Review of: Amrit Wilson (2013). The Threat of Liberation: Imperialism and
Revolution in Zanzibar. Pluto Press, London. XII + 175 pp.
Zanzibar today
Zanzibar has too much history
and too little geography!
A well-known commercial slogan to promote dollar tourism in
Zanzibar echoes ‘If you want to experience Paradise, visit Zanzibar!’ In the
past, European colonialists, with more than a pinch of sensation, described these
‘Spice Islands’ as ‘When you play the flute in Zanzibar, people dance as far as
in the lakes region of the interior of Eastern Africa!’ Later in the Cold War
jargon, the Western press called this archipelago ‘the Cuba of East Africa’ and
‘the Clove Curtain’ during the roaring 1960s and 1970s respectively. One can
find several shelf-metres in the libraries around the world having materials on
Zanzibar. The name ‘Zanzibar’ has been exploited by many to sell their books
and other works which have nothing to do with Zanzibar as such.1
Today, the semi-autonomous People’s Republic of Zanzibar is
a densely populated junior member of the United Republic of Tanzania, heavily
dependent on diaspora remittances, foreign aid and dollar tourism, constantly at
logger-heads with the Union Government on Mainland Tanzania. Half of its
population is under the age of 16. Most luxury tourist hotels are foreign-owned,
employing a large proportion of Mainlanders or foreigners who do not have Zanzibari
trade union affiliation and the associated social security. Most souvenirs and
the bulk of spices for sale to tourists and local consumption are imported,
except for cloves, chilly and cinnamon. The per capita consumption of food and
beverages, water, electricity, vehicles, fuel etc by the tourists is grossly
higher than that of the locals, and much of all this is imported, reducing
drastically the net income from tourism.
Together with ITC, Tourism is a top official priority in Zanzibar to boost
economic development.
During the early years after the Revolution in January 1964,
Zanzibar experienced political, economic and social stagnation. However, during
the recent decades, it has made many strides in the right direction to
modernize the country and develop an egalitarian society, with a multi-party parliamentary
system. The hard-handed early revolutionary rulers grossly mismanaged the
country and created even greater inequalities, limitless oppression, systematic
suppression of all human rights, harassment and confiscation of private
properties handed over to political and bureaucratic leaders, with corruption
from top to bottom in the administration which was mostly based on nepotism.2
Today the country can boast of two universities and several
university colleges, several modern clinics etc; however, its capital city the
Stone Town (Kijiweni) still suffers from water and power cuts, problems of
garbage collection and disposal, crime, violence and robbery. Increasing cases
of rape, drug problems, Aids, prostitution and pedophilia are reported daily.
Zanzibar before 1964 was one of the most prosperous and
developed countries in Africa, with a minimum of crime, almost free education
and health services, low-cost electricity and water supply etc, albeit
suffering from feudalism coupled with compradorial economics (whereby much East
African trade in ivory, gold, diamonds
and similar goods was controlled by Zanzibaris), and the resulting dichotomy of
urban and rural populations and contradictions contained therein. Early party politics
in Zanzibar were infected by racial/ethnic unrest, mostly aggravated by its
recent history of Omani colonization of the coast of East Africa and many
inland urban centres, plantation and domestic slavery and slave trade - slaves brought
to Zanzibar for local employment or export to Mombasa for work on coconut
plantations on Kenya coast, farms in the Juba Valley in Southern Somalia, and
date plantations in Oman, had been bought from local chiefs in the interior of
eastern Africa, or randomly caught, mostly in north-eastern, central and south-eastern
regions of Tanganyika, eastern Congo and south-eastern Kenya.3
Amrit Wilson’s present book
Much has been written on the 1964 Revolution in Zanzibar.
Dr. Amrit Wilson’s present book has come out timely when
Zanzibar is hectically planning and organizing to celebrate on 12 January 2014,
the 50th anniversary of the Revolution of 1964, which toppled the
one month old coalition government of the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) and
the Zanzibar and Pemba People’s Party (ZPPP) with its constitutional monarch Seyyid
Jamshid bin Abdullah, the 12th and last Sultan of Omani patriline.
The new revolutionary government was formed by the odd couple, the large and
corrupt Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) 4 led by its charismatic populist Chairman
Sheikh Abeid Aman Karume and the small radical Umma Party (UP) led by the
Marxist journalist Comrade Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu supported by the marginal
Zanzibar Communist Party (ZCP) led by the Maoist Abdulrahman ‘Gai’ Hamdani.
The book, with its 8 chapters and more than a dozen rare
photographs of historical importance to Zanzibar, is a well-researched study by
a respected author of long-standing. It outlines the dramatic history of
Zanzibar and its anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles, the British
transfer of power to a royalist coalition government, and the subsequent
overthrow of that government followed by neo-imperialist coercion to stifle the
Wind of Change in Africa by high-jacking the Zanzibar Revolution and
constructing the Union of Tanzania.
Under the insulating umbrella of this Union, the new
revolutionary leaders turned increasingly anti-intellectual and developed
Zanzibar into a police state using extreme violence and tyranny that is typical
of dictatorial governments and despotic rulers. This ultimately resulted in the
catastrophic assassination of the first
President of the People’s Republic, Sheikh Karume, in 1972.
The first 5 chapters treat well the anti-colonial struggles
in Zanzibar, the British transfer of power to the royalist coalition, the
Revolution and the Imperialist fears, the union with Tanganyika, and the first
decade of despotic rule. Chapter 6 of the book treats in detail the “Kangaroo
Court” of Zanzibar, the trials of the progressive elements, their long
imprisonment and exile. As vestiges of that period, with the demise of the
legal system and a culture of nepotism, one witnesses rife corruption even today
and court cases that have been going on for 15 to 20 years without any final
judgement in sight!
The important role of the Umma Party and its Marxist visionary
leader Comrade Babu in radicalizing the politics of Zanzibar is highlighted
throughout the captivating narrative.5 The book is thus also a
tribute to Professor Babu and his Umma Party. The last two chapters deal with
the current state of the Union and the increasingly strained relations between
the Islands and the Mainland. The Islanders demand among other changes, equal
representation at all levels and in all union organs as it is claimed it was
categorically expressed by Sheikh Karume – Nusu bi nusu! (50/50). It seems the
Union will soon develop into a federation with separate state governments for
Tanganyika and Zanzibar, under the umbrella of a small Federal Government as it
was understood by many in the beginning, leading eventually to an East African
Federation.
The Zanzibar Revolution was bloody, as all revolutions are! A
Revolution is a kind of civil war in which thousands are killed, and it leaves
many wounds unhealed for long and their ugly scars remain forever. In the aftermath
of the Zanzibar Revolution, several thousand people were remanded or jailed for
short or long periods without trial, and a couple of hundred of them were
summarily tried and sentenced to death – many of them buried in hidden or unmarked
graves or thrown in the sea.
The Zanzibar Revolution was carried out with outside help
and immigrant elements in the country, and it echoed racial tones. The
revolutionaries and their leaders were of all ethnic and mixed origins, and the
new rulers tried to rectify the ethnic/racial imbalance that had been cemented
by the British colonial rule based on a prodigal aristocracy and indebted feudal
class fraternizing with rising merchant and industrialist classes, both of
mostly non-African origin, specially South Asian. According to the December 1958
Census of Zanzibar, which was also a kind of social survey with 32 questions,
the population of Zanzibar 5 years before the Revolution numbered only about 360 000
souls, and they had perceived their ethnic origins as follows and identified
themselves as such:
Shirazi Africans 56%
Mainland Africans 19%
Arabs 17% (Omanis,
Yemenis, mixed Arab-African-Indian origins)
Indians 6 % (Sunni
Muslims, Shia Ismailis, Shia Ithnaasheri, Shia Bohora, Hindus, Jains, Ceylonese
Budhists, Indian Parsis, Goans and other Indian Catholics)
Others 2% (including Comorians, Somalis, Shia Bahrainis etc)
Soon after the Revolution, the new government classified the
population of Zanzibar as 80% African, 15% Arab, 4% Indian and 1% Others. This
was the quota used by the Ministry of Education under the Marxist leader Comrade
Ali Sultan Issa, a so-called ‘Arab’ by patrilineal origin, to allocate
secondary school places to students for a couple of years to redress the
imbalance of admission to secondary schools which was a result of the dichotomy
of the rural (mostly African) versus the urban (mostly non-African) communities.
No such ‘racial’ criteria were used for access to higher education, however, during
the first year of the Revolution, in state and local government employment,
some amount of selective ethnic cleansing was practiced to remove non-citizens
and Zanzibari citizens of Arab, Iranian and Indo-Pakistani origin. Most Zanzibaris are of mixed origins,
essentializing their agnatic descent in different social and political contexts.
With a minimum of meritocracy, the bureaucrats of Zanzibar were recruited in
the early revolutionary administration primarily through pure nepotism and favoritism.
Zanzibaris of today are much more ethnically mixed then they were 50 years ago.
About one fifth of the population, including many
semi-permanent migrant workers and
non-citizens, mostly males, were born in Tanganyika or other parts of
eastern Africa. About 2000 of them including more than 600 policemen, 60% of
the Police, did not adhere to Islam, the religious conviction of 98%
of Zanzibaris at that time. This was
crucial in bringing the ASP close to the Tanganyika African National Union
(TANU) on which ASP depended quite much financially, finally leading to the
formation of the Union of Tanzania which the Western powers indirectly imposed
on Zanzibar to contain the leftist Revolution – the alternative for Zanzibar was
to face a Western-supported rightist invasion from the Portuguese occupied
Mozambique. This may have been an empty threat, but it did work. Some
researchers have strongly argued that the Union of Tanzania is a Cold War
construction, and therein lies the main cause of the current constitutional
crisis that has been shaking the United Republic.
One immediate consequence of the Revolution was the closing
down of several factories producing coconut oil, soap and oil cake used as
cattle feed, many furniture and mechanical workshops, dozens of shops producing
garments, shoes and other consumer goods, a couple of hundred businesses
dealing with import of piece goods and their further export to the rest of
eastern African, and the loss of trade in ivory, gold and diamonds, created a
mass exodus of people to the rest of East Africa, primarily Tanganyika, which
also gained much from the braindrain of Zanzibar.6
Amrit Wilson’s fluent narrative includes meticulous details
with deep insight and convincing analysis of the colonial condition in Zanzibar
and the neo-colonialism it has been subjected to. The story is based on much
material previously unavailable including personal narratives of and interviews
with many who were involved in the different events that have shaped modern
Zanzibar.
The Revolution high-jacked and the people betrayed
The 1964 Revolution in Zanzibar, which started as a rather
badly planned insurgency by certain sections of the opposition alliance of ASP
and UP, and which took both the CIA and the world at large by surprise, gave
high hopes of constructive changes in many parts of Africa; it had far-reaching
implications on the politics of eastern Africa in particular and the Cold War
in general in the region. One immediate consequence of this Revolution was the
army mutinies in Tanganyika, Kenya and Uganda, which were effectively dealt
with by help from Britain and Nigeria. The African Revolution was thus high-jacked
in its infancy and the people were betrayed by the new elites. Later,
far-reaching socialist attempts at socio-economic reforms on Mainland Tanzania
in the form of Mwalimu Nyerere’s much-discussed and commented Ujamaa
“experiments” were also sabotaged by the mostly Western-educated bureaucracy,
and as once aptly expressed by Professor Issa Shivji and reiterated by his
colleague the late Professor Haroub Othman, “The Revolution in Tanzania
Mainland was also betrayed in the same way.”
Amrit Wilson’s present book offers the most complete and
detailed description so far of the events in Zanzibar, based on reliable
sources and first-hand accounts, which can be verified by those who were active
participants in those developments, (including the present reviewer who was an
active student and youth leader during the 1960s before he went into self-exile
in 1968 after a short period of political detention in Dar-es-Salaam and Zanzibar).
Today’s official slogan in Zanzibar is “Mapinduzi daima!”
(Revolution forever!). Revolution, Yes! But Zanzibar, Tanzania and the rest of
Africa needs a Mapinduzi ya Mawazo
(Mental Revolution), to learn from the past, to appreciate the present and to
plan and work for a better future! Tanzania has vast natural resources, a developed
educational system, intellectual capacity and most Tanzanians have the
willingness and desire to march forward peacefully! As Mwalimu Nyerere said,
“It can be done – play your part!”7
After many years of
monolithic rule which had outlawed parliamentary democracy by an oral
Presidential Decree, Zanzibar has matured and through both national and
international efforts, Zanzibaris with various political sympathies have succeeded
in forming a Government of National Unity (GNU). The proposal for such a
coalition government of all political parties was suggested already in 1963, a
few months before Independence from Britain and the subsequent republican takeover
with Marxist and racial overtones. Had such a government been formed at that
time, the violent Revolution could have been avoided, and neither Amrit
Wilson’s present book nor the present review essay would have been written!8
“The growth of Black Nationalism, the
suspicion of continuity of ‘Arab’ domination coupled with propaganda that
refreshed memories of slavery and the slave trade era, caused great disruption
in the social equilibrium with the determination of the lower classes to end
the long years of inferiority through a violent revolution. The Zanzibar
Revolution of 1964, though basically a class revolution, has echoed many racial
tones, for the socio-economic classes followed closely the weak – but
traditional – ethnic distinctions.
The institution of slavery, though not
foreign to East Africa, was escalated by non-African peoples and commercialized
with de-humanizing effects on the African populations. In Zanzibar, which had
been the citadel for the East African slavery and slave trade in the last century,
and where servitude in some form continued to exist, the last vestiges of
slavery were formally destroyed in 1964. (Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi: The
Institution of Slavery in Zanzibar and Pemba. Research Report No. 16. 1973. Scandinavian
Institute of African Studies, Uppsala. p.30-31)”
Amrit Wilson’s book necessarily
deserves a wide audience, not only comprising concerned Zanzibaris and
Tanzanians, but also all interested in eastern African affairs and the
phenomenon of Revolution in general.
1 John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968) is a 582 pages
thick dystopian science-fiction novel, again saying nothing about Zanzibar
proper.
Mary Margaret
Kaye’s Death in Zanzibar (1983) is a
novel involving European characters in Zanzibar setting, similar to her other
books such as Death in Kenya and Death in the Maldives.
In Michael
Morpurgo’s famous children’s adventure novel The wreck of the Zanzibar of 1995, “Zanzibar” is the name of the
ship that is wrecked.
The contents of
Johanna Ekström’s half a dozen short Swedish poems in verse under the title
“Dikter från Zanzibar” (Poems from Zanzibar) published in the Swedish literary
magazine KARAVAN No. 4/2001, specially dealing with literature
in the Third World, have nothing to do with Zanzibar. They were written while
she was on vacation there. Magnus Eriksson has pointed this out in his review
in the Stockholm morning paper Svenska
Dagbladet, 14 January 2002, criticizing the editors of KARAVAN for including Swedish literature in this journal using such
headings as “Poems from Zanzibar” and mislead readers.
Aidan Hartley
(2004) The Zanzibar Chest: A Story
of Life, Love, and Death in Foreign Lands, is essentially an exciting account of
the author's own experiences as a hot spots journalist covering the forgotten
wars such as in Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia, blending
some pieces of his family history and tales of exploits of his parents’ friends
in this narrative. This story is not about Zanzibar at all!
David Chrystal
(2008) As they say in Zanzibar. OUP, is a 720 pages long collection of
more than 2000 proverbs from 110 countries around the world; it however
contains only a couple of Kiswahili proverbs!
2 The terror of this period of the police state
in Zanzibar is well-depicted in the Kiswahili novel of ‘Comrade’ Hashil Seif
Hashil (1999) Wimbi la ghadhabu (Wave
of terror). This short novel is being currently translated into both English
and Swedish by two different trranslators. Professor Said Ahmed Mohamed Khamis’
novel (1989) Asali chungu (Bitter honey)
describes the decadent lifestyle of some
section of the upper class before the Revolution; and Ustaadh Adam Shafi Adam’s
Kasri ya Mwinyi Fuad (The Palace of
Lord Fuad) of 1978 gives a good picture
of life on a large plantation just before and after the Revolution and the
patrician lifestyle of the absentee landlord. Ustaadh Adam Shafi’s other
Kiswahili novel KULI (The coolie) of 1979 deals with another important episode in the
history of Zanzibar documented in detail by Dr. Anthony Clayton of Sandhurt
Military Academy, England, in his The
1948 Zanzibar General Strike (1979), Research Report No. 32. Scandinavian
Institute of African Studies, Uppsala. See also Anthony Clayton (1981) The Zanzibar Revolution And Its Aftermath.
Hurst & Co., London.
3 The Slave
Trade in Zanzibar and its dominions was abolished in 1873 by Sultan Seyyid Barghash
(the third Sultan, whose mother was an Ethiopian concubine). From 1890 when the
Sultanate of Zanzibar was reduced to its present size by the Europeans and it
became a British Protectorate, slaves could buy their freedom, which many urban
slaves did – these could afford it as customarily they could work on their own
for three days every week and earn some cash.
During 1897 to 1909, the government agreed to pay
compensation to slave owners for manumission of male slaves while concubines
were to become legal wives and their children declared legitimate heirs to
their fathers. Altogether 4 278 slaves became free in this way. The legal
status of slavery was finally abolished in 1911 when Zanzibar was transformed
into a constitutional monarchy with the new Sultan Khalifa bin Haroub, the 10th
Sultan of Zanzibar who had succeeded his brother-in-law Seyyid Ali who had
abdicated while on a visit to England. Altogether 17 293 slaves were freed
for a total of £32 502 as compensation to slave owners.
Professor Edward Batson’s A Social Survey of Zanzibar conducted duering 1948-49 and published
by the Zanzibar Government Printer in 1962, gave the following figures for
landless male Africans in Zanzibar:
Zanzibar Town/Urban: 2 220 Shirazi/Native Africans - 6
630 Mainland/Non-native Africans.
Rest of Zanzibar: 1 720 Shirazi/Native Africans - 8
600 Mainland/Non-native Africans
Mainland/Non-native Africans included both a few surviving
freed slaves and immigrant Africans from the other East African countries,
mostly Tanganyika.
During 1948-49, a total of 19 170 adult male Africans,
3 940 natives and 15 230 adult Mainland Africans, were landless; so were also most
of the Indian and Arab Zanzibaris, both urban and rural. However, during
1964-65 the Revolutionary Government gave altogether 22 000 landless
Zanzibaris of all origins including many urban dwellers with no agrarian
background, mostly on Unguja Island, 3 acres of plantation land which had been
confiscated from former landowners. Most of these ‘landless Africans’ were
Mainlanders! Much such land was also taken over by revolutionary leaders and
their relatives or friends. During the first decade, the new leaders of
Zanzibar lived lavishly on confiscated properties and embezzled public funds.
For details on Slavery and Slave Trade in Zanzibar, see A.
Y. Lodhi (1973), The Institution of
Slavery in Zanzibar and Pemba. Research Report No. 16. Scandinavian
Institute of African Studies, Uppsala. This publication can be downloaded free
from the website of the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala.
See also A. Y. Lodhi, et al (1979). A Small Book On Zanzibar. Writers Book Machine, Stockholm. p.
64-70.
4 At the time of Revolution, the ASP was almost
bankrupt while several of its leaders including Sheikh Karume had bought
property in Tanganyika. In the early evening of the Revolution, one prominent
ASP leader, Sheikh Mtoro Rehani, whose parents were Wazigua from Tanganyika,
had been chased into hiding by an angry crowd of ASP Youth League members for embezzling the funds
of the ASP Miembeni Branch, the former HQ of the African Association of
Immigrant Workers and the Club House of the very active African Sports Club,
the forerunners of ASP. The crowd vandalized the Club House, but a few days
later, not surprisingly, Sheikh Mtoro Rehani was appointed the new Mayor of
Zanzibar City by the Revolutionary Government.
Immigrant members of the ASP conceived the party as a Saving
Society, and in their Membership Card the name(s) of the heir(s) of the Member
was/were mentioned on the understanding that the collected Membership Fee would
be returned to Members if or when they
left the Party or if the party was to be dissolved, or it would be inherited by
his/her heir(s). Almost all the immigrant members of ASP were male.
5 See also A. M. Babu (1981), African Socialism or Socialist Africa?
Zed Press, London
6 Many educated Zanzibaris dismissed from the
civil service were given responsible positions on the Mainland. Zanzibari primary
school headmasters became principals at secondary schools in Tanganyika, and
Zanzibari secondary school teachers became college teachers and university
lecturers, some of them ultimately becoming professors at institutions in the
West e.g. Maalim Ali Ahmed Jahadhmi and Maalim Sultan Mugheiri in the US, and
Maalim Salim Kifua in Japan. Some of them like Maalim Shaaban Saleh Farsy and
Maalim Said Iliyas were commissioned to translate the Military Code and the laws
of Tanzania into Kiswahili; and Maalim Jaafar Tejani, an Cutchi Indian by
origin, was selected to organize the Institute of Kiswahili Research at the
University of Daressalaam and lead the Kiswahili Dictionary Programe sponsored
by the President’s Office.
7 See Haroub Othman, Ed. (2001), BABU – I Saw The Future And It Works. E & D, Daressalaam.
8 In early September 1963, upon a suggestion from
the Umma Party leader Comrade A. M. Babu, the Umma Students’ wing contacted the
non-party All Zanzibar Students’ Union (AZSU) to arrange a Brainstorm and
invite all political parties and their affiliated organizations to discuss the
possibility of forming an All-Party National Government that would lead
Zanzibar to Uhuru. Those attending the Brainstorm unanimously proposed that the
first government of free Zanzibar should be a National Government since
Zanzibaris of all political colours had together fought for Uhuru and that it
was the whole country which was becoming free, not only the coalition parties
which had won the elections based on the colonial model and organized by the
colonial power. The invitation to participate in the Brainstorm was sent to all
political parties, women’s unions and trade unions but no political party
participated in the deliberations; however, some officials of the Zanzibar and
Pemba Federation of Labour (ZPFL/ASP) with its leader Hassan Nassor Moyo, and
the Federation of Progressive Trade Unions/Umma Party) including Ahmed Badawy
Qullatein did attend the meeting and actively participated in the discussions.
The Brainstorm was chaired by Miss Sheikha Ali Al-Miskry, Chairman of AZSU, and
the present reviewer, Vice Chairman of AZSU, acted as the Secetary.
About a month later, on UN Day on 24 October 1963, at a
function organized by the Zanzibar UN Student Commission (in cooperation with
the UN Information Office in Daressalaam), at the Haile Selassie Hall, the ASP
leader Sheikh Karume and the ZNP leader Sheikh Ali Muhsin, both informed the
present reviewer that it was too late to form a National Government of all
parties together as “……. we have already
put our signatures at the meeting in England”.
About a year after the
Revolution, President Karume told the present reviewer in his office at the ASP
Head Quarters “That government of all Zanzibaris that you young people had
proposed last year, we have it now, under the umbrella of ASP. Now we are all Wana wa Afro-Shirazi (Children of ASP).”
Dr. Amrit
Wilson (b. 1941, India) is a UK-based veteran writer and activist.
Her other
works include:
US Foreign
Policy and Revolution: The Creation of Tanzania. 1989.
The Future that
Works: Selected Writings of A.M. Babu. 2002. (With Salma Babu)
Dreams, Questions, Struggles: South Asian
Women in Britain. 2006.
Dr. Abdulaziz
Y. Lodhi (b. 1945, Zanzibar) is Professor Emeritus at the Dept. of Linguistics
and Philology, Uppsala University, Sweden. He has published extensively on
Swahilistics, East African Social Studies and Zanzibar Affairs. Currently he is
also a Member of the International Scientific Committee (ISC) of the Slave
Route Project: History and Memories for Dialogue, Unesco, Paris.
