Justice with Civic Virtue: “I saw him walking today like a dhidir”

By Dr. Abdulkadir Osman Farah

Gar Allay Taqaan

Once, a powerful and calculating man stole property from a less powerful, unsuspecting owner. The dispossessed man appealed to elder mediators (oday dhaqameedyo), but the corrupt elders largely ignored his claim.

He returned to the thief. Unexpectedly, the thief proposed taking the dispute to a renowned regional judge (qaadi).

The victim agreed, unaware that the judge was the thief’s close relative. The judge heard both men and delivered a verdict that entered Somali collective memory: “Gar wiilkeyga ma taqaan, walaalkeyna ma taqaan, abtigayna ma taqaan, adeerkeyna ma taqaan, ehelkeyna ma taqaan, soddogeyna ma taqaan, seedigeyna ma taqaan.

Gar Ilaah bay taqaan ee xoolaha u celi ninkii iska lahaa” (Justice does not recognise whether a defendant is your child, your uncle, a member of your clan/constituency, or one of your in-laws. Justice knows Allah.

Therefore, return the stolen property immediately to its rightful owner).

The Somali conception of justice in Gar Allay Taqaan has endured for centuries, if not longer. Justice extends beyond judgments in public and private disputes.

It helps people understand one another and govern their shared life fairly. This durable social and political foundation helped generations of Somalis resist colonial conquest and settlement.

Somalis view their homeland as more than geographical territory. They see it as a shared world that binds them as a people and nation.

Stories passed down through generations insist that temporary status, rank, affiliation or position must never override justice.

The Somali qaadi dismisses the arbitrarily generated labels and loyalties that often shape accountability, identity and obligation. In doing so, he teaches both the court gathering and the wider public a fundamental principle. A crime remains a crime regardless of the offender’s identity and belonging.

Impunity ( Gar maroorsi )

Somalis may have forgotten the historic ruling embodied in Gar Allay Taqaan . At a recent public debate in Garowe, organised by the Somali think tank PDRC, a politician described how Somalis often judge criminal conduct.

People increasingly focus less on the offence and more on the offender’s constituency, status and rank. A powerful constituency may shield an offender from scrutiny and punishment.

People also judge theft and other offences selectively. Committing tuuganimo (theft), for example, does not automatically make others recognise the offender as a tuug (thief).

Influential groups often define the character of the offence.

The classic study “Professional Thieves” challenges the view that criminals are outsiders who repeatedly disrupt public order and spend much of their lives in jail. Research shows that privileged and affluent groups can commit highly destructive crimes.

These actors often avoid sanctions because mainstream society does not recognise their acts as crimes. Lawyers, supporters and followers may also protect them.

In Somalia, armed clan militias routinely defend privileged offenders. Such public distortion cannot erase a violation.

It can only conceal the facts temporarily. “Saddex lagama kaco: Gardarro garab og; Gaajo guri og; Gabow geeri og” (people struggle to overcome three conditions: injustice backed by impunity, hunger entrenched in the household, and old age accompanied by fear of death).

Walking like a “Dhidir”

In a casual conversation, two friends discuss a third person. The first asks, “have you seen hebel lately” .

The second replies, “Haa, hebel maantaan arkay, asagoo sidii dhidirka u socda” (Yes, I saw him today walking like a dhidir ). From childhood, Somali children hear stories about struggles in the animal kingdom.

These allegories mirror human life and interaction. Parents may tell children to act like a fox ( dawaco ) when observing their surroundings and anticipating events.

When seeking respect and accommodation, they should act like a lion ( libaax ). In Somali folklore, the dhidir holds a lower status than the lion or fox.

It represents lowliness and reluctant, passive movement.

The dhidir image may also reflect the existential condition of diasporic exile. In their transnational lives, diaspora members often keep a low profile and walk like a dhidir . In their homeland, they confront elites who stayed during the civil war. These elites now cast themselves as “lions” entitled to consume most public resources. In exile, diaspora members may face populists, unfair politicians and earlier migrants who make similar claims on public resources.

The exchange between the friends seems comic, but it reveals something serious about human interaction. Physical movement can express social, political and cultural relationships.

Walking like a dhidir signals a distinct cultural and political stance. People convey meaning through the way they carry their bodies, histories and sense of place.

Young people may adopt a dhidir -like walk when elders alienate them or exclude them from power and cultural authority. Marginalised groups may also alter their speech and movement to assert autonomy and resilience.

They may move conventionally in visibly safe surroundings. In the presence of people who exclude or oppress them, they may walk like a dhidir .

The walk then becomes a personal effort to restore balance and dignity. It represents freedom, slows the rush towards injustice and rejects structures imposed by dominant elites.

A politics of haste creates many injustices. It rushes decisions about who counts as a dambiile (offender). It also decides which towns or cities deserve national and international recognition. Walking like a dhidir can therefore become a form of micro-politics. Excluded or subordinated groups use this indirect political action when they cannot organise large protests or rebellions. It is resistance from below. Politics does not occur only in parliaments, ministries, corporations and city halls. It also occurs in public streets and in the actions of an isolated individual.

In nineteenth-century Paris, a French man publicly walked slowly like a dhidir . He wandered through the city and resisted the accelerating pace of capitalism and the growing power of wealthy urban oligarchs. By choosing his schedule and route, he refused to let powerful elites dictate his time or movement.

Mogadishu- a deserving/underserving capital city

A recent PDRC political debate revived the long controversy over whether Mogadishu deserves to remain Somalia’s undisputed capital. A politician argued that elites exploit and abuse people and property. The proposal to move the capital away from Mogadishu could represent a form of dhidir walking. It could resist centralisation and the exploitation of regions and towns outside the capital. Yet the politicians who support the proposal do not always pursue fairness and objectivity. Many also dream of making their ancestral cities the Somali capital.

Despite prolonged conflict and a slow, divisive recovery, no other city has, so far, united Somalis as effectively as Mogadishu. Its national role has declined over the years. Even so, Mogadishu remains one of the few places in Somalia where people do not feel compelled to declare their clan constituency ( is sheegis ). This practice remains common among the badawa or reer baadiye .

Therefore, neither 4.5 politicians nor brute force should determine Somalia’s capital or the country’s future. Access to weapons, armies and claims of majority status cannot provide public legitimacy.

The capital should offer a comprehensive and inclusive political project. It must earn legitimate public moral, ethical and political standing across the Somali nation, both at home and in the diaspora.

About five decades ago, the renowned Somali intellectual Hadraawi affirmed Mogadishu as the most legitimate pan-Somali centre. From solitary confinement near Qansaxdheere in southern Somalia, he wrote: “ Xudduntii Dhulkeygaay; Xaruntii Dadkeygaay; Xamareey ma Nabadbaa?”

Taleex: Historic Pan-Somali capital

Political consensus can relocate a country’s political or economic centre. Taleex, for instance, once stood at the centre of Somali politics and liberation. As a capital of emancipation, it challenged the British Empire and its claim to rule an empire where “the sun never sets”. British archives confirm Taleex’s historical importance. Yet many Somalis know neither the value nor the history of this remarkable town.

Choosing Taleex as the capital of pan-Somali liberation can also be read as historical dhidir walking. About 125 years ago, the Somali Dervishes pursued a strategy of liberation. British and other European colonial powers favoured coastal cities as administrative centres of domination and exploitation. They considered concentrated urban populations easier to govern. They also tied those populations to superficial external trade and material wealth. The Dervishes, by contrast, were largely nomadic, rural and unurbanized.

Colonial powers resisted and attached gatherings around historic inland centres such as Taleex. These places represented indigenous identity, liberation and dignity. Colonial architecture weakened the growth of cultural and political centres beyond colonial control. Self-interested politicians, in the past as well as in the present, often reinforce the manipulative external geographical framing. In return for limited personal and financial gains, they invite external powers or proxies to seize and control coastal cities.

Obstacles to Justice and Civic Virtue

The same elites might also sustain “social inertia” ( fikradda in bulshadu aysan waxba si xor ah u qabsan Karin ). A society that stops acting accountably and responsibly.

Such society suffers from stagnation ( fadhiidnimo ), cynicism ( wahsi, ya’si, shaki, kalsooni la’aan ) and resistant to change ( isbadal diid ). This inertia persists even when diverse better alternatives exist.

Social inertia does not arise only from individual failures and commitment. Often, the socially and economically secure networks resist change.

For them the existing order feels familiar protecting their advantages. In consequence, they miss to see how constructive reform could expand society’s shared capacities and benefits.

Nevertheless, change will come. Those who benefit from the dominant order cannot prevent it by simply rejecting it or declaring it “impossible”.

“Biyo fadhiya biyo socdaa kiciya” (flowing water stir stagnant water in motion).

Powerful political and economic elites might also, occasionally, invert and appropriate the image of dhidir walking by reproducing “social inertia”. Through such tactics, they ignore or forget their own offences and those of their associates and relatives.

Their calculated walk no longer represents liberation and dignity. Instead, their inauthenticity helps them violate others and evade justice.

Elites often suspend, bypass or delay beneficial public policies. For example, they claim that reform and justice require long time and currently unavailable resources.

Yet, surprisingly, the same elites act swiftly when a problem directly affects them, their allies or interests. They suddenly mobilise earlier unavailable resources and abandon their usual delays/excuses.

This imbalance exposes a gross public double standard: “ la joojiyaana bannaan, la jiifiyaana bannaan” .

Dr. Abdulkadir Osman Farah

Email: [email protected]

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Dr Abdulkadir is a vvisiting Research Professor, Somali National University ; Associate Aalborg University, Denmark-Migrant Solidarity and Hospitality in Global Perspective; Research and Innovation Associate, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa.