans­fer to other posts had been pub­lished in the press were al­lowed to re­main in their posts. The Prime Min­is­ter ceded on these points and went to in­form the Act­ing Ad­min­is­tra­tor that the cri­sis had been re­solved. How­ever, in de­spite of that the cri­sis have been put to rest nev­er­the­less, as we will re­port in sep­a­rate writ­ing, the re­la­tions be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter con­tin­ued to de­te­ri­o­rate lead­ing even­tu­ally to the Min­is­ter be­ing re­lieved of his post in 1959. 

M. Trunji
 Email: trunj@ya­hoo.com