The Gaboye of Somaliland: transformations and historical continuities of the labour exploitation and marginalisation of hereditary groups of occupational specialists

ABSTRACT

African hereditary groups of occupational specialists are an object of study neglected by social sciences. They often disappear into the broad category of minority groups, and social and historical analyses miss the specific characteristics of their forms of marginalisation. This article adopts the perspective of the Gaboye of Somaliland as an example of the contribution that these groups can make to the study of the transformation of labour organisation and social stratification in Africa. The case study of the Gaboye shows how labour exploitation and the marginalisation of occupational groups changed during the colonial period. Colonial institutions affected socio-economic relationships between local groups more deeply than they intended to, via the economic transformations they triggered and the consolidation of legal models and political apparatuses in Somaliland. By studying the legacies of elements which supported the Gaboye’s marginalisation in the past and focusing on their occupational segregation, the article also aims to define elements of comparative analysis which allow African hereditary groups of occupational specialists to be used as a point from which to observe processes which have affected different regions of Africa: the collapse of the postcolonial state, contemporary forms of transnational mobility, and the re-organisation of global economic networks.

KEYWORDS:

• Hereditary occupational groups
• African minorities
• labour
• marginalisation
• Gaboye
• Somaliland
• Somali territories

Acknowledgements

Sections of the article draw upon Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 8 of my PhD dissertation, Vitturini, E. “The Gaboye of Somaliland: Legacies of Marginality, Trajectories of Emancipation”. This work was supported by the University of Milan–Bicocca under a PhD scholarship (2014–2017); and the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013), ERC Grant agreement n. 313737, project acronym SWAB. I express my gratitude to Prof. Luca Ciabarri and Prof. Alice Bellagamba for their support and guidance. I am deeply thankful to Mohamud Abdi Ismail and Hussein Ibrahim Buuni for their irreplaceable help and assistance in Hargeysa. Finally, I am grateful to the anonymous readers on behalf of the Journal of Eastern African Studies for their attentive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Conrad and Frank, Status and Identity in West Africa; Dilley, Islamic and Caste Knowledge Practices; Freeman and Pankhurst, Peripheral People; Hoffman, Griots at War; Tamari, “The Development of Caste System”.

2 Tuden and Plotnicov, Social Stratification in Africa.

3 Dilley, “The Question of Caste”; Pankhurst, ““Caste” in Africa”; Pitt-Rivers, “On the Word “Caste””.

4 I studied the Gaboye during a PhD project concluded in 2017. I carried out fieldwork research between 2014 and 2015 in Hargeysa, the capital of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, and archive research at The National Archives and other institutions in London (below abbreviated as TNA). I did not have access to colonial era documents in Hargeysa which, according to local interlocutors, were largely destroyed during the conflict of the 1980s. Documents of the early years of British presence in Somaliland are available at the British Library, India Office Records collection area. Most of the materials are held in The National Archives; I researched different Foreign Office series (especially 371, 881 and 1015). My research concentrated on Colonial Office series and the documents quoted in this article come from 535 series (Somaliland Original Correspondence), 1015 (Central Africa and Aden: original Correspondence) and 859/221/1 (Annual Reports – Somaliland Protectorate 1949-1950).

5 Van der Linden, Workers of the World, 32.

6 Ibid., 35.

7 Cerulli, Somalia; Kirk, “The Yibir and the Midgàns of Somaliland”; Lewis, The Somali Lineage System; Swayne, Seventeen Trips to Somaliland.

8 Abir, “Caravan Trade and History”; R. Pankhurst, “The Trade of the Gulf of Aden Ports”.

9 Vitturini, “The Gaboye of Somaliland”, 60.

10 Lewis, The Somali Lineage System, 9.

11 Kirk, “The Yibir and the Midgàns of Somaliland”, 91.

12 Austin, “Reciprocal Comparison and African History”, 10.

13 Bellucci, “Wage Labor and Capital in Africa”.

14 Cooper, “From Enslavement to Precarity?”; Larmer, “Permanent Precarity”; Makori, “Mobilizing the Past”.

15 Lecocq and Hahonou, “Introduction: Exploring Post-Slavery in Contemporary Africa”.

16 Stanziani, Bondage.

17 Brown and Van Der Linden, “Shifting Boundaries”.

18 Vitturini, “Caste, Hierarchy and Social Change”.

19 On the history of British administration (from the point of view of the British) in Somaliland see Millman, British Somaliland.

20 Mohamed, “Imperial Policies and Nationalism”.

21 Swift, “The Development of Livestock Trading”.

22 Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation, 52–6.

23 Colonial Office. Somaliland. Annual Report for the Year 1936. H.M. Stationery Office. London.

24 The first debates among colonial officers about land expropriation in urban areas date back to 1927. TNA, CO 535/80/1. “Letter from Governor Kittermaster to Lieutenant-General Amery, Secretary of State for Colonies” 5th of May 1927. See Vitturini, “The Gaboye of Somaliland”, 88.

25 Kapteijns, “Gender Relations and the Transformation”.

26 Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation, 70–1.

27 The increase in this phenomenon is reported in Colonial Office. Annual Report on the Somaliland Protectorate for the Year 1936. H.M. Stationery Office. London, 28.

28 Kittermaster, “British Somaliland”, 335.

29 Colonial Office. Report on the Somaliland Protectorate for the Years 1950 and 1951. H.M. Stationery Office. London, 18.

30 TNA, CO 1015/270, “Letter of the 21st February 1953 to E. Marnham”.

31 Besteman, “Private History and Public Knowledge”.

32 All the interlocutors quoted in this paper are protected by pseudonyms.

33 Interview with Said, 6 August 2015.

34 The order to execute a targeted killing can be assimilated to the military role of the Gaboye.

35 Interview with Cabdi, 17 May 2015.

36 Interview with Cumar and Cusman, 6 February 2015.

37 TNA, CO 859/221/1, Dr. Leslie Housden, “Report on the Homeless Boys in British Somaliland”, 1950.

38 Interview with Aadan, a descendant of the first Gaboye “traditional” leader, 3 August 2015.

39 Interview with Caali, 1 August 2015.

40 Kirk, “The Yibir and the Midgàns of Somaliland”; Rayne, Sun, Sand and Somals; Swayne, Seventeen Trips to Somaliland.

41 Rayne, Sun, Sand and Somals.

42 In 1945, Governor of Somaliland Fisher requested from the International African Institute the selection of an anthropologist who could study the political organisation of the Somali “tribes” and advise the Protectorate's authorities effectively on the issue of “native administration” (see TNA, CO 535/141/8).

43 Frederick Cooper’s definition of indirect rule fits well with this phase of British rule in Somaliland. Indirect rule reflected colonial powers’ intention to scale down the original ambitions of the colonial project. This approach became dominant after World War I when “the hegemonic project of colonialism fragmented into a series of attempts to attach itself to local idioms of authority, often manipulated by African elders and chiefs, which limited the state as much as they provided it with its principal claim to order and stability”. Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, 11.

44 TNA, CO 535/92/1. “Letter from the Governor of Somaliland to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 24th of November 1930”.

45 “Some Preliminary Notes on Problems Relating to the Constitutional Development of the Somaliland Protectorate – March 1952”, by R.S. Hudson, in TNA, CO 1015/560.

46 The number of diya-paying group for each clan was recorded during the survey of the Somalilander genealogical units conducted by Major J.A. Hunt; see Genealogies of the Tribes of British Somaliland and Mijertein. General Survey British Somaliland. 1943-1944. John A. Hunt. These features are also discussed and confronted with other demographic estimates in Military Government Somaliland Protectorate. Report on General Survey of British Somaliland 1944, 7–8.

47 Lewis, The Somali Lineage System, 30.

48 Vitturini, “The Gaboye of Somaliland”, 151–8.

49 Interview with Cabdi, 17 May 2015.

50 Vitturini, “The Gaboye of Somaliland”.

51 Stanziani, Bondage, 13.

52 Ellison, “Everyone Can Do As He Wants”.

53 Babou, “Migration and Cultural Change”.

54 Ibid., 15.

55 Ambroso, “Pastoral Society and Transnational Refugees”.

56 Though not explicitly clarified, it seems that Ambroso included in his tables not only the members of the Gaboye clans in the strict sense, but also the individuals belonging to the Tumaal and the Anaas (or Yibir) groups.

57 Ambroso, “Pastoral Society and Transnational Refugees”, 32.

58 Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things”.

59 Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland.

60 See Luca Ciabarri on the rapid expansion of international import/export trade that involved Somalilanders during the last two decades. Ciabarri, Dopo lo Stato.

61 Vitturini, “Caste, Hierarchy and Social Change”.

62 Interview with Libaan, 11 August 2015.

63 Stanziani, Bondage, 13.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Milan-Bicocca is a distinct institution from University of Milan under a PhD scholarship (2014–2017); and the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013), European Research Council Grant agreement n. 313737, project acronym SWAB.