Aug 13, 2009

Race, Revolution and the Struggle for Human Rights in Zanzibar (Part 5)


 The fifth extract of G.Thomas Burgess work on Zanzibar history and politics presents an overview on the creation of  Zanzibar's Nationalism and its futher impacts on shaping political organization in the island.
 
 
Nationalism

In the nationalist era, the British role was overwhelmingly one of referee in an increasingly antagonistic dispute over the colonial inheritance.  Although nationalists of all varieties have criticized, both then and now, the British for engaging in “divide-and-rule” tactics, it was always in British perceived interest to reduce and not exacerbate communal tensions.  The British wanted to avoid a costly and embarrassing outbreak of violence within the islands. They wished to hand power over to a party that represented a voting majority, espoused “moderate” politics, and rejected communism.  If the British ever manipulated their own rules to suit their own interests, it was not to undermine either of the nationalist parties per se but to eliminate what they regarded as the communist virus in the islands.  They did not play favorites to such an extent as to affect the outcome of any of the elections preceding independence, despite allegations from all sides to the contrary.

The British did, however, sanction a very public and acrimonious debate about the nature of Zanzibari society and its cosmopolitan heritage, which revived old wounds, fears, and hatreds.  Zanzibaris disputed a series of interrelated questions: Are the islands outposts of the mainland, extensions of East Africa, and is Zanzibar largely an African cultural space? Or are the islands to be regarded as part of a multi-cultural Indian Ocean world, with allegiance to Islam being one of its primary distinguishing features? Who should and should not be considered a true Zanzibari? Who are natives, and who are alien intruders?  In reviewing the past, could islanders claim the creation of a culture of peace, tolerance, and civilized living or instead a long history of cruelty, slavery, and exploitation?  Would an independent Zanzibar see further inequality and an inevitable clash of communities, or could islanders work together toward an end, like development, considered by all to be good?

Founded in 1955, the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) attracted the support of nearly all members of minority communities in the islands, as well as a substantial number of Shirazi, who identify themselves as Zanzibar’s indigenous population.   Shirazi identity, however, was and remains highly controversial since its widespread usage began only in the 1930s and because the percentage of islanders who identified themselves as Shirazi by the 1960sdwarfed the actual indigenous population.  Many Africans claimed Shirazi identity to obscure their slave ancestry, to mark their status as landowners, or to gain access to World War II rations distributed by the colonial state along ethnic lines.  To complicate matters further, the Shirazi usually regard themselves as primarily of Persian ancestry. If it is not always clear what the label represents in a positive sense, its negative claims are more consistent: Shirazi are neither Arabs nor “mainlanders”—recent labor migrants from the African mainland. As indigenous Zanzibaris, Shirazi claim exemption from the stigma of slave ancestry; those who claim Persian ancestry do not, furthermore, claim racial kinship with Africans and regard their unique ethnicity as being more significant than their African birth.  The circumstances of Shirazi identity render it extremely difficult for scholars to even say if the term represents racial or ethnic tensions in island society.

The ambiguous nature of Shirazi identity lay at the very center of Zanzibari politics prior to the revolution, since, according to the 1948 census, 56 percent of islanders identified themselves as Shirazi; 21 percent, mainlander; 19 percent, Arab; and 4 percent, South Asian.  Shirazi did not vote as a bloc; they split over which community—Arabs or mainlanders—presented a more natural ally.  The ZNP sought to attract Shirazi voters through an appeal to Zanzibari nationalism that promoted the islands’ cosmopolitan and largely Muslim heritage as a positive good and differentiated “native” Zanzibaris from allegedly less civilized mainlanders.  The party preached multiracialism, while paradoxically denigrating mainlanders as uncouth newcomers intent on burying Zanzibar in a federation with much larger East African nations, none of which possessed a Muslim majority.  Through an alliance with the smaller Zanzibar and Pemba People’s Party (ZPPP), based among Pemba Shirazi, the ZNP emerged by 1961as a serious contender.

The Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), as the name suggests, was established as an alliance of mainlander and Shirazi voters who found common cause in a struggle against the ZNP, which they painted as more of a threat to their interests than the colonial power.  The ASP regarded the ZNP as a vehicle for Arabs to defend their privileges and subjugate the African majority.  Convinced their constituents would never receive fair treatment, ASP leaders wished to impose their own settlement that would protect their supporters from future exploitation.  The politics of race the ASP espoused was based on the premise that cosmopolitanism had not produced wealth and harmony but a deceptive facade for cultural chauvinism and racial injustice.  In a fictionalized account of the revolution, Gurnah’s protagonist recalls:

We liked to think of ourselves as a moderate and mild people. Arab African Indian Comorian: we lived alongside each other, quarreled and sometimes intermarried…In reality, we were nowhere near we, but us in our separate yards, locked in our historical ghettoes, self-forgiving and seething with intolerances, with racisms, and with resentments. And politics brought all that into the open..So when the time came to begin thinking of ourselves in the future, we persuaded ourselves that the objects of this abuse [Africans] had not noticed what had happened to them, or had forgiven and would now like to embrace anew rhetoric of unity and nationalism.  To enter into a mature compromise in everyone’s interest.  But they didn’t.  They wanted to glory in grievance, in promises of vengeance, in their past oppression, in their present poverty and in the nobility of their darker skins.

The ASP won little support among minority communities but received huge voting majorities in rural Unguja, as well as in Zanzibar Town’s largely African neighborhoods.  By rejecting much of the islands’ cosmopolitan heritage as a disaster for African interests, the party lost access to the skills and international ties of the most educated elements of Zanzibari society, the reality of which African nationalists were keenly aware.  Front and center in the ASP campaign against the “Arab” ZNP was Abeid Karume, formerly a professional seaman of limited education, who knew how to move a crowd. Salmin Amour noted that Karume was chosen as president of the ASP because, through his travels as a seaman, “he was more conversant with the overseas world” and so “could give better guidance to the masses of Zanzibar.”  Through his travels, he could see “the hard lives of so many innocent masses, in a number of countries.”
 
 
Note:
 
In the last extract, to be released on the UNPO website next week, Professor G. Thomas Burgess continues the story of Zanzibar with a discussion on Zanzibar's Revolution.

To purchase a copy of 'Race, Revolution and the Struggle for Human Rights in Zanzibar', please visit the University of Ohio Press, by clicking here .