The Somali question in Kenya during the 1963 election revolved around a fundamental political problem: whether the predominantly Somali North Eastern Region (NFR) should remain part of independent Kenya or should join with the Somali Republic. The region had been administered by Britain as part of the Kenya colony, but its population was ethnically and culturally Somali, spoke Somali rather than Bantu languages, and had longstanding ties to the Somali state. The question of the region's political future was thus not simply a question of administrative boundaries but of ethnic self-determination and national sovereignty.
The issue had emerged as a significant political question during the Lancaster House Constitutional Conferences. The Somali Republic, newly independent in 1960, asserted territorial claims to the North Eastern Region and mobilized political pressure for its incorporation into Somalia. The Somali government, under Prime Minister Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, supported the region's union with Somalia as a matter of national and ethnic self-determination. The British colonial administration, however, resisted the separation of the NFR from Kenya, partly out of administrative convenience, partly out of concern that allowing the NFR to join Somalia would set a precedent for other regions to secede, and partly out of strategic calculations about maintaining a unified Kenya as a Western ally during the Cold War.
The solution that emerged from the Lancaster House Conferences was the NFR referendum, to be held in March 1962 and again in 1963, which would allow the residents of the NFR to vote on whether to remain part of Kenya or to join the Somali Republic. The British designed the referendum to produce a pro-Kenya result, controlling the voting procedures, the electorate definition, and the campaign environment to favor the result that British authorities preferred.
During the 1963 election campaign, the Somali question was both explicit and implicit. KANU and KADU both supported Kenya's territorial integrity and opposed the secession of the NFR, though they had different visions of what role the NFR would play in post-independence Kenya. KADU's federalism would have given the NFR substantial regional autonomy, which some Somali leaders found more tolerable than the centralization that KANU proposed. However, most Somali political leaders opposed both options and preferred union with Somalia.
The 1963 referendum took place after the 1963 election, in April 1963. The result was heavily pro-Kenya (approximately 87% voted to remain in Kenya), a result achieved through substantial British logistical control of the voting process and through intimidation of Somali voters who favored union with Somalia. The Somali result represented not genuine Somali preference but rather the political outcome of British administrative control and manipulation.
The Somali question's resolution through the 1963 referendum was thus incomplete and provisional. The region remained politically restive, and the question of whether the NFR truly wished to remain part of Kenya would resurface repeatedly over subsequent decades, contributing to the Kenya-Somalia conflict of the late 1960s and to ongoing tensions within Kenya over the status and representation of the Somali community.
See Also
- 1963 Election Results
- 1963 Election KADU
- North Eastern Region Kenya
- Somali Republic
- Kenya-Somalia Relations
- Self-Determination and Decolonization
- Pastoralist Communities Kenya
Sources
- Branch, Daniel. Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1945-1963 (2011) - details referendum process and British manipulation.
- Shubin, Vladimir. The Hot Cold War: The USSR in Africa and Latin America (2012) - contextualizes Somali regional dynamics.
- Throup, David & Hornsby, Charles. Multi-Party Politics in Kenya: The Kenyatta and Moi States and the Triumph of the System in the 1992 Election (1998) - Somali representation in election politics.
- Ochieng, William R. A Modern History of Kenya, 1895-1980 (1989) - overview of Somali question in Kenya's political history.