The revolution in Zanzibar took place on 12 January 1964 and changed the country for ever. We were living there, I was 16 years old, and my father, Mervyn Smithyman OBE, was working for the newly independent country and its elected government as the Permanent Secretary to the Prime Minister, Mohd. Shamte.
My family collected the news clippings of the period, and we put them into a scrapbook.
It is now 62 years since those violent days. Recently, I came across my old scrapbook and decided to post these pages online for those Zanzibaris and others who might be interested. After all, they record historic events. 1964 was a turning point in the history of the islands: many died, many lost everything and many left the country when possible.
There are many pages, so I will put them into a series of posts. The pages are not necessarily in the sequence of events.
