Zanzibar Revolution

1964 overthrow of the Sultan of Zanzibar

the overthrow of the Zanzibar Sultanate

The Zanzibar Revolution (; ثورة زنجبار) began on 12 January 1964 and led to the overthrow of the Sultan of Zanzibar and his mainly Arab government by the island's majority Black African population. Zanzibar was an ethnically diverse state consisting of a number of islands off the east coast of Tanganyika. It had become fully independent in 1963, with responsibility for its own defense and foreign affairs, as a result of Britain giving up its protectorate over it. In a series of parliamentary elections preceding this change, the Arab minority succeeded in retaining the hold on power it had inherited from Zanzibar's former existence as an overseas territory of Oman. Frustrated by under representation in Parliament, despite winning 54 percent of the vote in the July 1963 election, the African Afro Shirazi Party (ASP) early in the morning of 12 January 1964, led by John Okello, youth leader of the ASP's Pemba branch, mobilised around 600–800 men on the main island of Unguja, also known as Zanzibar Island. Having overrun the country's police force and appropriated their weaponry, the insurgents proceeded to Zanzibar Town, where they overthrew the Sultan and his government. The massacre of Arabs during the Zanzibar Revolution ensued, and the insurgents proceeded to loot Arab and South Asian–owned properties and businesses, and rape or murder Arab and Indian civilians on the island. The death toll is disputed, with estimates ranging from several hundred to 20,000. An estimated 10,000 people escaped from the island, with many fleeing to the UK. The moderate ASP leader Abeid Karume became the country's new president and head of state. The new government's apparent communist ties concerned Western governments. As Zanzibar lay within the British sphere of influence, the British government drew up a number of intervention plans. However, the feared communist government never materialised. Because British and American citizens were successfully evacuated, the UK did not intervene in the island's unrest. The Eastern Bloc powers of East Germany and the Soviet Union, along with the anti Soviet People's Republic of China, immediately recognised the new government and sent advisors. Karume succeeded in negotiating a merger of Zanzibar with Tanganyika to form the new nation of Tanzania. Contemporary media assessed this merger as an attempt to prevent communist subversion of Zanzibar. The revolution ended more than 250 years of Arab dominance in Zanzibar. It is commemorated on the island each year with anniversary celebrations and a public holiday. The toll of victims in the massacres is generally not recognized.

The Zanzibar Archipelago, now part of the Southeast African republic of Tanzania, is a group of islands lying in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanganyika. It comprises the main southern island of Unguja (also known as Zanzibar), the smaller northern island of Pemba, and numerous surrounding islets. Merchants and traders regularly visited the islands from Persia, Arabia and India, beginning around the millennium. Some settled there, and Islam became influential in island culture among all ethnicities. The long history of Arab rule dated to 1698, and Zanzibar was an overseas territory of Oman until it achieved independence in 1858 under its own Sultanate. In 1890 during Ali ibn Sa'id's reign, Zanzibar became a British protectorate. Although never under direct British rule, it was considered part of the British Empire. By 1964, the country was a constitutional monarchy ruled by Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah.—and also contained significant minorities of 50,000 Arabs and 20,000 South Asians, who had long been prominent in business and trade. according to one historian, an important reason for the general support for Sultan Jamshid was his family's ethnic diversity. They enjoyed access to higher quality social services, such as health and education, than Africans. Apart from that, British authority considered Zanzibar as an Arab country and always held a position of supporting the Arab minority to stay in power. With the approach of the withdrawal of the British in the early 1960s, the major political parties organised largely along ethnic lines, with Arabs dominating the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) and Africans the Afro Shirazi Party (ASP). In January 1961, as part of the process of British withdrawal from the islands, the island's authorities drew up constituencies and held democratic elections. The ZNP/ZPPP won the rest and set about strengthening its hold on power. was banned, and all policemen of African mainland origin were dismissed. This removed a large portion of the only security force on the island, and created an angry group of paramilitary trained men with knowledge of police buildings, equipment and procedures. The new Arab dominated government made it clear that in foreign policy, the Sultanate of Zanzibar would be seeking close links with the Arab world, especially Egypt, and had no interest in forging relationships with the nations on the African mainland, as the black majority wished. Slavery in Zanzibar had been abolished in 1897, but much of the Arab elite who dominated the island's politics made little effort to hide their racist views of the black majority as their inferiors, a people fit only for slavery. Aley said in another speech in Parliament that if Arabs were over represented in the Cabinet, it was not because of race, but rather it was because the mental abilities of blacks were so abysmally low and the mental abilities of Arabs like himself were so high, a remark that enraged the black majority. The government's budget, with its draconian spending cuts in schools in black areas, was widely seen as a sign that the Arab dominated government was planning to lock the black people in a permanent second class status. but this request was rejected. The UK believed it inappropriate for British troops to be involved in maintenance of law and order so soon after complete independence. In 1959, a charismatic Ugandan named John Okello arrived in Pemba, working as a bricklayer. In February 1963 he moved to Zanzibar. Working as an official in the Zanzibar and Pemba Paint Workers' Union and as an activist of the ASP, Okello had built a following and, almost from the moment when he arrived on Zanzibar, had been organizing a revolution that he planned to take place shortly after independence.

Around 3:00 am on 12 January 1964, 600–800 poorly armed, mainly African insurgents, aided by some of the recently dismissed ex policemen, attacked Unguja's police stations to seize weapons, and then the radio station. The Arab police replacements had received almost no training and, despite responding with a mobile force, were soon overcome. Okello himself led the attack on the Ziwani police HQ, which also happened to be the largest armory on the island. At about 7:00 am, Okello made his first radio broadcast from a local radio station his followers had captured two hours earlier, calling upon the Africans to rise up and overthrow the "imperialists". At the time, Okello referred to himself only as "the field marshal". There was much speculation on Zanzibar about the identity of this mysterious figure leading the revolution, who spoke Swahili with a thick Acholi accent that was unfamiliar on Zanzibar. The Manga were armed mainly with hunting rifles, and once the arms seized from the police stations reached the rebels in the countryside, the Manga were doomed. Throughout Stone Town, rebels had looted and destroyed shops and homes owned by Arabs and South Asians, and gang raped numerous Arab and South Asian women. The revolutionary government seized the Sultan's palace and other property. At least 80 people were killed and 200 injured, the majority of whom were Arabs, during the 12 hours of street fighting that followed. Not knowing that Okello had given orders to kill no whites, the Americans living in Stone Town fled to the English Club, the point for evacuation. Those travelling in the car convoy to the English Club were shocked to see the battered bodies of Arab men lying out on the streets of Stone Town with their severed penises and testicles shoved into their mouths. As part of Okello's carefully laid out plans, all over the island, gangs of Africans armed with knives, spears and pangas (machetes) went about systematically killing all the Arabs and South Asians they could find. The American diplomat Don Petterson described this horror as he watched from his house a gang of African men storm the house of an Arab, behead him in public with a panga, followed by screams from within his house as his wife and three children were raped and killed, followed by the same scene being repeated at the next house of an Arab, followed by yet another and another. According to the official Zanzibari history, the revolution was planned and headed by the ASP leader Abeid Amani Karume. Okello was a complete mystery to the world at the time of the revolution. MI5 reported to Whitehall that he was an ex policeman who fought with the Mau Mau in Kenya and had been trained in Cuba in the art of revolutionary violence. At a press conference several days later, Okello angrily denied ever having been to Cuba or China. He said he was a Christian and believed "Everything can be learned from the Bible". During the revolution, Africans committed an orgy of violence against the South Asian and Arab communities, including thousands of women being raped by Okello's followers, and extensive looting and massacres of Arabs all over the island. Petterson wrote "Genocide was not a term that was as much in vogue then, as it came to be later, but it is fair to say that in parts of Zanzibar, the killing of Arabs was genocide, pure and simple". As a Pan African nationalist who made his followers sing "God Bless Africa" whenever he marched through the streets, Okello appealed to the black majority. But as a militant Christian who claimed to hear the voice of God in his head, Okello had lesser appeal to the island's population that was 95 per cent Muslim. The killing of Arab prisoners and their burial in mass graves was documented by an Italian film crew, filming from a helicopter, for Africa Addio and this sequence of film comprises the only known visual document of the killings. Many Arabs fled to safety in Oman, A police presence was back on the streets, looted shops were re opening, and unlicensed arms were being surrendered by the civilian populace. The behaviour of Okello's supporters, his violent rhetoric, Ugandan accent, and Christian beliefs were alienating many in the largely moderate Zanzibari and Muslim ASP. By March many members of his FMF had been disarmed by Karume's supporters and the Umma Party militia. On 11 March Okello was officially stripped of his rank of Field Marshal, and was denied entry when trying to return to Zanzibar from a trip to the mainland. He was deported to Tanganyika and then to Kenya, before returning destitute to his native Uganda. The merger was seen by contemporary media as a means of preventing communist subversion of Zanzibar; at least one historian states that it may have been an attempt by Karume, a moderate socialist, to limit the influence of the radically left wing Umma Party. Babu had become close to Chinese diplomats who had arranged for several shipments of arms to be sent to Zanzibar to allow the Umma Party to have a paramilitary wing. Many of the Umma Party's socialist policies on health, education and social welfare were adopted by the government. However, the British High Commissioner in Zanzibar, Timothy Crosthwait, reported no instances of British nationals being attacked and advised against intervention. As a result, the British troops in Kenya were reduced to four hours' standby later that evening. Crosthwait decided not to approve an immediate evacuation of British citizens, as many held key government positions and their sudden removal would further disrupt the country's economy and government. The Manley docked at Zanzibar Town harbour, but the US had not sought the Revolutionary Council's permission for the evacuation, and the ship was met by a group of armed men. Western intelligence agencies believed that the revolution had been organised by communists supplied with weapons by the Warsaw Pact countries. This suspicion was strengthened by the appointment of Babu as Minister for External Affairs and Abdullah Kassim Hanga as Prime Minister, both known leftists with possible communist ties. However this practice was started by those members who had staffed a ZNP branch office in Cuba and it became a common means of dress amongst opposition party members in the months leading up to the revolution. Zanzibar continued to receive support from communist countries and by February was known to be receiving advisers from the Soviet Union, the GDR and China. Cuba also lent its support with Che Guevara stating on 15 August that "Zanzibar is our friend and we gave them our small bit of assistance, our fraternal assistance, our revolutionary assistance at the moment when it was necessary" but denying there were Cuban troops present during the revolution. At the same time, western influence was diminishing and by July 1964 just one Briton, a dentist, remained in the employ of the Zanzibari government. with Kimche in Zanzibar on the day of the Revolution. The deposed Sultan made an unsuccessful appeal to Kenya and Tanganyika for military assistance, the soldiers' mutiny sparked similar uprisings in both Uganda and Kenya. However, order on the African mainland was rapidly restored without serious incident by the British Army and Royal Marines. The possible emergence of an African communist state remained a source of disquiet in the West. In February, the British Defence and Overseas Policy Committee said that, while British commercial interests in Zanzibar were "minute" and the revolution by itself was "not important", the possibility of intervention must be maintained. The committee was concerned that Zanzibar could become a centre for the promotion of communism in Africa, much like Cuba had in the Americas. In Crosthwait's opinion, this contributed to Zanzibar aligning itself with the Soviet Union; Crosthwait and his staff were expelled from the country on 20 February and were only allowed to return once recognition had been agreed. The US did, however, urge that Britain cooperate with other Southeast African countries to restore order. when the army riots in Southeast Africa prompted Rhyls diversion to Tanganyika so that the troops she was carrying could assist in quelling the mutiny. In replacement, a company of the Gordon Highlanders was loaded aboard Owen so an intervention could still be made if necessary. The aircraft carriers Centaur and Victorious were also transferred to the region as part of Operation Parthenon. Instead Operation Finery was drawn up, which would involve a helicopter assault by Royal Marines from HMS Bulwark, a commando carrier then stationed in the Middle East. However, the danger of a revolt over unification soon passed, and on 29 April the troops earmarked for Shed were reduced to 24 hours' notice. Operation Finery was cancelled the same day. An infantry battalion, tactical headquarters unit and elements of the Royal Marines would have been shipped to Zanzibar to launch an amphibious assault, supported by follow on troops from British bases in Kenya or Aden to maintain law and order. Giralda was scrapped in December, ending British plans for military intervention in the country.

One of the main results of the revolution in Zanzibar was to break the power of the Arab/Asian ruling class, who had held it for around 200 years. Despite the merger with Tanganyika, Zanzibar retained a Revolutionary Council and House of Representatives. Until 1992 it was run on a one party system and has power over domestic matters. The domestic government is led by the President of Zanzibar, Karume being the first holder of this office. This government used the success of the revolution to implement reforms across the island. Many of these involved the removal of power from Arabs. The Zanzibar civil service, for example, became an almost entirely African organisation, and land was redistributed from Arabs to Africans. The post revolution Zanzibar government was accused of draconian controls on personal freedoms and travel, and exercised nepotism in appointments to political and industrial offices, with the new Tanzanian government being powerless to intervene. Dissatisfaction with the government came to a head with the assassination of Karume on 7 April 1972, which was followed by weeks of fighting between pro and anti government forces. A multi party system was eventually established in 1992, but Zanzibar remains dogged by allegations of corruption and vote rigging. The 2010 general election was seen to be a considerable improvement. The revolution itself remains an event of interest for Zanzibaris and academics. Historians have analysed the revolution as having a racial and a social basis, with some stating that the African revolutionaries represent the proletariat rebelling against the ruling and trading classes, represented by the Arabs and South Asians. Others discount this theory and present it as a racial revolution that was exacerbated by economic disparity between races. Within Zanzibar, the revolution is a key cultural event, marked by the release of 545 prisoners on its tenth anniversary and by a military parade on its 40th. Zanzibar Revolution Day has been designated as a public holiday by the government of Tanzania; it is celebrated on 12 January each year. The Mapinduzi Cup (Revolution Cup), an association football knockout competition, is organized by the Zanzibar Football Association in early January between 6 and 13 January to mark the revolution day (12 January).

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