By Gavin Metzger
History of Somali bantus at home.
Somali Bantu: an ethnic minority from the region located in the Shebelle and Jubba River valleys, in the Southwestern part of Somalia. Used as slaves by Italian colonizers in the early 20th century, working in many Italian government plantations well into the 1930’s.
Somalian clan structure is what provided the foundation for social and political life. When it comes to how the Bantu families often claim membership in three of Somalia’s five major clans: Rahanweyn, Hawiye, and Darood clans.
This clan classification system had the largest impact when it came to claiming membership within larger Somali society than it was for the day to day life within Bantu villages. The suffering agriculturalist Bantu people faced brutality at the hands of the Somali pastoralists in the surrounding towns. The Jileec people were mostly part of the Darood clan who felt entitled to raid, pillage and assault the Bantu people and their property, even though they attempted to claim loyalty that may reflect their own. All of the Bantus efforts were completely disregarded that they were aligned with larger Somali clans, even though that their laborer status far outweighed their efforts to find kinship in shared clan alliances. Within these groups the social hierarchy from separating the jareer from the jileec had a major impact when the Cold War hit the Jubba and Shabelle Valleys in 1960. After suffering through the Italian administered forced labor camps, and the British-Italian conflict that had control of most of the area between the two countries, should have been the relief for the Bantu people. However, when the Italian and British powers rewrote the border between Somalia and Ethiopia that was administered for a significant area of land that the Bantus inhabited in Ethiopia in the middle of the 20th century.
Camp Life
The refugee camps rapidly became an obstacle for the Bantu’s newly installed government. To try and solve this problem the municipal government conducted a plan to move the refugees to a new, easily manageable location that was much farther from the center of town, shortly after the Bantu central government restoration in mid 2012. They believe that this will bring a measure of order and control to Mogadishu, which is a city that hasn’t seen much of either since Barre’s overthrow in 1991. Most of the war is over in Mogadishu, but the camps provide a small glimpse into the volatile status quo that’s taken place.