by M G Vassanji
Okello gives detailed information about the planning and the meetings, some of which involved large numbers of people. It is hard to believe that with so many youths of his party involved, Karume would be unaware of what was going on; but then the government in power was also in the dark. It is also interesting to note that the core group of fighters, according to Okello, had more men from the mainland than indigenous Zanzibaris. The delusions of this young man who heard voices from God are evident; we cannot help but feel that he exaggerates, and writing from a prison after three tumultuous years, some of his accounts would be inaccurate. Okello seems to have believed that the Arabs had planned a genocide of Africans: “All male African babies would be killed, and African girls would be forced to marry or submit to Arabs.…”
The revolt, as described by Okello, has a distinctly African-Christian ritualistic component to it. Before the fighting began, he had two dreams. In the first of these, God asked him to step into the river at Mtoni and pick up a black, white, and red stone and perform a ritual. In the second dream he was asked to sacrifice a black cat and a black dog and mix their blood and brains and the powdered stone in a pot. Afterwards all the recruits passed over this grisly mixture and took an oath. The oath, the water dipping, and Okello’s instructions and injunctions to his fighters regarding food and contact with women are reminiscent of other African wars, for example, Maji Maji in mainland Tanzania and Mau Mau in Kenya. His rules on the conduct of war sound eerie: “Never in any situation rape women whose husbands have been killed or detained. No soldier may rape or even touch a virgin girl.…” We can assume what was allowed or even encouraged.
Here was a demented, naive, and sensitive young man, restless, religious, and deeply wounded by the racism he saw and experienced. There can be no doubt that for a period of a few weeks this unlikely person managed to take East Africa by storm, by emerging as a leader in the Zanzibar revolution. Many of us are confused, even wounded, products of colonialism, in our culture, our politics, our responses to racism. It is possible to see in this lonely, wandering John Okello an extreme manifestation of this confusion.
Once the revolution got underway, a madness consumed him. His arbitrariness and cruelty are legendary by now. Seif Sharif Hamad, in his biography, describes:
Okello started the punishment of caning and whipping people … [he] liked, in particular, to humiliate Arabs from Oman.… [He] rounded up Arabs and ordered them to sing [a revolutionary song] … and then he would order their beards to be shaved without water, just dry. I personally saw this take place.
… he really frightened people. When Okello arrived in Pemba, he moved with a contingent of heavily armed followers in about three Land Rovers.
This account of course implicitly acknowledges Okello’s role in the revolution. Another account, by Ali Sultan Issa, a member of the ZNP and later the Umma Party, dismisses reports of Okello’s dominant role in the revolution as “rubbish.” But, an avowed Marxist, Issa was in China when the revolution began, arriving in Zanzibar two weeks later on January 25, having taken two days off for shopping in Hong Kong with his wife. Arriving in Zanzibar, he was immediately dispatched to Pemba. His hearsay account of how the revolution began is hardly reliable.
A CIA report, written in 1965 and released in 2010 as Zanzibar: The Hundred Days’ Revolution, suggests but does not affirm that Karume and Hanga were the leaders of the revolution. No details of what role this leadership took or how the planning occurred are given. The report moreover has no references and is out of date, having been written long before the books by Petterson, Okello, and others appeared. If Karume were involved in the planning, surely details would be available to become part of the history and folklore of the revolution?
A full, authoritative account of the Zanzibar revolution, then, continues to remain elusive.
Under Karume, a repressive regime was in place. The Asian and Arab minorities especially lived in constant fear. Properties and businesses were confiscated. Favouritism and outright theft by the leaders was the order of the day and people were afraid to speak out, to complain or criticize. There were disappearances, mass detentions, public floggings, and abductions of women and girls that were tantamount to rape. “During Karume’s time,” writes Hamad, in a statement corroborated by many, with the naming of names, “people had no security in their homes because if they had a beautiful wife or daughter, she could be taken and forced to sleep with a big shot.” Many people, women and children first, were smuggled out in boats by means of bribery.
From a global perspective, this tiny spice island in the Indian Ocean had caught the spotlight as a place of contention between the Communists and the West. The worry for Britain, the recently departed colonial ruler, and America, democracy’s somewhat shortsighted crusader, was that the coup was the stepping-stone for the spread of communism into East Africa. They were watching Abdulrahman Babu, in particular, with an obsession, seeing Karume and Nyerere as friendly and moderate. Don Petterson gives a clear picture of American concerns about Babu:
[The State Department], taking for granted that “for practical purposes” Babu was a “Communist and may lead Zanzibar into Commie camp,” wondered how Karume could be convinced of this and how Babu’s power could be “drastically reduced or eliminated.”
In their view it was imperative that Babu be removed from his position of growing power.
Karume, they believed, did not see the danger. And if he did come to see Babu as a threat, he himself would not have the means or capacity to deal with Babu and his supporters.… [T]he way to get Karume to see the danger would be through the East African leaders. Kenyatta was the key.…
One of the people who expressed this latter opinion, in a cable to Washington, was the American ambassador to Kenya, William Attwood, who would himself soon produce a book, The Reds and the Blacks (1967), about the Communist threat in Africa. It would be banned in Kenya, which is surprising since Kenyatta was an avowed friend of the United States. In a rather candid account of his career as a diplomat, in The Twilight Struggle (1989), Attwood blithely admits that several Kenyan members of the cabinet were on the payroll of the Americans. Those of us who come from small countries can only muse later in life how such casually described machinations not only changed the course of our countries but also determined our own personal lives: why we are here and not there.
And Okello? He was a loose canon on the scene, one who genuinely believed that it was his mission to liberate not only Zanzibar but also South Africa, Mozambique, and the African countries still under colonial rule. On one hand he respected Karume, the new president, on the other he would set conditions on the presidency. He was the one who sent Karume to safety on the eve of the revolution, and the one who invited him back. He was also aware that as a Christian in a predominantly Muslim nation, his position could not last. He mentions receiving anonymous letters of threat. But his image was large, his speech populist, and the three East African presidents, Nyerere, Kenyatta, and Obote were nervous.
On January 19, Okello paid a visit to Dar es Salaam for medical treatment, apparently in a plane sent for him by Nyerere; he met Nyerere and members of the cabinet, and he was in Dar when early the next morning the Tanganyka African Rifles went on a mutiny. This only fed rumours of Okello’s nefarious influence, but he says that he only placated the mutineers, telling them that they were going about their protests the wrong way. This was a scary moment in Dar es Salaam, especially for the Asians, after the violence of Zanzibar. People on the streets, watching defiant-looking soldiers speeding by in open army trucks, quickly started a free-for-all, a fujo, breaking down doors and looting shops. I recall my mother frantically praying, pulling her tasbih, at the same time warning us kids at the windows not to peep out. The mutiny was quickly quelled with the aid of British commandos.
The next month Okello visited Uganda and Kenya. According to the New York Times of February 29, Kenya went on emergency alert. “Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta and his closest assoc
iates were said to fear that a coup might be in preparation.” On his way to Nairobi airport to catch his flight back to Zanzibar, Okello says, he was whisked away to “a large office building in the city centre.” There he met a nervous trio of Nyerere, Kenyatta, and Obote, who interviewed him about the situation in Zanzibar.
Okello proved too strong a medicine, and he was very soon sidelined. Lied to and betrayed by the East African leaders, he was asked once to accompany Karume to a meeting in Dar es Salaam, where Nyerere pointedly ignored him and had him escorted to Kenya, from where he was post-haste deported to Uganda. He had little money on him. Ironically, as he says, “The ousted Sultan fled to Britain, where he is living comfortably. He had been paid £200,000 by the Colonial Office … as compensation.… I was expelled from Zanzibar as an unwanted person without a cent.”
Ironies abound in this postcolonial drama. Within three months of the revolution, Tanganyika and Zanzibar formed a union, the United Republic of Tanzania; apparently, Nyerere had tamed Zanzibar, as the West had desired. Calling Nyerere a statesman, Time, in its May 1, 1964 issue, declared jubilantly, in its florid style, “Last week, with scarcely a twitch of his toothbrush mustache, Nyerere swallowed—whole—the People’s Republic of Zanzibar.”
A strong adherent of African nonalignment, Nyerere shared the fears of Western leaders that Zanzibar, since its savage coup last January against the old Arab ruling crowd, was sliding into the Communist camp. Early last month, Nyerere sent Foreign Minister Oscar Kambona winging across the 23-mile channel that separates the two countries with an ultimatum: unless Zanzibar halted its leftward slither, Tanganyika would dissociate itself.…
But Tanzania in a couple of years was one of the staunchest allies of the Communist Bloc, in particular China, which built the Tanzania–Zambia railway line when the World Bank denied assistance. Chinese goods flooded the Tanzanian market (as they do now under different conditions). And Tanzanians visited in droves the Chinese trade fair in Dar, on the Mnazi Mmoja ground; many even saw the opera The East Is Red. Tanzania consistently supported China’s bid for admission to the United Nations, and when it was finally admitted in 1971, the Tanzanian ambassador, Salim, as the world press reported, “danced a victory jig.” One might well ask who swallowed whom. And Babu, whom the British and Americans had feared as a “Commie,” and might perhaps even have had assassinated, went on to live his last years in London. “Friendly” Karume turned out to be a brutal dictator, an embarrassment, who soon after he had forcibly married a sixteen-year-old girl, was assassinated. Today we know more about Okello than Karume, whose Wikipedia entry is almost barren. Many believe that he was in fact a mainlander, born in Malawi. Until the Zanzibar authorities release archival material—newspaper reports, radio transcripts, photographs, whatever remains—Okello’s account is all we have of the details of the Zanzibar revolution.
20.
Zanzibar: The Sweet and the Smelly
ONE DAY A FUNNY SMELL HIT UHURU STREET in Dar es Salaam. It was cloyingly sweet, and extremely repulsive to the young folk. My mother however immediately recognized the foreign odour with a smile. It was duriani, a fruit found in many parts of the tropics, including Zanzibar, but unusual in Dar. A vendor had brought a basketful for sale. We ran from it. Zanzibaris love duriani, and my mother was born in Zanzibar. Apparently the islanders don’t react to the smell the way others do. But it repelled enough people on our street that we never saw it again.
Whenever I bring up the issue of race with Zanzibaris, often the first response is an uncomfortable silence; the next one might be a subtle change of subject. I wonder if it’s the smell they are afraid of. Zanzibari Asians feel, perhaps with some truth, that important nuances will be lost if their island life is not properly understood. In 2009 a BBC report on the revolution created an uproar of protest. Zanzibar was never simple.
It is, foremost, a small island. Stone Town and the part of Ngambo (the “other” and formerly poorer area) adjoining it are tiny compared to the expanse of any modern city. In pre-revolution days the families living here, closely packed together in the maze of narrow streets, had known each other for decades, and were known by nicknames that are in use even today. It was difficult to keep secrets when you could get the story of a family through several sources, when you could eavesdrop from your window or balcony. News and rumours about the revolution had spread from balcony to balcony, window to window in ripples.
The Internet has created a virtual Zanzibar in which the exiles speak to each other, sharing information, keeping sweet memories alive, all in Swahili and English. They write about the various community festivals they would attend, the cricket matches at Mnazi Mmoja, the promenades at Forodhani where boys and girls threw flirtatious looks at each other, how the old sultan wearing his robe and turban, driven by a liveried chauffeur in the open state car, would wave at the people on the roads. They talk about the festivities of Imam Ali’s birthday, how the scouts marched through the streets, throwing salutes at the mosques. They recall the processions of the communities at their festivals—the Goans, the Khoja Ithnashiris, the Khoja Ismailis, the Bohras, the Hindus of various castes; the Yemeni kahawa sellers with their tall urns and tiny cups which they clattered together to announce their arrival, the snack places—Masi’s bhajia, Abedi’s “mix,” Adnan’s mbatata (potato), Maruki’s halwa; the street vendors they knew by name; all the island’s fruits, including, yes, duriani. They will tell you of how on New Year’s Eve they would go and stand in front of the English Club at Shangani and watch the elegantly dressed “European” couples go inside, and listen to the music and imagine the dancing. From the ships in the harbour and the hotels too would come strains of music, the entire Shangani seashore thrumming with lively jazz.
“There was absolute harmony and peace,” writes former islander Abdulrazak Fazal wistfully in a blog.
At dusk the loud siren would traditionally go off and the fluttering red flag in the backyard of the Sultan’s palace descended from its mast. The azan (call for prayers) from the mosques and the church and temple bells sounded from each and every corner. The public servant with his long wooden rod went from one street to another lighting street lamps. Zanzibar by night though dim was inviolable and had its serenity, sanctity and also liveliness.
These are the sweet stories of pre-revolution Zanzibar, sad and nostalgic. But there is a smell, and that smell has to do with race. But race in Zanzibar, as anywhere in a mixed society, is not simple; people lived peacefully and intimately for the most part, and many Zanzibaris were of mixed origin. In his book, Race, Revolution, and the Struggle for Human Rights in Zanzibar, Thomas Burgess writes,
It is easy, however, to overstate such divisions within colonial Zanzibari society. Allegiance to Islam was overwhelming, creating something of a spiritual brotherhood. There were large numbers of poor Arabs and South Asians, as well as Africans who owned considerable numbers of clove trees. Each of the communities also experienced its own sharp divisions.…
Africans were divided by ethnic identity. Former slaves in both Unguja [Zanzibar] and Pemba sought inclusion in island society by acquiring land and by adopting the dress and manners of wealthier islanders. They sometimes adopted ethnic markers, such as Swahili, Hadimu, and Shirazi, which obscured their slave origins and identified them as free and established members of coastal society.…
Still, the question persists, Why the orgy of violence directed primarily towards one identifiable race? Despite the mixing of races, the ambiguity of origins, and the class differences that could override race and religion, the division of the population into Africans, Asians, and Arabs existed and still does. The key word in Burgess’s observation is the uncomfortable slave. Slaves were retained in Zanzibar due to the growth of the clove industry in the nineteenth century; slaves were also used domestically. Reliable population estimates do not exist, but Zanzibar rarely had a nonslave population of more than 50,000. Burton’s estimate for 1857 was 25,000. It’s an astonishing fact then that du
ring that period there were 60,000 to 100,000 slaves on the island. In 1860, 3,000 slaves were emancipated from the Indians. How could that memory not have irked any African, of whatever description? The underclass remained, throughout, “African.” And who, beyond a certain age, could in all honesty have forgotten the treatment of servants everywhere in East Africa?
In 1857, Richard Burton undertook a tour of Zanzibar town. He describes the African quarter in the “East End” thus, in his book Zanzibar:
As we go eastward all such signs of civilization vanish; sun and the wind are the only engineers, and the frequent green and black puddles, like those of the filthy Ghetto, or the Jews’ quarter, in Damascus, argue a preponderance of black population. Here … the festering impurities render strolling a task that requires some resolution, and the streets are unfit for a decent (white) woman to walk through.
This area would have included Ngambo, across the creek, where the poorer Indians had yet to arrive in significant numbers in the early twentieth century.
There are two prominent museums on the seafront, the Bait al Ajaib, House of Wonders, and the People’s (formerly Sultan’s) Palace. The former, built in the later 1800s by the third Omani sultan, the ambitious Seyyid Barghash, is a large and tall white building; inside, the central courtyard is open up to the roof, with tall slim columns supporting the balconies, which run around the second and third floors. It’s a museum of coastal art and culture, displaying photographs and artifacts with useful annotations. The lighting is poor everywhere and the place has a somewhat shabby, neglected look, surviving as it does on the most meagre budget. There’s much on show; the only regret is that there could be much more.