Yusuf Haji, a paragon of pan-Kenyan vision and conviction to the very end

The apple, they say, does not fall far from the tree. This is true of the fallen Garissa Senator, Mzee Mohamed Yusuf Haji, a gentle giant and a man of pan-Kenyan vision and conviction who died on Monday morning.

To be or not to be a Kenyan? That is the question Haji had to resolve from his early years.

The answer was imposed on him by geography at his birth on December 23, 1940 in Garissa District in Kenya’s North-eastern region.

Kenya is a melting pot of more than 42 ethnic communities comprising five linguistic identities: Bantus, Plain Nilotes (Maasai, Teso, Samburu and Turkana), Highland Nilotes (Iteso, Njemps or ilChamus, Ogiek and Kalenjin), the River and Lake Nilotes (Luo) and Cushites (Rendile, Somali, Oromo and the Borana).

Haji hailed from the Abdalla subclan of the Ogaden and Borana from his mother’s line. In the light of identity politics in the Horn, his Somali and Borana heritage could have lured him to a parochial Cushitic consciousness, but Haji chose the long walk to Kenyan nationalism.

Greater Somalia

Haji’s story is inextricably linked to that of Omar Shuriye Hassan, the Sultan of the Abdalla sub-clan of the larger Ogaden clan who vehemently opposed the idea of Kenyan Somalis leaving Kenya to join a proposed Greater Somalia.

 “The only good thing coming out of Somalia is the sun,” Shuriye told a baraza in 1964 in Ijara, where he was assassinated.

Shuriye was not alone. David Wabera – after whom Nairobi’s Wabera Street is named—a Gabbra from Marsabit, was also assassinated in Isiolo soon after independence for irresolutely defending Kenya and rejecting Somali irredentism.

Shuriye’s martyrdom hardened Haji and his kith and kin, who resolved that the Abdalla sub-clan would remain part of the Kenyan nation.

Haji was one of those who accepted the African Union’s peace doctrine that African families should live within the borders inherited from colonialism to avoid cataclysmic wars but forge closer integration with new nations and states.

Armed with a diploma in Management and Finance Control from the University of Birmingham, Haji was absorbed into the Provincial Administration as a District Officer in 1960.

Over the next six decades, Haji would become a powerful voice of reason and the face of a largely excluded Somali nation especially after the Shifta War (1963-1967). He tirelessly worked to bridge the gap between Kenya’s ethnic Somalis and the rest.

A quintessential man of power who blended loyalty, trust and competence with supreme dexterity, Haji’s career straddled the four Kenyan administrations of Presidents Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi, Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta.

 al-Shabaab menace

 By the time he exited public service to join politics in 1998, Haji had become one of the most prominent public managers in Kenya. Few were surprised when he was nominated as a member of Parliament, named assistant minister in the Office of the President (1998-2001) and acting Cabinet Affairs minister in 2002. In 2007, he was elected MP for Ijara. After the December 27, 2007 General Election, Haji was named Defence minister, from where he helped hold the country together.

Haji’s pan-Kenyan conviction was tested in the wake of the al-Shabaab menace in the Horn, when he steered the resolution to take the war to the terrorists inside Somalia.

As part of Operation Linda Nchi, on October 18, 2011, he led Kenya’s negotiation with the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia (TFG) and signed an agreement with Somalia's Minister of Defence to collaborate against the al-Shabaab. And in early June 2012, Haji signed another agreement officially re-hatting Kenya’s troops in Somalia under the African Mission’s (AMISOM) general command.

On June 18, 2012, he was in charge of Kenya’s safety and stability, as acting Internal Security and Provincial Affairs minister, after the untimely death of his Cabinet colleague, George Saitoti, until Katoo ole Metito was appointed to the docket on September 21, 2012.

And on March 4, 2013, he became Garissa senator and subsequently Senate National Security and Foreign Relations Committee chairman.

Haji had proposed creation of border posts to check the proliferation of illegal firearms in the country and stressed the role of local actors in fight against cattle rustling.

 In 2014, he oversaw the signing of a peace agreement between the Degodia and Garre communities to end perennial clashes.

In the twilight of his life, Haji worked to build bridges to a united and inclusive Kenyan nation as co-chair of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) task force, now driving constitutional changes to put Kenya on an stable keel.

Like the late Jeremiah Nyaga, Haji’s scions continue to shape Kenya’s public life. His sons, Abdul and Noordin, are credited with saving multiple lives during the Westgate shopping mall attack in 2013. However, unlike Nyaga, Haji’s scions wield power as businesspeople (Abdul) and securocrats and bureaucrats (Noordin). They are yet to ventured into politics.

 Haji’s exit has orphaned the Abdullah sub-clan at a time when outgoing Somalia President Abdullahi Farmaajo is whipping pan-Somali nationalism and Cushitic consciousness to a fever pitch.

The high-profile presence of the President of Jubaland, Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed Madobe, in Haji’s funeral points to Haji’s influence in regional peace. Like Julius Caesar, you came, you saw, you conquered. Fare thee well, Mzee.