Somalis back ex-president in prize bid (Somali's follow like cows)

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Somalis back ex-president in prize bid

By Mark Doyle

BBC News, Kenya

 

 

The cow impersonator began moo-ing gently, but then gradually got more and more enthusiastic.

 

Soon, the man was moo-ing and moaning at the top of his voice - or, rather, at the top of a cow's voice - and everyone in the neighbourhood was beginning to gather round.

 

Since this performance was for my benefit, and I was a guest in a foreign land, I began to get a little nervous.

 

Could this loud and bizarre noise, I wondered, offend some local sensitivity? Was impersonating cows against any religious beliefs?

 

But as the cacophony continued, everyone who had gathered round began laughing and grinning.

 

The cow impersonator and performer had them all in the palm of his hand - or perhaps I should say his hoof.

 

I was in a tiny music shop in the Eastleigh quarter of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, a part of the city dominated by Somalis.

 

The cow performer, Mustafa Haji Ilmi, is a Somali musician and political satirist well known in Eastleigh.

 

The population here is a mixture of ethnic Somalis of Kenyan nationality and refugees from the Somali wars just over the Kenyan border.

 

The satirical "Cow Song" portrays Somalis as blindly following their clan leaders into war - like cattle.

 

Listening to it was part of my research into which former African president might win the $5m Mo Ibrahim Prize for Good Governance.

 

Former President Abdulkassim Hassan of Somalia is one of the candidates.

 

I had travelled to Kenya to ask the Somali community there what they thought of his chances.

 

The prize, due to be announced on 22 October in London, is to be paid in tranches over 10 years, then $200,000 per annum for life thereafter.

 

It will be awarded for promoting democracy, transparency and good governance and is due to be awarded every year. As a financial incentive to rule well, the prize is unprecedented.

 

Endless wars

 

Former President Hassan ruled Somalia through a Transitional National Government which was appointed in 2000 by a gathering of exiled clan leaders in Djibouti.

 

He hung on until 2004 when another government was formed by clans meeting in Nairobi.

 

In English the phrase we would use to translate the essence of the "Cow Song" would be "following like sheep". But in Somalia wealth is measured in terms of other livestock.

 

In the song, the cows mock human beings. Some of the lyrics were loosely translated for me:

 

"What are you doing?", the cows ask the Somali people, to a jaunty musical beat. "Why are you following your leaders blindly into conflict?"

 

"We cows, we are doing our job," the cattle continue. "We are as good as - if not better than - European cows. We make milk and meat just like them."

 

"But you, the Somali people, you are not like other people."

 

And, as the beat continues and the moo-ing reaches a crescendo - "You are messing up by following your leaders blindly into killing each other."

 

"You are more like cattle than us! Moooooo!, Moooooo!"

 

By now, everyone in the little music shop was falling over with laughter. I had never seen so many Somalis having such fun.

 

But the satirical Cow Song is also about tragedy - the tragedy of the seemingly endless wars which have engulfed Somalia since the ousting in 1991 of the long-time dictator, Siad Barre.

 

Somalia is a unique African country in that it only has one ethnic group - the Somalis.

 

But this homogeneity is ruptured by clans and sub clans which can be as small as an extended family or large enough to encompass a whole geographic region.

 

It is these clans which fight each other in Somalia - traditionally for control of resources like water, but in the modern world for strategic installations like ports or airports.

 

In recent years religious groupings have added to, and overlapped, some of the clan disputes.

 

On this evidence, Somalia is perhaps not a country which is likely to produce a winner in the Mo Ibrahim Prize for best recently-retired African president.

 

Every sub-Saharan African head of state who left office between 2004 and 2006 is automatically eligible for consideration by the judges.

 

The judges include former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Unesco Special Adviser Aicha Bah Diallo, retired Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, and former Nigerian Foreign Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

 

'Good man'

 

I had thought the Somali community in places like Eastleigh - and in the refugee camp in the Kenyan town of Dadaab near the Somali border - would be completely dismissive of the candidacy of Mr Hassan.

 

This was not because of any inside information I had about the man himself, but because of the manifest failure of Somali politicians in general to resolve the country's problems.

 

But I was wrong. In Dadaab, I spoke to a group of schoolboys in the refugee camp: "Mr Hassan was a good man, and religious", said one of the teenage boys.

 

"He was a good man, but people stood against what he was achieving for tribalist reasons."

 

It struck me as amazing, in this filthy, sand blown refugee camp - where some of these teenagers had been born 16 years ago - that anyone would have a good word to say about any Somali politician at all.

 

But another boy said of Mr Hassan; "He was a good leader".

 

"He tried to rule well," the boy continued. "But he did not have the right people working alongside him".

 

Back in Nairobi, a former government minister and leader of the *** clan, Mohamud Uluso, also had encouraging words for the former president: "He tried, but he was opposed by those around him."

 

"He may have tried," I countered, "but he didn't end the war, so how can he possibly be a serious candidate for a leadership prize?"

 

"I do not think," Mr Uluso said, "that in the Somali context you will get a better leader."

 

It appears to amount to this: Abdulkassim Salad Hassan did not stop the war. But he did not start a new one either. The message I was getting was that, in the Somali context, that is not bad going.

 

Cows, coups and clan warfare - all these would seem to augur against the possibility of former President Hassan winning the prize.

 

But a random selection of Somalis I spoke to surprised me by saying he deserved consideration.

 

The organisers of the prize promise there will be no advance leaks. So we will have to wait until the 22 October ceremony in London hosted by Kofi Annan, to know the winner.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7053085.stm