Mennonites and Post-Colonial African Studies by John M. Janzen Harold F. Miller John C. Yoder

Author:John M. Janzen, Harold F. Miller, John C. Yoder [John M. Janzen, Harold F. Miller, John C. Yoder]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Africa, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Anthropology
ISBN: 9781000349719
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2021-02-28T05:00:00+00:00

I have been asked to comment on Saȉd Samatar’s major intellectual contributions to Somali studies and African history. In co-authoring Somalia: Nation in Search of a State with Saȉd, an early friendship and mutual admiration relationship turned into a near mind meld, one in which Saȉd’s deep insights into human nature and his sardonic humor affected and infected my own thinking, not only about Somalia, but about the world. His charismatic upending of conventional wisdoms was the stuff of our periodic but intense interactions. When the editor of the “Nations of Contemporary Africa” rejected the book proposal I drafted for what was to become our co-authored book, Saȉd used the diplomatic skills he inherited from his father to restore the project with both sides believing they had won.

What originally brought us together was a presentation Saȉd made at an African Studies Association conference where he shared the preliminary results of his doctoral research. This was the foundation for his seminal Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism. Somali studies, at the time of his doctoral research, was dominated by I.M. Lewis, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies and the University of London. In his classic A Pastoral Democracy, Lewis examined the clan structure of Somali society and insisted on its robust prevalence in post-colonial Somalia, despite the accoutrements of a modern polity. When Somalia’s modernizing dictator, Mohamad Siyaad Barre, tried to outlaw the question all Somalis asked one another—i.e., their clan identity—Lewis observed that a new question was posed, asking one another their “previous” clan identity. Clan remained supreme! In response to this, a new generation of Marxist-oriented Somalists saw Lewis’s view as antiquated and as hiding the class structure of Somali society.

Not willing to be a slave to any orthodoxy, Saȉd adopted the Lewis line, but with a twist. Yes, clan is the foundation of Somali society, but we still need to know about material interests and how they play out in nomadic society. An excellent example in Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism is his analysis of a skirmish between an (aristocratic) nomadic and (out-caste) farming clan in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. The conflict took place in the context of a famine, which compelled nomads to lead their herds into traditional farming lands to graze. Saȉd described the destruction of a maize field by trekking camels that incited the violence that killed a nomad and a farmer. The skirmish continued for months but reached a climax with the murder of a nomadic elder. The affected clan then recruited a wider set of kin to teach this “worthless scum of saucy slaves” a lesson.

Despite the caste and clan rivalry, the farmers and nomads had a history of trade relations that were mutually valuable in a material way. (Here’s where the Marxist orientation creeps in.) Among the nomads, the warriors were ready to attack, and used their poetic skills to mobilize their clansmen. But another group of elders, with complementary rhetorical skills, called for peace based on a common Islam and a common enemy (the Ethiopians).

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