Language and Collective Mobilization: The Story of Zanzibar

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS • AFRICA STUDIES

boundaries. She has creatively applied a social psychological theory to provide a penetrating and highly readable account of modern Zanzibar, set in historical context.”

—FATHALI M. MOGHADDAM, Georgetown University

HASHIM

“Nadra O. Hashim’s book demonstrates that the most exciting research is being conducted across disciplinary

Language and Collective Mobilization analyzes the origins of communal conflict in five phases of Zanzibar’s modern history. The first phase examines the implementation of British colonial control, focusing on the conversion rupted a variety of indigenous political and social institutions that traditionally promoted peace and stability. During subsequent phases of colonial rule, the British government devised political, economic, and educational policies that promoted elite Arab rule at the expense of the majority Swahili-speaking population. Colonial authorities rendered illegal any attempts by Swahilis to organize political resistance, a rule that exacerbated antiArab animosity. Colonial rule ended in 1964, when Swahili-speaking Zanzibaris led a violent revolution against English command and Arab control. Having forced a variety of wealthy Arab and Indian communities off the island, Swahili revolutionaries allowed a small number of Indian merchants and a few Shirazi farmers to remain. Less than twenty years after the revolution, in this fifth phase of Zanzibar’s political history, partisan conflict between the Shirazi and Swahili populations threatens to unleash a new rash of violence. The social climate mirrors the first phase of British rule, where economic stratification deepens and political tensions grow. The analysis offered in this book will find an audience in students, scholars, journalists, and policymakers interested in understanding so-called ethnic conflict in Africa. NADRA O. HASHIM is adjunct professor at DeVry University and an independent researcher.

LANGUAGE AND COLLECTIVE MOBILIZATION

of Zanzibar’s subsistence farming economy to a cash-crop plantation complex. This first phase of colonial rule dis-

LANGUAGE AND COLLECTIVE MOBILIZATION THE STORY OF ZANZIBAR

For orders and information please contact the publisher LEXINGTON BOOKS

A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 1-800-462-6420 www.lexingtonbooks.com

Language&CollectiveMobilizationL1 1

NADRA O. HASHIM

3/5/09 1:28:32 PM

Language and Collective Mobilization

Language and Collective Mobilization The Story of Zanzibar Nadra O. Hashim

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Lexington Books A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hashim, Nadra O. Language and collective mobilization : the story of Zanzibar / Nadra O. Hashim. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-2211-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-3708-6 (electronic) 1. Zanzibar—History—Revolution, 1964. 2. Zanzibar—History. 3. Zanzibar—Languages—Social aspects. 4. Zanzibar—Social conditions. 5. Zanzibar—Politics and government. I. Title. DT449.Z26H37 2009 967.8’1—dc22 2008055649 Printed in the United States of America

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992.

For Alice and Osman Hashim, parents and scholars, who made this and other research possible.

Contents

A Preface to Zanzibar

ix

Introduction: The Five-Phase Model

1

I II

Stratification

15

Disarticulation

51

III

Repression

117

IV

Resistance and Revolution

165

Inversion

203

V

Bibliography

233

Index

243

About the Author

259

vii

A Preface to Zanzibar

Before there was the Silk Road, there was the ancient maritime spice route, and Zanzibar was in the middle of it all. Ancient Oman and Somalia, the lands of frankincense and myrrh, were two important endpoints of this trade and the Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar became a vital naval midpoint where sailors rested, trading spices for equally lucrative tortoise shell and ivory. From antiquity to the present, Zanzibar has been described by people fascinated by the Orient. This included the author of A Thousand and One Nights, who introduced the islands of the Indian Ocean, and the broader Middle East, to European explorers devoted to rendering enigmatic lands less mysterious. Dubbed “the coast of the blacks,” or Zanzibar, by first-millennium Iranians, Arabs referred to East Africans as “coastal dwellers” or Sahili, which later became Swahili, a name for the people and later their language. Centuries later, British diplomats would christen Zanzibar “the isle of cloves” and, finally, American political observers nicknamed the island the “African Cuba.” Given a variety of pet names and conquered by a variety of empires, Zanzibaris have been engaged in a long and intense search for a unified national identity. Since colonial independence Zanzibaris have chosen to refer to their island as Unguja and themselves as Ungujans. However, much of the world still thinks of Unguja as Zanzibar Island. Well before Zanzibar became an object of imperial design it was a sleepy international harbor. At that time Zanzibar was known as ix

x

A Preface to Zanzibar

Menouthis, a name given by Greco-Roman sailors who spoke of its wealth and splendor.1 Like Switzerland, but in an Indian Ocean setting, first-millennium mariners knew Zanzibar as a safe international harbor, a neutral outpost in an era of contesting empires. In the modern era, Zanzibar has all but lost that idealized image. While still an international harbor, by the mid-twentieth century the “clove isle” had become one of the most impoverished and potentially violent nations in East Africa. In the years leading to and following independence, continuous election violence and charges of “ethnic cleansing” once in the 1960s and again in years 2000–2005 have made Zanzibar a harbinger of a new and sad phase in African history—the era of political decline.2 Today the foreign ministries and state departments of Western countries often warn against travel to Zanzibar. Meanwhile, the economic tensions and communal conflict that now animate island politics threaten to cloud and possibly eclipse a spectacular culture with a glorious past. Described by ancient historians Hippalus and Herodotus, and later Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, Zanzibar became a fixture in popular imagination from the golden years of the Greco-Roman era to the golden age of modern European imperialism.3 Zanzibar retained that image throughout the first and well into the second millennium, and attracted farmers and traders from the far reaches of Africa and Asia. These developments made the island even more exotic, which played into the designs of rival dynasties and empires. When Western European explorers finally “discovered” Zanzibar they found a land of contrasts: a languid, exotic isle but also a bustling business enclave with a vigorous maritime economy. An East African nation governed by wealthy Arabs and Asians, Western European powers realized that controlling the lucrative trade of the “clove isle” could be very profitable. Eventually both the export of cloves and the island itself would come under the control of British authority. Like most tropical islands, Zanzibar evokes a range of emotions, including wonder, delight, and curiosity. This was especially true in the mid-nineteenth century when British explorers David Livingstone and Richard Francis Burton were making their maiden voyage to Africa’s Great Lakes region. The many visitors who followed these intrepid voyagers were wary of the rigors of the African mainland and the weather,

A Preface to Zanzibar

xi

topography, and diminutive size of Zanzibar Island made it more hospitable than the rugged terrain of inland travel. Zanzibar is one of several tropical islands off the coast of Africa. It is 637 square miles (approximately 1,660 square km). Thought by geologists to have separated from the mainland in the Pliocene era, the island topography is composed of limestone, along with a variety of soils including sand, clay, and loam.4 A humid climate and fertile soil produce a variety of crops including cassava, yams, and various fruits associated with the tropics.5 The discovery of microlithic tools suggests that Zanzibar has been home to intelligent humans for at least twenty thousand years.6 Today the island boasts a population that is descended from Africans, Near Easterns, and Asians, many of whom are small traders and farmers and upward of 95 percent of whom are Muslim. Though quite diverse now, in prehistoric times Zanzibar, mainly the home to animist Bantu farmers, was much more homogeneous. These migrants left central Africa and settled in southern and eastern Africa between 30,000 and 5,000 BC.7 As the first permanent residents of the island, they established a modest economy organized around subsistence economy and trade with the mainland, and possibly Greece, Rome, and Egypt.8 By the first millennium AD, Zanzibar emerged as a harbor town in an era when the Mediterranean’s small nations became great naval powers. Throughout southern Europe and the Near East, various ancient maritime nations, sponsored by ambitious dynasties, established absolute control in their own countries, and then created wealth and power for themselves by extending their authority over neighbors. In addition to the Mediterranean Sea, these early powers relied on the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean for their livelihood. Thus, Zanzibar’s ancient maritime heritage can be divided into three overlapping periods: the Greco-Roman period (350 BC–395 AD), the Iranian Sassanid times (224 AD–610 AD), and lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the Sohar (a region in Oman) period.9 The Sohar period, the era of Oman’s early political dominance, is important because it is a dynastic bridge between two distinct historical periods in Zanzibar: the era before and the centuries after the emergence of Islam. The Sohar era, the emergence and rise of Omani power is also important in Zanzibar’s history because the Omani Sultanate would exert some form of power over Zanzibar from the era before Christ until the mid-twentieth century. As in later years, in the early Sohar, the late

xii

A Preface to Zanzibar

Greco-Roman era, Zanzibar was primarily known as an ancient exporter of rare commodities such as ivory. Roman cartographer Hippalus first documented the island’s legendary beauty in 45 AD in a guidebook he called Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Other historians of the ancient world, including Herodotus and Claudius Ptolemy, also documented travel to the exotic markets of Rhapta, now called Pemba and its larger neighbor Menouthis, which is Zanzibar. Even in that ancient era these islands were known for their stock in rare items such as animal skins, shells, and tusks harvested on the islands, along with other goods, such as cinnamon, which were produced on the mainland and sold to naval parties docking on the islands.10 At that time Bantu farming and in-kind trade was still the dominant feature of the local culture. However, by the late centuries of the first millennium, a seismic shift in the society, economics, and politics of the Middle East would eventually change Zanzibar forever. After the emergence of the Islamic faith, Arab merchant dynasties, protectors of the new faith, began conquering their rivals in areas spanning Western North Africa, into the Levant and throughout and just beyond the Arabian Peninsula. Between the seventh and twelfth centuries, the Ummayad dynasty (661–750), headquartered in Damascus, the Abbasid dynasty (749–1258), which had its capital in Bagdad, and the Fatimid dynasty (909–1171), which governed from a seat in Egypt, presided over an exponential growth in the Muslim population of the Middle East.11 The Fatimids, in particular, presided over an extensive trade network that expanded Mediterranean and Arab trade of the ancient world to China.12 Under the Fatimids, Abbasids, and the Ummayads, the growth of new states, cities, and governments also transformed loose groups of nomadic tribesmen into stable urban and farming populations.13 The material wants and needs of these new communities, along with the desire of their governments to increase state revenue, led to the coordination of a variety of formerly random trade routes. By the tenth century, the Arab dynasties had developed urban monetary and agricultural credit systems.14 These twin developments led to greater cultural unity among previously competing communal groups. Villages became cities and then states as trade became more diverse and profitable. The growing trading cities of these new Muslim empires relied on corresponding rural areas to supply agricultural goods and labor to cities, which

A Preface to Zanzibar

xiii

in turn produced goods for export. Zanzibar’s proximity to both Africa and southern Arabia made it a natural commercial and tourist harbor and by the eighth and ninth centuries, successive waves of Ummayad Syrian emigrants, Persians from Shiraz, and Omanis from areas outside Muscat settled in Zanzibar. These communities began to change the composition and culture of the island and helped establish Zanzibar as Africa’s primary gateway for Arab, European, and African trade traveling east. As a result of Zanzibar’s emerging role as an international harbor, Bantu influence, which relied on agricultural trade with the African mainland, began to decline. Arab and Persian trade propelled Zanzibar’s economy, and the competition between these two groups developed into an intense rivalry. Arab culture and the Islamic religion experienced a period of rapid territorial expansion during the medieval era. This led to intense dynastic competition among Arab tribes seeking a permanent place where they could exercise their particularistic tribal governance and newly realized imperial aspirations. The primary cleavage that emerged in the Middle East was the tension between Sunni Muslims—those that believed Caliph Abu-Bakr, the Prophet Muhammad’s most loyal disciple, should succeed him—and the Shi’a Muslims—those who believed the prophet’s son-in-law Ali should have been the first caliph.15 This dispute created a lasting faultline in Middle Eastern politics. In the eighth and ninth centuries, many Shi’a located in eastern Arabia and Persia found themselves on the “losing” side of this ideological battle. A number of Arab and Iranian Shi’a, comfortable with East African trade and society, left Arabia permanently and made their home on the eastern coast of Africa. A large group settled in Zanzibar. Between the eighth and fifteenth centuries, the Arab and Persians, and their descendants the Afro-Arab Swahili and Afro-Iranian Shirazi, created in Zanzibar a political arrangement where they often shared power.16 By the fifteenth century Afro-Shirazi clans had established and governed more than thirty coastal towns stretching from modern-day Somalia to Kenya. Swahili power, less dominant in this era, led to intensified rivalries between the two groups.17 In the eleventh century, Oman established East Africa’s first foreign government, when the sultanate in Muscat installed various governors to resolve disputes, prevent disruption to trade, and enhance the general peace and security of Zanzibar and other coastal towns. As Oman began to exert more influence over the island, the power of the Swahili clans increased.

xiv

A Preface to Zanzibar

The Shirazi were still a formidable power in the fifteenth century, when the Portuguese crown began to search for new venues for trade and conquest. The Indian Ocean islands and the eastern coast of Africa became important because they were thought to be gateways to Africa’s gold wealth and provided a new route for Arab and Indian spice trade.18 Between the late 1490s and early 1520s the Portuguese navy attacked Shirazi strongholds in the coastal cities of Kilwa, Sofala, and Mobassa. Overwhelmed by Portugal’s massive power, the Shirazi were now vulnerable to attack by Bantu clans, which were neither Shirazi nor Swahili.19 In 1509 Portugal attacked and subdued Zanzibar.20 The crown kept a fortification there until the mid- to late 1600s when Oman began helping the coastal clans expel the Portuguese from many of their holdings in East Africa. In 1652 an Omani fleet sacked the Portuguese stronghold in Zanzibar, and, by 1698, the sultanate in Muscat had dislodged the Portuguese from the last of their East African possessions. 21 In addition to the Omanis, the Portuguese were weakened by Persian powers resisting their conquest of Hormuz. Meanwhile, the Dutch East India Company was waging a diplomatic campaign to divest the Portuguese of any hospitable trading bases anywhere in the Indian Ocean.22 A mere twenty years after the Omani navy defeated the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, the sultanate in Muscat came under attack from a combined Persian-Portuguese strike.23 For the next one hundred years Oman continued to be vulnerable to Persia’s imperial incursions. Ultimately, the Al bu Said, or Busaidi dynasty, the clan of the current rulers of Oman, thought that for security reasons the Omani capital should be moved from Muscat. In 1832 the Sultan Seyyid Said decided to make Zanzibar the capital of the sultanate.24 In the years that followed the sultan drafted a series of exclusive trade agreements with Britain. The Busaidi dynasty relied on British dotage to protect their burgeoning clove trade from ambitious French and German interests, eventually ceding more and more control over the island until 1890 when the British made Zanzibar an official colonial protectorate.25 In the years that followed Zanzibar would become one of the centers of British power in the Indian Ocean. During the span of the twentieth century Zanzibar was transformed from a sleepy international harbor to a vast British entrepôt, and eventually to one of Africa’s first independent Swahili governments—but one with an alarming tendency toward fragmentation.

A Preface to Zanzibar

xv

The Zanzibar story is far from complete, and the search for national identity still animates much of the conflict. Today, at the beginning of the new millennium, the communal violence that threatened to destroy a newly independent African nation is once again looming. These tensions are symbolic of many of the problems throughout Africa and beg several important questions. Namely, is it possible for Africa’s national leaders to compromise on matters of economic and political power sharing? Can they promote peace and reconciliation, or will they allow old wounds to fester, to the detriment of themselves and their mainland neighbors?

NOTES 1. Lionel Casson (trans.), The Periplus Maris Erytheai (or Periplus of the Ertheian Sea, written by ancient Greek historian Hippalus) (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), and G. W. B. Huntingford (trans.), Periplus of the Erythrean Sea (London: The Haklut Society Publishers, 1980). 2. Violence in the 2000 elections is documented online; see “Violence Follows Zanzibar Polling,” October 30, 2000, CNN.com; and in the 2005 election at “Zanzibar: Violence Flares,” The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, April 1, 2005, at unpo.org/content/view; also “Pre-election Violence in Zanzibar,” October 10, 2005, at BBC News, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/Africa. 3. By the thirteenth century the great Arab historian Ibn Battuta used the term Swahili to refer to residents of the coast and isles of East Africa; see Basil Davidson, Africa in History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 118. 4. The New Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 12, fifteenth ed., 2005, 895–96. 5. The World Book Encyclopedia (World Book Inc., 2007), 586. 6. David Else and Sarah Chanter, Guide to Zanzibar (Walpole, Mass.: Hunter Publications, 1995). 7. Erin Digitale, “Genetic Evidence traces ancient African Migration,” Stanford Report, August 6, 2008, news-serivce.stanford.edu/news/2008; and L. L. Sforza-Cavalli et al., History and Geography of Genes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). 8. Felix Chami, “Greco-Roman Trade Link and the Bantu Migration Theory,” Anthropos 94 (1–3): 205–15; and Felix Chami and P. Msemwa, “A New Look at Culture and Trade on the Azanian Coast,” Current Anthropology 38, 673–77. 9. Pat Southern, The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine (Oxford: Routledge, 2001); and David Nicolle, Sassanian Armies: The Iranian Empire Early 3rd to Mid 7th Centuries AD (London: Monvert Publishers, 1996); and

xvi

A Preface to Zanzibar

Oman: A Sea-Faring Nation (Muscat, Oman: Ministry of Information and Culture, 1979). 10. Casson, The Periplus Maris Erytheai. Regarding the extent of the AfroAsian spice trade, see Innes J. Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), chapter 8. For a further discussion of ancient trade between pre-Islamic Oman and towns in East Africa, see F. D. Omanney, Island of Cloves: A View of Zanzibar (Philadelphia: J.B Lippincott Company, 1956). 11. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (New York: Warner Books, 1991), 38–58. 12. Irene Beeson, “Cairo, A Millennial,” Saudi Aramco World, September/October 1969, 24–30. 13. Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, 43. 14. Davidson, Africa in History, 209. 15. For a succinct description of the Sunni-Shi’a philosophical debate, see Mir Zohair Husain, Global Islamic Politics (New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1995), 7–9. 16. Omar Mapuri, Revolution in Zanzibar: Prospects and Achievements (Dares-Salaam: Tema Publishers, 1996), 5; and Neville Chittick and Robert Rotberg, East Africa and the Orient (New York: Africana Publishers, 1975), 34. 17. Norman R. Bennett, A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar (London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1978), 8–13. 18. Ladis Da Silva, Through A Door in Zanzibar (Toronto: Celaz Print Shop, 1994), 62. 19. Reginald Coupland, East Africa and Its Invaders: From the Earliest Time to the Death of Seyyid Said in 1856 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938; reprint 1965), 60–61. 20. Zoe Marsh and G.W. Kingsnorth, A History of East Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 31. 21. R. W. Beachey, The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1976), 33–42. 22. Claude Ake, A Political Economy of Africa (London: Longman Group, 1981), 47. 23. C. S. Nicholls, The Swahili Coast (New York: Africana Publishers, 1971), 33. 24. John Illiffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 108. 25. D. A. Low and Alison Smith, History of East Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 492–94.

Introduction The Five-Phase Model

In October 2000, Zanzibar experienced a protracted electoral conflict that various Western newspapers described as either a racial conflict or as an “ethnic clash,” reminiscent of its violent anti-colonial revolution thirtyfive years earlier.1 In fact, throughout the late twentieth century scholars have categorically labeled most political cleavages in Africa as racial “conflict,” and in those discussions race and ethnicity have been conflated or used interchangeably.2 A prolonged and focused study of war in Africa suggests that rather than a pure racial contest, or a clash of cultures, communal violence is more often a legacy of conflict over language and political privilege on the one hand, and the distribution and ownership of land on the other. In fact the very complex nature of both the 1964 revolution and contemporary electoral politics inspires several questions. The first and most obvious question is whether readers should attribute the conflict in Zanzibar to ethnic cleavage. If, as various scholars suggest, ethnic tensions are responsible for violence in Zanzibar, then it is necessary to determine what “ethnicity” means to Zanzibaris. More precisely, it is necessary to determine how Zanzibaris define themselves and how others have defined them. When considering the distinction between “race” and “ethnicity,” readers should remember that Zanzibar is culturally diverse and racially heterogeneous. The most precise way of defining Zanzibaris can be derived from the way individuals and groups construct their respective identities. 1

2

Introduction

In Zanzibar language defines ethnicity. Swahili-speaking Zanzibaris of mixed Bantu-Arab-Iranian origin refer to themselves as Swahili, while individuals with an identical racial heritage, who speak a Bantu dialect, refer to themselves as Shirazi or Bantu. Arabic-speaking residents of Zanzibar perceive themselves as Arab, even if they cannot name an Arab ancestor. Race was and continues to be incidental to conflict, both among and within, Zanzibar’s rival communal groups. The primary conflict in Zanzibar was, and continues to be, a contest over national resources. Thus the true sources of conflict in Zanzibar are largely economic and linguistic; they are a function of the grave disparities that characterize plantation economies. Like most plantation economies, Zanzibar’s singular oppression of the working class included a suppression of subordinate languages, and the imposition of a political system that limited access to education and social advancement. In this closed system the only individuals who had full access to the elite educational system were Zanzibar’s linguistic elite. The Oman Sultanate and later the British colonial government placed a high social and political premium on their subject’s linguistic ability. In the twentieth century English and Arabic enjoyed a particularly lofty status relative to Zanzibar’s indigenous languages. This was due in large part to the fact that linguistic groups were defined by their role in Zanzibar’s highly stratified plantation economy and its rigid colonial bureaucracy. Swahili-speaking individuals were uniformly consigned to the lowest occupation until they revolted against the colonial government in 1964. Zanzibar’s 1964 revolution is especially interesting because it represents one of Africa’s earliest contests between foreign authorities and the indigenous population over two types of resources—land and language. Ultimately, the conflict that preceded Zanzibar’s revolution, and the revolution itself, represented a struggle over what was to become the dominant political, economic, and social culture of the nation. The1964 revolution was not only a struggle against foreign rule, it was also a movement toward the formal institutionalization of the indigenous Creole culture and language.3 I argue that the colonial dictates of a plantation economy impoverished the majority of Zanzibar’s farmers and suppressed the subsistence economy. I also argue that the conflict prevented the development of a unified indigenous language or the cultivation of a counter-elite, making revolution likely, if not inevitable.

Introduction

3

The 1964 revolution was essentially a class conflict, and not a “racial” struggle, for two reasons. First, racial difference is not the sole or even the most accurate explanation for much of the conflict throughout Zanzibar’s ancient or medieval history. Yet scholars of the 1964 revolution emphasize racial difference as the main source of modern communal violence.4 As mentioned before, this approach does not explain why revolutionary Africans attacked Arabs while they spared the Indian community. Second, with regard to the Bantu-Iranian Shirazi community, racial difference fails either to explain or to predict their political organization or party affiliation. Shirazi political behavior, like political behavior in the Bantu, Swahili, and Arab communities, reflects economic interest. In the case of the Shirazi, the plantation economy produced a pronounced split within the community along class lines. This cleavage was especially obvious during electoral contests, and it prompted some Shirazi to vote with the largely working-class African Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), while other Shirazi voted with the upper-middle-class Arab Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP). This book incorporates a range of elements that explain the cleavage within Zanzibar’s communal groups and between its various social classes, as well as the specific dynamics of the 1964 revolution. These models analyze important aspects of communal relations, in general and in the specific case of prerevolutionary Zanzibari politics. They locate the core causes of communal tension and revolutionary violence, which happen in Zanzibar due to economic and linguistic cleavages. I examine the evolution of these cleavages using a model specifically designed for the study of Zanzibar that I call the five-phase model of modern communal relations. The five-phase model specifically addresses economic anomalies which characterize Zanzibar’s political history. As such, it is thick, layered, descriptive, and deep. The five-phase model is a complex analysis that owes a great intellectual debt both to Fatton’s three-site model of class formation and McKirnan and Taylor’s five-stage model of intergroup relations. Taylor and McKirnan’s model “concerns relations between groups of unequal status, and the individual and collective responses of the disadvantaged to their status.”5 According to this model there are five stages of social development that most societies experience, even though the time frame of these stages may vary from a few years to decades or

4

Introduction

even hundreds of years. The stages include periods of (1) clearly stratified intergroup relations, (2) the promulgation of individualist ideology by the high status/privileged group, (3) the ideology of and attempt toward individual social mobility by the disadvantaged/low status group, (4) consciousness raising among the disadvantaged group, and finally (5) the collective action of the underprivileged group. This model differentiates most of the groups based on an ascribed characteristic. In Zanzibar locals use language as the ascribed characteristic to differentiate among, and assign value to, individuals and groups.6 Robert Fatton’s model also addresses communal differentiation. His model is comprised of three sites that include class formation, class disarticulation, and class resistance. Fatton’s three sites are analogous, or parallel, to the first three stages of Taylor and McKirnan’s five-stage model. Fatton’s three-site model locates class cleavage, and the five-stage model describes the timing of these conflicts. More specifically, stages 4 and 5 of the five-stage model are merely logical extrapolations both of the first three stages of the five-stage model and Robert Fatton’s three sites.7 The model I have developed for the discussion of Zanzibar adapts elements of both models and analyzes the distinctive conditions that led to Zanzibar’s revolution while describing the timing of these events. The new model modifies the fourth and fifth stages of Taylor and McKirnan’s model. It analyzes Zanzibar’s dominant classes’ use of ascribed characteristics to foster both class differentiation and class cleavage. This new model also introduces concepts from political science that narrowly focus on class cleavage within the African state—ideas that are just outside the narrow scope of the final stages of Taylor and McKirnan’s five-stage model. The altered and expanded discussion of the fourth and fifth stages requires that the new model be given its own nomenclature. The combination and modification of Fatton’s three sites and adaptation of the five-stage model produces a hybrid model I call the five-phase model of modern communal relations, which I use in this book to describe political cleavage in Zanzibar.8 The new model will be abbreviated, and will hereafter be called the five-phase model. The phases are: (1) the emergence of a plantation economy and the creation of a stratified class system—a system closed to nonelites or counter-elites, (2) the promulgation of social, educational, and sociological policies by the British protectorate government, (3) the

Introduction

5

manifestation of a repressive colonial policy toward indigenous populist leaders and organizations, (4) the emergence of strong resistance to and violent revolution against the colonial government by the underprivileged group, and (5) the emergence of a new class system, the mirror image of phase 1, with new elite leadership closed to former elites. In addition to the five-phase model, I examine the discussions of state and civil society found in Francois Bayart’s analysis of African conflict. The five-phase model’s analysis of elite formation, along with Francois Bayart’s discussion of the reciprocal assimilation of those elites, guides my exploration of intergroup conflict that was the legacy of British colonial rule in Zanzibar.9 In addition to elite theory and class analysis, I also examine the role of linguistic differentiation generally and the colonial government’s specific privileging of minority languages in Zanzibar. In the course of examining twentieth-century conflicts in Zanzibar, I explore various methodologies of political science. Some are called “grand theories” and others are more aptly described as “models.” Traditionally, either grand theories or narrow models have been used to examine socialpolitical phenomena. I have found that they are both useful in analyzing the emergence of class and group conflicts in Zanzibar. Recognizing this utility, I have employed certain analytical models to supplement my primary analysis, which requires a heavy and dense historical treatment. I begin by examining the core arguments of the three-site and five-stage models; the former suggests that political development is the result of class conflicts, while the latter argues that conflicts derive from differences in group identity. In addition to employing these models, I examine the colonial ideologies of conservative imperialism and “liberal” dual mandate. I employ the five-phase model, a narrow construct, which allows me to examine the general influence of dual mandate, Britain’s foremost grand theory, on class and group conflict. The five phases allow me to examine certain grand theory assumptions, some of which became a direct source of British colonial policy. Tracing the ideologies of the colonial government is crucial to understanding Zanzibar’s economic history, which is beset by complex social cleavages. I argue that the social dynamics of the plantation economy played a fundamental role in the evolution of political cleavages in Zanzibar. Conservative imperialism and dual mandate led the colonial government

6

Introduction

to promote communal groups whose role in the plantation economy was vital to British enrichment. The languages of the preferred groups, the Indian financial class and the Arab planting class, were English and Arabic. These became the official languages of the state. By the early twentieth century, language became the most important medium by which Zanzibaris improved and consolidated upward mobility. The five-phase model assists my exploration of the trajectory of linguistic conflict and the impact of British policies in Zanzibar. In the early phases of Zanzibar’s modern history, dual mandate policies excluded most Swahilis from the political system. In the absence of more progressive policies of British colonialism, Swahili-speaking Zanzibaris felt compelled to rebel against protectorate authorities. Ultimately, the Swahili killed or expelled many members of the Arabic-speaking community. They quashed the dual mandate system of colonial rule in the most violent way imaginable. In the subsequent phase of political governance, the Swahili ended cash-cropping, and established an economic communitarianism as well as a political system that best served the Swahili majority. In contrast to the situation in Zanzibar, British governance in Tanganyika did not drive its contending classes to violent revolution. Peaceful change was possible in large part because Fabianism, which gained popularity at the League of Nations and the United Nations, also prevailed in Tanganyika. It was a school of thought that advanced social development at the expense of expanding cash-cropping. Fabianism animated much of British policy in Tanganyika and British Fabians cultivated Tanganyika’s local institutions and its national leaders. The Tanganyikan African Association (TAA) and Julius Nyerere emerged as a result of Fabian patronage. Ultimately Nyerere and the TAA developed their own indigenous grand theory of political governance, the so-called Ujamaa method of governance. Ujamaa discouraged violence, which made incremental change possible. Communitarian incrementalism, in turn, created the conditions for inclusive public policy and stable majority rule. Thus, the complex nature of cleavage in East Africa, and in the specific case of Zanzibar’s modern history, is directly tied to the contending policies that informed colonial policy. Zanzibar’s history is also influenced by the highly personal creeds of various economic actors, coupled with the contentious nature of the plantation economy. Each of these actors and their sweeping ideologies

Introduction

7

requires thick historical analysis. The five-phase model, a descriptive construct that concentrates on the specific conditions unique to Zanzibar, can accommodate dense analysis of several contending policies. In the same manner as the five-stage and three-site models, the five-phase model focuses on group and class conflict. However, as this book is specifically interested in the plantation economy, an extension of these models is required. The resulting fivephase model examines the root cause of specific cleavages in Zanzibar. The five phases are low-level, grassroots analyses that examine the role of taxation as a form of economic extraction, land alienation as a means of social control, and linguistic stratification as a tool of elite assimilation and alien rule. Few scholars have examined the role linguistic privilege plays in sustaining communal cleavage in Zanzibar. Even fewer scholarly works consider land and language in tandem. Most analyses of East African politics view Zanzibari cleavages as primarily racial. However, the heterogeneous nature of mixed and Creole society makes racial analysis a far more compelling analytical tool when it is coupled with a study of linguistic difference, privilege, and group conflict. In addition to the five-phase model, I draw on literature that examines state collapse and failure. This literature, along with analysis of linguistic differentiation, helps examine the final phases of Zanzibar’s political disintegration culminating in the 1964 revolution.10 Analysis of communal conflict in the Balkans, the former Soviet Republics, in Belgium, among the Celtic and Welsh populations of Great Britain, and the Quebecois of Canada often considers the role linguistic difference plays in sustaining hierarchies and in creating communal conflict. If scholars of Zanzibar could depart from the standard discussion of racial difference and focus on linguistic differentiation, readers may better understand the broader nature of East African communal cleavages. Paradoxically, while race often trumps language in most analysis of modern African conflict, it is the very presence of linguistic competition along with Africa’s global and economic marginalization that has in many instances animated, and in some cases determined, the outcome of Africa’s struggles against colonial rule.11 Like most conflict in Africa, the struggle in Zanzibar is complex. Most thoughtful studies of conflict in colonial Africa consider linguistic and economic cleavage in addition to

8

Introduction

ethnic tension. One particularly compelling approach attempts to infuse the analysis of intergroup conflict with a consideration of the relationship among language, class, and occupational status in Africa.12 Judith T. Irvine argues that more than being a means to an end, language is an end in itself. Irvine suggests that many societies, especially hierarchical ones, privilege language, which in turn creates a linguistic political economy where there are elite and subordinate languages. Individuals either become linguistic haves or have-nots. Irvine’s characterization of a linguistic political economy is especially relevant in describing the economic and linguistic dislocations that accompany the establishment of plantation economies.13 Like Irvine’s work, Debussman and Arnold’s analysis describes Zanzibar’s metamorphosis from a system of land held in communal trust to one where individualistic and corporate interests prevailed and the concepts of ownership and property came to dominate older social norms such as African communitarianism and Arab philanthropy.14 Both Irvine’s observations and Debussman and Arnold’s analysis contribute to understanding how an ascribed characteristic, such as language, identifies class and describes the relation of class to the study of political conflict. Thus, taken together, Irvine, Debussman and Arnold, Fatton and Bayart, and the fivephase model form the core analysis in this book. Chapter I of this book gives a brief overview of Zanzibar’s political history and discusses the dislocation of indigenous political and social institutions that occurred with arrival of the Omanis and the British. It identifies the emergence of class and linguistic privilege associated with plantation economies, as well as Zanzibar’s social and political development, giving a brief historical overview of Zanzibar’s earliest immigrants.15 It continues with arrival of nineteenth-century colonial powers, describes the competition among these groups for political hegemony in East Africa, and examines what policies and institutions the colonial powers transplanted to Tanganyika and Zanzibar. These policies included, but were not limited to British attempts to coopt local chiefs, centralize political authority under British colonial rule, and cultivate an economic elite. As in most countries it colonized, Britain enacted what I call its first-phase policy. This political strategy modified existing social relations, maximizing economic control, and generating and extracting the greatest amount of revenue for the crown. To this end,

Introduction

9

Britain promoted Zanzibar as an Arab state and Arabs the sole governing power. Establishing Arabs as their political representatives was an easy choice for the British as local Arabs were already wealthy from their transnational maritime trade routes and were the dominant economic ruling class. Throughout its African colonies, Britain made dominant economic classes, often minority groups, the dominant political class as well. Before the British intervention in Zanzibar, the Omani government adopted a checks and balances approach to social engineering, making rich Indians the dominant economic class and powerful Arabs the dominant ruling class. In this respect, British and Omani economic and sociological policies overlapped and reinforced one another. However, in other instances, especially in the areas of political and educational policy, British and Omani policies clashed, changing Zanzibari society in ways that neither Britain nor Oman could have predicted. Either way, Omani rule and British protection had a cumulative impact on Zanzibari society. This first chapter therefore juxtaposes economic life before and after the arrival of the Omanis and the British in tandem. As mentioned earlier, during its first-phase economic program the British government invented organizations and political structures that would serve the crown and expand the local plantation economy.16 Britain formally recognized Zanzibar as an Arab state and created a system that converted communal land into state-owned private property. The protectorate government transplanted European feudal and industrial economic norms concerning the creation and management of plantations. More specifically, the colonial government developed a strategy that determined how crops should be taxed and how cash-crop farmers should be paid and classified. During this period of protectorate rule, the British created the ethnic associations, the Clove Growers Association (CGA), Zanzibar’s legislative committee (LEGCO), and executive committee (EXCO), in order to establish a class hierarchy and to assimilate elites. The colonial government diminished the power of African chiefs, expanded British control over state bureaucracies, and patronized Indian-owned mortgage companies. Chapter II builds on these contrasts as it explores the second phase of colonial policies, juxtaposing societal and linguistic privilege before and after foreign rule.

10

Introduction

I examine the social, educational and economic policies of the British government and the Arab ruling class vis-à-vis Zanzibar’s majority African population. This discussion analyzes the process of class disarticulation and also reflects the continued assimilation of elites within the colonial institutions created during the first phase of colonial rule. Following these initial economic programs, the British government began what I call the phase 2 policy of transplanting colonial culture and economic control by enacting polices of a sociological nature.17 Britain’s second-phase sociological policies reflected its attempt to influence Zanzibari public opinion through its educational policies, its promotion of English and Arabic in state bureaucracies, as well as its use of the CGA, EXCO, LEGCO, and ethnic associations as engines for the advancement of British interests. Britain’s second-phase policy sponsored linguistic differentiation in every aspect of colonial life. Ultimately, the protectorate government devised a highly politicized census that it used to formulate policies in the years between the two world wars, its second and third phases of colonial rule.18 Chapter III examines the third phase of British colonial policy and how it affected the bureaucratic and political life in the middle years of the British protectorate.19 This chapter also explores Britain’s third-phase colonial policies regarding the political orientation of state bureaucracies, the colonial government’s policy toward trade unions, the use of Zanzibar’s “ethnic” associations to defeat subaltern rebellion, and Britain’s influence over indigenous political parties and the courts. Here I continue my application of Bayart’s analysis, while drawing on a variety of other scholarship that discusses African political resistance to the system of linguistic and economic repression.20 I contrast political transition in Zanzibar with similar efforts in Tanganyika. More specifically, I examine the extent to which German, and later British, efforts to cultivate indigenous political leadership in Tanganyika made it possible for Tanganyikans to facilitate a peaceful transition from colonial rule to African independence. Chapter IV addresses the repercussions of political repression during the third phase of British colonial rule. British efforts to suppress African civil society and prevent it from challenging Zanzibar’s colonial economic order ultimately led to violent revolution. I designate this stage of violent revolution the fourth phase of colonial rule.21 I describe the revolution in detail, and this analysis becomes the body of my fourth-phase analysis

Introduction

11

and the focus of the fourth chapter. Finally, I argue that there is yet a final, or fifth phase in Zanzibari political development. The fifth phase of postcolonial governance is the inverse or mirror image of first-phase colonial rule, where power is reversed, but the system remains closed to counter-elites.22 Chapter V describes fifth-phase unequal distribution of political power in contemporary Zanzibar, where the island’s remaining Arabic-speaking Shirazi populations claim that they are a marginalized minority group in a political system that only promotes Swahili leadership.23

NOTES 1. Raw News/abcnews.com, “Zanzibar and Tanzania Worlds Apart,” October 28, 2000. 2. While the term “race” purports to be a biological label and ethnicity a cultural one, in many studies of East Africa the terms ethnic and racial were used interchangeably to denote both the origin of these groups and their contemporary affiliation. When in the rare occasions that I use the term race in my analysis, I adopt its common usage and groupings—e.g., white (Caucasian), black (Negroid), and Asian. In the case of Zanzibar there was so much mixing that the notion of pure racial groups loses all meaning and is actually inaccurate. When studying Zanzibar, most cautious scholars use the term “ethnicity” rather than race to refer to rival political groups. I will use the term ethnicity simply because it is the most accurate way of referring to Zanzibar’s complex communal groups. I employ it only with the caveat that linguistic affiliation is the primary means of defining ethnicity, and that, taken together with land ownership and material wealth, linguistic affiliation is a better determiner of political affinity than cultural or racial background. 3. The American Heritage Dictionary describes a creolized language (such as Swahili) as “[a] type of mixed language that develops when dominate and subordinate groups that speak different languages have prolonged contact, incorporating the basic vocabulary of the dominant language (Arabic) with the grammar and admixture of words from the subordinate language (Bantu)”; The American Heritage Dictionary, second college ed. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1982), 339. An Arabic question reads Kam (how many) Askari (soldiers), while the same Swahili question uses the Arabic word for soldiers with a Bantu interrogative. As a result, the Swahili phrase Askari wangapi (how many) reads in the inverse manner that Bantu grammar dictates; Joan Russell, Swahili: A Complete Course for Beginners (Los Angeles: NTC Publishing Group, 1996), 35. For a further discussion of the

12

Introduction

role of the Swahili lingua franca in East African political development, see Peter Pels, “The Pidginization of Luguru Politics: Administrative Ethnography and the Paradoxes of Indirect Rule,” American Ethnologist 23, vol. 4, 738–61. 4. W. H. Ingrams, Zanzibar: Its History and Its People (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967); and Esmond Bradley Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978). Even scholars such as Middleton and Campbell who document Zanzibar’s income and land inequality resist identifying group conflict as economic cleavage. Rather, they argue that revolutionary violence derived from racial and cultural difference; John Middleton and Jane Campbell, Zanzibar: its Society and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 9 and 32–42. 5. Donald M. Taylor and Fathali Moghaddam, Theories of Intergroup Relations (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Press, 1987), 153. 6. Donald Taylor and D. J. McKirnan, “A Five Stage Model of Intergroup Relations,” British Journal of Social Psychology 23 (1984), 291–300; and Taylor and Moghaddam, Theories of Intergroup Relations, 153–57. 7. Robert Fatton’s three sites describe the location and distinctive features of class cleavage in African society. The three-site model describes how socially prominent and wealthy classes situate themselves in powerful positions of authority in order to keep their actions isolated from public scrutiny as they try to monitor and control the actions of subordinate classes. The five-stage model details the timing and evolution of the process, from the origins of group stratification through the period of individual mobility to the era of collective class resistance. 8. Robert Fatton, Predatory Rule (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992), 8–11, 19–37, and 144–45. 9. Robert Fatton, Predatory Rule; and Jean-Francois Bayart, Politics of the Belly. The first three phases of the five-phase model address British attempts to control and direct Zanzibari society to suit its commercial interest between the years 1870s and the 1950s. The colonial government created policies, programs, and organizations that would influence the economic, sociological, and political dynamics of the state, which will be discussed later. 10. Judith T. Irvine, “When Talk isn’t Cheap: Language and Political Economy,” American Ethnologist 16, no. 2 (May 1989), 248–67; Ali A. Mazrui and Alamin M. Mazrui, The Power of Babel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); and Alessandro Duranti, Linguistic Anthropology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 11. Colonial protectorates, plantation economies, elite privilege, and subaltern repression are the hallmarks of closed political systems, especially where individual access to higher circles or group advancement is based on the acquisition of an ascribed characteristic such as linguistic ability. Yet, as mentioned earlier, much of economic or linguistic analysis of conflict in Africa has been overshadowed by

Introduction

13

analysis emphasizing tribal or racial divisions. By contrast, studies of European cleavage often include a variety of conflict indices, and ethnic difference figures prominently in studies of European conflict by examining linguistic difference, political orientation, historical legacy, and class cleavage. 12. Class animates differentiation in Robert Fatton’s three-site analysis and ascribed characteristics inspire differentiation in the five-stage model. My analysis of Zanzibar concerns differentiation based both on class and wealth, and more specifically cleavages based on land ownership and linguistic cleavages. 13. Judith T. Irvine, “When Talk Isn’t Cheap.” 14. Robert Debusmann and Stefan Arnold, Land Law and Land Ownership in Africa (Bayreuth, Germany: Bayreuth Publishers, 1996). 15. This discussion loosely corresponds to Robert Fatton’s analysis of ruling class formation—the first site. 16. The first phase or category of Britain’s economic policies is also described by Robert Fatton’s first site. Ultimately many of these policies influenced and in many respects acted as a governing principle over Britain’s subsequent second site sociological and political policies. 17. The second phase of colonial rule, the introduction of sociological policies, corresponds broadly to Robert Fatton’s second site class disarticulation. 18. The latter phenomenon corresponds both to Robert Fatton’s second and third site. Irvine and Debussman and Arnold’s observations are addressed in the second and third chapters of this book because they deal respectively with African cultural, economic, and third site/phase political resistance as well as Arab and British repression of those efforts. 19. Chapter IV of this book will cover election strife that led to the 1964 revolution, and will analyze the revolution itself and the subsequent union with Tanganyika. 20. This dynamic corresponds to Robert Fatton’s third site subaltern political resistance. 21. Fatton’s analysis concerns three sites. I introduce this fourth phase to consider what Fatton says may happen if third-site resistance is crushed. This fourth phase—the site of violent and successful regime change—considers the events leading to the 1964 revolution and the revolution itself. More broadly, my fourth phase also corresponds to the fourth stage of the five-stage model and may be worth considering as a unit of analysis for the African countries where third-site resistance turns to violence and repression. Discussions of state collapse or failed states could also be considered (as a divergent part of) fourth-site (fourth-phase) analysis; Taylor and McKirnan, “A Five Stage Model of Intergroup Relations.” 22. This site corresponds to the fifth stage of the five-stage model. Fifth-stage/ fifth-phase societies have gone through fourth-phase revolution, but have not experienced collapse or state failure. These societies tend to revert to political systems

14

Introduction

that promote a newly powerful group over a subordinate faction, a mirror image of stage/site/phase 1. 23. See Douglas Anglin, “Zanzibar: Political Impasse and Commonwealth Mediation,” The Journal of Contemporary African Studies 1 (January 2000): 39–66. The terms “Arab” and “African” are used broadly to denote that a cleavage that is still essentially linguistic. Swahili-speaking residents of Unguja are currently the political rivals of Arabic-speaking residents of Pemba.

I Stratification

The

geographical location, strategic value, and diverse population of Zanzibar give this island nation a complex history. Over the centuries individuals and groups came to Zanzibar from other African nations. Other immigrants traveled from the Middle East and Asia to Africa, arriving on the shores of Zanzibar’s main island, Unguja, and its smaller island, Pemba.1 Some of these immigrants became permanent residents. As early as the first millennium BC, Zanzibar Island was among East Africa’s most important port cities. Traders from Indonesia used the larger island, Unguja, as a place to distribute cinnamon to the spice markets of East Africa and southern Arabia. Spices traveled from the ports in Zanzibar north, south, and, most importantly, to western European empires. Coincidentally, just as Europeans were becoming aware of Zanzibar’s role as a growing spice market, the island was also becoming one of several large East African ports in Middle Eastern slave trade. The Indian Ocean spice trade and the Middle East slave trade ran concurrently as parallel economies operated by different classes and nationalities of individuals, and were therefore largely independent phenomena. By contrast, the European trade of African slaves and the European feudal/plantations system became inextricably linked. The arrival of the British and the merging of these two European trades ultimately became the foundation of Zanzibar’s nineteenth-century sharecropping system, which, in turn, became the basis for Zanzibar’s twentieth-century political cleavage. 15

16

Chapter I

I argue that the European and Middle Eastern trade of African slaves are separate systems. The former developed as the natural outgrowth of European feudalism, a rigid system that dictated most facets of social and economic custom. By contrast Middle Eastern feudalism and slave trade were less rigid systems. To support this argument I contrast the rules and regulations of these respective feudal systems with slavery. Ultimately, I argue that both Middle Eastern slavery and feudalism produced temporary social dislocations that did not impede social mobility. Further, when contrasted with European feudalism and European slavery, Middle Eastern/ African feudalism and slavery can be viewed as more open, less repressive systems of social control. More specifically, Middle Eastern political systems diffused, rather than encouraged, violent regime change. The focus of this book is the history of Zanzibar’s twentieth-century dislocations, the product of the island’s nineteenth-century plantation economy and the offspring of European feudalism.2 I will briefly contrast the differences between European, Middle Eastern, and African agricultural traditions, in order to determine how each of these systems created unique social dislocations, specific to each culture.

MIDDLE EASTERN, AFRICAN, AND EUROPEAN FEUDALISM European feudal serfs were crucial to the survival of very powerful landed aristocrats, noblemen, and, perhaps more importantly, their vast armies. The European feudal system emerged when the landed aristocracy decided to participate in agricultural production to feed their armies, and later to create revenue-generating export.3 The European aristocracy needed new sources of labor for this vast new project, and, in the second millennium BC, began to establish the principalities that preceded the rigid feudal system. The feudal system, in turn, created a captured class of bonded agricultural labor and a rigid hierarchy of class and caste. First millennium economic, political, and religious transformations within Europe reinforced a type of social arrangement peculiar to societies organized for the mass production and export of goods. In tenth-century England, landlords gained the right to exclusively control private industry. Ultimately they owned water mills, baking ovens, and wine presses, and controlled the production and sale of alcohol. This industrial system was monopolistic,

Stratification

17

because it allowed peasants the right to labor on the land but denied them the right to own land.4 Feudalism impoverished most small farmers while it dramatically increased the wealth of the already rich manorial class. The new business of agricultural export thrived because of the emergence and codification of a rigid system of European—but especially British—land law. The export industry made the feudal manor the vehicle of European social organization.5 The British manorial system demanded that its peasants only harvest crops for two purposes: to meet the subsistence needs of their respective peasant families and, more importantly, to create revenue which was given to the manorial estate. Peasants could not sell what they grew, and were never able to gain independence from their lifelong feudal duties. The British government checked families who wanted to produce crops for surreptitious personal sale by codifying law that prevented individual peasants from owning more than two oxen, while larger families could own no more than eight. Most peasants found that on tracts of land as large as twenty-five acres, owning as few as two oxen made farming for profit nearly impossible.6 The British manorial system made upward mobility impossible since marriage, by law, was strictly forbidden between peasants outside of one’s particular parish, or between peasant and nonpeasant classes.7 While the feudal system preceded the modern industrial era by hundreds of years, it made the various facets of capitalism such as wage labor and the modern division of labor possible. Medieval European aristocrats made the competitive “hide” system as rulebound and antagonistic as possible. By pitting peasant families against one another feudal lords prevented the laborers from organizing large-scale revolts against the manor.8 The Norman conquest of England took place in 1066. From the twelfth century well into the industrial era, British aristocracy relied on the hide system to organize and keep England’s peasantry locked into a system of permanent serfdom.9 Throughout the medieval era the aristocracy coerced peasants into producing large quantities of agricultural goods for sale and export. This economic activity dominated the lives of farmers on English manors and eventually spread to European society more broadly. The concept of large-scale cash-crop farming was largely European and only a few African societies had any system of feudalism that even closely approximated Europe’s feudal plantation economy.

18

Chapter I

Though similarly committed to mass production of agricultural goods, Africa’s most hierarchical medieval societies were not as rigid as most European feudal communities. In fifteenth-century Mali, one of Africa’s early “feudal” societies, chattel and domestic labor still had greater access to land than their counterparts in Europe, because more land was held in common in Africa than it was in Europe.10 Further, Mali’s peasants had access to private land through more prosperous kin, to whom marriage was possible. In exchange for allowing their poorer relatives to occupy their land, the rich kin could garner patron status, which was a significant political achievement, one that simultaneously assured the patrons of having loyal, accountable clients.11 Mali’s governing authority was exercised not over individuals but rather over families and clans, of whom there were always a few rich or powerful members who could check any authoritarian tendencies of the governing leadership.12 In many North African countries, communities rather than individuals were accountable for producing the crops used as payment to the government.13 Another difference between the European and the African feudal plantation system was that neither African feudal nor slave status prevented an individual from “owning” land.14 Further, slaves could sell or barter any agricultural goods they produced beyond subsistence and manorial rent.15 Beyond norms governing production and consumption, European feudalism differed from Middle Eastern and African feudalism in other ways. Whereas in Europe, only the aristocratic classes derived a steady income from the feudal plantation system, in Ottoman society the military leadership, or sipahs, were also given a division of feudal land, called a timar. Given to bureaucratic and military officers in exchange for their military and tax raising services, the system of timariots allowed peasants to live on timars and grow crops for personal consumption and sale, as long as they provided crops for the state.16 Like similar feudal systems in first millennium Iran and Iraq, and their European counterparts, the timariot system was prone to abuses of power. Nonetheless, all three of these Middle Eastern feudal arrangements stood in stark contrast to the European system of perpetual and inescapable feudal bondage.17 According to Richards and Waterbury: The elaborate legal, church-sanctified infrastructure of European feudalism, was missing, or, where it existed, flatly contradicted the principle of an he-

Stratification

19

reditary nobility as much as it contradicted that of inherited vassalage. Indeed, local Middle East power figures had no legal authority over vassals, only the Muslim judge, the qadi, had such authority. Second, the privileges of power figures were legally temporarily and often assigned to scattered bits of territory rather than being concentrated geographically, as in Europe. Finally, there were no serfs in the legal sense in the Middle East; peasants were not bound to land, although all sorts of extralegal pressures might tie them down.18

Marxist and liberal economists agree that the laws emerging in medieval Western economies rested on the rule of production, while Ali Mazrui argues that subsistence nomadic culture of the pre-Islamic era relied on laws governing subsistence consumption. As a result, the concept of farming for profit, or, more precisely, creating plantations for the export of a solitary cash crop, was fairly new, and rather foreign. By the time the prophet Muhammad’s successors had spread Islam throughout the far reaches of the medieval world, a mixed economy emerged in what is now called the Middle East and northeast Africa. What Karl Marx called the “Asiatic mode of production” Ali Mazrui called a mixed economy, “regressive but self-sustaining.”19 The contrast between European and Afro–Middle Eastern feudalism is important. The European colonial project of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ultimately replaced flexible and indigenous forms of African and Arab feudalism with a restrictive agricultural system akin to European feudalism. However, European powers modified their feudal system when they exported it to Africa. As Omanis had already introduced the cash-crop export system, a new development in East African economic life, it was easy for the British to expand it. Ultimately the protectorate government forced subsistence farmers and even nonagricultural nomads into a lifestyle they resisted. Cash-cropping institutionalized economic difference, and in Zanzibar it created a hierarchy that privileged some occupations and languages over others.20 Part of keeping a class of agricultural workers captured and bound to the land involved keeping their personal and professional aspirations artificially depressed. In Europe, local aristocrats achieved their ends through restrictive feudal law. In East Africa, during the second phase of colonial rule several European powers created a colonial hierarchy by promoting foreign or minority languages and making educational opportunities and professional employment an unattainable goal for most indigenous people.21

20

Chapter I

PHASE 1: TRANSPLANTED FEUDALISM AND AFRICA’S PLANTATION ECONOMIES As medieval European expansion reached its logical and final dimensions, and Europe’s population began to overwhelm local agricultural and monetary resources, British politicians and economists began promoting imperialism as a way to create new markets to sustain growth. In the Elizabethan, Stuart, and Georgian eras, when Britain was busy colonizing the American New World, British imperialism was limited to economic and personnel exchange. In the late eighteenth century, when Britain began considering conquest of the Pacific and Africa, colonization in the Far East came to involve more complex exchanges including a transfer of British politics, culture, and religion. British imperialists began to differ about the proper parameters of this new sociological aspect of colonization. By the early nineteenth century British imperialists began organizing themselves into two camps, called “liberal” imperialism and “conservative” imperialism. The first camp represented “liberal” intellectual explorers who believed that Africa could enrich Britain materially, and in return Britain could have a “civilizing” liberal influence on the continent and its residents. The “commerce and civilization” camp consisted of Whig, Liberal, “radical,” and later Labor party politicians, including William Ewart Gladstone, often considered the Liberal party’s foremost leader. Other “liberals” included Lord John Russell and Sir Edward Grey (later Viscount Grey of Fallodon), who supervised the administrations of Sir George Napier and Sir Harry Smith in South Africa, and the government of Lord Elgin in Canada.22 The other camp dubbed itself the Palmerston school, after Prime Minister Henry Temple Palmerston. These conservative imperialists wanted British “commerce and expansion” to surpass the imperial efforts of the other European powers.23 This school promoted British settlement, and opposed the “civilizing” social welfare programs that characterized Gladstonian “liberal imperialism,” both in Britain and abroad. Despite the fact that Gladstone, Palmerston, and their respective colleagues had very strong views, they often formed parliamentary coalitions with opposing parties. In fact, the terms liberal and conservative in nineteenth-century British politics were somewhat flexible. Gladstone was a liberal by party affiliation. He supported the Concert of Europe,

Stratification

21

and argued that morality, not expediency, should dominate foreign policy. However, as prime minister Gladstone was not opposed to all forms of imperial expansion. In fact, Gladstone favored conservative efforts to reduce government spending and argued against most forms of income tax, favoring taxes on property and luxury goods. The Gladstone approach was in many ways a reaction to the two important conservative politicians of the nineteenth century—Lord Canning, who served as foreign minister in 1807 and prime minister in 1827, and Lord Palmerston, who served as foreign secretary twice between the years 1830 and 1851 and later was the appointed prime minister in 1851.24 Though a member of the Whig party, Palmerston considered himself the disciple of Lord Canning and therefore pursued fairly conservative policies. Many historians consider Palmerston a conservative, despite his Liberal party affiliation. As foreign secretary, Palmerston supported the opium war in order to open China’s markets. When it came to British trade interests, Palmerston did not distinguish between constitutional governments and absolutist regimes. Finally, Palmerston’s approach to dealing with smaller, if intransigent, nations was so severe that he was given the nickname “John Bull.”25 Palmerston and Benjamin Disraeli, also a disciple of Canning, tried as much as possible to distance themselves from the multilateralism of Liberal-Radical Gladstone. As a result, historians considered Palmerston and Disraeli among the foremost conservative imperialists of their era. In the 1880s and 1890s British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli and the Tory colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain spoke for a powerful constituency in Britain when they offered their idea of an advanced mercantilism in the form of “imperial federation.”26 Prime Minister Disraeli and his “conservative” colleagues argued that Britain was the world’s leading metropolis and should therefore receive the “tribute of the world.”27 In addition to the great political leverage of Palmerston, Disraeli, and Chamberlain, there were many important conservative philosophers who influenced formulations of imperial policy both within the conservative party and throughout Britain’s broader political arena. Edward Gibbon Wakefield was one of the most influential conservative scholars of the Victorian era. An academic and sometime politician, Wakefield was dubbed the “prophet of new imperialism.” He made colonization a field of study, and more specifically raised imperialism to an economic discipline in British political study.

22

Chapter I

His principal philosophy was that imperialism should serve the crown and not the colonial settlers or the indigenous natives. Wakefield’s approach promoted Britain’s use of the colonies as sites for agricultural production. He suggested that colonial governments should convert indigenous subsistence farmers into an agricultural labor class akin to medieval serfs, while a white upper class of expatriate industrialist or “impoverished” aristocrats should run the colonial bureaucracies. He argued that since there was a superabundance of land, and far less capital or people in Africa, it would be wise for the British government to induce a percentage of its population to emigrate and settle in new colonies, but only those Britons of the right socio-economic class.28 Wakefield believed that having a landed (white) aristocracy in Africa would make it easier for the British government to control the colonies.29 As such, Wakefield was totally against devolution of power to settlers. For that reason, he considered Lord John Russell’s attempt to “reform” colonial government in Canada and South Africa, devolving power to local authorities, to be completely foolish.30 Consistent with his opposition to devolution, Wakefield argued that having a foreign overclass would make colonies more orderly and economically efficient, and as such, he introduced his leading theory, called the principle of “sufficient price.”31 Wakefield developed his doctrine of “sufficient price” by studying some of the difficulties colonial administrators experienced in South Africa, Canada, and Australia. According to Wakefield, the British in these colonies faced so many problems due to the nature of land distribution. Wakefield argued that the British government had, indiscriminately and unwisely, given white settlers tracks of land that were too large and unyielding. He suggested that by raising the price of land, in fact, keeping land prices artificially high, the British government could induce “a better class” of British to settle in new colonies. Thus, according to Wakefield, establishing a “sufficient price” could ensure that the settlements themselves were smaller and easier to govern. Wakefield believed that the colonial office should strive to “reproduce in the colonies the society of the mother country.”32 As Adam Smith had written nearly fifty years earlier, Wakefield suggested that, in England, there was a “superabundance of capital and labor in relation to the field of production.” Wakefield was an expert in marketing his ideas, and tried to make sure that his ideas about land distribution, in particular, became the official colonial policy of the

Stratification

23

British government. In 1836 Wakefield used his considerable influence as a ranking member on the Select Committee on the Disposal of Lands in the British Colonies. He further convinced influential friends in government to place the sale of all land in the colonies and the rules governing British emigration under the central land board, which was answerable only to select individuals in the colonial office, rather than Britain’s entire parliamentary body. Long after he retired from government, Wakefield’s ideas and his influence in the colonial office had an impact on land policies in Zanzibar. Although colonial officials did not have to contend with a large population of white settlers, Wakefield’s concept of “sufficient price,” taken together with Britain’s other “land to property” squatter policies, made it easier for the British government to keep clove-growing land in the hands of a few wealthy Arab families. Thus, in Zanzibar “sufficient price imperial federation” meant displacing more egalitarian forms of Afro-Arab feudalism with a program where the British government could track and tax Arab land and agricultural products. Arabs were land rich, but due to taxes, increasingly cash poor, while Indians, prevented from owning land, were cash rich, but land poor. The large African working class was, on the whole, totally impoverished and completely dependent.33 Palmerston, Disraeli, Wakefield, and the other supporters of imperial federation argued that Britain could better exploit foreign wealth by establishing formal colonies. As important as these British thinkers were, they simply articulated a formal ideology for a centuries-old British policy of colonial expansion that had existed since the late sixteenth century.34 In fact, since the decline of feudalism, and the beginning of enclosure (events that preceded European industrial development), Europeans looked south and west for territorial expansion and for the acquisition of cheap labor and material resources. By the 1600s it became clear that Native American populations used as slave labor on early tobacco, rice, and sugar plantations were dying off sooner than they could be replaced.35 Europeans turned to a new resource for an unlimited number of plantation slaves. The African continent was primed for exploitation.36 As a result of this new trade in African slaves, British commerce reached its zenith. During the 1700s the triangular trade between England, Africa, and colonial America supplied exports, while plantations produced and exported

24

Chapter I

raw materials. Slave ports in Zanzibar equaled, and then surpassed, Mozambique as the largest East Coast supplier of transatlantic and Middle Eastern slaves.37 When American independence ended British colonial tax revenue, the British led European efforts to colonize Africa.38 Thus, the sixteenth-century effort to find slaves required fleets and armies to subdue Africa, while the eighteenth-century need to find more raw materials and markets for Western goods kept Europeans in Africa.39 The colonization of Africa began when Europeans established cash-crop plantations and transplanted European feudal customs, converting land into cash-crop agricultural property—which simultaneously advanced European culture and commerce.40 In some African countries, European governments induced natives to grow crops such as rubber and sisal for export. Owing to its location near the Indian Ocean spice trade, Britain decided Zanzibar could become a cash crop export colony.41 In the decades before the British arrived, the Omanis established small clove plantations. However, under the British, the clove plantation became the dominant force of Zanzibar’s economy. It is worth noting that the Omanis came to Zanzibar at the behest of its inhabitants. During the seventeenth century the Swahili chiefs of Zanzibar’s coastal kingdoms appealed to the Omani sultan to help them expel the Portuguese. Omani rule seemed like the only way to prevent the Portuguese from prevailing over local coastal Shirazi and Swahili chieftaincies. However, the Omani Sultanate and its economic interest in expanding the clove trade ultimately became the gateway for British rule and led to the emergence of a permanent hierarchy of an Arab landowning class over African “squatters.” When the Omanis created and the British expanded the plantation economy, they initiated Zanzibar’s first-phase class stratification. Britain differentiated between Zanzibar’s diverse communal groups and social classes by passing laws, formulating policies, and establishing organizations that advanced Arab landownership and commercial clove trade and obstructed African subsistence farming, while promoting Arabic and English over all indigenous languages. These first-phase economic policies and social programs led the British to promulgate laws and establish organizations that promoted the reciprocal assimilation of elites. This first created the context for predatory British rule and then autocratic Arab governance. During the first phase of British colonial rule Zanzibar

Stratification

25

went from being a mere station in the Middle Eastern slave trade to the largest Indian Ocean spice plantation with the largest number of agricultural slaves in the region. Even before Britain established its massive cash crop project, Omani clove plantations were becoming a growing source of political and economic tension. Like other Middle Eastern empires, the Busaidi dynasty of mid-nineteenth-century Oman was committed to imperial expansion and chose agricultural production as the obvious way to integrate its trading empire. In the early nineteenth century, Iran occupied Oman’s capital, Muscat. Iranian occupation and other strategic concerns led Oman’s deposed sultan, Seyyid Said, to make Zanzibar his new residence. As mentioned earlier, Swahili chiefs relied on Omani military strength as a buffer against Portuguese aggression. In 1832 Seyyid Said established Zanzibar as the capital of the exiled Omani Sultanate. So when there was not any great resistance by local Shirazi and Swahili chiefs, Sultan Said decided that Zanzibar, like some of the other successful spice islands in the Indian Ocean, could devote some land to cash-crop farming. Throughout Said’s reign, before Britain became involved in the cash-crop industry, Zanzibar’s agricultural production was still largely directed toward the traditional subsistence farming that characterized most East African economies. In most cases, Omani farms were not cash-crop plantations and as such taxes were not, on the whole, levied against farmers, but rather on foreign commodities traded by Indian and Arab merchants.42 Eventually, as Sultan Said expanded the clove plantation industry, he began to place a modest tax on crops “characteristic of Arab serfdom” called the jizia. The jizia was based on Indian rupees, the currency used by many Arab kingdoms, including the Omani Sultanate.43 The tax was minimal, by British standards. The cash crop industry was still in its formative stage, commercial farming was still entirely optional and the jizia only affected a small group of farmers who chose to plant cloves for profit. Further, sharia law, and shamba and waqf agricultural conventions, promoted communitarian norms in other sectors of Zanzibar’s economy, influencing the national culture. These mixed economic systems made Zanzibari society more fluid than the rigid class systems found in European societies and, before the establishment of the protectorate, made upward mobility attainable.44

26

Chapter I

BRITISH FIRST-PHASE POLICIES VERSUS INDIGENOUS ECONOMIC TRADITIONS By the early 1880s, Britain began its colonial project in earnest. In 1890 Britain established Zanzibar as an official British protectorate. Britain was the metropole and Zanzibar was the periphery. As Britain’s largest colonial holding in the region, India acted as a submetropole, first lending its currency and then its educated population to the British protectorate to facilitate its colonial agenda.45 Under Omani rule, the Indian business class had a nominal role in East Africa’s economic order and an almost entirely negligible role in Zanzibari politics. When the British established the protectorate, Indians garnered exclusive control over the banking and lending institutions, which gave them both great political and economic power. In addition to having minority Arab and Indian populations administer colonial rule in Zanzibar, Britain enacted other features of its phase 1 colonial rule. Britain’s phase 1 policies ultimately dislocated most peasant farmers, changing the legal and economic system, maximizing revenue for the crown, and reducing the political and economic opportunities of most Africans. During this era the British eliminated the Arab waqf and Bantu shamba land systems, as well as Zanzibar’s indigenous political institutions. Originally, the Bantu shamba system of laws protected the rights of the Bantu to clear land and grow food on that land in perpetuity. The shamba system also established a code protecting Bantus’ right to inherit cleared land used by their ancestors.46 The Shirazi had a similar, if more complex, system of land use based on kinship, while the Swahili had, by the nineteenth century, an emerging system of land ownership that combined Bantu customary law and southern Arabian tribal communitarianism. As mentioned earlier, when early Shirazi clans arrived from Persia, they intermarried with Bantu and formed a network of thirty or more coastal cities that they ruled through the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. As late as the early twentieth century the basic political structures of most of the coastal cities of East Africa largely reflected the Shirazi political organization established six centuries earlier.47 Throughout the medieval era, the Shirazi, largely a planting and subsistence community, traded along the East African coast, while their successors, the Swahili dynasties, traded beyond the coast, across the Red Sea.48 As Swahili political organiza-

Stratification

27

tion became more complex, the economy began expanding beyond its local and subsistence domain. Eventually Shirazi and Swahili political structures merged.49 When Sultan Seyyid Said overran the Portuguese, he transferred his royal court and the Omani capital from Muscat to Zanzibar, and brought the Swahili coastal towns under tributary control.50 The network of Zanzibar’s political organizations became even more complex. The Omanis brought governors, qadis (judges) and created various small bureaucracies including a treasury, army, import/export customs, a court system, and post office. The Omani establishment dominated local government. The sheha and liwali posts, which the Shirazi and Bantu created and occupied, were taken over by Arab Omanis who took orders from the sultan. The Omani government took pains to try to maintain Shirazi custom where possible, and preserved the right of the community to pick their sheha by public acclaim as they had done for centuries before the arrival of the Omanis. In a brief fifty-year period the Omani sultans cobbled together a coherent form of governance from the disparate Arab, Shirazi, Swahili, and Bantu political traditions while maintaining a decentralized form of government.51 As mentioned earlier, the Omanis brought the Islamic sharia legal system that weakened, but did not eliminate, the indigenous Swahili, Shirazi, and Bantu communitarian land use systems.52 In compensation for these dislocations the Omani sultans established schools offering free elementary educations and charitable waqf land trusts. Dislocations included encouraging farmers to grow cash crops for international export, while allowing locals to continue growing traditional subsistence crops for local trade and barter. The Omani program of farming for profit led to a dramatic increase in an otherwise fairly small slave trade. By the mid-nineteenth century, the growth of slavery, supported by the British interest in Indian Ocean trade, led to the emergence of rigid social hierarchies in Zanzibar that were, heretofore, usually associated with plantation economies in Europe.53 In Zanzibar, nineteenth-century social divisions and the protectorate era tax scheme led to permanent class and linguistic stratification. Before the arrival of the British government, the practice of an intact and coherent system of sharia law held Zanzibar’s disparate groups and classes in peaceful coexistence, compensating dislocated individuals with squatting rights on land held in trust.54 This new order was held together

28

Chapter I

by an unwritten social contract between the Omanis and the Africans they governed. The Omani order promised mobility within an Islamic system of sharia law.55 By contrast, when the British arrived they took immediate control over the government and of all of the local principalities. The protectorate government allowed British officers, who lived outside the community, absolute control over local leaders.56 The British ended the Zanzibari slave trade in 1897, seven years into the colonial protectorate. However, when the British government ended slavery it closed Oman’s porous social system, making it impossible for former slaves to achieve the type of social advancement previous generations enjoyed. Once the British arrived, they replaced parts of sharia law with British common law, leaving a void in the new social system. The new system was efficient in extraction, but incoherent to the non-British residents of Zanzibar, and incapable of producing the norms of justice to which Zanzibaris had become accustomed. Farming cloves became a lucrative international cash crop. Individual Arab merchants, as well as representatives of the Omani government mortgaged their property and soon grew indebted to the colonial government. Newly impoverished Arabs began to expropriate land whenever they chose and by whatever means they had at their disposal.57 In some cases this acquisition took the form of clearing unoccupied jungle land; in other instances Arabs harassed the Wahadimu, the Swahili people of Zanzibar Island, as well as various Bantu tribes, into selling their land.58 As the British Empire extracted wealth from Zanzibar, Omani regents threw more Zanzibari families off their land and many became propertyless squatters.59 The process of creating “property” where land once existed, and establishing a large tax system for colonial extraction, characterized the stratification associated with the first phase of colonial rule.60 Fredrick Cooper suggests: A sharp division arose between “Arabs,” cultivating cloves and other tree crops in northern and western Zanzibar, and the (Swahili) Wahadimu cultivating subsistence crops supplemented by small scale cash crops in southern and eastern Zanzibar.61

On Pemba Island, indigenous Africans retained more land than Africans on Unguja. Pemba’s “indigenous population,” largely Swahili Wahadimu and Shirazi Wapemba (Pemba residents of Bantu-Shirazi origin),

Stratification

29

held onto their land because the plantations were small and the British were not interested in controlling cash crop production on Pemba, which had a smaller yield than Unguja. The Wahadimu and Wapemba controlled Pemba clove production themselves, ultimately raising tax revenue for the Omani sultan and later the British Empire, pooling family and clan resources.62 Most of Pemba’s indigenous residents retained their land and property rights, so their lack of fluency in Arabic or English played less of a role in their economic or political mobility on Pemba than their counterparts on Unguja.63 On Unguja, Arabs, and the British government, threw the Shirazi and Swahili off their ancestral lands with equal fervor. On Unguja, the British compounded Shirazi-Swahili dislocation when the government created a political system that rewarded English and Arabic speakers and relegated Bantu speakers to the bottom of Zanzibar’s linguistic pyramid.64 Swahili-speaking laborers lacked the linguistic skills, business networks, or social resources that would allow them to advance. Rather, the new plantation economy accelerated their decline. While the British officially ended slavery in 1897 and the slave/nonslave distinction disappeared under British occupation, the colonial government perpetuated a political system where linguistic ability and occupational role, a phenomenon directly influenced by the legacy of slavery and dynamics of sharecropping, determined the direction of an individual’s life.65 Furthermore, whereas slavery was over, the British co-option of the Omani squatting system in many respects was more rigid than Omani “slavery.” The Omani Sultanate in Zanzibar was not a predatory government as such, but the expansion of Omani financial interests and the inauguration of a large-scale cash crop clove economy generated the conditions that made predatory rule possible. Only an alien government interested in pursuing economic imperialism could institutionalize these dislocations and hierarchies.66 While the Omanis weakened many of Zanzibar’s various communitarian land arrangements, the British removed the communitarian land systems almost entirely. The British also removed the sharia system of law that had protected both customary African legal practices as well as economic upward mobility. The protectorate government replaced the pluralistic linguistic political economy that characterized the Swahili coast with British common law and a rigid metropole system of English and Arabic. After the turn of the century English and Arabic became Zanzibar’s core economic and bureaucratic languages. Though a majority

30

Chapter I

of Zanzibaris spoke the Swahili and Bantu dialects, the new economy drove these dialects to the periphery of Zanzibari society. The Omanis grafted Zanzibar’s plantation economy, a foreign entity, onto the existing tribal economy. The British expanded the Omani agricultural system, superimposing their political system on all other indigenous communal arrangements, and promoted commercial over subsistence interests, which in turn, institutionalized permanent class cleavage. The protectorate government then expanded the Omani jizia tax scheme, encouraging private ownership of farm land and coercing new land owners to plant cloves.67 These acts precipitated the closing of Zanzibari society. Once the British established their dominion over Zanzibar, they made the laws of the protectorate and the economic orientation of the plantation economy inextricably linked. These laws, which initially concerned land ownership, taxes, and crop revenue eventually extended to educational opportunities and finally to linguistic, political, and economic affiliation. Whereas before 1890, the majority of Zanzibaris—Bantu, Shirazi, and Swahili—grew various crops on land they held in common, after that year, they grew cloves on “property” as sharecroppers.68

SQUATTING, SHARECROPPING, AND THE POLITICS OF COLONIAL LAND USE Like the Arab waqf and the Shirazi shambas, the British ultimately coopted Zanzibar’s squatting system, an indigenous land use scheme that furthered colonial extraction. As with the waqf and the shambas, squatting preceded the arrival of the British; however, unlike these two schemes, the squatting system expanded rather than declined under phase 1 British rule. The ultimate goal of phase 1 British colonial rule was to convert freed slaves from their seasonal work as clove harvesters on small Arab owned farms to full time laborers on large plantations. Concomitantly, the British also sought to convert the Arab planter class into a landlord class.69 Zanzibar resisted both efforts to create a hierarchy of class interest. Exslaves were not interested in abandoning subsistence farming in favor of full-time work, and Arab planters were suspicious of a system that relied on such large amounts of debt.70 Nevertheless, the British colonial government was committed to such a system because it converted the in-kind

Stratification

31

barter economy to a fully monetized system in which they could dominate. When the British government made ex-slaves wage workers, they also made them taxable persons, creating revenue for the crown. When the British government monetized the clove economy they created the need for British participation in the Indian Ocean economy. As a result, Indian businessmen, and, more importantly, the Indian spice buyers, could support Arab clove export.71 When the British advanced the clove cash crop and export economy they had to substantially alter the indigenous squatting system in every way other than name. Originally “squatting” referred to a system that allowed slaves and free-persons alike to reside on their property, as long as they agreed to pick cloves at harvest. It existed contemporaneously with slavery, because there were never enough slaves to harvest Zanzibar’s ever-expanding clove industry. After the British emancipated Zanzibari slaves, squatting—living rent-free on Arab land—became a significant social phenomenon. Arabs assigned squatters a small parcel of land and allowed them to plant subsistence crops so long as they agreed to continue to harvest cloves. Thus, squatting under Arab rule allowed nonslaves and former slaves equal opportunity to live rent-free, participate in the harvest, and plant what they pleased, when they pleased. The British government believed that the squatting system under the Omanis was too vague, and, in a series of executive orders, turned the squatting system completely on its ear. In complete contravention to the spirit of the squatting system, the British pushed Arab planters to collect rent from the squatters, and argued that “squatter” labor should be paid, but made compulsory. The British government established vagrancy laws, similar to those in the Jim Crow states of the southern United States.72 The colonial administration tried to convince Arab planters to take on the difficult task of compelling nonslaves or ex-slaves to become compulsory laborers, claiming that Arab tax burdens could be shifted from the Arab planter class to the African laborers.73 The foreign and colonial offices were interested in creating a wage labor system because it allowed the protectorate government to create rents that expanded the revenue/taxrich clove industry. The British government helped Arab planters, Shirazi landlords, and the Indian business class create organizations that could advance their economic interests. These organizations furthered what Bayart calls the “reciprocal assimilation of elites.”74

32

Chapter I

In 1913 the British crown moved Zanzibar’s administration from the foreign office to the colonial office. This change in venue carried with it a change in status for the people of Zanzibar. Zanzibar became more than a holding. The British realized that Zanzibar was a possession that must be controlled and as such began a campaign to co-opt local institutions that controlled the government and economy, creating new ones to maximize British control of Zanzibar’s elite. One of Britain’s earliest creations was the Arab Association. Founded right after the 1897 emancipation of the slaves, its initial and primary objective was to ask the British government for compensation for losses sustained by the emancipation of Arab-owned slaves.75 In 1905, wealthy Indian financiers formed the Indian Merchants Organization (IMO). In 1910, just before World War I, they renamed the IMO the Indian National Association (INA). The INA pleaded the cases before the British colonial office on behalf of a variety of Indian merchants. The British wanted to control Zanzibar’s indigenous political institutions by creating new state bureaucracies and supporting “ethnic” associations, which in turn, established the most efficient revenue-generating markets that Zanzibari society could support. In sum, the colonial government created a class system that included new labor, management, and the landlord classes. England designed this new labor-class system to energize its revenue-generating machine and to introduce both the concept and function of debt-driven European governance. The colonial government believed the best way to achieve these goals was to try to influence, if not co-opt, organizations such as the Arab and Indian associations. However, British efforts to capture and assimilate Zanzibar’s elites often led to conflict.

THE RECIPROCAL ASSIMILATION OF ELITES AND THE DEBUT OF CLASS CONFLICT Bayart describes the process of reciprocal assimilation both during and after colonialism. He characterizes the “production of ethnicity” as a manifestation of colonial efforts to create classes while attributing class conflict to precolonial or preexisting “racial” strife.76 In order to fully understand the assimilation of elites during the first thirty to forty years of the British protectorate, it is necessary to identify how the British cul-

Stratification

33

tivated the elites, who the elites were, what institutions represented them, and how their reciprocal relationship worked.77 The British government implemented Zanzibar’s first-phase political “development” in six consecutive steps. Steps 1 and 2, Britain’s conversion of land to property, its transplantation of European agricultural traditions and its diminution of local chiefs, have already been discussed. During steps 3–6, Britain created the Clove Growers Association (the CGA), the ethnic associations, and the EXCO and LEGCO. In furtherance of elite assimilation and the expansion of the colonial state, the British created Indian mortgage companies, which came increasingly into conflict with Arab clove planters. As mentioned earlier, former slave traders formed the Arab Association (AA) in 1897. The AA’s initial aim was to try to convince the British to pay Arabs compensation for the loss of slave trade revenue. Eventually, the Arab Association, with the help of the British government began promoting the notion that Zanzibar was an Arab state, with a dual Arab-British mandate. The Arab Association began to argue that Arab economic interests should prevail, and more specifically, that the British government allow Arabs sole ownership of the land. While the Arab Association was among Zanzibar’s most powerful economic organizations, the Indian Association (IA) ran a close second. The IA represented Zanzibar’s prosperous financial class, and as a result the IA soon found itself in conflict with the British colonial government, the Arab planter/landlord class, and the Arab Association.78 Before the 1890s Arab plantation owners had a fairly good relationship with Indian merchants who lent them money. After the British established the protectorate Indians began forming networks and alliances to shore up their financial interests. This networking culminated in the formation of the IA. The IA represented the interests of the richest Indians, especially those who held mortgages on Arab plantations. As a result, the orientation of the IA had less to do with racial politics than with politics of creating wealth.79 When the British created the Clove Growers Association, the economic competition between the Indian and Arab Associations came to a threatening impasse.

THE CGA The institution which most embodied the dynamic of British class differentiation, debt production and rent-seeking was the Clove Growers As-

34

Chapter I

sociation. The British formed the CGA because the Indian financiers associated with the Indian Association were demanding higher and higher interest payment on Arab plantation owners. Britain’s prohibition on slave trade and its termination of income from the slave trade made it necessary for Arabs to take out bigger and bigger loans. Ever-increasing British taxation made it impossible for Arab planters to repay these Indian loans, and the Arabs asked for British intervention, which led to the formation of the CGA. Britain advanced the notion of an Arab-British dual mandate. Wealthy Arabs dominated the CGA and the protectorate government gave them special powers to inspect and evaluate the cloves of clove dealers. Indians occupied the position of clove dealer. The British government required that all clove dealers, including Indians, receive licenses from the CGA. Due to the power of Arabs in the CGA, Zanzibar’s precarious balance of economic interests temporarily shifted from Indian mortgage lenders to the Arab clove growers. By the 1920s, Arab planters were the sole representatives of the CGA. Britain’s final transferal of power occurred in 1937 when the government compelled individual Indian clove dealers to obtain licenses, and obliged them to buy cloves only from Arabs.80 Thus the British government was directly responsible for promoting the emerging and continuing conflicts between Arab planters and the Indian business class. Before the protectorate, during the era of the slave trade, Arabs took Indian loans on a competitive basis. As a result, pre-protectorate era loans usually carried low interest that Arabs would pay back whether or not they made a profit on their annual clove sales. Before the British established the CGA, Indians were not monitored by the colonial state, which made the clove trade less regulated but more competitive. These previous arrangements benefited both small Arab/Shirazi planters as well as the Indian clove merchants. Once the British ended slavery and Indians became exclusive managers of loans in the protectorate, Arab planters began to feel that they were at a distinct economic disadvantage. These conflicts emerged in the 1930s just as the global economic depression rendered luxury items such as cloves expendable. As a result of their losses sustained during the depression, Indian mortgage lenders increased the interest on loans. The British, fearing a collapse of the clove industry in Zanzibar, intervened and formed the CGA. Due to the fact that Arabs governed the CGA, an organization whose clients were often the very same Indian clove merchants who floated Arab planters loans, the impasse worsened.81

Stratification

35

The conflict between nascent elite planters and Indian bankers deepened and tension developed into an intractable class cleavage. Eventually the Indians, and the Indian Association in particular, decided to boycott Zanzibar’s clove industry. Zanzibar’s Indian Association asked India’s National Congress, then essentially a liberation movement, to stage an Indian boycott on Zanzibar’s exportation of cloves to the subcontinent. This was a serious development because India was the largest importer of Zanzibar’s cloves. Once again, the British government decided to intervene, leaving Zanzibar’s Indians at a disadvantage. Despite British assurances that the colonial government would give Indians more power in the CGA, Zanzibar’s Arabs maintained dominance and control. Meanwhile, the colonial government continued to block Indians from acquiring plantations from bankrupt Arab planters. Thus, British policy uniformly kept Indians as a landless financier class and landed Arabs as cashless landlords, always in conflict with one another. Despite this apparently intractable cleavage, Indians and Arabs shared privileges unavailable to most Zanzibaris. Most wealthy Indians and Arabs were conversant in English and Arabic. Most, if not all, sent their children to private schools making them eligible to serve as British civil servants and representatives of the British government over a large population of increasingly aggrieved African laborers. Despite Swahili and Bantu attempts to get the British to open the civil service to Africans and to working class individuals of other groups, it remained closed. When the British created the legislative committee, the LEGCO, and the executive committee, the EXCO, members of Zanzibar’s labor classes thought these political organizations, while not open with regards to membership, might at least acknowledge African political grievances. However, despite increasing tensions between wealthy Indians and land-rich Arabs in Zanzibar’s “ethnic” and political organizations, these individuals tacitly agreed with the basic premise of British rule. The colonial government must continue to exclude Swahili-speaking laborers from institutions where they might be able to advance their political and economic aspirations to the detriment of Zanzibar’s minorities.

THE LEGCO AND EXCO The rhetorical mandate of the LEGCO and EXCO were to ameliorate “racial” tensions between Zanzibar’s various communal groups. In fact,

36

Chapter I

these organizations actually promoted Wakefield’s concept of sufficient price, land accumulation, and conservative imperial class federation and as such created more tensions than they relieved. The British claimed that they created the LEGCO and EXCO to reduce the manifestations of class tension between the business-finance class (who happened to be Indians) and the landowning planter class (who happened to be Arabs). The LEGCO and EXCO promoted the reciprocal assimilation of Zanzibar’s elite, who were responsible for various aspects of Zanzibar’s plantation economy. However, because of the adversarial nature of the plantation economy and the British role in the powerful CGA, Indian lenders and Arab planters came into constant conflict, even in the legislature. Britain’s denials to the contrary, the LEGCO and the EXCO appointed representatives who advanced the interests of their economic class rather than their communal group.82 As such, the British promoted Indian clove traders/financiers, rather Indian lawyers or shopkeepers. Similarly, the British groomed Arab plantation owners and rich Shirazi planters to be representatives of their communities, rather than individuals who were outside the clove industry, or who may pose a threat to the narrow interests of the respective committees.83 Thus, the British government made the CGA an organization whose primary function was to promote the economic interests of rich Arabs and of the British colonial government. By contrast the EXCO and LEGCO were designed to unify and translate conflicting planter-lender class interests into a unified and focused economic agenda for the British crown. Whereas British governance bred tension between Indians and Arabs over cloves, which yielded cleavage between the Arabs and Africans over land and language, these conflicts were the product of a clash of economic interests, rather than racial, cultural, or religious values.84 Fredrick Cooper argues: The ties of religion, ethnicity, and clientage did not supersede the ties of class but were used to maintain the domination of the planter class. Just as the transformation of the relationship of the state to the plantation system in the years after abolition helped to shape the interests and consciousness of an upper class, so the same process slowly and incompletely helped to shape a lower-class identity.85

Stratification

37

From the beginning the Arab and Indian Associations pursued economic agendas that were in direct opposition to one another. The Indian Association committed itself to establishing Indians as the sole providers of loans, and the main means for Arabs wishing to gain access to India’s lucrative spice market. The Arab Association was, after the abolition of slavery, almost solely interested in reducing its debt to Indian moneylenders while preventing them from owning land. As mentioned earlier the British managed this potentially explosive situation.86 The British took the concept of Arab/British dual mandate of government very seriously because it furthered Britain’s economic goals. Consistent with Wakefield’s formulation of conservative imperialism, the British government established the CGA, EXCO, and LEGCO during its first phase of colonial control. As with Wakefield’s theory of sufficient price, the primary objective of the CGA, LEGCO, and EXCO was to promote the interests of the British government and those of the Arab minority ruling class. During the first phase of colonial rule, protectorate administrators cultivated class-based institutions that would govern the plantation economy and generate British revenue. The protectorate government often pursued its first-phase economic objectives by finding willing allies within the LEGCO, EXCO, and CGA. The colonial administration pitted Zanzibar’s ruling, financial, and labor classes against one another, hoping to promote British interests, then “managing” the conflict that emerged to prevent violence.

CONCLUSION The British colonial office made ex-slaves wage workers and made planters landlords, rigidifying classes and creating an impenetrable class hierarchy that in the first phase of colonial rule stratified individuals according to their debt level and access to land. During the first phase of colonial rule, the British government encouraged specific social dynamics that would continue through all four phases of colonial rule and into the early years of colonial independence. The success of a plantation economy required that the government exaggerate differences between wealthy Indian lenders and wealthy Arab borrowers, between middle-class Shirazi

38

Chapter I

and Arab farm owners, and among poor Shirazi and their poorer Swahili and Bantu counterparts. Colonial authorities cultivated these differences by creating land ownership policies unique to each group, depending on their heritage and geographical location. In a radical departure from its policies concerning most small farmers, the British government allowed Pemba Shirazi the right to retain their land and control over their cash-crop harvest. Conversely, the government refused to allow Unguja Shirazi the same access to their land or the right to control their farms. In an analogous strategy, the colonial government pressured Arabs to acquire more land from African Shirazi than they could cultivate, while refusing Indians who wanted to own clove farms the right to purchase land. These policies displaced Swahili-speaking farmers, created Arab-African cleavage, and fostered conflict between Indians and Arabs. During Britain’s second phase of colonial rule, conflicts between Indians and Africans and Africans and Arabs emerged and intensified as the government made education an instrument of class cleavage. In the second phase, the British phase 1 system of economic stratification, a program based on debt acquisition and land dispossession, was augmented by disparities in linguistic acquisition and academic opportunities. These disparities translated into differences in educational attainment and social status. Together these inequalities reduced opportunities for upward mobility, a trend that affected African Zanzibaris, individually and collectively.87 I now turn to Britain’s implementation of its phase 2 educational policies and its attempt to characterize phase 1 class differentiation as phase 2 racial conflict.88 Chapter II further analyzes how these new educational hierarchies affected Arab-African linguistic, economic, and political relations. NOTES 1. The larger of the two islands, Unguja is often called Zanzibar Island, while Pemba Island is sometimes simply called Pemba. When referring to both islands they are simply referred to as Zanzibar. 2. The connection between European feudalism and transatlantic plantations economies is discussed in Philip Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History (London: University of Cambridge Press, 1990).

Stratification

39

3. John Martin, From Feudalism to Capitalism (New York: MacMillan Press, 1983), 58–68. 4. R. H. Hilton, English and French Towns in Feudal Society: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 12. As mentioned before, European peasants were also refused ownership of industrial materials. 5. G. W. S. Barrow, Feudal Britain: The Completion of the Medieval Kingdoms, 1066–1314 (London: Edward Arnold Publishers, 1956), 43; and John Martin, From Feudalism to Capitalism, 36. 6. Martin, From Feudalism to Capitalism, 34. 7. Ibid. 8. Despite the contentious nature of the hide system, some feudal workers united and formed large-scale revolts toward the end of the fourteenth century. See R. H. Britnell, The Commercialization English Society 1000–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 224–26. 9. F. M. Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism, 1066–1166 (Oxford: The Ford Lectures, 1950), 117. 10. Regarding the relative size of communal land in Africa and Europe, see Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1982), 36. 11. In many respects the feudal system in medieval Mali was similar to the shamba system of land distribution among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Zanzibari Bantu and Shirazi populations. For a thorough discussion of Middle Eastern and North African patron-client arrangements, see Philip Khouri, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Halim Barakat, The Arab World: Society, Culture, and State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); see Middleton and Campbell, From Child to Adult: Studies in Anthropology of Education, 30–31. 12. Basil Davidson, The African Slave Trade (London: Little Brown and Co., 1980), 46 and 99. 13. The ancient north African practice of treating communities as collectively responsible for tax burdens was reinforced by a similar Ottoman tradition introduced by aristocratic rulers beginning in medieval north Africa and continuing into the nineteenth century; see Kenneth M. Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants in Lower Egypt, 1740–1858 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 35. 14. African slaves could “own” land the way other free persons in Africa “owned” land, i.e., they had exclusive use of the land and its products. Often the chief retained the deed rights and veto powers over its disposal, sale, and legal status. See B. Davidson, Africa in History (New York: Macmillan, 1969), and H. Labouret, Africa before the White Man (New York: Walker & Co., 1962). 15. Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 61.

40

Chapter I

16. When tax was collected in cash it was collected and paid by the entire village. When fluctuations in currency or acts of nature prevented the sale of crops, then taxes were often paid in kind; Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants in Lower Egypt, 29. The Ottoman timariot system was similar to the Omani “squatting” arrangement discussed earlier in this chapter. 17. Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978); Nikki Keddie, Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981); Charles Issawi, An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 18. Alan Richards and John Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), 43 19. Ali A. Mazrui, Cultural Forces in World Politics (London: James Currey, 1990), 69. 20. Abdul Sheriff and Ed Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991), 20. 21. This aspect of phase 2 colonization is reflected in Fatton’s second site and is discussed in chapter II of this book. The exception to this norm to colonial rule based on linguistic privilege is present in the German experiment in Tanganyika that will be discussed later. 22. W. P. Morrell, British Colonial Policy: In the Age of Peel and Russell (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1966), 476–77. Although all these men considered themselves liberals, pursuing liberal policies such as granting Canadians a measure of autonomy from the British government worried them. 23. Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1965), 77–79. 24. Prime Minister George Canning served as the leader of a coalition of liberal Tories and conservative Whigs. In 1807, as foreign secretary, and then in 1827, as prime minister, Canning “opened” Latin America for British commerce, supported Greece against the Turkish Empire, and the Spanish-American colonies against Spain. He condemned the French revolution, and during his tenure as prime minister withdrew Great Britain from the alliance with Austria, Prussia, and Russia, called the Congress system. His bold and acquisitive policies, though very beneficial to Britain, were often considered by many of his opponents to be opportunistic. 25. John Cannon, The Oxford Companion to British History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 417 and 720. In many respects “conservative imperialists” of the late Victorian era took their cues from this “Rule-Britannia!” Liberal-Whig prime minister.

Stratification

41

26. Bernard Semmel, The Liberal Ideal and the Demons of Empire: Theories from Adam Smith to Lenin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 111 and 169. 27. Semmel, The Liberal Ideal and the Demons of Empire, 57. 28. Morrell, British Colonial Policy, 6. 29. White is in parentheses here because, in various colonies—notably, Zanzibar—where whites could not be induced to immigrate, an indigenous aristocratic minority, such as Omani Arabs, was often cultivated to serve as a political proxy for Britain’s ruling class. 30. In 1838 a rebellion in Canada led the British government to send British Premier Lord Grey’s son-in-law, Lord John Lambton Durham, to investigate the situation and write a report. Durham was called “Radical Jack” because of his campaign for social reforms that would expand suffrage in England. Premier Grey thought that his well-known “radical” ideas would instill confidence, and that Lord Durham would be able to comprehend the Canadian perspective. Grey believed Durham possessed political finesse and as such, would make him the most effective representative of the British government. At Durham’s behest, Gibbon Wakefield accompanied him to Canada; see Cannon, The Oxford Companion to British History, 316. Unlike Durham, Wakefield thought that the Canadians were being coddled. Wakefield argued that white settlers were too demanding and rather than being indulged by England they should learn to oblige their mother country. Ultimately, Wakefield disagreed both with Durham’s recommendations, and with Premier Grey and Prime Minister Russell’s conclusion, that white settlers in Canada as well as those in New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa would have to be given more autonomy. Russell, in particular, argued that Britain’s colonial ventures should be tempered by its “imperial responsibilities” to “protect” white settlers and “civilize” black natives; see Earl Grey, The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell’s Administration (Richard Bently, publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty, 1853; reprinted in August Kelly, 1970), 79. 31. Wakefield became personally entangled in the debate over devolution, arguing that the trend toward expanding colonial self-governance was a personal attack on his economic theories. Wakefield charged P. M. Russell, Lord Grey, and Prime Minister Gladstone with neglecting the sufficient price model; Morrell, British Colonial Policy, 478. Yet, despite the fact that his approach was unpopular during the liberal regimes, Wakefield’s sufficient price model survived, and ultimately became central to land policies implemented by the conservative imperialists who succeeded Gladstone. 32. Morrell, British Colonial Policy, 473. 33. The indigenous Afro-Arab forms of feudalism will be discussed later.

42

Chapter I

34. The business interests and the Disraeli-Chamberlain vision of foreign policy toward Africa was challenged by J. A. Hobson who argued that imperialism repudiated free trade and suggested that efforts to open foreign markets distracted Europe from expanding its own continental markets. He characterized imperialism as a corrupt vestige of feudalism. Similarly, Thomas Veblen, a contemporary of Hobson, argued that imperialism only benefited Europe’s financial class at the expense of its common men; Semmel, The Liberal Ideal and the Demons of Empire, 57. Ultimately Hobson and Veblen’s work became one of the basis for Marxist, neoMarxist, and world systems critique of European colonialism. 35. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 210–12. 36. Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex, 17–25. 37. Esmond Bradley Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), 32. 38. The “Liberal” imperialism of the early Victorian era, with its tentative colonial ventures, gave way to voracious imperial expansion by the mid-1870s. Recalling the successes of Palmerston and Foreign Secretary Canning, the conservative government of the late 1870s began a set of foreign policies that ushered the era of the scramble for Africa. The scramble for Africa in the 1890s and the imperial policies that preceded it by two decades were the logical extension of conservative British imperialism. In 1874, Conservative Premier Benjamin Disraeli defeated the Liberal Gladstone government by appealing to “disenchanted Palmerstonians,” who wanted fewer reforms within Britain and more expansion overseas. 39. During the era of late Victorian imperialism the role and temperament of the colonial administrator, usually called the colonial governor, and his relationship with his direct supervisor in Britain’s colonial and foreign offices became very important in the nature of scope of a particular colonial enterprise. In the years after the rebellion of 1838, the colonial governor in Canada was able to persuade the home office that devolution of power to the settlers was in the best interest of keeping England out of war in the far north. By contrast, Sir George Napier, colonial governor in South Africa persuaded Undersecretary Hope that the expansion of British settlements and colonial law were consistent with the needs of the “natives” and they (and the Boers) would eventually submit. Though Napier was succeeded by a series of more moderate governors, the Boer War broke out fifty years later because of the unresolved territorial conflicts that preceded apartheid. 40. The conversion of land into property and the transference of Britain’s feudal traditions are the first and second of six aspects of Britain’s site 1 policies in Zanzibar described in the beginning of this chapter. 41. Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex, 48–49. 42. Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 1991.

Stratification

43

43. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Toronto: Warner Books, 1991), 35; and Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 192. 44. Between the years 1850 and 1870 the international demands for cloves increased exponentially, the European powers began their intensive interest in Africa which culminated in the Berlin conference dubbed “the scramble for Africa,” hosted, ironically, in Zanzibar. Due to Sultan Said’s tenuous military power vis-àvis East Africa’s new European actors, Said was forced to cede official control of Zanzibar to Britain. A few years later Zanzibar became a British protectorate. 45. India’s role as submetropole was due to its role as the proverbial jewel in Britain’s political empire. 46. A comprehensive treatment of the various indigenous agricultural schemes and their subsequent commercial modifications, see Robert Debussmann and Stefan Arnold’s Land Law and Land Ownership in Africa. 47. The most basic unit of Shirazi political organization, consistent with their tradition of kinship-based land use, is a “bilateral kinship group” called the ukoo. The ukoo is divided into kinship subgroups called the tumbo, or womb, and the mlango, or door. Members of the tumbo and the mlango share an “inalienable piece of land” called the kiambo. More often than not a kiambo was land that fell within the limits of a particular town. The main feature of the kiambo land system was that it was an unalienable land shared by relatives who could not sell land without the permission of others in their kinship group and never to outsiders. This feature of Shirazi land ownership made their economic and social identity quite distinct from both the Arabs and the Swahili, who increasingly became indebted or were forced to sell their land. The ukoo to whom a given kiambo belonged often lived in different, albeit neighboring, towns, which meant that visiting members of the ukoo diaspora had rights to the land as tenants. Rather than being a source of intra-Shirazi grievance, this expanded concept of land use strengthened Shirazi social bonds, as did the other economic traditions of bride-wealth and funeral expenses that held most ukoo together; Middleton and Campbell, 1965, 32–37. 48. Ancient maritime records indicate that the first millennium Indonesian cinnamon trade had its African entry point through the coastal cities of modern Somalia, Zanzibar, and Kenya. These ancient port cities then traded cinnamon and other spices among themselves. By the sixteenth century the confluence of Portuguese colonialism and Swahili rule created a two-way trade of amber, ivory as well as various spices. More than that, Zanzibar was considered the ideal stopping point/resting area for weary Europeans on their way to India; G. F. Hourani, Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950). 49. As Shirazi dynasties waned due to interclan rivalries, Swahili families emerged as natural leaders of these cites and supplanted Shirazi rule in the late fifteenth

44

Chapter I

century. The Mazrui family, one of the most prominent families, left the Shirazi political structures in place and simply acted as the chief over the Shirazi’s many local clan leaders and political deputies. When the Swahili families began to prevail over Shirazi rulers and their local Shirazi headmen, known as sheha, the Swahili organized villages and towns into political units called miji and kijiji respectively. Towns and villages were divided into smaller areas, wards, called mtaa. Swahili towns were governed by four Watu Wakuu (Great Men), but the Swahili great men retained the Shirazi sheha as their adjutants. 50. As mentioned earlier, by the early eighteenth century the Omani Yorubi dynasty had, with the encouragement of East Africa’s Shirazi and Swahili coastal rulers, displaced the Portuguese. In 1745 the Busaidi dynasty replaced the Yorubi as the effective rulers of Oman. In the 1880s the Swahili Mazrui clan was ruling Pemba through a liwali, or deputy of the family. Two Wapemeba (Shirazi) diwani or local rulers sought help from Sultan Seyyid Said bin Sultan. The sultan overthrew the Mazrui and decided to defeat and capture Mazrui held Mombasa and then relocated his court to Zanzibar; Middleton and Campbell, 3–4. 51. E. B. Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 40. Sultan Seyyid Said, who established Zanzibar as the Omani capital, died in 1856 and was succeeded by Seyyid Majid his son who ruled until 1870, and then by a younger son Sultan Seyyid Barghash bin Said, who ruled until 1888 and was responsible for expanding the sharia system and bringing more qadis to be sent into the interior of Zanzibar’s towns and villages; Middleton and Campbell, 5. Sultan Seyyid Khalifa succeeded bin Said Sultan Barghash, Barghash’s youngest brother, in 1888, but reigned only for two years until 1890. Threats from Germany and France prompted Sultans Barghash and Khalifa to accept British protection in November 1890. Between 1890 and 1911 Sultans Seyyid Ali bin Said, Seyyid Hamed bin Thwain, and Seyyid Hammoud and his son Seyyid Ali bin Hammoud ruled in rapid succession, each conceding more authority to the British colonial government. In 1911 Seyyid Khalifa bin Harrub, a great-grandson of the founder Seyyid Said bin Sultan, succeeded and ruled, with limited power and at the indulgence of the British, until 1960; R. N. Lyne, Zanzibar in Contemporary Times (London: Hurst and Blacknett, Ltd., 1905). 52. Anthony Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath (London: C. Hurst and Company, 1981), 3 and 21; and Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 117. The most obvious of these dislocations was of the Arab (and then the British) co-option of the Swahili/Shirazi Mwinyi Mkuu, traditional chiefs or lords on the main island (Unguja). This was significant occurrence in the lives of most African Zanzibaris, because the Mwinyi Mkuu were traditionally considered the sole legal and political representatives of rural peasants. The Mwinyi Mkuu dynasty was absorbed, co-opted, exiled, and ultimately died out in 1873.

Stratification

45

53. Although slavery and feudalism were parallel and largely unrelated subcultures in the Middle East, during Oman’s brief foray into cash cropping these two cultures converged. In Zanzibar this meant that as the clove industry grew throughout the late nineteenth century, Omani dependence on slave labor increased as well. After 1870 slave capture expanded and the individual slave tenure lengthened until Omani slavery no longer resembled eighteenth-century New World indenture, but instead more closely favored sixteenth-century European serfdom. Despite that, the vast majority of Zanzibar’s African population was comprised of free men and women who worked as subsistence farmers. However, Oman’s unusual economic experiment made it much easier for Britain to graft its transplanted and less benign sharecropping/plantation system onto the Omani clove industry than it would have been had Sultan Seyyid clung to more traditional Omani norms governing slave tenure and manumission. See Frederick Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980). 54. Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule. 55. Economic mobility was possible under Omani rule because education in basic Arabic was attainable in the Omani system of mandatory kindergarten through elementary Koranic schooling. Knowledge of basic Arabic was a necessary condition for work in the public sector. However, appointment to positions in the Arabic civil service was also governed by a code of patronage and a large measure of serendipity. When the British took over they made entry to civil service even more remote. They also eliminated the Omani waqf and modified the sharia judicial system. These were crucial elements in the Omani social infrastructure responsible for making the political system appear open and which helped adjudicate Arab-African land disputes. Without these accommodations the political system appeared, and was indeed closed to those without kinship or patronage ties. 56. E. B. Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 40. 57. John M. Gray, History of Zanzibar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 57. 58. Michael Lofchie, Zanzibar: Background to Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 43–51. 59. For an analysis of French acquisition of Algerian land, see John Ruedy, Land Policy in Colonial Algeria (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 13, 24–25, 87, 99–105. 60. As mentioned earlier, like Fatton’s first site, this first phase of Zanzibar’s political development, which occurred during the beginning of British protection, corresponds to the first stage of the five-stage model of social relations. See Donald M. Taylor and Fathali Moghaddam, Theories of Intergroup Relations (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Press, 1987), 157; see also the introduction of this book.

46

Chapter I

61. Frederick Cooper, Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), 58; and W. H. Ingrams, Zanzibar: Its History and Its People (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967), 29–32 and 122. The term Wahadimu refers to the largest tribe of Afro-Iranian Shirazi. They inhabit mainly the eastern cost of Unguja and in larger concentrations throughout southern Unguja. Some speak only Bantu dialects others are conversant in both Swahili and Bantu dialects. 62. Gray, History of Zanzibar, 57. 63. Language, and specifically the ability to speak Arabic, became an issue among Pembans on the eve of Zanzibar’s colonial independence, when Zanzibaris formed political alliances based on wealth and linguistic affiliation. 64. See Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 1991; E. B. Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 1978; Michael Lofchie, Zanzibar: Background to Revolution, 1965; Anthony Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath, 1981. When Britain converted land from communitarian, shamba, waqf, and Shirazi systems to private property, it issued these decrees in English and Arabic. The government subsequently published these and other laws in Arabic or English. Most Bantu-Swahili laborers could not read Arabic script or understand English and could not resist or challenge these orders. Further under British protection, Islamic sharia courts, which originally permitted that proceedings be held in the Swahili language, were replaced by a judicial system that was conducted in English or Arabic only. Furthermore, under British rule, the main source of Swahili education, the Koranic school system fell into decline. The details of this decline will be discussed in chapter II. 65. While slavery ended in 1897 by official treaty between Britain and Oman, Great Britain had two policies regarding African/Middle Eastern slavery, which made Omanis suspect of their motives. Between 1500 and 1807 Britain unconditionally encouraged slavery. However, with Britain’s early 1800 conversion to wage labor, slavery was provisionally discouraged, depending on the relationship with and relative power of Britain’s political subordinate. See Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex, 143. 66. Robert Fatton, Predatory Rule: State and Civil Society in Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992), 7 and 55–56. 67. The British tax on Zanzibari clove growers, ultimately created one of the greatest sources of revenue for the British crown anywhere in Africa, exceeded only by British holdings in Asia, and India, in particular. Beginning in the 1870s, as the British influence dominated the Omani state, and the government increased domicile and land taxes. By 1886, four years before the beginning of the official protectorate, 30 percent of British revenue came from the sale of the clove crop. By 1896, the British created a direct 25 percent tax on clove production, where

Stratification

47

none had existed before, deriving wealth at the beginning and at the terminus of clove production—leaving very little clove wealth for Zanzibar itself. While this new tax on cloves had to be paid in pounds sterling, it was largely administered by Arab civil servants who reported to the sultan and the crown—thereby putting an elite Arabic face on a monarchical English practice; Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 32, and Michael F. Lofchie, Zanzibar: Background to Revolution, 55. Sheriff and Ferguson argue that as much as 90 percent of Zanzibari state revenue was raised through taxes on clove production, workers, and small farm owners. 68. Chris Jones in Robert Debussman and Arnold, Land Law and Land Ownership in Africa, 142–44. Once converted from land, the designated property was in some instances owned by Omanis, but in many cases, it was owned by the British government, administered to Anglo-Indian holding companies, but leased to Omanis. 69. Frederick Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters, 220–32. Cooper’s analysis of this process is comprehensive. 70. Lofchie, Zanzibar: Background to Revolution, 107. Islamic banking principles eschew incurring debt and participating in interest bearing economic activity. 71. Lyne, Zanzibar in Contemporary Times, 271–72. In return for their service, the British government acknowledged the Indian community as Zanzibar’s official financial class and retained special privileges as citizens of the British Commonwealth. 72. Vagrancy laws induced squatters to pay rent and to plant cloves all year long in contravention to age old Omani norms governing crop rotation. 73. Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters, 37. In actuality the Arabs found that everyone would be taxed and despite the increase in coerced African labor and African taxation, Arab debt burden to the British crown and Indian lenders continued to increase exponentially. 74. Promoting the short term economic interests of Zanzibar’s elite (and the British government) ultimately undermined Zanzibar’s indigenous economic pluralism and replaced it with a hierarchy of class interests that came to dominate the government. 75. Lofchie, Zanzibar: Background to Revolution, 99 76. In the case of political development in Zanzibar these occurred during the colonial era, and corresponded to the first and second sites of the three-site model and phases/stages 1 and 2 of the five-phase and five-stage model. 77. The end of the slave trade and the beginning of the British Protectorate led to great economic upheaval on Unguja and Pemba. Whereas the economy was diversified, the British plantation economy and the centralization of government created class interests, even as the classes were just coming into being.

48

Chapter I

78. Omar R. Mapuri, The 1964 Revolution: Achievements and Prospects (Dar-es-Salaam: Tema Publishers), 1996. 79. The African Association formed in 1920, and the Shirazi Association formed in 1938, were established in reaction to the economic advantage enjoyed by the Arab and Indian Associations. The former organizations will be discussed in chapter II, which covers Britain’s second phase of colonial rule—the creation of sociological methods of control, the site of working-class disarticulation. 80. As opposed to Shirazi and Swahili farmers, who were more willing to accept a lower price for their cloves. 81. Very often the British colonial government benefited from promoting, then managing class conflict. 82. The LEGCO and EXCO were created by decree. They were appointed bodies. The LEGCO members included four ex-officio members, while the British nominated five official members and eight unofficial members were nominated by the sultan, including three Arabs, two “Africans” who were uniformly Shirazi and usually wealthy, two Asians (Indians), and one European. The Arab and Indian Associations were give then privilege of submitting the names for consideration to the LEGCO and EXCO positions. The EXCO members included the sultan heir apparent, four ex-officio members (the same individuals in the LEGCO), and three official members were British officers nominated by the British resident, who, with the sultan, presided as vice-president and president, respectively. From 1926 to 1955 the LEGCO and EXCO remained unchanged. Eventually, in 1955 by official decree the LEGCO was expanded to twenty-five members. In 1955 six members would be placed on a common roll to be elected by Zanzibar’s registered voters. 83. While there were wealthy Arab businessmen working in other industries, as well poorer Shirazi shamba (clove farm) owners, these on the whole were denied access to either the LECGO or EXCO. 84. There were cleavages among Africans, between African mainlanders and the older pre-nineteenth-century residents, cleavages between town and rural dwellers, and most importantly between small African planters who hired African peasant or migrant labor and those migrant/peasants themselves. Curiously, the British did not exploit these cleavages very successfully, and by the 1940s the non-Shirazi African labor class began developing a fairly well integrated ideology of African labor unity. 85. Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters, 170. 86. Despite Britain’s best efforts, Indian boycotts of the CGA and Arab counter boycotts of Indian clove traders led to conflict in 1938, when Arab militia formed and began threatening violence (ironically) against Indian shopkeepers. Ultimately the Arabs tried to end the Indian boycott by appealing to Muslim

Stratification

49

Indians and to the rich clove exporters of the Indian National Association (who viewed themselves as separate from the less wealthy rural Indian shopkeepers). Ultimately the Indian National Congress became involved and threatened to enact an Indian embargo against Zanzibari cloves. Finally the colonial government of India and the Indian office in London sent India’s British resident, J. Hawthorn Hall, to Zanzibar to resolve the dispute. A treaty named the “Heads of Agreement” created a charter or rules of business conduct that governed Zanzibar’s Indian clove exporters and the Arab CGA. The charter required Indians to buy cloves from the CGA, at a base price, but stipulated that the CGA would no longer exercise authority over the export of cloves. The British hoped with this agreement to manage Arab indebtedness so that it never threatened Arab ownership of land; Lofchie, Zanzibar: Background to Revolution, 123–26. 87. In the five-stage model conflict that arises from not letting the disadvantaged group advance. However, this conflict is diffused if “talented” but disadvantaged individuals are allowed to “pass “ into the privileged group. Chapter II discusses how the British government frustrated stage/phase 3 linguistic “passing.” The protectorate’s exclusive educational system prevented the majority of Zanzibaris from learning either Arabic or English and prevented them from passing into the privileged classes. 88. This technique of representing class conflict as racial conflict is consistent with Fatton’s discussion of class disarticulation.

II Disarticulation

A s suggested in the first chapter, and as with most empires, the British rule focused on extracting wealth from its new trade routes and on expanding its territory. Europe’s tentative exploration of new worlds during the Elizabethan age gave way to its enthusiastic trade of slaves and to imperial expansion of British Victorians. In the Zanzibari protectorate the British government expanded Omani organizations as a means of furthering British colonial authority. The colonial government eliminated institutions that might challenge the rapid economic expansion that characterized the Victorian era. This chapter examines how a range of British philosophies beginning in the late 1700s, and continuing throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras, influenced Britain’s colonization of Zanzibar. Britain’s phase 1 policies established a plantation economy. These policies inspired British second-phase policies that sought to create a plantation culture. During the second phase of colonial rule, the composition, nature, and interests of liberal and conservative imperialism became more subtle and complex. As the membership of Britain’s political camps changed, the nature of debates concerning the most effective means of colonizing Africa expanded. The first camp, formerly the liberal camp, became the “three Cs” (Christianity, commerce, and civilization) camp, and ultimately evolved into the indirect rule/dual mandate camp.1 The other school belonged to conservative imperialists. In the late nineteenth century the writings and observations of industrialists residing in the British colonies—most notably, Cecil Rhodes—dominated “conservative imperialism.” Conservative 51

52

Chapter II

imperialists associated with scholars in the field of social Darwinism and strategized with politicians who advocated “new imperialism.”2 In the twentieth century, conservative imperialists changed their name to the “new imperialists.” New imperialists argued that Africa’s best, most resourceful, and fertile land was “white man’s country.”3 Beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing into the midtwentieth century, the dual mandate camp became engrossed in three important debates with the new imperialist camp. These debates greatly influenced Britain’s second phase of colonial rule in Zanzibar. The first debate concerned divergent Victorian ideas regarding the respective educability of Europe’s working-class whites and Africans of all backgrounds. The second debate pertained to the duties or responsibilities of Europe’s imperial powers toward those they colonized. The latter debate focused on the role white and non-white foreign settlers should play in determining the nature of colonial government in Africa.4 Ultimately, the powerful mercantile interests of the new imperialists camp prevailed. This was especially true during the second and third phases of colonial rule, when new imperialism dominated social discourse and overwhelmed the dual mandate sensibilities, championing universal education. In that vein, Zanzibar’s phase 2 colonial government expanded its phase 1 program and increased the plantation workforce. It promoted the reciprocal assimilation of the financial and planter elite beyond the narrow confines of adult economic organization into the protectorate’s official program of primary education. Following an examination of the origins and history of British educational philosophy, this chapter will discuss how a variety of colonial ideologies and a small group of political actors defined second-phase educational policy in Zanzibar.5 The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate that after Britain created a rigidly stratified economic system during the first phase of rule, it exacerbated economic cleavage by creating a stratified educational system during the second phase of colonial governance. During the second phase, the colonial administration issued various policy statements and published documents that suggested that British rule afforded Zanzibar a greater degree of working-class social advancement than it had enjoyed under Omani rule. The colonial government suggested that under British governance class cleavage did not exist, and, further, that political conflict in the Zanzibar protectorate was the result of an-

Disarticulation

53

cient racial divisions.6 Thus, British phase 2 social policy, like its phase 1 economic policy, promoted what Robert Fatton calls working-class disarticulation.7 Meanwhile, Zanzibar’s plantation economy and Britain’s phase 1 economic institutions continued to severely limit individual or group mobility throughout the second phase of colonial rule. In an effort to diffuse blame and evade social responsibility for communal tensions in Zanzibar, the colonial government promoted the idea that group conflict was the result not of the extractive and competitive nature of the plantation economy, but rather of Zanzibar’s intrinsic racial heterogeneity. The campaign to promote economic and political disarticulation and call it racial strife is described by Francois Bayart as the shadow theater of ethnicity.8 In Zanzibar, British educational orthodoxy, developed by the protectorate government in the nineteenth century and implemented in the second phase of colonial rule, argued that popular education should promote only the agricultural realities of life in Africa. As such, individuals and groups should advance gradually. According to the political orthodoxy of the day, this incremental progress should be measured by the level of tribute given to the British government in the form of taxes raised or services rendered to the colonial administration. Consistent with the nominal educational opportunities afforded the average white resident of the British Isles, Britain’s colonial program for African “civilization” was similarly modest.9

THE EMERGENCE OF BRITAIN’S SCHOOL SYSTEM The emergence of universal education in Britain was mainly the outgrowth of pressure by interest groups that came largely from religious communities. For the “Non-Conformists,” and the “evangelical wing” of the Anglican Church, the explicit goal of expanding British education was to encourage students to read the Bible and commit to a Christian life. In addition, or perhaps in reaction to the efforts of religious organizations, a very small group of individuals, not affiliated with religious institutions, promoted African literacy. Many of these worked alone, or in small institutions that advanced secular instruction.10 Members of the Victorian intelligentsia were also members of the landed and mercantile classes. They were, therefore, not especially enthusiastic

54

Chapter II

about popular education. Similarly, social theories of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century suggested that education was wasted on the poor and laboring classes. More specifically, the Romantic movement disparaged formal education and crowded urban living. It celebrated the country life as solitary but suffused with opportunities for personal meditation and growth. In reality, the vast majority of poor eighteenth-century farmer-tenants lacked the time for personal reflection or the means for formal education.11 By the early nineteenth century the urban businesses of the industrial revolution were recruiting a vast number of rural workers for British cities. As whole farming communities moved to British cities, early nineteenthcentury Utilitarians argued that urban schools should tailor education to the economic class of the student and his/her likely profession. Schools reserved the most advanced curriculum for a small group of students, those who could improve their talents and connections by such an education, and who in turn could advance British interests to the furthest extent. The Utilitarians often juxtaposed the poor and other, Global South “lower orders” with wealthy Global North “industrious classes.” Utilitarians were neither entirely convinced of vertical social mobility, nor fully committed to the democratizing realities of popular education.12 At the same time that ideologues began acknowledging Utilitarianism as an important field of economic analysis, the study of race emerged as a popular facet of social Darwinism. Though initially inspired by Charles Darwin’s scientific concept of evolutionary (natural) selection, social Darwinism developed into a study of racial differentiation and political preferences. One of the most troubling aspects of social Darwinism was its celebration of caste and class hierarchies, and its repudiation of social programs that aided “the weak,” or the poor. Ultimately the Romantics, the Utilitarians, and the social Darwinists advanced a type of idealized social order where the poor remained quiet, restrained, and thoroughly dominated by the “skilled” classes.13 Thus, eighteenth-century philosophies about the “natural order of things” were not much different from the ideologies that energized the caste system of Europe’s feudal era.14 From the medieval era well into the industrial era, the British government classified European laborers according to the skills they acquired by birthright. Government classified households into economic units, and it assigned children value based on their “economic contribution” to that

Disarticulation

55

household.15 When children were young they kept busy completing their household chores and animal husbandry. As they got older, children worked either in the “open field system” where they planted crops all year long, or toiled in the newly expanding industrial economy. Thus, for most European children, education was considered a luxury.16 To that end, many Victorian scholars argued that with the exception of Britain’s “new elite” mercantile classes, the majority of Britain’s working classes were innately incapable of mastering the sciences, abstract thinking, literature, or advanced math.17 In colonial Africa, a desire to expand Europe’s industrial revolution and create a parallel workforce led to similarly pseudo-scientific arguments regarding the costs and benefits of educating Africans.18 Britain’s earliest concept of life in Africa was parceled together from ancient narratives of early Greek explorers and the contemporary and formal accounts of Portuguese colonials, as well as the anecdotes of British mercenaries who sailed along the west coast of Africa.19 Like most good yarns, the more fantastic the story, the more it bore repetition.20 As a result, the accounts about life in Africa that got the most attention were those exaggerated, sometimes fabricated, tales that simultaneously captivated and distressed their audiences.21 Many narratives portrayed even the most mundane local customs as wildly exotic and potentially threatening.22 Furthermore, the attitudes and beliefs of the most fantastic aspects of one region were used to imagine life in regions as yet unknown to Europeans.23 As England’s common people were first hearing about life in Africa, the reign of Queen Elizabeth and the scope of her empire surpassed the Portuguese system, meeting Spain’s vast naval power. By the late nineteenth century, British slaving missions in Africa gave way to early and tentative colonial settlement.24 In the mid- to late Victorian era the appeals of private business interests and the official policy of the British government began reflecting a desire to colonize Africa. These early imperialists agreed that the crown should implement colonization, but differed on the scope and nature of the enterprise. The political tensions that characterized domestic social policy during the mid-Victorian era became even more pronounced when the British foreign office began formulating social policy in the colonies. During the first phase of colonial rule the tension between “liberal” and “conservative” imperialists affected whether and how often the crown

56

Chapter II

should acquire colonies and how the British government should implement land and taxation policies. In the second phase, influenced by the highly personal philosophies of colonial authorities and African reaction to the colonial experience, British policy grew subtler. Two major points of contention between the rival philosophies of conservative and liberal imperialism remained. More specifically, these differences arose from the crown’s formulation of colonial educational policy, as well as the type of political participation best suited for Africa’s indigenous populations.25 Conservative direct rule imperialists, like many liberal indirect rule imperialists, advanced the notion that the best of African land and wealth was entirely available for colonial consumption.26 Insofar as conservative imperialists believed they owed Africa’s indigenous people anything, they were inclined neither to help nor to hinder indigenous institutions, largely ignoring Islamic schools, known as medressas. Similarly, while conservatives often gave tacit support to missionaries striving to create a sympathetic local elite, they did not meddle in the content of missionary syllabi.27 In contrast to the conservative philosophies of Britain’s “new imperialists,” liberals promoted the ideal of reciprocity enshrined in the rhetoric of dual mandate. As such, many liberals endorsed mass, albeit vocational, education of African children. British liberals believed their government had a role, however small, in helping Africans fund and expand their educational opportunities, and as such they supported secular as well as missionary efforts.28 Conservatives and liberals agreed that while a system of primary education could be conducted in a region’s dominant vernacular, schools should use English for secondary and advanced levels of instruction.29 As in the first phase of economic rule there were second-phase philosophical tensions among British politicians regarding the direction of colonial policy and the nature of social control. Some of these tensions came from differences in the economic or political background of rival appointees, as well as the social class of individuals responsible for British colonial policy.30 Most of the tensions between the political factions in Britain’s colonial office were due to differences in party politics and worldview.31 These conflicts concerned how Africa should be colonized—whether the government should encourage education and the degree to which African culture, divergent and therefore “inferior” to European culture, could be modified to better suit British interests.

Disarticulation

57

In Zanzibar, Britain’s phase 2 policies concerning foreign settlement, governance, and socialization were formulated, privately, to maximize British economic interest first and elite Arab advantage second. These same policies were publicly promoted as a means of “improving” Africa’s indigenous Bantu population.32 Educational policies, the dominant aspect of phase 2 “socialization,” were promoted as Western “enlightenment.” Britain’s colonial government hoped its phase 2 educational policies could perpetuate its phase 1 economic policies, promoting class stratification while denying that class interests exist.

PRIMARY EDUCATION IN EUROPE AND AFRICA DURING THE VICTORIAN ERA The history of British educational policy in Africa can be derived from general theories about popular education within the British Isles, and the specific cultural and economic relationship Britain developed with Africa. During the Elizabethan and Stuart eras, European—specifically British— explorers began writing commentaries on the cultural differences between Africans and Europeans. The authors of various fantastic accounts of African excesses published their narratives, which made Africa a place deserving more exploration. Britain’s nineteenth-century religious revival and the growth of its colonial shipping enterprises converged, making African markets and its religious conversion an attractive venture. Britain’s commercial interests used that timely confluence of events to petition both the crown and the colonial office for military and political support. They argued that Britain’s colonization of Africa was obligatory if the continent was to become a “civilized” trading partner. The European tendency to think in terms of white superiority and black inferiority, juxtaposing international commerce and “white” civilization on the one hand with subsistence farming and Negroid “barbarism” on the other, emerged in antiquity and was called “the Great Chain of Being.” The Great Chain of Being, a philosophy of the first millennium, enjoyed renewed popularity in the eighteenth century with the emergence of Europe’s study of the human anatomy. By the early 1900s, physiognomy, phrenology, and craniology were the leading fields of intellectual inquiry.33 These studies, often funded by the wealthiest and most highly

58

Chapter II

regarded individuals in Europe, defined the parameters of social debate in the Victorian era, sustaining notions of African intellectual inferiority well into the twentieth century.34 Craniology and physiognomy, theories that were popular in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe, and the true forebears of social Darwinism, became modern representations of the Great Chain of Being, a concept that originated in the ancient empires of Greece and Rome.35 Ward and Lott describe great chain social categorization: Simply stated, the idea of the Chain is that all inanimate matter, living beings, and supernatural powers are arranged in a hierarchy with the basest of matter at the bottom and God on top. Man is placed in the middle of this graded hierarchy, between the brutes on the one side and the angels on the other.36

The tendency to categorize peoples according to their geographical location or by their so-called innate qualities was an idea central to literature that defended colonialism. Regarding the educational system in British colonies, the colonial office argued that the particular “disposition and temperament” of each of Africa’s various communal groups must be understood “before a suitable education could be provided.”37 According to Paul Reinsch: It may nevertheless be said that there are four great classes of populations with whom we have to deal; namely, [1] savage races, [2] those populations whose social cohesion has been impaired or destroyed, [3] the Mohammedan races and [4] other races of higher civilization.38

In Zanzibar, British policy as late as the twentieth century suggested that they considered the Bantu “savage,” and the Shirazi and Swahili “impaired” communities.39 The Arabs, due to their status of former rulers were a Muslim “race” shown deference but granted influence with grave reservation.40 The British government reserved its highest honor, commonwealth membership, for Zanzibari Indians. Further the British gave many Indian families grants to inaugurate their mortgage companies.41 British citizenship and financial support implied that the crown considered Indians “a higher civilization,” one approximating European culture, and therefore the only group that was worthy of trust.42

Disarticulation

59

It is evident that the African is intellectually, morally and personality-wise inferior to the European. Zanzibar Africans, just like a pendulum clock, need constant reminding and reprimands. They are like children who have been taught Arab manners. I think it is true that most of these Africans were born thieves and hypocrites.43

Chosen by the Royal Geographical Society to lead the greatest Victorian expedition to East Africa, Sir Richard Francis Burton landed in Zanzibar in December 1856 and immediately published his thoughts on its Swahili population.44 Burton castigated the Swahili: From the Arab they derived shrewd thinking and practice in concealing thought; they will welcome a man with the determination to murder him; they have unusual confidence, self-esteem and complacency; fondness for praise, honours and distinctions, keenness, together with short-sightedness in matters of business and a nameless horror of responsibility and regular occupation. . . . their African languor upon doctrinal points prevents their becoming fanatics or proselytizers. African, also, is their eternal restless suspicion, the wisdom of serf and slave compensating for their sluggish imagination and small powers of concentration. They excel in negro duplicity . . . honesty and candour are ignored even by name. When they assert, they probably lie, when they swear, they certainly lie.45

Thus, even before Zanzibar became a protectorate, the British government received reports suggesting that the Swahili, Zanzibar’s majority population, were essentially lazy, morally bankrupt, and uncivilized.46 Having both a familiarity and high opinion of Arab and Indian culture, many colonial administrators believed that the Arabs and Indians might become the guardians and potential leaders of their incompetent African countrymen.47 The staff of Britain’s Committee on Education perpetuated Burton’s view of the Swahili: If properly educated, the Arab can be trusted with positions of authority. He can effectively be employed in the police force on account of the respect he enjoys from the African. The African can subsequently be enabled to participate in political and economic matters alongside the Arabs and Indians of the Protectorate only if he is painstakingly educated.48

60

Chapter II

In Zanzibar, the Arab community was accustomed to raising funds for the “proper” education of its children well before the advent of British protection. By contrast, neither the sultan’s administration nor the British colonial government were concerned with the “painstaking” education of Africans. Both Britain’s new imperialists and the dual mandate devotees wanted to establish educational programs in Africa on the cheap. As such, the government limited access to vocational and primary schooling, excluding most Zanzibaris—African, Arab, and Indian alike. The policy of the Phelps-Stoke Fund argued that a common vernacular should be used in primary education, and that schools should introduce European languages at the secondary and higher levels, where, no doubt, the higher “classes” would gravitate.49 A variety of colonialists stationed throughout British colonies testified about their own experiences with establishing profitable plantations. Many argued that if lower classes, especially labor, were given too much education they would lose the discipline required to work.50 In the late 1600s the European drive to organize its local economies, coupled with the desire to understand human reasoning, led to the popular should-not argument that cognitive deficiencies among the working class could not, therefore, be remedied by education. Various scholars thought that especially true when external conditions, ranging from bad weather to agricultural scarcity, “discouraged rational thought.”51 The most prominent advocate of the “external intelligence” theory was seventeenth-century philosopher John Milton. Milton believed intelligence was influenced largely by environmental factors. He argued that hot weather and innate intelligence were inversely proportional.52 Milton appealed to his audience by awakening their feelings of national pride: Lords and commons of England: consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof the governors—a nation not slow and dull, but of quick, ingenious and piercing spirit; acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest human capacity can soar to. . . . Those natural endowments [are] haply no the worst for two-and-fifty degrees north latitude.53

Like Milton, other scholars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries tried to explain variations in human intelligence by relying on

Disarticulation

61

clues that they observed in plain sight. William Petty, one of the founders of Britain’s Royal College of Physicians, promoted physiognomy—the study of the physical attributes of mammals. According to Petty, internal disparities in analytical ability between groups and individuals manifested themselves in their external physical attributes. In the late eighteenth century, Petty inferred that Africans’ physical dissimilarity with Europeans meant that blacks were less intelligent than whites. Utilizing the idiosyncratic grammar and irregular spelling that characterized eighteenth-century European literature, Petty described African physiology to readers, who, in most cases, had never seen Africans: I say that the Europeans do not onely differ from aforementioned Africans in collour . . . but also in their haire . . . [and] in the shape of their noses, lipps, and cheek bones. . . . [Africans] differe also in the nautrall manners and in the interall qualities of their minds.54

Petty suggested Africans seemed physiologically closer to apes.55 A few years later Charles Darwin developed his taxonomy of human evolution. Darwin asserted Europe’s connection with evolutionary development in Africa, and more specifically Europe’s connection with African apes. Almost immediately, scholars challenged Darwin’s theories and promoted those that reflected Petty’s sensibilities. Ultimately, several European intellectuals adapted Darwin’s explanations of evolution. They altered parts of the model that supported pseudo-scientific race theories, including an eighteenth-century version of the Great Chain of Being. Proponents of a new great chain “grad[ed] humanity itself, thereby placing the black and not the European in the slot next to apes.”56 Taken together, the ideologies of the Victorian era created a sense of European intellectual superiority and cultural entitlement. Many of these pseudo-scientific race theories supported a variety of assertions, especially claims of African inferiority, the benign nature of the slave trade, and, later, the need for European trade and imperialism to “civilize” the “dark continent.” However, while Britain’s imperial ventures generally adopted a tone of racial superiority, colonial policy in Zanzibar was a function, first and foremost, of Britain’s commercial class interests. In fact, British colonial policy regarding education in East Africa was similar to the social agenda Britain’s financial elite created for its own working classes. While

62

Chapter II

European, and especially British, writers were making hasty and dubious speculations about African intellectual ability, they were developing very similar theories regarding education of European labor. Between the years 1830 and 1850 British Anglicans, the Protestant Non-Conformists, and the Voluntary-Secular educational communities were insisting on strictly vocational curricula for all but a few of their “gifted” working class pupils.57 In the 1830s the Anglican curriculum was largely based on the presumption that most working-class children would not go to school. In their official policy papers, the Anglican educational authorities suggested that by four years old children were ready to assist in domestic chores, while children of five years could work in the fields. Those few working-class students who attended school were given minimal lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic. During the rest of the three to four years students spent in school, daily lessons focused on ways to improve farming skills or moral reasoning.58 Non-Conformist daily schools, mostly located in urban centers, offered courses in the newly established industries of the 1850s. The curriculum focused on brick-laying, carpentry, metal “smithing,” and glass cutting, which were especially lucrative careers for working-class laborers.59 Like Non-Conformists, Voluntary-Secular schools located mostly in urban communities, also emphasized industrial labor in the elementary and secondary school curricula. Most Anglican schools continued to serve students in rural areas, and as such, favored teaching innovations in agriculture rather than industry.60 Non-Conformist, Anglican, and Voluntary-Secular schools competed for limited funds allocated by the British government for expenditure on primary education.61 In the late nineteenth century, Britain’s trade unions, especially the Trade Union Congress (TUC), along with the Socialists and Fabian Societies led a campaign to expand primary education in Britain. Business interests who believed that such reforms would drain Britain’s thriving labor force resisted the efforts of labor organizations to expand educational opportunity.62 Fabian and TUC efforts to democratize working-class education were met with even more resistance when they discussed African educational opportunities. Many influential colonialists, like their wealthy commercial counterparts in Europe, suggested that African matriculation through elementary was more than sufficient. The Fabians disagreed and continued to press for more and better educational opportunities through-

Disarticulation

63

out the colonies. W. E. F. Ward, high-ranking member of the Fabian party and deputy education adviser in the colonial office during the years 1945–1956, argued that the colonial government had a responsibility to promote education in the colonies. Ward argued that: Politically, education must serve the agreed policy of preparing the peoples of the colonies for self-government. . . . Education, therefore, has to be developed as a balanced system. It must include primary, secondary and higher education of all types . . . it must include adult education and community development.63

Noting India and Pakistan’s postindependence use of Hindi and Urdu, Ward also stressed the importance of helping former African colonies replace English with a local lingua franca.64 Ward’s position, and the general norms of British Fabians, was more consistent with German linguistic policy than with the indirect rule mandate of Britain’s colonial office. The German policy of direct rule, and its belief in using a lingua franca, such as Swahili, to create a successful educational policy in East Africa, was due to Germany’s successful experimentation within its own borders. In addition to a vast and successful educational bureaucracy, Germany also created several academies for the study of policy relating to language, education, and political philosophy. One such organization was the Colonial Institute in Hamburg. In 1911 the German government asked the institute to send a survey to all schools in German colonial Africa. Martin Schlunk, a noted German Africanist, compiled the statistics and interpreted the results, describing both the objectives of German policy and the realities of politics in the colonies. He published his findings in The School System in the German Colonies.65 Schlunk made two observations that were critical in the development of Germany’s unique position with regard to language policy in Africa. Schlunk initially proposed two conflicting positions. He suggested, on the one hand, that for “political reasons its was expedient to try to replace the language in the colonies” with German.66 On the other hand, Schlunk recommended that “for pedagogical reasons it seemed wise not to teach a foreign language in the colonies.” Ultimately, Schlunk argued that the short-term political expediency of teaching German did not guarantee long-term political success and that forcing African students to learn German in elementary and middle school would eventually lead to native resentment toward colonial rule. He advised that “it is possible to give the

64

Chapter II

natives a feeling of patriotism toward the fatherland without the teaching of the German language.”67 Schlunk suggested that: The teaching of German is at best only of doubtful value for the majority of the native pupils. Only a small minority of them will have any use for that language after leaving school. Every educational program, in order to be useful, has to be given in the native language.68

When the League of Nations made Tanganyika a mandate and transferred political authority from German to British control, the new colonial government used its prerogative to establish indirect rule, where direct rule had once prevailed. Like Britain’s other colonial rulers, the educational philosophy of Tanganyika’s first governor, Governor Donald Cameron, protégé of Lord Lugard, betrayed a preference for indirect rule. Sir Donald Cameron established English as the language of the colonial government and made instruction in English available primarily to a small number of Tanganyika’s elite.69 In Zanzibar, the British promoted indirect rule that encouraged the elite to use English and Arabic as the primary languages of commerce and governance. Indirect rule also convinced elite Indians and Arabs to respectively consider themselves citizens of the British Commonwealth and subjects of the sultan, rather than Zanzibari nationals. In Tanganyika, as elsewhere, the British government established indirect rule in order to to discourage African nationalism, promote elite rule, and foster British economic and political ascendancy.70 Ironically, most if not all of the elite sons of Tanganyika’s African chiefs, educated at Britain’s new English-language high schools, became the loudest critics of indirect rule. One such son, Julius Nyerere, cultivated a friendship with British Fabians, and, along with other similarly situated elites, led a successful mass movement against colonial rule.71 As was the case in Tanganyika, Fabians generally argued that Africans in other countries needed to learn their own languages and deserved to rule their own nations. In contrast to the Fabian worldview, several champions of indirect rule, as well a larger number of European export tycoons, argued that African intellectual inferiority would prohibit even the best efforts to democratize colonial education. Speaking in 1954 at the annual meeting of Rhodesia’s Missionary Conference, Godfrey Huggins, protégé of Cecil Rhodes and mentor of Ian Smith, invoked ideas associated with the Great Chain of Being when he discussed the future of educational

Disarticulation

65

policy in Africa. Huggins took issue with Ward and other Fabians and suggested that promoting African education, beyond the primary level, was an exercise in futility. He promoted the functional education of Africans.72 In 1954 Huggins declared: We have the sad spectacle of many of our so-called educated Africans wasting their energies on some completely unattainable objective such as self-government. The African with one foot in his primitive culture presents two problems for the government. [The first is], how to deal with the immediate situation caused by the mis-guided so-called African intellectuals. The second is how to develop the African so that the educated ones do not waste their time on sterile and futile nationalistic agitation. The best that we can do is to formulate a policy to assist the African with one foot in his primitive culture to emulate the white man. Our task as a government is to reverse the claimed consciousness which is believed to have come about as a result of the war and guide the African mind toward a proper end.73

A century before the Ward-Huggins debate of the late 1950s, disputes regarding British educational policy served as the harbinger of a growing contest between Africa’s Fabian and imperial interests.74 By the late nineteenth century, the British government endorsed education for working-class children that would enhance their practical mastery of manual labor.75 These educational theories, revised, expanded, and exported to Africa, made it seem necessary for the British government to establish programs that would introduce the African elite to European social, political, and economic norms that would “civilize” them.76 During the industrial and Victorian eras, Britain’s colonization of Africa was referred to as the “three Cs”—Christianity, commerce, and civilization. As mentioned in chapter I, Britain’s Stuart era “discovery” of Africa was closely followed by its industrial era slave trade. Britain’s seventeenth- and eighteenth-century explorers, betraying their obvious cultural bias, suggested that Africa needed Europe to domesticate its populations through trade and commerce. Using this rationale, British slave traders maintained that as Africans lacked civilization, transporting slaves to a better life was not theft or murder, but charity. During slavery’s waning years, David Livingstone returned to British readers’ late medieval thinking, suggesting that Europeans could leave Africans in Africa, but transfer the benefits of white culture—namely, Christianity and commerce—by colonizing Africa.77

66

Chapter II

Later, in 1856, when John Hanning Speke arrived in Zanzibar with fellow traveler Sir Richard Francis Burton, he suggested that British rule could also transfer civilization, in addition to Christianity and commerce.78 Initially, the primary goal of the Speke-Burton mission was to determine if British enterprise and settlement might be possible in East Africa. Speke and Burton toured the entire region, including Lake Tanganyika, Uganda, Lake Victoria, and the powerful kingdom of Buganda. Despite the sophistication of their government and the wealth of the various East African communities, Speke wrote of the need for white settlement to establish “Christianity, commerce and civilization.” Speke’s voyage and writings were largely responsible for European knowledge of the interior of East Africa and later contributed to British imperial zeal leading to the “scramble for Africa.”79 The three Cs concept, like the writings of other European explorers, justified Britain’s international imperial campaign. Ultimately, the philosophy that energized Speke’s three Cs was incorporated into, and replaced by, a concept called “the white man’s burden.” The notion that the Global South needed improving, and that it was the white man’s burden to take up this three Cs challenge, came from a poem of the same name. British explorer/scholar Rudyard Kipling wrote “The White Man’s Burden” on the eve of the twentieth century.80 Kipling exhorted his American readers to assume duties that came with white privilege, urging them to “send forth the best ye breed . . . to wait in heavy harness on . . . sullen peoples, half-devil, and half-child.” For several decades the ideology of the white man’s burden enjoyed broad application in the fields of politics and diplomacy. Late Victorian and early Edwardian imperialists often evoked Kipling’s appellation because it made imperialism seem like a reciprocal enterprise—one that benefited the colonized as much as the imperialist. By the first few decades of the twentieth century, the concept of “white man’s burden” fell into disuse.81 The international political community began to debate and censure European imperialism, and especially Britain’s colonial enterprises. Rather than altering their imperialistic ventures, Europe’s great powers developed new nomenclature for their activities. Among the British, white man’s burden was succeeded by the somewhat more moderate and far more elegant expression developed by Lord Lugard. Lord Lugard transformed Speke’s three Cs and Kipling’s burden into the formal policies of dual mandate and indirect rule.

Disarticulation

67

Britain formally promulgated “dual mandate” and “indirect rule” as policies in 1888 when Lord Frederick Delatry Lugard arrived in East Africa, fresh from serving in the Indian army. Lord Lugard’s assignment in Africa was to establish British authority in Nigeria, Nyasaland, and Uganda. Serving as British advisor on international commission concerning Africa, Lord Lugard implemented his ideas between 1900 and the 1920s.82 He published his experiences with, and ideas about, dual mandate in 1922. He argued that Britain ruled Africa primarily for England’s own “enlightened selfinterest,” and, to a far lesser degree, “for the advancement of the African people.”83 The British often called their concept of “indirect rule” their system of “native administration,” which was also developed by Lord Lugard and discussed in Dual Mandate in Tropical Africa.84 Like the dual mandate, British scholars initially formulated the ideologies of Romanticism, Utilitarianism, and social Darwinism for domestic European consumption. These early philosophies evolved into the basis for imperialist design during the Edwardian era and the period of World War I. The concepts of the three Cs, white man’s burden, and indirect rule/dual mandate, developed for the express purpose of pursuing imperialism, ultimately converged with Romanticism, Utilitarianism, and social Darwinism and spread beyond the borders of Europe.85 As these ideas converged they came to govern the field of economic and, especially, educational policy, in Britain’s foreign, colonial, and field offices.86 In most instances, the power of social Darwinism was all-consuming. It overwhelmed well-intentioned, if limited, efforts of progressive politicians to reduce colonialism’s economic displacement and cultural domination.87 Like most empires, the British imperial system functioned imperfectly, burdened by many cross-purposes and philosophical tensions. The first controversy of Victorian colonialism concerned the educability of Britain’s working-class whites and most, if not all, Africans. The second debate concerned Britain’s civic or cultural responsibility in Africa. A third tension emerged when a conflict arose between those British elements who believed that “dual mandate” governance in Africa demanded a vast European settler presence and those who believed “dual mandate” could be accomplished with fewer white settlers and more “indirect rule.”88 This settler debate reflected aspects of both the education and three Cs debates. It became central to the core debate in Britain’s ongoing discussion of policies formulated throughout the

68

Chapter II

twentieth century, well into, and even beyond Africa’s colonial independence. Although the British coined the three Cs and dual mandate rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, these notions had much older roots and were therefore harder to eradicate. The Europeans who visited Africa between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries made the three Cs/dual mandate agenda possible. Many of these early imperialists held important political positions in British or other European royal courts. In the late eighteenth century, C. B. Wadstrom, a Swedish political official, went on a fact-finding mission to Africa to find out whether “Africans could be convinced to grow cash crops” and to determine “above all how far [Africa was] capable of improvement and of colonization.”89 An early proponent of what would later be called liberal imperialism, Wadstrom promoted his version of idealized colonial rule, including references to ideas that the British government later called “enlightened self-interest,” indirect rule, and dual mandate. Wadstrom believed that Europe’s relationship with Africa could be both extractive and friendly.90 More than friendship, Wadstrom argued that the European relationship with Africans could lead to the latter’s advancement. Wadstrom believed that: Friendship to the Africans is not incompatible with friendship to the Europeans, and to all mankind. The author has ever thought that the most likely ways to promote the civilization of mankind would be to lead their activity into the cultivation of their country, as the best exercise for their affections and to diffuse among them a spirit of liberal commerce, to exercise their understanding. . . . The day, I hope, is not far distant when Africa will enrich Europe with the most lucrative commerce.91

The sentiment expressed by C. B. Wadstrom, an officer in the eighteenthcentury Swedish court and consultant to the British Privy Council, was echoed in the statement by Lord Lugard regarding Britain’s twentiethcentury dual mandate in Africa. Beseeching his audience, Lugard suggested that: We are endeavoring to teach the native races to conduct their own affairs with justice and humanity, and to educate them alike in letters and in industry. . . . As Roman imperialism laid the foundations of modern [European] civilization, and led the wild barbarians of these [the British] islands along the path of progress, so in Africa to-day we are re-paying the debt and

Disarticulation

69

bringing to the dark places of the earth, the abode of barbarism and cruelty, the torch of culture and progress, while administering to the material needs of our own civilization.92

The material or economic needs/desires of the British Empire were vast, and, as a result, spending on social programs in the colonies was necessarily meager and usually inadequate. Thus, Britain extended its phase 1 neglect of Zanzibar’s indigenous economic institutions to Zanzibar’s indigenous educational and civic institutions, such as the Shirazi system of communal land ownership, during the second phase of colonial rule. During Britain’s second-phase implementation of sociological and educational regulation, the protectorate government neglected or refused to fund Zanzibar’s medressas or other indigenous institutions. Instead, the colonial government supported newly created European academies, where class hierarchies thrived. While phase 1 policies created financial institutions that facilitated economic extraction and promoted class stratification, phase 2 policies promoted social regulation that increased British revenue accumulation and land alienation. Britain’s phase 2 policies in Zanzibar should be classified into three broad and often intersecting categories. These categories correspond to the three broad debates that energized British colonial philosophy throughout the Victorian era.93 The first of Britain’s phase 2 policies openly promoted economic, educational, and social stratification. These policies were a legacy of ongoing contest between Fabian/missionary forces who supported the education of working-class whites and Africans versus social Darwinists who questioned the innate intelligence or educability of these populations. While the crown claimed that the social, educational, and economic systems were open, in reality, Britain’s phase 2 policies promoted stratification and disarticulation. More specifically, Britain’s second category of phase 2 policies delivered economic, political, and social stagnation. The nineteenth-century debate between dual-mandaters and new imperialists reflected Europe’s responsibility toward the colonized Global South, and is consistent with Britain’s policy of class disarticulation. The third and final category of second-phase policies created economic and educational stratification by perpetuating a caste system based on economic origin and communal history, while claiming that intergroup conflict was due to racial difference. This category was ultimately influenced by the

70

Chapter II

debate regarding the role of white and non-white foreign settlement, and its influence in determining the nature of colonial government in Africa. In the second phase of colonial rule, as in the first, the economic interests of the elite Arabs and Indians at the expense of African laborers reinforced “the politics of classlessness that paradoxically reinforces class—a politics mired safely in class formation.”94 Even in the decades before the official declaration of protection, England argued that the presence of “British Indians” required a larger and more formal British presence. Sheriff and Ferguson describe academic disarticulation: With respect to education, religious observance and right to appeal, Indians as a whole were intentionally isolated to form a separate community under the imperial policy of divide and rule. Under this scheme it was possible to divide the local appropriating classes along “racial” lines whereby community denoted function, a policy which paid off the British in the years of colonial rule.95

The Indian community benefited from this head start. Along with Christian schools Zanzibar’s Hindu community established Zanzibar’s first K–12 schools in the mid-nineteenth century.96 After a brief experimentation with one nondenominational school for all the Indian communities in the early 1900s, Zanzibar’s wealthy Indian traders returned to the notion of establishing small schools for the elite of their respective linguistic and religious communities.97 Most Indian schools established between nine and twelve grades, which far and away exceeded the primary education of most Swahili students educated, almost exclusively, in K–5 Islamic and missionary schools.98 Thus, Zanzibar’s Indian, and to a lesser extent its missionary, schools, having opened fifty years in advance of most of the private Arab and secular government schools, gave their communities a distinct political and economic advantage.99 Both Indian and missionary schools emphasized broad, liberal curricula that promoted education in professional and technical fields. By contrast, British government schools emphasized agricultural and, occasionally, limited clerical training. These forms of vocational education would be serviceable to the British colonial administration “in relation to the absorptive capacity of East Africa.”100

Disarticulation

71

The British government’s efforts to create economic communities that performed a particular function in the larger plantation economy was central to all its colonial programs, including the formulation of land law, and later its education and settler policies. The third of three debates concerning colonial policy during Britain’s second phase of imperial rule concerned settler policy.101 In this third debate there were three distinct arguments. Some imperial parties argued that the British government’s revenue-generating needs should reign supreme over humanitarian or social welfare considerations. Others argued that the British government should make the investment interests of individual settlers its primary consideration. Still others thought that promoting the livelihood of indigenous Africans was crucial to the survival of British colonies. As in all former debates, the dominant philosophies of the new imperialism prevailed. The British government ruled out European ownership of Zanzibari clove plantations because it thought Zanzibar’s clove farms were too unprofitable to operate and too onerous for Europeans to manage. In 1915, Zanzibar’s British resident responded to a query regarding shamba ownership by a European investor named Wilson Fox.102 The British resident stated what many Arabs believed: What is required is for someone to devise a scheme to regenerate the clove plantations of those Arabs, who ruined by the abolition of slavery, have got deeper and deeper into the hands of the Indian money-lender until, unable to redeem their mortgaged properties or pay their labor, they have relinquished all interest in their plantations. The Indian mortgagee who was probably long ago repaid his initial loans by charging exorbitant interest (on his loan) does nothing to replace the dead clove tree with young ones. . . . I can conceive of no European settlers tolerating for any length of time the payment on the 25% duty of cloves. I do not necessarily uphold this heavy burden on the clove producer but the fact remains, this is one of our main sources of revenue.103

As in matters of land and tax policy, the British developed an educational policy by emphasizing the financial interests of the colonial government. In Zanzibar, the British government created and funded schools for those who needed the most education, not, as in Tanganyika, to staff a large bureaucracy, but to run the island’s sprawling network of mortgage houses. The British government therefore almost exclusively encouraged

72

Chapter II

Indians to get the most training because of their historic role as financial agents of the colonial government and their status as citizens of the British Commonwealth. Britain’s theories regarding elite education, land ownership, governance, and settler rights dictated policy in many African colonies. However, these policies did not prevail everywhere.

EDUCATIONAL THEORY IN GERMANY AND ENGLAND In order to evaluate the influence of European colonization and its implications for East African political development, particularly in Zanzibar and Tanganyika, it is useful to make a comparative analysis of British and German state bureaucracy and colonial rule. Educational systems in nineteenthcentury Europe, especially in Britain and Germany, became the basis for twentieth-century colonial education in Zanzibar and Tanganyika. When Britain initiated its educational reforms in the late Victorian era, as little as 25 percent of the population had access to a primary level education. By the late nineteenth century, only 50 percent of England’s primaryschool-age children were attending primary and secondary schools.104 By contrast, in 1860s Prussia, 81 percent of the population’s young children attended a six-year elementary school.105 Several other early nineteenth-century developments in the German school system distinguished it from the British educational system. The General Civil Code of 1794 proclaimed that the state should supervise, however nominally, Prussia’s mainly religious schools. The 1794 code also established Prussia’s “modern/secular” system of primary education called the Volksschule. In 1817 the Prussian state chancellor, Karl von Hardenberg, created the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. Von Hardernberg appointed Karl von Altenstein, a reform-minded educator, to run the new ministry. In April 1822 von Altenstein signed an edict that demanded that the Volksschule establish a confessional educational model.106 Later, in December 1822, another edict created a system of bilingual German/Polish education in eastern Prussia.107 These two developments prepared German colonial administrators for the diverse linguistic and confessional student bodies they would face when governing East Africa. As was the case with British colonial explorers and race scholars, many Germans intellectuals viewed themselves as the intellectual and

Disarticulation

73

“racial” superiors of the Africans they colonized.108 Despite a wealth of scholarship that claimed that working-class whites and Africans were uneducable, the official educational policy of nineteenth-century Prussian government suggests otherwise. German social Darwinists and race theorists certainly had their audience. However, the seat of Prussian political decision-making, at least with regard to domestic and colonial education, seemed to be dominated by the ideas of Max Weber. Weber argued that well-organized bureaucracies could promote “ideal,” rulebound behavior.109 Extrapolating Weber’s arguments, many of Weber’s devotees maintained that rational institutions could force even the most “irrational” men, or “races,” to behave rationally.110 The Tanganyikan colonial experiment, as executed by Germany’s colonial administrators, suggests that the doctrine of bureaucratic rationality prevailed over both race and class theories. This was especially true where Tanganyikan education and African political participation were concerned. Thus, in the first of three sweeping dialectics, the debate regarding the innate intelligence of certain classes of people had a very different outcome in Germany than it did in Britain.111 As early as the eighteenth century, Prussian advocates of a rational, progressive, and even ambitious educational agenda prevailed over their more conventional colleagues. By contrast, well into the first half of the twentieth century, ideologies that supported class-based political and educational limits routinely overwhelmed Britain’s progressive forces.

THE RATIONAL USE OF SWAHILI IN TANGANYIKAN EDUCATION The writings of men such as David Livingstone and John Speke energized the German missionary system in East Africa, and led to the formal annexation and development of a system like the British missionary system.112 By the end of the nineteenth century, there were six hundred mission schools in German Tanganyika, which enrolled as many as fifty thousand pupils.113 Whereas British missionaries in Zanzibar were largely free to pursue their educational program independent of government control, as of 1891 the German missionary school system in Tanganyika became part of the government system.114 Tanganyika’s Colonial Governor Karl von

74

Chapter II

Soden, a Weberian “liberal,” implemented a program of direct rule right away. He recruited several Swahili-speaking Germans and a few educated Tanganyikans into a growing colonial bureaucracy, ones that emphasized secular education and civic participation.115 Von Soden promoted a policy that demanded that the Swahili language be the medium of instruction in Tanganyikan schools. Von Soden’s educational program was consistent with the logic of the state, which, although German, catered to the majority of the population, rather than an elite minority.116 Further, when von Soden recruited the first German education officer he hired an agnostic, fluent in Swahili.117 Von Soden anticipated the day when Tanganyikans might play a role in government and educated them in the Swahili language. In an attempt to reach out to the Muslim community, von Soden offered to pay Muslim teachers to visit colonial schools for daily religious instruction. Ultimately, various missionary organizations frustrated efforts to include the Islamic community in government schools, causing a pronounced rift between the central Tanganyikan government, the Swahili school system, and Tanganyika’s Muslim community.118 The German educational system in Tanganyika was most effective in larger cities and focused on the instruction of coastal Swahili-speaking boys. As such, boys in interior, or rural, Tanganyika and most if not all Tanganyikan girls remained unschooled. Despite this fact, Germany made two significant and lasting contributions to Tanganyika’s national development. First, as mentioned earlier, the colonial government insisted on making Swahili the nation’s official language.119 Secondly, and equally important, Germany created an educational system that developed both the vocational skills and literary talents of many Tanganyikan pupils, regardless of their origin or status. In doing this, Germany encouraged Tanganyika’s missionary schools and its Islamic schools, or medressas, to become more progressive, and to compete with government schools for students and for funding.120 By contrast, both Zanzibar’s missionary and government schools met with little success. The termination of the slave trade, though necessary for Zanzibar to move to a system of wage/migrant labor, led to social and economic upheaval. The Arab community could never recover from this turn of events. From the era preceding British and German rule, Arab communities on the coast established a network of Islamic primary schools, or medressas, that eventually reached into the East African mainland. When

Disarticulation

75

the British protectorate government established Zanzibar’s education department in the first decade of the twentieth century it refused to fund medressas. However, Muslim parents, afraid of Christian “indoctrination,” kept their children out of government schools. As a result, five years after the British established Zanzibar’s government schools only 348 Muslim students were enrolled.121 Even fewer Bantu, Swahili, and Shirazi students could enroll in such schools because, in addition to issues of religious difference, few could afford to pay government school fees. Thus in Zanzibar, as elsewhere, the source and nature of educational grants were responsible for making the educational system functional. From the earliest European settlements, until twentieth-century colonial independence, missionaries, missionary schools, and missionary fundraising dominated the African educational system. Middleton and Read describe the relationship between the church and African schools: European thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw no incompatibility between establishing “forts” to regulate the slave trade and educating a very limited number of Africans to assist them in their enterprises. This education implied, as a rule, conversion to Christianity, and in this respect the early trading companies anticipated the work of the missions. . . . In the British territories the missions depended for their educational, and indeed for all their work at first, on contributions from the home churches, and on the gifts often in kind, from African peoples and the almost universal payment of fees by pupils in schools. As the governments in the territories assumed full responsibility for all the administrative services, they established a system of grants-in-aid for mission schools.122

The grants-in-aid program was established in 1925, three years after the British administration took over the postwar mandate in Tanganyika. To inaugurate the grants program the colonial government sponsored a conference meeting with missionaries, social progressives, and various commercial interests to discuss educational policy and funding strategies. It was the first such meeting of its kind in the colonies.123 The conference provided a range of perspectives and a lively debate ensued. Progressives and missionaries thought education should receive broad government funding, while commercial and government parties argued that schools should be funded by private money and school fees. On the surface, tensions at the 1925 conference seemed simply to reflect differences regarding

76

Chapter II

budgetary allocation. On a more philosophical level, the debate between conference partisans reflected an enduring controversy between two basic groups—liberals and conservative or “new” imperialists.124 After the conference, participants published a memorandum outlining the specific objectives of the meeting as well as the broader policies of the British government regarding educational policy in colonial Africa. These principles were collectively known as “Education for Adaptation.”125 The principle of adaptation maintained that African land was Britain’s primary source of revenue, and, as such, the colonial government should emphasize agricultural and vocational education above all other curricula. The conference memorandum took a sharp turn away from the literary curricula of the German system, and advocated vocation and agricultural education offered by schools in Britain. The other important proposal discussed in the conference memorandum was how these schools should be funded. The resulting grants-in-aid system, which the British developed to promote “education for adaptation” fell woefully short of the goal of expanding educational opportunity for Tanganyikan students beyond the primary level.126 From the earliest days of the protectorate, British colonial policy promoted class and linguistic stratification, while it continuously underfunded welfare programs. As a result, the grants-in-aid program failed to promote inclusion, even at the primary level. When the British government established the protectorate in the 1890s, most Zanzibaris, and nearly all African Zanzibaris, lived in rural clove growing areas. Various factions resisted the Department of Education’s early attempts to create rural schools. Parents of African and Arab origin living in rural districts were suspicious of government schools for several reasons. In many cases newly arrived high school teachers of Indian or Egyptian origin found life in East Africa challenging. Despite the infusion of these highly qualified new hires, most government schools had to draw from missionary societies to staff the primary and secondary courses. Whereas Tanganyika’s coffee tribes could request the types of schools they wanted, African Zanzibaris lacked the wealth or power, and often the conviction, to make such demands. Meanwhile, Zanzibar’s wealthier Arab and Indian groups continued to increase educational opportunities for their children. The gap in educational attainment between the classes widened. Despite the colonial government’s recruitment of foreign teachers, there was still a dearth of qualified individuals to teach in Zanzibar’s

Disarticulation

77

many rural school districts. When the Department of Education tried to hire teachers from local medressas to lecture at government schools, the arrangement failed. Many medressa instructors were uncomfortable with the secular environment of government schools and several objected to the “Western” content of the syllabus. Ultimately, Swahili students and poorer Arab and Shirazi children completed their primary education almost exclusively in Islamic medressas. Having garnered limited support from the British government, Zanzibar’s various Indian communities continued to rely on their own wealthy patrons to fund their schools. The colonial administration established its most successful government-community educational partnership with the creation of the highly exclusive Arab School. The sultan endorsed the school, and Mr. Rivers-Smith, the director of the Department of Education, paid for the school’s conversion from a four-year primary school into a proper elementary academy offering seven standards or grades. Renamed the Primary School, the staff conducted classes strictly in Arabic and English. The school awarded successful students Zanzibar’s coveted Primary Certificate, which in turn-of-the-century Zanzibar was practically a prerequisite for placement in the British bureaucracy. Between its inception in 1905 and 1910, the Primary School, formerly the Arab School, taught only wealthy Arabs. As such the language and curriculum favored elite tastes. By 1908 there were approximately sixty Arab boys enrolled to study Arabic and English, literature, and philosophy. The strictly elite culture of the school started to change in 1909 when the school decided to accept boys of all races and began offering a three-year industrial course.127 The next year, in 1910, boys in the Swahili, Arab, Shirazi, and Indian communities entered the Primary School. This school’s policy of inclusion ran counter to most colonial philosophies of the era.128 Detractors in a number of privileged circles thought Zanzibar’s integrated school subjected Arab children to the improper influence of their “subordinates.”129 Chilver and Smith describe colonial philosophy regarding native education: The sympathies of British officials lay with the Arab aristocracy; they saw the country, not as one society, but as separate communities. The population was labeled by race, [but] race denoted function; Arabs were landowners and clove-planters, Indians were traders and financiers, and African laborers. The “correctness” of this hierarchy was supported by contemporary

78

Chapter II

ideas of racial superiority for the status of communities was in theory one of ascending order according to “whiteness.”130

In Zanzibar, the proclivity to create economic stratification to promote a linguistic hierarchy, while calling it “social order,” was a tradition more of British imperialism than a legacy of Omani rule.131 Before British rule, Zanzibar’s mainly Muslim population usually obtained three or four years of primary education in Islamic medressa. Once the British protectorate was established, the colonial government organized Zanzibari society by economic specialty, while identifying this order as an immutable racial hierarchy. This development discouraged African laborers from attending school beyond the medressa or seeking education in professions that would not, under protectorate dominion, be open to them.132 Consistent with the view that education should be relevant to origin and occupation, Britain’s Department of Education proposed that government schools in rural areas offer curriculum relevant to agricultural life. The government opened three schools in rural areas on Unguja, or Zanzibar Island, and one on Pemba Island.133 According to various accounts, the temptation of early employment and lack of rural schools, along with the seasonal nature of agricultural work in Zanzibar’s plantation economy, made it impossible for African students to attend school with any regularity.134 In the 1920s, after more than thirty years of colonial rule, only six thousand British pounds, less than 1 percent of all government expenditure, was allocated for Zanzibar’s schools.135 There were forty thousand school-age children in Zanzibar, yet less than 10 percent, only three thousand students, attended mission or government schools. Approximately half of those attending Zanzibar’s schools were Indian students, a group that was wealthy and comprised less than 5 percent of Zanzibar’s population.136 Of the remaining 1,500 Arab and African students, the vast majority were Arab or Swahili, and as Muslims they were disinclined to attend missionary schools. This group of students had seven government schools to choose from, two on Pemba and five on Unguja. All of the seven schools required fees beyond the reach of most Bantu, Shirazi, and Swahili families.137 This requirement, and the location of the schools, ensured that the government would recruit largely from urban areas, and in trades other than clove work. Thus, from inception into the modern era the protectorate’s educational enterprise promoted class and occupational differentiation.

Disarticulation

79

Britain’s literature on the educability of Africans and working-class whites, the feudal classes of empire, promoted vocational training. In Zanzibar, where the plantation economy demanded a vast supply of labor, British schools promoted a modest curriculum focused on keeping Africans bound to agricultural work. Paradoxically, though confronted by religious and cultural resistance, missionary schools had a broader curriculum than many secular schools. In fact, in many instances, missionary schools exposed children to the type of literature, advanced mathematics, and social sciences unavailable even in the best secular academies. The elementary missionary school syllabus was more consistent with secondary training in Europe’s secular schools than most government schools in colonial Africa. Whereas, in Tanganyika, tribal chiefs were able to convince the British to maintain and expand the use of the Swahili language as the medium of instruction, community leaders in Zanzibar adopted no such strategy. As a result, a strange and bewildering primary system of education emerged in Zanzibar, with Swahili written in Latin script in elementary and middle school years.138 Thus most African students of the Swahili, Shirazi, and Bantu communities stopped their education after attending three-year medressas. As a result most African Zanzibaris were never trained for professional work and instead began working on clove farms well before ten years of age and continued to toil on farms for the rest of their lives. In summary, only a small percentage of East Africa’s equally small number of students attended the government’s eight primary schools. Most students in Tanganyika and Zanzibar attended either missionary schools or medressas. As medressas were routinely excluded from the grants system, the largest recipients of grants-in-aid were missionary schools.139 The total budget for grants-in-aid was small, so most missionary schools were woefully underfunded.140 The colonial authorities drew Zanzibar’s tribal chiefs into the government’s sprawling clove project. Under Britain’s indirect administration the chiefs lacked the formal authority or financial independence to make any real demands of the British government. By contrast, Germany ruled Tanganyika through the direct authority of the local government and with a massive network of offices situated throughout Tanganyika’s rural areas and supervised by Swahili-speaking Germans. Paradoxically, direct rule afforded Tanganyikans a large measure of

80

Chapter II

financial independence. Tanganyika’s leading revenue-generating export was coffee, and Tanganyikans, not Germans, dominated the country’s many independent coffee farms. Thus, Tanganyika’s tribal chiefs were at once independent of German administration and in command of a thriving local economy. Chiefs with the largest populations and biggest coffee farms were able to insist that the government fund the secular schools they wanted established throughout rural Tanganyika. Tanganyika’s chiefs increased their demands, including the expansion of literary and industrial education, and further requested that rural schools provide education beyond the primary level.141 Despite the brave efforts of Tanganyika chiefs to create more secular schools, as of World War II, 95 percent of the children receiving a primary or secondary education in Tanganyika were enrolled in missionary schools.142 As such, the Germans did not disclose the source, origins, and parameters of most educational funding in Tanganyika until after World War I. After 1925, missionary schools received British grants-in-aid, which, being a source of funds independent of the colonial budget, allowed them to expand at a rate far exceeding government schools.143 In 1920, the British inaugurated their mandate in Tanganyika, allowing them to assume civic responsibility for Germany’s vast colonial programs. The education department of Zanzibar’s administration service recruited S. Rivers-Smith, the new director of education in British Tanganyika.144 During the interwar era, the British government generated Zanzibar’s educational funding by implementing various forms of taxation of the native communities.145 The fact that Zanzibar was a protectorate did not alter the reality that the economy was primarily agricultural, and education was not a paramount concern among most classes of Zanzibaris. A notable exception to this rule was Sultan Seyyid Ali Bin Hamoud, who was among the first Zanzibaris to pursue a Western education.146 Having failed to persuade the British government to create a secondary school that would provide Zanzibaris with a Western education, Sultan Seyyid Ali established a small school in his palace for the sons of leading Arab families. In 1905 Sultan Seyyid Ali convinced the British government to form an education department that it would fund at forty-five thousand rupees per annum.147 In 1906 the education department took over his school and named it the Arab School.148 Zanzibar’s Arab School was a success, largely because its

Disarticulation

81

director, S. Rivers-Smith, formerly the director of education in Britain’s Egyptian service, knew how to manage urban schools and elite students. In 1910, the Primary School was integrated into the government system. The Department of Education decided that Swahili, rather than Arabic, should be taught in the lower levels, while Arabic and English was made compulsory at the upper levels.149 Some Arabs objected to the emphasis on Swahili and withdrew their students. The primary school retained 50 percent of its students at the end of the first three years of coursework in Swahili. The teachers shifted academic instruction from Swahili to Arabic and English in the last four years of primary instruction, and only 10 percent of students managed to graduate with primary certification.150 Despite British inclusion of medressas into Zanzibar’s official educational system and the removal of school fees, pupils enrolled in Zanzibar’s schools at a very slow rate. For the years 1944, 1948, and 1952 total school attendance was 2,103, 3,952, and 5,104 students respectively.151 Even with such small group of primary graduates, Zanzibar’s lack of secondary schools made it impossible to accommodate many students who wanted to extend their training. In 1958 one thousand of the approximately five thousand primary school graduates sat for exams for secondary school. The British government only had places for the top two hundred students in one of a handful of secondary schools.152 As of the 1950s, secular education in Zanzibar was not a great success. Less than 10 percent of male children attended primary school, a fraction of that number attended secondary school, and less than 1 percent of Zanzibar’s girls saw the inside of a government school. Upper-class children continued to receive better education, both in Zanzibar and abroad, than their Swahili-speaking counterparts. Yet very few technical and government jobs were available for Arabs or their Bantu and Swahili countrymen and women. When Zanzibar gained independence from British rule, the gap in educational attainment, and the broader issue of illiteracy among Africans wishing to vote, became a significant source of conflict. Educational inequality contributed to Zanzibar’s communal violence that, in turn, provoked a coup d’etat and revolution. In Tanganyika secular schools were more of a success. Between the year 1885 and 1905 Tanganyika’s indigenous Bush schools increased their student body from 405 boys to 3,452 students, of which 1,822 were boys and 1,620 were girls.153 In 1911 Tanganyikans graduating from

82

Chapter II

primary schools numbered more than sixty thousand, while students in government and mission schools offering higher education numbered only 1,290. There were 286 students enrolled in industrial government and mission schools. All totaled, there were 66,647 graduates of some form of Tanganyikan school. Between 1911 and 1914 German secular government schools increased by sixteen, from eighty-three to ninety-nine schools, graduating sixty-one thousand students.154 In 1957, 51,549 students were enrolled in the final year of Tanganyika’s primary schools. In 1961 that number rose to 93,978 students; of that number 31 percent were girls. Tanganyikans still suffered the disparities that all Africans faced with regards to their European counterparts; however, by the 1930s the German government, in cooperation with bush, missionary schools and Islamic medressas, had ensured that between 20– 25 percent of Tanganyika’s youth was literate in their national language. The number of literate students in Zanzibar was far smaller. Africans in Zanzibar and Tanganyika were both poor, but Tanganyikans had a distinct advantage. Tanganyika’s schools, its government, and its economy all functioned in Swahili. This political system established by Germans and continued by British Fabians fostered a cohesive national identity. Zanzibar’s schools and students fared much worse for several reasons. First, the protectorate government’s conception of Zanzibar as an “Arab” state made it fundamentally reject Swahili as the national language. This led to a convoluted system that trained only a handful of children in Swahili, and when it did, taught them alternately in Arabic and Latin scripts. This approach was incoherent and led to confusion within the primary system and especially between the primary, secondary, and advanced classes. Further, the colonial government’s continued insistence on collecting school fees made attaining an education out of the reach of all but Zanzibar’s richest communities. Finally, even when the government suspended school fees, the program of inducing Zanzibaris to work for wages on commercial plantations held more value in Zanzibar than it did in Tanganyika, where mainland farms were generally family- or clanowned. British insistence on utilizing Christian educational orthodoxy in Muslim Zanzibar created deep-seated resentment. However, of all the controversies caused by the colonial government, the issue of linguistic stratification was among the most important concerns haunting Zanzibar’s

Disarticulation

83

Department of Education, its government broadly, and its society more generally. Raymond Betts stipulates that: In the Tanganyikan context special note should be taken of the importance of language policy in fostering nationalism. Confronted with the problem of communicating with people who spoke over one hundred languages and dialects, the German regime discovered there was one potential lingua franca: Swahili, spoken by most of the coastal population and a few upcountry inhabitants. Officials, in attempting to establish an efficient subordinate civil service, decided to use Swahili as the medium of instruction in the lower [primary and secondary] levels of their schools and German in the upper. Missionaries used local dialects to win confidence. . . . When Britain assumed the mandate, general and educational administrators alike favored further promotion of Swahili . . . gave Tanganyika an advantage not shared by the majority of African colonial territories: an indigenous language.155

Zanzibar differed from Tanganyika in every possible way regarding language use and education. The German penchant for teaching Swahili and using it as the official language of its colonial government was an idea derived from Germany’s philosophy regarding education and governance. As mentioned earlier, by the mid-nineteenth century the German government, despite differences in language and religion, committed to expanding popular education throughout Germany. By contrast, British experts in the fields of philosophy and education were more dedicated to the instruction of the British elite in London than they were to the education of England’s rural communities, or religious and linguistic minorities in distant regions of the United Kingdom. Another difference between the British and the Germans involved the German approach to colonial rule. German governments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were strong advocates of direct rule in their colonies. Rather than relying on co-opting or altering indigenous political and social institutions as the British did, the Germans built an extensive bureaucracy in Tanganyika. They sent many Germans conversant in Swahili to occupy the executive positions, but allowed Africans to work in these institutions in other capacities. Thus the combination of direct rule, Germany’s creation of Tanganyikan political institutions of governance, and its dissemination of Swahili established the conditions necessary for mass education, which

84

Chapter II

compelled Tanganyikans to create a nonviolent nationalist movement and eventually sustained and enlightened Swahili rule.156 British rule in Zanzibar could not have been more different. By the early 1900s British officials in Zanzibar employed a system of indirect rule, co-opting the local Swahili-Shirazi system of liwalis to control clove production in Zanzibar’s rural areas.157 In Zanzibar Town the British relied on the sultan and his good, but modest, offices to rule Zanzibar’s ports. Promoting the concept of indirect rule/dual mandate, the protectorate government used Arabic and English in the courts and in the secondary school systems, maintaining Arab landownership while strengthening Indian monopoly of financial and skilled occupations. R. H. Crofton enumerated the hopes and grievances of the Arab community: As a result of the changed conditions many landowners found themselves in financial difficulties, with their properties heavily mortgaged. At the same time practically all skilled trades had become an Asiatic monopoly. On the success of the plan for education rested the hope of rehabilitation of the once prosperous plantation owners and the establishment of the Sultan’s subjects firmly in the skilled labor market. The foundation on which to build was anything but promising. The only possible medium in the elementary stages was Swahili, but the Protectorate being Muhammadan [Muslim] it was essential to recognize the need for the study of the Koran and therefore the inclusion of Arabic as a subject of study in the curriculum. There seemed little doubt that the old Arab families visualized in education a channel through which the prestige of their language might be restored.158

Ultimately, the British government felt that its colonial business interests could only be expanded if an educated and wealthy minority remained in power. In Zanzibar, Arabs held that distinction. Britain’s most persuasive colonial forces argued that keeping African education at the primary level and its curricula in the vocational and agricultural fields would keep the labor and upper classes in balance, and the political and economic aspirations of Africans low. The justification for such attitudes originated with a centuries-old argument—namely, that Africans simply were not intellectually equipped and would therefore never be “ready” to assume control over their own political and economic futures. In the 1950s, Rhodesian prime minister Godfrey Huggins, mentor of Ian Smith and protégé of Cecil Rhodes, spoke to various political groups, including

Disarticulation

85

a conference of European missionaries. He suggested that black attempts at self-rule were a “sad spectacle” white Rhodesians must discourage. Huggins argued that even after seventy years of British rule, the African mind was still “primitive.”159 He declared that white Rhodesians would always need to guide Africans to their “proper end,” which was service to the colonial government.160 The effort to maintain minority rule in Rhodesia continued into the 1970s, decades or more behind similar efforts in most African colonies. To the shock and dismay of the international community, Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith, a staunch defender of white rule, declared his historic Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), hoping to preempt African demands for independence from Britain or for majority black rule. The attitude of many white Rhodesians and the actions of their prime minister supported the contention made by many African revolutionaries. Power could not be granted—it could only be seized. A decade after the UDI, Ian Smith still faced armed resistance from black Rhodesians, and public censure from the Organization of African Unity and the United Nations.161 Smith continued to ignore international efforts to mediate the conflict. Smith made his personal stand the official statement of the UDI: After the tremendous effort of the past 10 years to preserve western civilization, [white] Rhodesians have no intention of handing over [power] to anyone.162

In Rhodesia and elsewhere, minority governments, especially European imperialists, often characterized colonial rule as a colossal effort to impart European “civilization” to “primitive” Africans. Champions of minority rule often juxtaposed “civilized” order with “mass” brutality. Britain’s clients, minority Indian and Arab communities, like their European patrons, wanted to maintain cultural and economic ties with African colonies and with one another. As African independence approached, many European governments and several of their minority clients feared African rule would defeat European “enlightenment,” and would compromise international trade. As a result, many European countries tried to arrange African colonial independence in a way that would most benefit Europe and her governing clients. During the decades of the Zanzibari protectorate, the British government successfully employed indirect rule to promote enrichment of Arabs, Indians, and the British crown. The

86

Chapter II

colonial office, dominated by many “new imperialist” legacies, believed that Arab rule could and should prevail after independence. Hoping to maintain economic ties with Zanzibar’s richest communities, the British crown granted Zanzibaris independence, but restored the Omani sultan as a constitutional monarch. Many Africans regarded Zanzibar’s new political system as a continuation of indirect rule. Several argued that the economic and social deprivations that were the norm under “protection” might prevail during “independence.” In the 1950s the Young African Union (YAP), the youth wing of Zanzibar’s Afro-Shirazi Party, quite accurately argued that British policy was responsible for denying generations of Africans the educational opportunities available to most Arabs and Indians. The YAP further asserted that these educational disparities were the result of Britain’s distinct preference for alien rule, and that the Omani government would promote similar policies.163 Ultimately, and in complete contravention to British views on the matter, the YAP argued that the only way Africans could attain educational and economic progress in Zanzibar was if the country became an African, rather than an Arab, state.164

CONCLUSION Before the era of “protection” and the official era of indirect rule, the British government allowed missionaries and Islamic authorities to operate their schools largely unfettered by colonial control. Had the British allowed missionary and Islamic schools to continue their natural growth in Zanzibar, they may have expanded their numbers and achieved rates of primary matriculation similar to those of Tanganyikans under Germany’s “direct rule.” Indirect rule in Zanzibar changed this trajectory.165 More specifically, once Lord Lugard successfully “organized” British colonial interests in Nigeria, the colonial government began monitoring local medressas and missionary schools throughout its African holdings. The British colonial office increased the number of schools staffed by secular authorities. These secular institutions were accountable to the colonial government and were responsible for monitoring curricula content as well as the educational achievement of their students. The colonial system required that native authorities regulate their behavior in order to stabilize

Disarticulation

87

the political system and help the colonial state generate as much revenue as possible.166 Thus, while the British government of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century advocated the “dual mandate” goal of universal education, it really promoted the narrow economic priorities of elite minorities. This approach characterized most colonial projects and inspired by British “new imperialism.” By contrast, the Weberian philosophy of nineteenth-century bureaucratic Germany strove to create a hybrid Swahili-German system of direct rule. Rather than creating a plantation system where the government controlled and taxed the national cash crop, German officials allowed Tanganyikan “tribes” to manage their own farms. Rather than taxing Tanganyika’s coffee cash crop, they established modest house and sales taxes.167 The German bureaucracy in Tanganyika was large and the Germans centralized their authority. However, despite this centralization of authority, the German government appeared progressive because it funded indigenous “bush” schools. Unlike the British government in Zanzibar, Germany created many government schools, primary and secondary academies, which, unlike Zanzibari schools, were free.168 Finally, German authorities used Swahili as the official language of Tanganyikan schools as well as of the Tanganyikan government. For these reasons the German government was able to cultivate a relationship that appeared to be based more on affinity than on control.169 In Zanzibar, the first manifestation of Britain’s phase 2 policy was its effort to put the state, already at the heart of the plantation economy, at the center of colonial educational policy. The colonial government effort to promote working-class disarticulation was visible in its program of integrating competing social philosophies into a broad design for its educational program. The final feature of Britain’s second-phase policy focused on its narrow economic strategy of educating only those Zanzibaris who would promote British rule and cash-cropping rather than Swahili rule. During all three of these efforts, Britain’s leading thinkers and its most powerful industrialists argued about the nature of African educability, the burden of imperial rule, and the uses of settler or minority populations to generate colonial revenue.170 The formulation of colonial educational policy was influenced by all three debates. Ultimately, the new imperialists, several of whom were social Darwinists, prevailed. The new imperialists promoted educational policies that sustained the British bureaucracy

88

Chapter II

and preserved the ruling elite. They eliminated programs that threatened the protectorate, or more specifically, the plantation economy.171 Though the British referred to governance in Zanzibar as “indirect rule,” its reach appeared wider and stronger than Germany’s so-called direct rule of Tanganyika. When formulating second-phase educational policy, Britain’s primary aim was to determine how Zanzibar’s schools could be financed— cheaply.172 While the British government proclaimed the virtue of expanding educational opportunity, it created and ultimately funded only a handful of schools.173 This ruse of academic development and economic oversight gave the government control over all educational institutions, to the detriment of Islamic medressas and African Zanzibaris. Like the British, German colonial authorities enjoyed almost complete control over Tanganyika’s school system, and, like the British, they were frugal. However, due to Germany’s unique legacy of educational populism, a singular quality in nineteenth-century Europe, German colonial administrators were willing to adapt their policies to Tanganyika’s indigenous bush and Islamic schools. Further, these same administrators learned Tanganyika’s lingua franca, adopting Swahili as the official language of Tanganyika’s government, thereby encouraging genuine social integration. By contrast, Britain’s system of elite education, and its cultivation of Arabic and English as the official languages of local trade and the Zanzibari state, led to increased economic and linguistic stratification, and, finally, profound African resentment. When African resentment turned to political defiance, British authorities often blamed Omani rule, Indian wealth, and Arab privilege, dubbing economic struggle “racial conflict.”174 The third chapter will analyze Zanzibar’s land and linguistic inequalities, introduced in the first two chapters, in order to consider African political will and social activism. As with chapters I and II, chapter III will consider British political strategy—more specifically, phase 3 economic development, contrasting Zanzibar’s preindependence political conditions with parallel experiences in neighboring Tanganyika. Chapter III will also consider the impact of indirect rule, a major influence in academic policy, on Zanzibar’s political institutions and African activism within and outside these organizations, as well as Britain’s next phase 3 response toward African labor strikes and economic boycott. The chapter will conclude by

Disarticulation

89

considering the role Zanzibar’s land, language, and political conflicts had in animating phase 4 revolution. NOTES 1. The three Cs refer to commerce, civilization, and Christianity. The three Cs, dual mandate, and indirect rule are considered in the discussion to follow. 2. In the late 1880s Sudan’s Mahdist rebellion and the Boer raid against the government in South Africa suggested that native and white populations were willing to challenge British colonial authority. Meanwhile, various British adventurers and an assortment of European politicians pushed for “a new imperialism,” an aggressive march of British forces into new territories, coupled with renewed attention to security in lands already occupied by the British. Cecil Rhodes, the struggling prime minister of 1890s South Africa, was one of the leading advocates of “new imperialism.” Unlike most Gladstonian liberals, Rhodes and other “new imperialists” believed the more colonies the crown acquired, the better; see Robinson and Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians, 410. Among Cecil Rhodes’s “Realpolitik/imperial federation” allies in the Liberal party was Lord Rosebery, a Gladstone appointee in the foreign ministry whose family and in-laws, the Rothchilds, would gain from African resource wealth (312). Rhodes and Rosebery’s desire for colonies could not be sated. 3. Despite simultaneous rebellions in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and South Africa, new imperialists pressed for expansion of British rule. In the late nineteenth century, new imperialist philosophy and Rhodes’s personal ideologies, in particular, dominated Britain’s prevailing doctrines regarding colonialism and education in Africa. Rhodes argued that Africans were incapable of learning. They could not be educated, and did not need schools; see Rhodes’s Confession of Faith. A tract written by Lord Hugh Cholmondeley Delamere, called “White Man’s Country,” made the case for increased white settlement in the temperate East African regions. Lord Delamere believed white settlement would make it possible for crown to transfer of wealth and resources from Africa to Europe; Robert Collins, Documents from the African Past (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Weiner, 2001), 298–300. 4. This debate continued into the third, fourth, and fifth phases of governance in Zanzibar. In the mid-Victorian era, Britain preferred to think of itself as an ever-expanding empire of “white colonies.” Canada, Australasia, South Africa, and the West Indies, governed by the progeny of Englishmen, initially inspired more confidence than colonies associated with the Indian subcontinent. Creating a “white” empire became more difficult as white settlers began expanding and expropriating “native” lands in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa well

90

Chapter II

beyond urban areas and against the advice of Britain’s colonial office. Some colonies, such as America, broke with Britain, while others, including Canada, Australia, and South Africa, maintained their links as they sought more local control and autonomy. Once supported only by Britain’s commercial interests, “new imperialist” white settler expansion was ultimately defended by the British government because it continuously delivered bigger revenue for the crown; see Ronald Robinson, John Gallagher, and Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1965), 8–9. 5. In 1869, only 50 percent of British children attended “voluntary” schools, and these were largely run by religious organizations. The Education Act of 1870 made it possible for nonsectarian organizations to establish schools, which would be supported by local and national taxes. However, when the British government gave the Church of England the largest amount of tax derived school funds, Non-Anglican Protestants, often called “Non-Conformists,” began resenting the power of the Anglican Church. They petitioned the government for a nonsectarian approach to the dispersal of money. Parliament issued the Act of 1870 and the Education Act of 1876, which made it possible for school boards to make elementary school mandatory. This expanded British literacy. In 1880 British students were required to attend school until the age of ten and in 1891 school fees were eliminated. In 1918 The Education Act made school compulsory until students were fourteen years of age; see Melinda Core and George Ochoa, The Encyclopedia of the Victorian World (New York: Henry Holt Publishers, 1996), 148–49; and Martin Pugh, Britain Since 1789: A Concise History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 167. The British government passed no such laws to make schools either free or compulsory in Britain’s African colonies. 6. Zanzibar’s sultanate never claimed that society was open to group advancement, but the sultan’s administration promoted a vigorous program of individual advancement, referred to in chapter I as “linguistic passing.” The colonial government made many claims suggesting that British rule opened Zanzibar to Swahili social advancement. In the first phase of colonial rule, these assertions concerned Britain’s campaign against slavery. During the second phase of colonial rule the British government maintained that it was delivering civilization and commerce. More discussion of these assertions will follow. 7. Britain’s various phases of colonial rule are discussed in chapter I. Under British rule, linguistic education and “linguistic passing” became difficult to achieve. Britain tied its emancipation of domestic slaves with its system of tax driven mandatory labor on plantations. Though free, former slaves were relegated to income and living conditions of Britain’s working class. In the second phase of colonial rule, the government promised to expand opportunity and promote upward mobility by opening public government schools. However, the British

Disarticulation

91

state promoted class disarticulation by helping fund private primary and secondary schools for Arab and Indian elite, while opening only a handful of primary, largely vocational, schools for Africans. 8. Francois Bayart, Politics of the Belly (London: Zed Press, 1997). 9. Beginning in the late Victorian era, Britain began to open its educational system. It gradually became somewhat affordable and therefore more popular. However, these changes came slowly and even as late as the beginning of World War I, Britain’s schools were still not entirely accessible or democratic. British attitudes toward working class education were still tempered by Victorian attitudes concerning class as well as caste and the orthodoxy of a well-ordered society. 10. For a thorough discussion, see David Wardle, English Popular Education 1780–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 7; and P. W. Musgrave, Society and Education in England Since 1800 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968), 11. During the 1830s, Robert Owen, self-proclaimed “radical” and agitator for social justice, established his own school that focused on infant education. He argued that environments, not inherited traits, influenced individual children. Owen established cooperative communities in England and America, where he also became involved in the trade union movement. His philosophies ran counter to many of the dominant Victorian philosophies of the late nineteenth century. As such, they enjoyed limited circulation; see P. W. Musgrave, Society and Education in England Since 1800, 11. Other educational reformers who worked outside the missionary system included individuals who sympathized with Britain’s emerging labor and socialism movements. One such organization was the Fabian Society, which became especially influential in Tanganyikan independence era politics. 11. Deborah Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work (Oxford: Routledge, 1998), 13–36. 12. Pugh, Britain Since 1789, 41–42. 13. The notion that the middle and upper classes bred more intelligent children than the lower classes was central to the popularity of the eugenicist movement among Europe’s would-be elite, the rising professional classes; Pugh, Britain Since 1789, 119–20. 14. For a discussion of the Romantic Movement, see Sheldon Rothblatt, Tradition and Change in English Liberal Education (London: Faber & Faber, 1976), 53. For a discussion of Utilitarian educational orthodoxy, see David Wardle, English Popular Education 1780–1970, 4. Social Darwinism is discussed in Corey and Ochoa, The Encyclopedia of the Victorian World, 414–15. The above philosophies are contrasted in Wardle, English Popular Education 1780–1970, 7. 15. Joan Simon, The Social Origins of English Education (Oxford: Routledge, 1970), 63.

92

Chapter II

16. Simon, The Social Origins of English Education, 62; and Pamela and Harold Silver, The Education of the Poor (Oxford: Routlege & Kegan Paul, 1974), 5. The content and nature of education in medieval/industrial Britain was bifurcated. It organized students according to their economic class. The higher the economic status of the parents the more education the students would receive. For hundreds of years elementary and secondary schools were two separate systems. The elementary system, created for mass education, stressed “mechanical obedience.” In the frugal years of the early nineteenth-century elementary schools used a system called “monitorial” instruction where one book was used to teach an entire class. Whereas in the elementary system students graduated from a basic diet of the three Rs, in the secondary “grammar” schools, students were instructed in seven liberal arts, including grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and finally Latin and Greek; see John Cannon, The Oxford Companion to British History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 327–28. The gap between these two educational systems was never spanned, and working-class students suffered. However, in the mid-Victorian era, the mercantile elite created a small group of schools designed to train the rising sons of mercantile families in classical curriculum previously available only to the landed aristocracy. Class differences remained an issue in Britain’s new schools. Schools such as Rugby, Bretton, and Woodward were established for a groups of boys who were considered neither “too low” such as tradesmen sons nor “too high” such as Britain’s landed aristocracy; John Raymond de Symons Honey, Tom Brown’s Universe (Memphis, Tenn.: Millington Books, 1977), 15. 17. Established in the early nineteenth century, Britain’s “public” schools wanted the rising middle class, the so-called new elite to develop social skills that would enhance their status among Britain’s traditional ruling classes. As such, along with the acquisition of professional skills that would lead to work in government or politics, these schools emphasized literary and linguistic training; Honey, Tom Brown’s Universe, 229 and 237. In addition to foreign languages, students were expected to erase any accents or vocabulary that would identify their class or origin. Young students such as William Gladstone, identified by his “Lancasterian burr,” and Benjamin Disraeli, known for speaking a “Lancanshire patois,” were expected to modify their accents if they hoped for a bright career in government. Ultimately graduates of these schools referred to themselves as “public schools boys” well into their old age. Many became leaders in Britain’s new foreign colonies, forming associations based on their public schools heritage, often socializing only with one another. For further discussion of linguistic accent, class, psychological, and professional identification in British history, see Rom Harre, Social Being (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), and Rom Harre and Paul F. Secord, Explaining Social Behavior (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972).

Disarticulation

93

18. Among the arguments that became popular in the late Victorian era were those that suggested that non-European racial characteristics (such as an “African” cranial shape) were incompatible both with innate intellectual reflection and with learned moral reasoning. In the late 1700s German medical doctor S. T. Von Soemmering conducted a forensic experiment, contrasting the shape of an African skull with the skull of a European person. He published a paper titled “Concerning the Physical difference between Negros and Europeans,” cited in Vincent Battle and Charles Lyons, Essays in the History of African Education (New York: Columbia University, 1970), 2. Charles W. White, a medical student in Britain, began research based on Von Soemmering’s “analysis”; Battle and Lyons, Essays in the History of African Education, 25. White argued that there were four races that developed independently; the Europeans were of the highest order, followed by Asian and Red races. The Africans were assigned to the lowest rung of existence—a group Von Soemmering and White suggested was incapable of advanced thought due to their small skulls/brains. White’s work was influential in pro-slavery works in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. For further discussion and critiques of these theories, see Christine Bolt, Victorian Attitudes toward Race (Oxford: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), 75–108. 19. In 1555 William Waterman published The Fardle of Fashion (The Burden of Culture), a book based on William Prat’s Description of the Country of Africa (1554). Prat’s book was itself a translation of Johan Boemus’s Ominium Gentium Mores (1520). All three works are cited in Eldred Jones, The Elizabethan Image of Africa (Washington, D.C.: The Folger Shakespeare Library—The University Press of Virginia, 1971). Prat, Waterman, and Boemus’s books were notable because they all featured Herodotus’s ancient observations about North Africa, in addition to more contemporary commentary by an assortment of medieval European explorers concerning European trade in West Africa. The same year the Fardle of Fashion was published, Richard Eden translated Peter Martyr’s Decades of the New World, also in Jones, The Elizabethan Image of Africa, 6. Waterman, Prat’s, and Eden’s books provided sensational, exaggerated descriptions of Africa’s wealth in gold and ivory. They also distinguished among various Africans populations, in some instances creating and designating “racial” nomenclature to distinguish between them. Waterman classified central, western, and eastern Africans as “Nigrite(s), Moors, Ethiopes . . . ,” respectively, making further, if dubious, distinctions between “white and black Ethiopes,” in Jones, The Elizabethan Image of Africa, 7. What these narratives lacked in science they more than compensated for in creativity. 20. Richard Eden’s accounts of explorer John Lok’s voyage to Guinea came to typify medieval views toward Africa. 21. “The people which now inhabit the regions of the coast of Guinea . . . Moors, Moorens or Negroes, [are] a people of beastly living, without God, law,

94

Chapter II

religion or commonwealth,” from Decades of the New World, cited in Jones, The Elizabethan Image of Africa, 12. Another account in Eden’s work referred to the people of Benin. It suggested that “the inhabitants live in idolatry, and are a rude and brutish nation”; see Jones, The Elizabethan Image of Africa, 25. 22. William Bosman, a chief officer for the Dutch West India Tea Company wrote about his trip to Axim (Axum) in 1700–1701. He was puzzled by Axum’s representative form of government, where power was “not vested in a single person.” Bosman found their bicameral legislature, with a body of young warriors called manceros and a smaller assembly of elders, known as the caboceros, to be incomprehensible. He lamented that “the best of their methods of administration are confused and perplexing”; see Robert Collins, Documents from the African Past, 121–28. Bosman argued that custom of having the king consult with the bicameral legislature before formulating foreign policy, especially acts of war, peculiar and unnecessary. 23. The narratives of Fathers Joan Dos Santos (1590) and Giovanni Cavazzi (1654) of Portugal made universal the violent and cannibalistic tendencies of a few Ethiopian and Angolan warriors. European readers were made to believe these were mundane African custom throughout the continent, in Collins, Documents from the African Past, 60 and 109. Ultimately, exaggerated narratives such as these, promoted the idea that Africans were culturally subordinate to Europeans. These and other stories, delivered by similarly esteemed individuals, served as justification for Europe’s exploitation of Africa people and resources. 24. Sir John Hawking, Britain’s first regular slave trader, began his missions in 1562, 1564, and 1567. Many slave traders and shipping companies followed his lead, cited in Jones, The Elizabethan Image of Africa, 16–17, and Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 83. 25. For a discussion of the distinction between liberal and conservative imperialists, see the beginning of this chapter. Eventually, narrow treatises, written by men with financial interests in African conquest began replacing Lord Palmerston and P. M. Disraeli’s ambivalent and enigmatic essays concerning the pros and cons of colonization. Cecil Rhodes and Lord Rosebery, men of different classes, but similar economic philosophies, promoted “new imperialism” unequivocally. These works, in turn, were succeeded by more refined policy papers published by conservative and liberal factions between the 1890s and 1930s. 26. Throughout the nineteenth century, both conservative and liberal imperialists wrote tracts in favor of discovering and exploiting resources in lands that could be colonized. They disagreed how colonization should be conducted, and to what extent the indigenous residents had the right to obstruct European colonial interests. By the twentieth century, well after the end of the slave trade and the beginning of the scramble for Africa, Britain’s industrial interests reflected

Disarticulation

95

European entitlement to African resources. In a tract titled “White Man’s Country,” Lord Hugh Cholmondeley Delamere argued that poorer white colonists could work in the positions occupied by Indian traders, while richer white settlers could expand trade and “civilization,” in a manner in which Africans and Indians could not; see Collins, Documents from the African Past, 298–301. This and other conservative arguments naturally regarded the ideals of dual mandate and indirect rule as unnecessary and ineffective, respectively. Ultimately, even liberals stopped advocating dual mandate aspect of “indirect rule,” in favor of letting Africa “gradually” develop “along its own lines” toward self-government. Of course, after sixty years of colonial rule, Africa’s lines were now irreversibly fragmented, and Britain’s gradual Africanization was a concession given too little, too late. For a review of the official policies of indirect rule and “letting Africans develop along ‘their own lines,’” see Sir Donald Cameron’s tract in Documents on Modern Africa, Walter T. Wallbank, ed. (Tucker, Ga.: Anvil Publishers, 1964), 44–47. For a discussion of the policies of “Africanization” and “gradualism,” see “The Watson Report,” Wallbank, Documents on Modern Africa, 87–91, and “Gradualism for Southern Rhodesia,” 160–64, respectively. 27. For conservative new imperialist “tolerating” Islamic medressas and “supporting” missionaries amounted to the same thing—neither controlling the content of the syllabus, nor funding either institution. As in Britain, many conservatives resisted the efforts of liberals to end school fees. 28. Liberal imperialist advanced three types of education in Africa—vocational, literacy, and technical training. Most students, farmers, and other laborers would enroll in vocational classes and matriculate with a primary level course of literacy. A smaller group of clerical workers would achieve a secondary level education and would read European literary works. The most advanced students, a lilliputian group, would finish their studies with technical expertise and could compete, perhaps with Indians, for work in finance and medical fields. Thus, liberal theories concerning the “role appropriate” education of Europe’s working classes, were consistent with the conservative goals of keeping secondary and advanced education limited to Africa’s smallest, and perhaps, wealthiest classes. 29. For a thorough discussion of the various debates concerning the use of English and Africa’s vernacular languages, see 72–78 of Julian Dakin, Brian Tiffen and H. G. Widowson, Language in Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968). In 1911 and 1923 the British government organized the first Imperial Education Conferences. At the 1923 conference, delegates from British colonies emphasized the problems with bilingual education; Dakin et al., Language in Education, 73. During the same period the Phelps-Stokes commission began its own inquiry into education in Africa. A report titled “Education in Africa,” 1922, published by the Phelps-Stokes Fund, gave three recommendations for

96

Chapter II

primary and secondary school teachers in Africa. During the elementary grades the commission promoted local tribal language should be used. In the middle years teachers should use a lingua franca, such as Swahili, should be used to teach intermediate students. Finally, in the last years, or “upper standards,” English should be introduced as the preferred medium of instruction. Other British reports that emphasized linguistic bifurcation included the “Memorandum on Educational Policy in British Tropical Africa,” Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1925, and “The Place of the Vernacular in Native Education,” African No, 1110, H. M. Stationery Office, 1927. 30. Early and mid-Victorian era political leaders hailed from aristocratic backgrounds and inherited both their titles and appointments from their forebears. Gentlemen such as Earl Charles Grey and his son Earl Edward Grey, both enjoyed tenures as Britain’s foreign secretary; see Cannon, The Oxford Companion to British History, 437–38. Similarly Earl George Villers Claredon was the progenitor of a noble legacy of three earls who were both inherited royal and appointed power (216–17). By the late Victorian era these and other aristocrats who had political power shared governmental authority with men such who either acquired wealth and distinction through trade rather than nobility, or who garnered nobility through education and service to the crown; Gallagher, Robinson and Denny, Africa and the Victorians, 18, 20–22. Whereas before 1895 aristocrats held the majority of all appointees in all British cabinets, by the turn of the century they never enjoyed such a distinction again; Eric Hobsbawn, The Age of Empire: 1875–1914 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 171. 31. For a discussion of how the aristocratic tendencies of the ruling nobility and the middle class political strategies of England’s new elite created friction in Britain’s foreign and colonial offices, see W. P. Morrell, Colonial Policy of Peel and Russell (London: Frank Cass, 1966), 29–34. 32. According to Abner Cohen elite associations, and policy are “maintained in the public interest, but at the same time are used to develop and protect maximal [elite] rewards”; see Abner Cohen, The Politics of Elite Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 219. 33. Though craniology enjoyed its most prominent position in the late nineteenth century, it remained an important field of study into the 1940s, energizing discussions concerning Europe’s role in Africa’s preindependence educational policy; see Raymond D. Dart in I. Schapera, ed., The Bantu-Speaking Tribes of South Africa: An Ethnopgraphical Study (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1937), 1–32. Raymond Dart, a professor of race and craniology, contributed to an inquiry commissioned in 1937. Dart’s published his observations with other preeminent European faculty of South African universities in an edited compilation. In his study Dart described the South-African “bush” race as having

Disarticulation

97

low-vaulted pentagonal skulls with large foreheads. He claimed that bush people had a skull in the “foetal form,” calling this tribe of people champaepentagonoid; Schapera, The Bantu-Speaking Tribes of South Africa, 9 and 17. See also The American Heritage Dictionary, second ed. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, Co.) An invented term, the first part of the word derived from the Bantu word for monkey—“chimpanzee,” the second part came from the Greek word for five-sided object. Dart called the Bantu ortho-ovids, named for their supposed vertical, egg-like skulls; Schapera, The Bantu-Speaking Tribes of South Africa, 18. Due to the fact that there was variation in skin color among the Bantu and because they spoke a variety of dialects, Dart concluded that they must be related to “Mediterranean or brown races” (21). In a unique departure from most of the studies of the era, Dart argued that the Bantu population should be considered one of the socalled brown races responsible for the great civilizations found in the Nile valley, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. Dart argued that as a brown race, the Bantu must possess more intellectual potential than other neighboring groups of southeastern African. Dart dubbed the black people of southeast Africa the “bush” races and suggested that they were less progressive than the Bantu; see The Bantu-Speaking Tribes of South Africa, 9, 23, and 31. Like Dart’s work, nineteenth-century craniological studies argued that most if not all southeastern Africans were both wholly “bush” and Negroid. Furthermore, like Dart, most craniological studies argued that the black or “non-brown” races of Africa were incapable of advanced thought. However, unlike Dart, most scholars in the field of craniology were not particularly interested in these subtle classifications and grouped most African tribes, including the Bantu and the Swahili as Negroid and therefore thoroughly ignorant. See Stephen Gould, The Mis-measurement of Man, for a comparison of the various theories in the fields of craniological study. 34. See Charles Lyons, To Wash an Aethiop White: British Ideas about Black African Educability 1530–1960 (New York: Columbia Teachers College, 1970), 14. 35. According to much of ancient Greek literature, people were classified as either Greek or barbarian, which was largely a geographical index; see Julie K. Ward and Tommy Lott, Philosophers on Race (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 14–37. Aristotle used the term barbarian to describe most people, including northern Europeans (21). As a rule, barbarians were thought to lack the ability for rational deliberation (24). In Aristotle’s estimation, the riotous personality or untamed nature of barbarians, especially northern Europeans, required that Greeks rule them “despotically” (23). 36. Ward and Lott, Philosophers on Race, 14. 37. See Paul S. Reinsch, Colonial Administration (New York: Macmillan Co., 1912), 41. Reinsch was a prominent German sociologist in the early twentieth century.

98

Chapter II

38. Reinsch, Colonial Administration, 41. 39. Lady Claud (Genesta) Hamilton, a visitor and biographer of Zanzibar life in the early 1900s, described the Mwenyi Mkuu, one of several indigenous Swahili tribes that ruled Zanzibar’s coast until Arab invasion, as “cruel” and predisposed to “witchcraft”; see Lady Hamilton, The Princes of Zanj, Elspeth Huxley, ed. (London: Hutchinson, 1957), 81. The colonial government considered the Mwenyi Mkuu, a tribe conquered by the Omanis and absorbed into an undifferentiated pool of Bantu and Swahili squatters, uncivilized; Middleton and Campbell, 18 and 26. European observers interviewed for Hamilton’s book called Africans of the interior (whose ancestors were captured as slaves), “savage,” “absent of thought,” in Huxley, Princes of Zanj, 84 and 89. 40. European visitors in East Africa referred to Arabs of Zanzibar’s royal house as educated and sophisticated and praised them for the creation of clove plantations, but suggested that they still lacked “the constructive and adaptable minds of the West”; Huxley, Princes of Zanj, 201–2. 41. Not all accounts regarding Zanzibar’s Indians were favorable. In fact, much of the literature produced by and for the British government was ambivalent when it came to discussing the role the Indian community played in expanding the colonial economy in Africa. British royal explorer Sir Richard Burton referred to Zanzibar’s Indians especially those of Western India as “mild,” calling them the “fellow-subjects” of the British crown. However, Burton also suggested that “these Hindus lead a simple life, active only in the pursuit of gain”; Sir Richard Burton, Zanzibar: City, Island and Coast (London: Tinsely Brothers, 1872), 331, vol. 1. Burton maintained that in most cases Hindus were given to “usury” that was “rapacious”; Burton, Zanzibar: City, Island and Coast, vol. 2, 147. He described another groups of Indians, the Khojahs, as “by no means deficient in intelligence, though unscrupulous and one-idea’d in pursuit of gain. They are popularly accused of using false weights and measures . . . they are receivers of stolen goods, and by the readiness with which they buy whatever is brought for sale, they encourage the pilfering propensity of slaves,” in vol. 1, 338–39. For a contemporary study of the stereotypes that describe “model minority” Asians, see Frank H. Wu, Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black & White (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 67–77, 79–88. 42. Clearly the terms “race” and “civilization” are expressions used by the author to denote higher orders of existence. Despite the obvious scorn the British had for the “savage” Bantu and the “impaired” Shirazi and Swahili, these communities, along with Arabs and Indians, all played a vital economic function in Britain’s plantation economy. British organization of these groups into an occupational hierarchy was based more on generating revenue for the crown than promoting its extensive feelings of disdain. However, various British imperial-

Disarticulation

99

ists, some adherents of craniology or the logic of Social Darwinism, others with their own feelings of superiority, generally placed indigenous African groups at the base of a racial pyramid. Groups that the British thought to be similar to themselves were placed at the pinnacle. There were exceptions. In cases where Europeans, such as the British, experienced economic competition from “advanced” groups, the civilization or culture of these “enlightened” groups came into question. For negative views by British regarding Indians in Kenya and Boers in South Africa, see, respectively, Lord Delamere’s “White Man’s Country,” and Thomas Pringle’s “Boer Meets Bantu,” both in Collins, Documents from the African Past, 298–300 and 183–87. 43. A British colonial officer cited in Omar R. Mapuri, The 1964 Revolution: Achievements and Prospects, 9. For a similar view of Swahili Zanzibaris, including the British notion that the Swahili feign good manners and are therefore like a clock that requires constant winding, see Lyne, Zanzibar in Contemporary Times, 224. 44. Cannon, The Oxford Companion to British History, 144, and Lyne, Zanzibar in Contemporary Times, 68. 45. Sir Richard Burton cited in R. N. Lyne, Zanzibar in Contemporary Times, 203. Sir Burton’s views regarding African inferiority were consistent with those of Britain’s Anthropological Society, of which he was a ranking member, are cited in Cannon, The Oxford Companion to British History, 144. 46. The official reports of Sir Richard Burton, and men like him, reached several colonial authorities. One such report caused Lugard to argue that despite their shortcomings, Zanzibar’s Swahili might be “molded to fit British will”; Lyne, Zanzibar in Contemporary Times, 223. In contrast to Messrs. Burton and Lugard’s view of the Swahili, Bishop Frank Weston argued that they were admirable. A missionary sent to Zanzibar at the turn of the nineteenth century, he suggested that “in fact the African is not idle. Even if it were true that Africans were idle, the remedy must not be one that is itself immoral. . . . The call of service to the human race is always valid; but it does not summon a man to work for the enrichment of a small band of commercial foreigners. . . . The doctrine that Europeans are justified on commercial grounds in making serfs of the Africans is in itself immoral”; Lord Oliver, White Capital and Coloured Labour (Richmond, UK: The Hogarth Press, 1929), 111. Reports such as Bishop Weston’s caught the attention of the Fabians in the colonial office, but otherwise generally fell on deaf ears. 47. European writing of the nineteenth century is replete with contempt of Bantu or “African” culture and admiration for Arab civilization. Ironically there are also examples of contempt for Bantu culture in the Swahili language and culture. The word for civilization in the Arabic language is pronounced hadara. Hadara literally means to be settled, urbanized, or stable; J. M. Cowan, ed., The

100

Chapter II

Hans Wehr Arabic-English Dictionary (Urbana, Ill.: Spoken Language Services, 1976), 244. The word for civilization in Swahili is ustaarabu, which means to act or behave like an Arab (as opposed, presumably, to a Bantu); see Frederick Johnson, The Standard English-Swahili Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), 90. 48. “Report of the Committee on Education 1915,” cited in Mapuri, The 1964 Revolution, 9. In 1924 the Phelps-Stokes Commission challenged this view and sent delegates to visit East Africa. The commission stated that its primary aim was “to find the types of education best fitted to meet the twofold needs of Negro masses and of the Negro leaders of Africa in the near future,” in Battle and Lyons, Essays in the History of African Education, 109. In its 1924 report the commission argued that “every people must have some of its own to serve as leaders,” Phelps-Stokes Report on Education In Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 138. It argued that “the secondary school is the all-important institution for training almost every type of leader required in Africa” (150). To the detriment of a truly feasible policy for colonial education, the commission also made assertions regarding the need for expensive boarding schools, thought to cultivate “sounder habits,” among potential African leaders (149). Discussions of secondary school funding were omitted from the “official recommendations” of the commission. However, the report concluded by stating that the development of boarding schools, favored by the commission, required “the generous aid of the [British] government” (209–10). 49. Ibid., 43. 50. British colonials in Jamaica argued that the educational system produced indolence among the agricultural labor class, see Mapuri, Essays in the History of African Education, 50. Similarly, a German missionary and headmaster of a government school in Tanganyika complained to a British colleague that he feared that the German educational system would make Tanganyikans less willing to work on government-run banana plantations, and, instead, would only work on their own, tribal-owned, coffee farms; see Julian Sorell Huxley, Africa View (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1968), 55. 51. This new school of thought continued well into the colonial literature of the twentieth century, supporting the notion that European administration should allow Africans to develop their underdeveloped land which would energize their “latent [intellectual] capacities”; see T. Walter Wallbank, ed., “General Considerations Affecting White Settlement,” a report by the joint Committee of both Houses of the British Parliament, 1931, in Documents on Modern Africa, 53–55. 52. See Lyons, To Wash an Aethiop White, 21, for a discussion of John Milton’s book, Aeropageitca (published in 1644).

Disarticulation

101

53. See Lyons, To Wash an Aethiop White, 21, and note 52 above. 54. Henry W. Landsdown, ed., The Petty Papers: Some Unpublished Writings of Sir William Petty (two volumes; London: Constable, 1927), II, 31. Spelling reflects eighteenth-century English grammar. 55. Lyons, To Wash an Aethiop White, 21. Various late medieval and early industrial ages secular scholars, including the philosopher Jean Bodin, as well as religious scholars such as Morgan Godwyn, and medical doctors such as Petty, implied that Africans looked, acted, and socialized with apes. 56. Lyons, To Wash an Aethiop White, 15. 57. J. M. Goldstrom, The Social Content of Education 1808–1870: A Study of the Working Class School Reader in England and Ireland (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1972). Beginning in early nineteenth century, members of Protestant sects that separated from the Anglican Church of England, collectively known as the “Non-Conformists,” began establishing their own elementary schools. The Non-Conformists successfully petitioned the British government for financial assistance. 58. Wardle, English Popular Education 1780–1970, 93. 59. Goldstrom, The Social Content of Education 1808–1870, 45. 60. Some secular schools took on the role of community leader, eclipsing parish priests, who had once ruled supreme. Anglican and secular schools leaders, taking cues from local government, began dispensing financial advise to families of their students. More specifically, local governing councils told the students enrolled in secular schools located in financially challenged rural areas that they could increase their wealth by accepting credit, and mortgaging their farms to “expand family wealth”; ibid., 76–77. 61. In 1833 the British government instituted an annual grant of twenty thousand pounds to voluntary organizations that managed primary/elementary schools. Most of the organizations that received this money were religious associations. In fact, much to the chagrin of the Protestant Non-Conformists, the British government began investing a large amount of money in establishing its own Anglican schools. Ultimately, most Non-Conformists children had to attend Anglican schools. Non-Conformists parents were upset because large, wealthy Anglican schools were being subsidized at a rate equal to or greater than the far small and fewer Non-Conformist schools. Anglicans, on the other hand, were upset because, as of 1870, Non-Conformists were allowed to run for election to school boards, and, not long after, began outnumbering their Anglican colleagues on many of the school boards in most parishes; see Martin Pugh, Britain Since 1789, 101. 62. Clive Girgiss, The Trade Union Congress and the Struggle for Education 1868–1925 (London: The Falmer Press, 1983). In the 1880s and 1890s, both the

102

Chapter II

Fabians and the Trade Union Congress, the TUC, sought to make working class education more accessible, equitable, and closer to elite education. The TUC’s initial attempts to promote education reform in the early 1880s were a success. However, by the turn of the century, the drive to make educational reform important was reduced, taking a backseat to wage reforms and attempts to reduce the national work-week. During World War I, the demand for child labor to assist in the war effort reduced educational opportunities even further. Even when “universal” education was successfully promoted by the TUC during the years 1880–1930, it largely advocated technical curricula, all the while worrying that such a move may stifle lower class upward mobility (14). 63. See Arthur Creech Jones, ed., New Fabian Colonial Essays (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1959), 191. 64. Jones, New Fabian Colonial Essays, 187. 65. Cited in full in David Scanlon, Traditions of African Education (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 27–50. 66. See Scanlon, Traditions of African Education, 39. 67. Scanlon, Traditions of African Education, 42. 68. Ibid. 69. When he arrived in Tanganyika Donald Cameron announced that “We’re here on behalf of the League of Nations to teach the Africans to stand by themselves”; J. Cameron and W. A. Dodd, Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1970), 40. Sir Cameron announced that he was on a mission to locate and train “traditional indigenous authorities” to serve under British regional deputies and district commissioners (40). 70. Lord Lugard, Political Memoranda 1913–1918 (London: Frank Cass, 1970), 130–31. According to Lugard, “the primary function of education should . . . ensure that the exceptional individual shall use his abilities for the advancement of the community and not to its detriment, or to the subversion of the constituted authority” (130). 71. Cameron and Dodd, Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania, 41–42. 72. Paradoxically, while many of Zanzibar’s elite Arabs were given a British “grammar” school education and Africans were largely relegated to technical and agricultural curricula, in 1920 Britain’s Education Commission argued that “the future of agriculture, we must assume, in the main lies with the Arabs,” cited in Bennett, A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar, 224. 73. See Godfrey Huggins cited in Dickinson A. Mungazi, The Mind of Black Africa (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Press, 1996), 115. The debate between the Fabian and conservative forces regarding colonial Africa in the twentieth century is important to the study of East Africa. While Fabians mentored Julius Nyerere and Tanganyika African National Union, Britain’s conservative forces dominated Zanzibar’s

Disarticulation

103

the two official political organizations, the LEGCO and the EXCO. More discussion on these divergent political influences will follow in chapters III and IV. 74. Fifty years before the “scramble for Africa,” Britain’s concept of an educational system was largely based on promoting primary schools created by Christian organizations. The British government reserved the right to show financial and political preference toward some religious organizations/schools and very little consideration of others. Naturally, the British colonial government also used this approach when endowing schools in East Africa, and Zanzibar in particular; see Cameron and Dodd, Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania, 68. 75. Cannon, The Oxford Companion to British History, 328. 76. Outside the religious and labor union communities, the political impetus for popular education in Britain and in Africa came from “liberals” in the Whig party and “progressives” in Liberal party, with the limited assistance of a few “radicals” in the Conservative party. When Britain participated in the Berlin conference and established the protectorate in Zanzibar, the Conservative new imperialists were in control of British Parliament and, the foreign and colonial offices. World wars, economic depressions, and the continued dominance of “new imperialism” kept British social polices restrained and to a minimum—especially experimental endeavors such as colonial education. By the time liberal forces regained stature in British politics, African colonial independence was imminent. In Tanganyika, British Fabians were able to build on the large and bureaucratic school system established by the Germans. In contrast, the few mission schools that survived economic hard times in Zanzibar were hardly equipped to accommodate more than a handful of students. More discussion of these developments will follow. 77. David Livingstone’s travel to East Africa preceded the Speke-Burton mission by a decade. As a missionary, an officer of the British crown and a product of industrial era he believed and professed that his charge in Africa was to “try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity”; P. J. Marshall, Cambridge Illustrated History: British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 208 78. In Collins, Documents from the African Past, 253–57. 79. See Collins, Documents from the African Past, 252–57. For a reproduction of the official documents epitomizing the African scramble, including the Berlin Act of 1885, and the 1919 League of Nations Mandate concerning the allied acquisition of axis colonies, see Wallbank, Documents on Modern Africa, 15–17 and 21–23 respectively. 80. Rudyard Kipling published his celebrated poem in McClure magazine in February 1899, in support of the American acquisition of the Philippines during the Spanish-American war. The poem created many reactions. Among the Americans who thought new world imperialism was a luxury America could ill

104

Chapter II

afford was Anna Manning Comfort, who wrote “Home Burdens of Uncle Sam,” published in The Public, May 1899. A poem titled “Charity begins at Home,” published in The Colored American, March 1899, expressed a similar sentiment; see Jim Zwick, ed., Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898–1935, 2003. 81. Even though the term “white man’s country” became less popular, new imperialists of the early twentieth century remained true to its ideology, as they adopted more politically correct terminology. 82. Collins, Documents for the African Past, 290. 83. Lugard coined the term “enlightened self-interest,” which was subsequently used by various “liberal” advocates of colonization; see the Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, cited in Wallbank, Documents on Modern Africa, 40–42. 84. Margery Perham, Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. [1922], 1965), 204–6. 85. In some missionary communities of the late nineteenth century, the Christian ideal of charity and a preoccupation with Social Darwinism led to a philosophy known as the “Social Gospel,” which was similar to the principle of the three Cs, in Battle and Lyons, Essays in the History of African Education, 24. 86. British advocates of the broadest notion of dual mandate, and therefore those tentatively committed to universal primary education, included individuals who considered themselves part of the liberal Gladstonian tradition, including Sir Harry Smith, Lord John Russell, and Lord Stanley. As crown governor in South Africa, Harry Smith advocated a policy that foreshadowed Lord Lugard’s notion of dual mandate. Like Lugard, Smith believed that Africans could be “ameliorate[d] . . . from brutes to Christians, from savages to civilized men.” Smith’s supervisor, the Lord Earl Grey, believed that “the means of advancing civilization” in Africa were of two kinds. On the one hand he believed that it was important to “stimulate the industry of the people, by having recourse . . . to direct taxation bearing upon them as the means of raising revenue required for public service (the crown).” Lord Grey believed the colonial government’s other civic responsibilities included maintaining order, security, and improvement of infrastructure, as well as fairly vague directives to provide both secular and religious education; see Lord Earl Grey, The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell’s Administration (Richard Bentley, publisher in Ordinary to her Majesty, 1853; reprinted August M. Kelley, 1970), 79. 87. In the early 1840s Earl Charles Grey, secretary of state for the colonies, asked Britain’s leading educational organization, the Committee of the Colonies, to “report on the mode in which. . . . Industrial schools for the colored races may be conducted in the colonies, so as to combine intellectual and industrial education”; see Battle and Lyons, Essays in the History of African Education,

Disarticulation

105

16–17. The committee, however, disregarded Lord Grey’s high opinion of African intellect and pursued its investigation based on three assumptions. First the committee argued that (1) blacks had lower capacities than Europeans, that (2) the “tropical exuberance” made it necessary to help them overcome the habits of “listless containment” (laziness), and as a result (3) blacks could only fill humble posts. Lord Grey did not support the “great chain of being” hypothesis that “innate differences” separated intellectual abilities of European and non-Europeans. Furthermore, his proposal suggests that he believed the committee would respect his efforts to devise a method for combining literary and agricultural education. By contrast, due to their basic assumption of African inferiority, the committee reported that Africans could only benefit from simple primary-level religious and agricultural education, which would, coincidentally, also best serve Britain’s financial interests; Battle and Lyons, Essays in the History of African Education, 16–17, and Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas & Action 1780–1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 427–28. 88. Indirect rule suggested that even in the absence of white settlers, colonial policy could still be promoted through willing and cooperative foreign (or very wealthy native) elites. Although both “indirect rule” and “dual mandate” were formally pronounced in the twentieth century, the ideas of indirect and dual mandate rule were concepts that emerged much earlier. While sixteenth-century representatives of trading companies were solely interested in obtaining African wealth, by the late seventeenth century, missionaries from various European countries began suggesting that in addition to trading in African slaves and goods, Europeans could transfer their culture, religion, and technology. Narratives, and official colonial dispatches by Father Rui De Aguiar in 1561 about the reign of King Myemba Nzinga (christened Affonso I of the Congo), and an account by Father Antonio Suarez regarding the conversion of the king of the Mutapa (Mozambique), petitioned the Portuguese crown to increase exploration of Africa; see Collins, Documents from the African Past, 25–27 and 113–15. Several centuries after these missionaries wrote about the moral duty of white settlers to improve/educate their African hosts, Lord Lugard suggested Britain’s indirect rule and dual mandate were inextricably linked and absolute requirements of African colonization. 89. C. B. Wadstrom, An Essay on Colonization: Particularly Applied to the Western Coast of Africa, with some free thoughts on Cultivation and Commerce (London: Darton & Harvey Publisher, 1794; reprinted by August M. Kelley, 1968), ii. Mr. Wadstrom identified himself as an officer in the Swedish court who requested leave of his post to travel to Africa for a year. In 1787 the Swedish king financed Wadstrom and two companions in what became an official fact-finding mission to west and central Africa. Before returning to Sweden in 1788, the Brit-

106

Chapter II

ish Privy Council asked him, as a visitor in England, to give them a description of what he thought of Africa. Wadstrom’s essay reflects his final report to the British Privy Council and to the king of Sweden. 90. Wadstrom, Smith, Grey, and Lugard’s conceptualizations of indirect rule/ dual mandate, along with “the material needs” of the crown, affected, among other things, the implementation and funding of schools in Zanzibar. By the twentieth century, few colonialists treated dual mandate/indirect rule as a unitary theory. Many colonists viewed them as independent concepts, often advancing one without the other, or advancing them in different degrees. The tension between the “civilization imperative” of dual mandate and profit driven premise of enlightened interest/indirect rule, meant that Britain’s social welfare policies in the colonies were often in jeopardy, especially in times of imperial decline or regional economic distress. 91. C. B. Wadstrom, An Essay on Colonization, iii–iv, emphasis mine. 92. F. D. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edinburgh: Frank Cass and Sons, Ltd., 1926 [reprinted 1965]), 617–18, emphasis mine. 93. Discussed at the beginning of chapter II. 94. Fatton, Predatory Rule, 1992, 9. 95. Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 168. As early as the 1850s, Zanzibar’s leading financial firms were Indian. Indian firms were the gateway for British economic monopoly and later formal colonial rule of Zanzibar (163–71). Robert Fatton uses the term disarticulation to describe how privileged communities (and sometimes the state), try to limit the social and economic development of laboring classes. 96. Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 168. The Portuguese attempted without much success to establish Christian schools in Zanzibar for the education of missionaries throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Aside from a few converts, the schools, and the missionaries they produced met with little professional success. Most of these early Portuguese missions were closed, a few were replaced by French, German, and English missionary schools in the late nineteenth century; see J. M. Gray, Early Portuguese Missionaries in East Africa (London: Macmillan, 1958), 27. 97. L. W. Hollingsworth, The Asians in East Africa (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1960), 156–58. In 1916, Zanzibar’s British Department of Education made its first grant to Indian schools; see O. W. Furley and T. Watson, A History of East Africa (New York: Nok Publishers International, 1977), 35. 98. Indian communal particularities and Christian mission work emphasized ingroup similarities and exaggerated out-group differences. Well into the first decade of the twentieth century, even Britain’s so-called secular schools emphasized Christian religious training in their syllabi. All of these factors led to a segregated educational system in Zanzibar based on community membership, which as mentioned

Disarticulation

107

earlier denoted language, occupational function and class. Further, these attributes defined ethnic identity; see Furley and Watson, A History of East Africa, 35–36. 99. In the mid-nineteenth century the British campaign to end slavery in East Africa resulted in their establishing St. Andrews College, a teachers college, for the education of freed slaves in Zanzibar and later German East Africa. Between the years 1869 and 1912 approximately six hundred primary teachers from St. Andrews graduating with the hopes of working on mainland Tanganyika and Uganda as teachers, leaving Zanzibari missions to fend for themselves. Non-Muslim African Zanzibaris, and other Zanzibaris willing to send their children to mission schools suffered directly from this policy; see John Iliffe, Tanganyika under German Rule 1905–1912 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 176. 100. At the turn of nineteenth century, the British government generally believed that colonial education in Africa should be “geared to clearly identified needs in pursuance of a predetermined policy of development.” A few years later Zanzibar’s first director of education in the 1920s, Mr. S. Rivers-Smith, argued that “the ideal for a system of African education would be that based on an employment census and a careful forecast of economic development”; Cameron and Dodd, Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania, 63. A 1937 report by a commission appointed by the secretary of state for the colonies similarly endorsed the notion that educational opportunities should be tailored to fit local industry. The commission suggested that “the requirements of employers should be stated before attention is given nature of schools which may be provided in order that the question of quantity may be considered in relation to absorptive capacity of East Africa”; see Higher Education in East Africa (H.M. stationery office, London, September 1937), 16. British colonies policy consistently sought to limit educational opportunities for Zanzibar’s Africans rather than expand or vary their employment opportunities. 101. See the beginning of this chapter for a discussion of the three debates. 102. A shamba is a medium-sized clove farm. 103. Cited in Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 173. 104. Corey and Ochoa, The Encyclopedia of the Victorian World, 1996, 148. 105. Marjorie Lamberti, State, Society and the Elementary School in Imperial Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 19. 106. Karl von Altenstein’s argued was that the confessional system would grant fair access to all groups who wanted an education for their children, and would prevent dissention which was the norm in Prussia’s interconfessional schools. The new decree promoted increases in taxes, fees and dislocations. Thus, the confessional system initially proved to be disruptive to the students formally enrolled in large interconfessional schools. Additionally, school administrators resisted having their schools reorganized. Ultimately, however, the confessional

108

Chapter II

system proved popular and succeeded in its goal of increasing literacy. By 1861, of the 80+ percent of Prussia’s students attending primary school, 99 percent of Protestant and 97 percent of Catholics attended schools of their own confession; Lamberti, State, Society and the Elementary School in Imperial Germany, 20–21. 107. Lamberti, State, Society and the Elementary School in Imperial Germany, xii. 108. Immanuel Kant’s writings characterized a school of German thought that promoted the inferiority of black or African intelligence (Akademie-Ausgabe, Critique of Pure Reason, IX, 316) and the problems with race-mixing (AA, VIII, 367); Friedreich Nietzsche was responsible for more general musings on the relation between European craniology and advanced intellect (On the Genealogy of Morals, I: 5). These ideas were popular throughout Europe in as late as the nineteenth and early twentieth century; see Ward and Lott, Philosophers on Race, 158, 159, and 186. 109. Although Weber was not one of Germany’s noted neo-Kantian scholars, his work conveyed some of same the well-known concepts regarding rational thinking and human endeavor found in Kant’s writings. Penned in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries respectively, Kant’s categorical imperative and Weber’s “ideal” type share a desire to respectively make exemplary moral behavior and cool rational thought the paragon of human behavior; see Jay M. Shafritz and Albert Hyde, Classics of Public Administration (Three Lakes, Wis.: Cole Publishing, 1992), 51–57, and Konard H. Jarausch, Students, Society and Politics in Imperial Germany (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), 170–71. Weber’s philosophies regarding appointment of administrators was that they should be chosen based on their ability rather than their status or connection. These ideas were central to German’s direct rule approach used in its African colonies. Direct rule and bureaucratic rationality encouraged the Germans to establish a large and an exacting school system in Tanganyika. By contrast, the British fondness for indirect rule stimulated Arab patronage in Zanzibar, a system that thrived in the absence of rigorous educational program. 110. Max Weber was a “liberal of the left, by German Standards.” However, Weber also believed that Germany should be a strong imperial power. He joined the “ultra-reactionary” Pan-German league. Weber’s code of bureaucratic neutrality became attractive to politicians on Germany’s entire political spectrum; see Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875–1914 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 188. Critics of Weberian thought, including Leo Strauss, argued that in the tradition of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke, modern, positivist theories such as Weber’s discouraged moral features of political life; see Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), and

Disarticulation

109

Thomas Mautner, The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 543. 111. For a discussion of colonialism’s three great debates, see the beginning of this chapter. 112. By the 1890s there were one thousand Europeans, mostly Germans, who began building modern state in Tanganyika. Germans missionaries built eleven mission stations for health and education; E. B. Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 43. 113. Even after the German administration established its schools, missionary schools in Tanganyika accounted for 95 percent of student enrollment. This was not a problem at the time however because less than 10 percent of Tanganyikans were Muslim. At the turn of the century, the colonial government estimated that Muslims comprised less than 10 percent of the population. By the mid-1950s the British government believed the Muslim community to be approximately 27 percent of Tanganyika’s population; see J. Spencer Trimingham, Islam In East Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 60. 114. E. B Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 43, and Cameron and Dodd, Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania, 55. Just before the turn of the century, the German colonial authority established three government schools, which were built in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanga, and Bagamoyo. 115. Late nineteenth-century Social Darwinist writings on the inferiority of black or African intelligence did not seem to dominate colonial educational policy or the personal philosophy of Director von Soden; see Ward and Lott, Philosophers on Race, 158 and 186. 116. By World War II, the German colonial administration conveyed most of its official dispatches and policy in Swahili; see Lene Buchert, Educational Development in Tanzania (Oxford: James Curry, 1970), 16 117. Cameron and Dodd, Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania, 56. 118. Cameron and Dodd, Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania, 55 and 68. The adherence by many of Zanzibar and Tanganyika’s “secular” government schools to some variety of Christian instruction meant that they could not benefit from donations from one of the richest communities in East Africa, namely Zanzibar’s coastal Arabs. The rift between Tanganyika’s Muslim community and the German school system was not as serious as the cleavage between Zanzibar’s Muslims and the British, because the Muslim community represented 20 percent and 90 percent of the Tanganyikan and Zanzibar’s population respectively; see J. Spencer Trimingham, Islam in East Africa, 60. 119. In 1911 the Colonial Institute in Hamburg sent a survey to all schools in German colonial Africa. Martin Schlunk, a scholar of German colonial Africa, described the purpose of German educational policy and the politics of language

110

Chapter II

in the colonies. He published his findings in The School System in the German Colonies (Hamburg: L. Friederichsen & Co. Publishers, 1914), cited in full in David Scanlon, Traditions of African Education, 27–50. Schlunk argued that “the teaching of German is at best only of doubtful value for the majority of the native pupils. Only a small minority of them will have any use for that language after leaving school. Every educational program, in order to be useful, has to be given in the native language” (42). Schlunk’s recommendations validated the policy implemented by Tanganyika’s first director of education Karl von Soden, and von Soden’s successors. 120. The German government established schools between the 1890s and World War I, which, despite their progressive exterior, emphasized “submissiveness and not enlightenment” and promoted pro-German nationalism; see Cameron and Dodd, Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania, 57. As such, secular schools were the first causality of war with the Allies, while the missionary system absorbed pacifistic strategies and ultimately prevailed. 121. Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 48. For several decades after the establishment of government schools, the number of enrolled Muslim students remained very low. 122. Middleton and Read, From Child to Adult: Studies in Anthropology of Education, 276, 278. 123. Buchert, Educational Development in Tanzania, 20. The missionaries, and commercial interests were largely represented by foreign or minority groups. Very few Africans attended this important conference. 124. During World War I, Britain’s Liberal-Imperialists had become a loose association of progressive parties who professed, sometimes ambivalently, that imperialism meant great opportunity but equally great obligation. Dubbed the “limps” by their conservative rivals, they shortened their name in the 1920s to the “Liberals.” In contrast to the Liberals, conservative (new) imperialists, had by the 1920s, become as narrowly focused on the financial rewards of colonial rule, as they had been during the “scramble for Africa.” Many continued to argue, quite adamantly, that neither colonial settlers nor the British government were in any way obliged to help Africans. Ultimately, the interests of Edwardian era commercial partisans often prevailed, as they so often throughout the Victorian age. 125. The document in which the 1925 conference ideals were enshrined was called “Educational Policy in British Tropical Africa.” The idea of transferring new farming techniques was the laudable aspect of adaptation. In the absence of other forms of education, however, adaptation to Africa’s postcolonial economy could and would not be fulfilled. 126. The other aspect of “adaptation” was its promotion of an educational system which distinguished primary, secondary and higher education by its use

Disarticulation

111

of language; see T. J. Jones, Education in Africa (Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1922), 25–26. In Zanzibar, during the elementary years of instruction, Swahili was written in an Arabic script, while other Bantu “vernacular” languages were written in Latin script. In the intermediate or middle school years the British eliminated Bantu dialects and Swahili instruction was rendered in the Latin script. Ultimately Swahili was eliminated from high school and secondary instruction. English and Arabic were introduced as the new mediums of instruction in the most advanced levels and, coincidentally, among the wealthiest classes. 127. According to Rivers-Smith, “As a result of changed condition [the end of slave labor], many [Arab] landowners found themselves in financial difficulties, with their properties heavily mortgaged. At the same time practically all skilled trades had become an Asiatic monopoly.” Sheik Abd el Bari, a leader in the Arab community, created the industrial program specifically for Zanzibar’s Arab community, but allowed a few Swahili boys to attend. The success of the program rested on the hope that the fortunes of once prosperous plantation owners could be restored. This Arab vanguard would presumably lead the larger Arab community, the sultan’s true subjects, to dominion over the skilled labor market, thereby challenging the power of the Indian community by becoming the darlings of the British government. Naturally, the sultan would bask in their reflected glory; see R. H. Crofton, Zanzibar Affairs 1914–1933 (London: Francis Edwards, 1953), 20–21. 128. Once again the school’s fee prevented many Shirazi and most Swahili boys from enrolling. 129. The idea that “racial” integration would detrimental to Zanzibari Arabs was saturated with irony. Before the arrival of the British, most schools, Islamic and missionary, were fully integrated by race and class, even if they were segregated by religion. 130. E. W. Chilver and Allison Smith, History of East Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), vol. 11, 651. 131. Chapter I argued that divisions between Arab planters and Bantu slaves were largely a factor of linguistic and religious difference. As Bantu peoples were absorbed into the Arab culture, linguistic, and religious conversion made manumission possible. The African intertribal slave trade that existed on a small scale before the arrival of Arab immigrants expanded with Arab trading networks. Once the Europeans established the transnational slave trade in the seventeenth century, slavery in Africa took on a racial dimension. For a discussion of “the industrial factor in race prejudice,” see chapter III of Lord Oliver, White Capital and Coloured Labor (Richmond, UK: Hogarth Press, 1929), 44–49. In the subsequent chapter (49–59), Lord Oliver further explains that racial exploitation was expressed in its highest degree during the slave era and again, decades later,

112

Chapter II

during the “new imperialist” industrial era. These were periods of time noted for British economic expansion and separated by a brief era of colonial “liberalism,” promoted by missionaries and like-minded politicians. 132. By 1897 Britain had emancipated all former slaves. This led to mass migrations of rural populations to the city. There were not enough jobs in the city to employ former slaves; rather, there was only seasonal and rural clove work. Aware of this new labor dynamic, and the need to have a population of cash crop workers at the ready, Rivers-Smith realized that expanding African education might lead to a demand for African employment; see R. H. Crofton, Zanzibar Affairs 1914–1933, 20–27. 133. These schools offered a minimalist version of Britain’s three Rs and more in-depth courses in agricultural planning. Especially bright student to enroll in Zanzibar’s Primary School to complete the last four years of primary education. However, the government rarely fulfilled the promise of rural education for most students even the most talented. All four rural schools had very low enrollment because of a small, yet compulsory, fee. Furthermore, students periodically dropped out of school to harvest cloves and other small cash crops. In 1910 the number of rural schools had increased to eight schools, but the combined attendance was under two hundred students; see Furley and Watson, A History of East Africa, 40. 134. In 1913, a year when the clove harvest was especially successful, enrollment of students in rural schools dropped during the harvest season over thirty percent from 642 to 459 students; Furley and Watson, A History of East Africa, 43. 135. Reflects statistics from the fiscal year 1922; see Thomas Jesse Jones, Education in East Africa (New York: Negro University Press, 1925 [1970]), 224. 136. T. J. Jones, Education in East Africa, 224–25. 137. T. J. Jones, Education in East Africa, 225. In the early 1920s, the British established an eighth government school. It was free, but like the other government schools emphasized a curriculum that was mainly vocational. 138. Furley and Watson, A History of East Africa, 134. 139. Medressas fell into the category of “unassisted” schools by virtue of their general unwillingness to subscribe to the “regulation” of curricula imposed by the colonial government; see Lord Lugard, Political Memoranda: Revisions of Instructions to Political Officers 1913–1918, third ed. (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1970), 157. 140. The grants-in-aid program received less than 5 percent of British expenditure in 1925 until the end of the Second War when 5 percent of colonial expenditure was allocated for the annual education budget. At the end of colonial rule in the 1960s that percentage had only risen to 12 percent; see Buchert, Educational Development in Tanzania, 59. 141. Buchert, Educational Development in Tanzania, 27.

Disarticulation

113

142. Although Tanganyikans had many more students enrolled in primary schools than Zanzibaris, and were a lot more vocal about participation in the education system, both Tanganyikan and Zanzibar enrollment in secondary levels was very low. In the 1920s and 1930s, less than 3 percent of Tanganyikan students were enrolled in secondary school or beyond; see Buchert, Educational Development in Tanzania, 27. In 1935 the British government established only one secondary school in Zanzibar. It graduated only twenty-nine students in 1936; see the Commission on Higher Education in East Africa, Report of the Commission appointed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies 1937 (H.M. Stationery Office, 1937), 50. 143. Buchert, Education in the Development of Tanzania, 20. 144. Rivers-Smith, like German Governor von Soden, had respect for Islamic faith and held the Swahili language in high esteem; see Cameron and Dodd, Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania, 58–59. The British government never fully committed to Swahili as a national language in East Africa, the way the German government had in the years before World War I. 145. Buchert, Education in the Development of Tanzania, 23 146. Sultan Seyyid Ali was educated in England at Harow; see Furley and Watson, A History of East Africa, 36. 147. Furley and Watson, A History of East Africa, 37. 148. Sultan Seyyid Ali and the protectorate government both recruited teachers from Egypt. 149. In the 1920s the bifurcated vernacular-colonial language education system was endorsed by the leading educational foundation the Phelps-Stokes Fund. They suggested that (1) the tribal language should be used in the lower elementary standards or grades, and (2) a lingua franca of African origin should be introduced in the middle class. In areas which occupied by large native groups speaking diverse languages, and (3) the language of the colonizing nation in control should be taught in the upper standards. See the Phelps-Stokes Fund, Education in Africa Report. 150. These statistics specifically refer to the year 1911, but reflect general trends in the retention and advancement of students at the Primary school from years 1911 until the 1950s; see Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule. During the years of World Wars I and II school attendance dropped markedly for students of all groups, but especially African students. 151. Of the approximately 5,000 primary school students, only 410 were girls; see Furley and Watson, A History of East Africa, 214. 152. Furley and Watson, A History of East Africa, 217. These numbers do not reflect medressas of which there were 795 in 1954, which graduated 7,454 boys and 3,563 girls. In 1960 Zanzibar’s medressas graduated 9,714 boys and 7,060 girls.

114

Chapter II

153. Furley and Watson, A History of East Africa, 48 154. Furley and Watson, A History of East Africa, 63–64. 155. Raymond F. Betts, The False Dawn: European imperialism in the 19th Century (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1975), 62. 156. The League of Nations made Tanganyika a mandate after World War I and transferred authority from German to British control. The new governor of Tanganyika was Donald Cameron, protégé of Lord Lugard. Cameron’s policy, faithful to norms of the indirect rule, who promoted government schools for the elite, as well as the use of English in these elite schools and in the government; see Cameron and Dodd, Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania, 41–42. 157. As mentioned in chapter I, the British made the liwali system less democratic, by selecting the liwali rather than allowing communities to vote for their leader as they had done both before and during Omani rule. 158. R. H. Crofton, Zanzibar Affairs 1914–1933, 20. 159. For the complete quotation from Godfrey Huggins, see note 185 of this chapter. 160. See A. Mungazi, The Mind of Black Africa, 35 and 115. Godfrey Huggins made this statement in an official capacity at annual meeting of Rhodesia Missionary conference in 1954. The Rhodesian case study is valuable to a discussion of colonial policy in Zanzibar because Cecil Rhodes, Godfrey Huggins, and Ian Smith clearly articulated the prototypical new imperialist position. This worldview captured Britain’s colonial office at the beginning of the twentieth century and held sway until Africa’s colonial independence, influencing the formulation of policy in Britain’s various holdings, including Zanzibar. African Rhodesians, like African Zanzibaris, had little or no access to primary or secondary education; see T. R. M. Creighton, Southern Rhodesia and the Central African Federation (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976), 164–69. African Rhodesians, like African Zanzibaris, viewed land disparities between the indigenous majority and ruling minorities as a source of historic discrimination; see “Land: Rhodesia’s Powder Keg,” the statement of ZAPU cited in full in The African Liberation Reader, Aquino de Braganca and Immanuel Wallerstein, eds. (London: Zed Press, 1982), 57–59. 161. The UDI was declared in 1965; see Peter Godwin and Ian Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 99. 162. The citation was Ian Smith’s response to Dr. Henry Kissinger’s efforts to promote a “philosophy of responsible majority rule”; Kissinger cited in Godwin and Hancock, Rhodesians Never Die, 155. Ian Smith argued that in the 1970s Rhodesia was already a “meritocracy,” and that the most qualified people, individuals who just happened to be almost exclusively European, were the most “responsible” parties for the job.

Disarticulation

115

163. In 1952 the YAP declared that “the educational system in Zanzibar has been such as not to give the same facilities for higher education to Africans. . . . What facilities are there for Africans for secondary school?” See YAP official statement in Lofchie, Zanzibar: Background to Revolution, 1981, 161–62. In the 1930s the number of African youths entering secondary school(s) in Zanzibar was under thirty students, see Higher Education in East Africa 1937 (H.M. Stationery Office), 50. Secondary education for African Zanzibaris remained under one hundred students throughout the 1940s and 1950s. 164. Ibid., 163. 165. Despite the implementation of British mandate and indirect rule after World War I, Tanganyikan’s progressive educational system designed by the Germans during fifty years of rule, survived. Further discussion of Tanganyikan adaptation to the end of German rule and the inception of British mandate will follow in subsequent chapters. 166. See David Abernathy, The Political Dilemma of Popular Education (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969), 82. Before Lugard, “the willingness of the British administrators to leave education in the hands of the missionaries, and the relative indifference of the colonial government to the role of education in justifying colonial rule, produced a laissez-faire educational policy in Southern Nigeria during the period before 1914. . . . Educational policy changed noticeably under Sir Frederick Lugard, who became Governor of Southern as well as Northern Nigeria in 1912, and who in 1914, engineered the amalgamation of the two areas under one administration” (82). 167. The German system in Tanganyika stands in stark contrast to the tax system on Unguja Island (Zanzibar Island), where nearly every process in the production of clove cash crop was taxed. The German system of letting tribes control Tanganyika’s coffee cash crop, and taxing only houses and nonagricultural products, more closely resembled the system in which Pemba Shirazi were allowed to maintain their clove production under separate agreement with the British protectorate government. 168. While the German government in Tanganyika created secondary schools in close proportion to the number of primary schools, British policy fundamentally resisted creating secondary schools in most of its African colonies. While the British Phelps-Stokes commission condemned “any movement to provide an inferior system of education for the black man,” but, paradoxically, stressed that vocational training must prevail. The commission argued that secondary schools would only produce clerks, which Africa’s agricultural economy did not truly require; see L. J. Lewis, Phelps Stokes Reports on Education in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 25–26. On the other hand, the report stressed that “the ultimate test of colonization is not, however, in the exploitation of physical

116

Chapter II

resources. The final test is in the civilization of the Native people” (136). As such the report stressed the need for middle schools to train African “leaders.” These schools would only provide an additional three years of education beyond the three years of primary school (143–45). 169. While missionaries in Tanganyika prevented von Soden form including Islamic teaching in the government school curricula, and, later, from giving medressas grants-in-aid, the German government did not try to convince Muslim Tanganyikans to transfer their students from medressas to government or missionary schools, which was the case in Zanzibar. 170. See the beginning pages of this chapter for a thorough discussion of these debates. 171. Consistent with the dominant strain of colonial philosophy, the British government established a system of colonial rule in Zanzibar’s urban bureaucracy that emphasized centralized control more than Lord Lugard’s indirect rule system. British colonial authorities reduced the number of Arab and Indians in the “higher echelons” of Zanzibar’s colonial administration. Colonial authorities justified these dismissals by advancing a need for British leadership, which could establish bureaucratic “efficiency,” which in turn would promote a system of indirect rule and native authority in rural areas; see Bennett, A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar, 191. In actuality, the British government was prepared to support Arab plantation owners and Indian financiers in economic capacities, but wanted to reduce the political power of the sultan over his clients—Zanzibar’s rich communal groups. 172. Funding expenditure for education in Zanzibar was 1 percent of revenues at the beginning of the protectorate, and rose to 2 percent in the 1920s, where it remained until the 1940s. Between 1940 and 1960 expenditure rose to more than 5 percent of the annual revenue, but this was too little too late; see Phelps-Stokes Commission Report, cited in Furley and Watson, A History of East Africa, 129 and 211. 173. In the second phase of colonial rule British authorities claimed they were “opening” Zanzibari society, promoting “mass” education. In reality, elite education was expanded, while the majority of African labor was largely neglected. British rhetoric regarding its educational campaign is consistent with stage two of Taylor and McKirnan’s model, which suggests that the elite of stratified societies claim to expand opportunities, but consistently promote their narrow interests to the detriment of the majority of the population. This trend is discussed in chapter I of this book. 174. British strategy of framing economic struggle as racial conflict is discussed in Fatton’s second site in the introduction to the first chapter.

III Repression

The first and second chapters of this book argue that in the years before the arrival of the British, social inequality in Zanzibar was caused by a distinction made between free and slave labor. In most cases the Arab ruling class groomed and promoted only free persons, particularly those individuals who either had a specific talent, or who belonged to a clan that could advance the state’s political or economic interests.1 Chapter I indicated that the British established a system of stratification based on disparities in wealth and land ownership and that this led to the impoverishment of the African laborer. This system was not unique to Zanzibar, but was characteristic of most plantation economies. In concluding chapter II, I argued that the colonial educational system, small and elite in nature, ultimately became a prominent source of strife among Zanzibar’s incipient political organizations, including labor unions and political parties. The unrest over educational opportunities extended in Zanzibar’s third phase to other aspects of political and social development. These conflicts are the focus of the following chapter.2 This chapter will determine how Britain’s land and language policies, which defined its phase 1 agricultural and phase 2 educational strategies, ultimately influenced its phase 3 labor practices.3 While the primary focus of the first and second phases of the British administration was creating property and linguistic differentiation, the colonial government also concentrated on eliminating indigenous political institutions that it thought might challenge British rule. The colonial administration replaced native 117

118

Chapter III

structures and institutions with British institutions or associations of elite communal interest. In many instances it was Zanzibar’s independent economic organizations, both those that were indigenous to Zanzibar and those created by foreign forces, that were the focus of colonial manipulation. Thus the primary focus of colonial administrators during the third phase of colonial rule was to continue the policies of “new imperialism”—namely, to prevent both native and alien efforts from organizing labor.4 This chapter thus focuses on phase 3 political repression. The first area of inquiry concerns the lasting impact the ideologies of new imperialism and dual mandate had on colonial administrations in Zanzibar and Tanganyika. Although chapters I and II dealt strictly with colonial rule in Zanzibar, political analysis in this chapter will contrast political developments in Tanganyika with Zanzibar. It is useful to explore the Tanganyika case for several reasons. After World War I, Britain assumed control of Germany’s African colonies and ruled in Tanganyika until its independence in 1961.5 Due to the fact that British policies toward Tanganyika and Zanzibar were so dissimilar, a discussion contrasting these policies is necessary, particularly because this chapter endeavors to determine why British rule in Tanganyika did not end violently. The Germans and British began their rule as repressive colonial powers. However, while the German administration in Tanganyika became progressive, the British government in Zanzibar grew more conservative. When Britain came to rule in Tanganyika, the indigenous population, accustomed to relatively progressive German leadership, pressured Britain to build on this progressive legacy. When the British mandate and trustee administrations did try to implement conservative policies in Tanganyika, Tanganyikans used political, economic, and social resources to resist. British rule in Tanganyika and Zanzibar grew more divergent as the respective colonial governments followed ever more progressive and conservative trajectories toward independence. Analysis of Tanganyika begins with a focus on the evolution of German command to the introduction of the British mandate, and the United Nations’ implementation of the trusteeship system. This will be contrasted with the profound expansion of economic imperialism in British Zanzibar. The political situation in Zanzibar, described in chapters I and II and consistent with the dynamics described by the five-stage and five-phase models, began as a closed system, and became more exclusive in each phase. By contrast, native

Repression

119

reaction to colonial rule opened Tanganyika’s previously closed system to progressive Fabian rule. The second area of analysis will contrast German and British attitudes toward subsistence and cash-crop farming and will examine different forms of African resistance to cash-cropping and British labor policies more broadly. Colonial reaction to indigenous resistance will also be examined. This analysis will demonstrate that although the political system in Tanganyika began as a more rigid colonial authority when compared to the government in Zanzibar, the German colonial authority modified its style of governance in response to native resistance, and adapted to changes in the global economy. More specifically, the German government opened Tanganyika’s economic and political systems to African participation. By contrast, colonial rule in Zanzibar began as a liberating force, but it quickly embarked on a path of African exclusion. Phase 1 economic and phase 2 educational exclusion extended to civic and political restrictions during the third phase. Thus the first section of this account deals with the evolution of two waves of labor unionism in Britain and Germany and how these significant endeavors ultimately influenced East African colonial administration. As the primary colonial agents in East Africa, British and German labor history had a lasting impact on the modern politics of Zanzibar and Tanganyika, respectively. The central dynamic that animated phase 3 European colonial rule was its response first to domestic and then to colonial labor unionism. At the turn of the twentieth century, miners’ boycotts, dockworkers’ strikes, and the MajiMaji revolt were the first episodes of labor insurgency. The first occurred in Germany and the second in Britain. The final revolt took place in Tanganyika and was a rebellion against Germany’s early agricultural policies. All three insurgencies occurred within a fifteen-year period. By contrast, almost fifty years later, and after a long era of relative calm, Swahili dockworkers brought labor resistance once again into colonial consciousness. When Tanganyikan and Zanzibari dockworkers went on strike in the late 1940s they made many of the same demands as their European counterparts. However the reaction of the respective colonial governments could not have been more different. In Tanganyika the British trustee government met many of the demands of the striking dockworkers and allowed them to organize a permanent political organization. However, the government in Zanzibar frustrated or ignored most worker demands.

120

Chapter III

Global economic depression and events leading to two world wars dominated European politics between 1914 and 1944. During those years, British labor politics lay dormant, only to surge in the mid- to late 1940s. British labor, a factor since the early twentieth century, did not become a leading force in domestic politics until the end of World War II. Internationally, the Labor party was able to express itself more forcefully, first with the socialists and the Fabians in the League of Nations and subsequently, in the United Nations. These two organizations were directly responsible for developing policy in postwar Tanganyika. From the turn of the century until the end of World War II the Conservative and Liberal parties, with their right and center-right domestic and international policies, dominated the British political landscape. This was especially true in the British colonial office, where the weight and gravity of the Conservative party cast a long shadow over the administrations of Conservative and Liberal parties alike. This meant that Britain’s progressive elements were meager and isolated relative to its conservative forces. Reactionary political thinking dominated policy formulation in British colonies, especially cash-crop, resource-rich protectorates such as Zanzibar. Hampered by a long tradition of conservatism, Britain’s progressive elements could not make early gains in the arena of domestic politics, and, as a result, were unable to influence most of British colonial policy. This chapter will analyze early attempts by East Africans to resist colonial authority as well as British and German reactions to those efforts. Here the discussion will expand themes discussed in chapter II—namely, the distinct nature of colonial rule in German and British East Africa. This discussion will focus on the differences between Britain’s approach to imposing pure economic imperialism in Zanzibar and its more progressive economic strategy in the Tanganyikan mandate. In Tanganyika, German attempts at colonial governance began as an exercise in pure and direct rule. The German government established a broad network of colonial offices throughout the Tanganyikan countryside, staffed by Swahili-speaking Germans. A central colonial office in the capital Dar-es-Salaam controlled this bureaucracy. The contrast with British indirect rule, at least at first, could not be starker. From the outset, the British system was ad-hoc. It relied on co-opting and coercing local institutions and individuals into implementing British policy. In many ways British indirect rule meant to be more egalitarian than German

Repression

121

rule. However as time wore on, the plantation economy became a bigger burden on its subject population and indirect rule grew less enlightened. Tanganyikans soon discovered that direct rule was not without positive aspects. Among other concessions, direct rule offered its subject populations a very progressive educational system and a colonial bureaucracy that recruited those elite who matriculated through the system. What German colonialism had in common with British rule, and other forms of European imperialism, was that it promoted revenue generation as the primary goal of its political operations. Germany, as were most of Europe’s imperial governments, was interested in expanding trade—especially agricultural cash crops. In Tanganyika the German government began a campaign to get Tanganyikan locals to grow crops on their small plots of land. They created the need to produce cash crops by establishing an annual hut tax, which Tanganyikans did not oppose, at least initially, because they still retained ownership of their land. The British colonial government took a different approach when it established a cash-crop economy in Zanzibar. First, the protectorate gradually alienated Zanzibar’s Africans from their land. The British colonial government then forced them to work as hired laborers on land they lost, which was newly acquired by Arab families. The government created a range of taxes that had to be paid throughout the year and then coerced squatters to work by establishing vagrancy laws and monitoring their activities. By contrast, Tanganyika’s Africans retained their land even when the German government began producing luxury cash crops for export. Tanganyikan backlash against Germany’s cash-crop campaign emerged as soon as the policies were implemented. This backlash came in the form of the Maji-Maji rebellion of 1905. The rebellion had an impact for decades to come, influencing colonial policy in Tanganyika for a variety of political administrations over the next fifty years. In Zanzibar the gradual alienation of Africans from their land and the slow but deliberate expansion of clove plantations elicited a similarly dilatory and sluggish response. Whereas Tanganyikans actively opposed the system of cashcropping, Zanzibar’s Africans chose to adopt work slowdowns and work stoppages, avoiding outright rebellion until well after World War II and then not effectively until 1964.6 In the years between the first and second world wars, Zanzibar’s economic situation worsened and, as the need for colonial revenue generation increased, colonial repression intensified.

122

Chapter III

The primary focus of the following discussion is to examine the British policy of political repression, just before, during and after the world wars, with the objective of assessing the interaction of economic imperialism with Africa’s emerging political resistance. A brief digression into the study of German policy before and after the Maji-Maji rebellion will prove useful in analyzing the impact of the rebellion on German rule prior to World War I and during British rule in the era of the Tanganyikan mandate.7 Most importantly, it will facilitate analyzing the remarkably different approaches the British and German colonial governments adopted with regard to their colonies. The present account addresses how native response to the disparate labor policies adopted by the British mandate government in Tanganyika and the British colonial administration in Zanzibar influenced the formation and character of labor unions in East Africa. The emerging conclusion will show that during the third phase of colonial rule, the British government in Zanzibar shifted its administrative strategy from merely co-opting or eliminating institutions it did not like to repressing the development of newly emerging political institutions, populist leaders, and socio-economic movements.8 This chapter argues that during the third phase of British rule Zanzibar’s colonial government escalated political repression.9 Third-phase African political resistance was disorganized, lurching from impulsive to chaotic, until the fourth phase, when John Okello led an organized and successful revolt.10 Before Okello, third-phase political resistance developed over a period of three intervals. The initial interval spanned the first decade of the twentieth century, while the next interval began just before World War I and lasted the duration of the war. The final interval of phase 3 British rule spanned the interwar years, the Depression, and World War II.11 In the years before World War I, African Zanzibaris faced a world that was changing dramatically. The transfer of land from African kinship groups to a handful of Arab families was almost complete. African Zanzibaris, now alienated from their land, were forced to work in Zanzibar’s colonial industries. These new industries were almost exclusively agroindustrial, providing processed crops for export.12 None of the occupations open to Africans required education or allowed for social enrichment. Both during Omani rule and later under British protection, Zanzibar remained a society closed to Africans seeking upward social mobility.

Repression

123

Before British rule, Bantu, Swahili, and Shirazi members of the population were either slave or free. As slaves they had very little access to land ownership or wealth. However since slavery was not an inherited status and as manumission was part of the creed of Arab society, emancipation, social status, and wealth could be attained during a slave’s lifetime. British protectorate rule ended de facto slavery. However, the colonial state replaced the Arab slave system with British wage dependency.13 Modern African social inequality was created in the colonial office, sired by the plantation economy, and sustained by Arab rulers indebted to the growing British Empire. It was economic imperialism in its purest form, a cycle of stratification that permeated every aspect and stage of colonial rule. As opportunities for transnational trade expanded for Arab and Indian merchants during the first and second phases of colonial rule, free Africans were integrated into this modern economic system solely as an immutable caste of agricultural laborers. As the British demand for cloves, taxes, and cash-crop revenue increased, so did its desire to create a large class of African workers. Having created this class of workers by alienating them from their land, the colonial government realized it would have to monitor their political activity very carefully. As with the British in Zanzibar, the German colonial government in Tanganyika initially pursued pure economic imperialism, coercing Africans to grow cash crops. Between the years 1890 and 1904 the German “grow more crops” scheme proved successful. The scheme raised a significant amount of revenue for the German government. By 1905, however, Tanganyikan reaction required the German government to put down a countrywide rebellion and initiate radical steps to reform their agricultural policies, eschewing economic imperialism in favor of a milder approach to colonial governance. In almost total contrast to the German approach, Britain’s first-phase colonial administration developed an elaborate scheme to seize Zanzibari land and appropriate African labor. The British colonial government justified this scheme during the second phase through a carefully worded rhetorical campaign promoting political, civic, and educational opportunity. In reality, Britain’s secondphase educational policies, like its first-phase economic program, solely benefited the Arab and Indian elite. Namely, second-phase educational opportunities were available only to those already enriched during the first phase by the clove trade.

124

Chapter III

The second phase of colonial rule expanded and institutionalized social inequality, creating a monetized economy that excluded the vast majority of the society. That phase of colonial rule was also marked by the formulation of colonial philosophies that rationalized the economic and cultural dislocations with which it was associated. Twentieth-century European political theory suggested that both vast economic dislocation, as well as intense individual sacrifice, were the price of social progress. By extrapolation, any dislocations experienced by non-European people—especially those throughout British colonies—were considered of even less significance. Ironically, the dislocations of industrialization and modernity were a source of discontent both across colonial Africa, as well as throughout many newly industrialized Western societies. In Europe the dislocations associated with industrialization similarly included loss of property and community identity, which became the catalyst for European labor to organize unified opposition to rapidly expanding capitalist industry. The central dynamic that characterized phase 3 European colonial rule was its response to the worldwide surge of socialist/progressive labor unionism at the turn of the century and again during the interwar years between 1920–1940, as indicated at the outset of this chapter. The parallel evolution of two waves of socialism in Germany and Britain and the convergence of these movements in East Africa influenced colonial policy in German Tanganyika and, later, in Zanzibar. The first wave occurred in 1890–1910, and the second wave developed during the years after World War II. As colonial agents, Britain and Germany had a lasting impact on politics in colonial East Africa. Germany, Britain, and German Tanganyika experienced three different types of labor insurgencies: miners’ boycotts, dockworkers’ strikes, and the Maji-Maji revolt—an African insurgency against German agricultural policies that had to be put down by the German military. Almost fifty years later, and after relative calm, labor resistance again erupted in East Africa. As in Africa, nineteenth-century European labor unionism met conservative backlash. This was true both in Britain and Germany. However, in Germany, the backlash was shorter in duration and less effective. The economic gains and political institutionalization of progressive German socialism, and the legacy of Germany’s medieval guild tradition, subdued conservative resistance to Germany’s modern labor unions and encouraged the growth of political parties. Ultimately this legacy of progressive

Repression

125

socialism became a source of enlightened colonial policy in German Tanganyika. The evolution of socialism, labor unionism, and progressive politics in Britain, by contrast, occurred in fits and starts, and encouraged a high degree of conservative resistance and backlash. Labor activism in Britain surged later than it did in Germany and made only modest political gains, which were temporary—reversed during the onset of World War I. Throughout the early years of the twentieth century, reactionary elements in the Conservative and Liberal parties dominated British politics. These elements formulated domestic and foreign/colonial policy to frustrate rather than accommodate the development of labor unions. England’s guilds, quashed under Tudor rule, survived only at the margins of British society until the beginning of the industrial revolution, when the British Parliament formally outlawed them.14 Workers formed small trade unions or “houses of call” because they were exploited and did not have guilds to protect their interests.15 Houses of call remained largely secret organizations because the government promulgated a series of laws called the (anti-) combination (of workers) acts. The parliament passed the combination acts in 1799 to curb the growth of labor organizations and aimed to keep the trade union movement from developing. However, trade unions continued to ripen underground until 1825 when political pressure in parliament led to the “houses of call” act being repealed.16 By the late 1860s Britain’s various “houses of call” united, creating the modern Trade Union Congress (TUC). Along with the creation of the TUC, there was the growth of other independent labor unions, the emergence of socialist activism, and the rapid expansion of the cooperative movement.17 One of Britain’s first and most elite progressive-socialist organizations was the Fabian Society (FS). Moderates in the Socialist-Democratic Federation (SDF) who felt that SDF politics were both too radical and too provincial founded the FS in 1884. Coincidentally, the Fabian Society became one of the few organizations in colonial Africa that responded, both rationally and empathetically, to striking Swahili dockworkers.18 Like other political organizations in Britain, the Fabians initially promoted nineteenth-century colonial exploration. However, by the early twentieth century the Fabians argued that colonialism was not the solution to either Britain’s economic depression or its political problems. They believed that there was a great need for labor reform, but Liberal-Conservative rule shifted focus

126

Chapter III

away from reforming economic conditions to eagerly endorsing African colonization. Public support for Fabian and socialist reform diminished as enthusiasm for colonialism soared. In contrast to the situation in Britain, Germany’s East African labor policy, like its domestic trade unionism, was far more progressive than its British counterparts, both at home and in its overseas colonies. That fact was in large measure due to Germany’s unique political history. Germany’s progressive political spirit was a reflection of the state’s sympathetic attitudes toward its guilds and labor unions. German guilds were Europe’s first modern nongovernmental organizations, and, unlike British guilds, they grew largely unfettered.19 Eventually, the economic and civic power of German guilds evolved into political power.20 This produced a strong and enduring tradition that encouraged provincial oversight over Germany’s medieval oligarchy, its medieval state bureaucracy, and, much later, its modern labor unions and colonial possessions overseas.21 According to John Moses, scholar of medieval European labor history, German political development was unique: Only in Germany did guilds themselves play a significant role in the nineteenth century, thus making for distinctive political culture and social philosophy. As before, their fate was bound to the small “hometown” though they functioned in large cities too. Their position in the German milieu was related both to later industrialization and to the Napoleonic experience. It was also bound up with continuing German debate about the location of Germenischaft (community) between individual and state and the peculiarly German constellation of forces, in which individual liberty was ranged alongside state power against guild and commune.22

By the nineteenth century, German guilds were several hundred years old. They were able to influence, even sway, the policies of Germany’s modern trade unions as well as the nation’s emerging political parties. The heirs of the guild movement, Germany’s trade unions and its emerging socialist and cooperative movements, expanded during the years 1860–1930.23 The years that reflected the most growth for Germany’s progressive labor unions were the late 1880s to World War I. Paradoxically, Europe increased its imperial activities during that era. Germany’s initial strategy of new imperialist direct military rule, paradoxically dubbed “the age of diplomacy,” spanned the years 1890–1904.

Repression

127

Germany enacted policies during this era sought to expand cash crop plantations and coerce Tanganyikan labor to grow crops for export. Tanganyikans responded to Germany’s program of forced labor by collective rebellion, engaging in the Maji-Maji rebellion of 1905–1906.24 The rebellion was Germany’s wake-up call in colonial Africa, analogous to a series of mine workers’ strikes in Ruhr in 1889 and the English dockworkers’ strike during that same year. After the Maji-Maji rebellion Germany changed its imperial policy in Tanganyika. Between 1906 and 1910 the German government modified its colonial program to foster political accommodation. This era was called the “age of reform.”25

GERMAN LABOR POLICY 1890–1905 AND THE MAJI-MAJI REBELLION Germany instituted the age of reform to correct the singular rapacity of German agricultural policies established during the “age of diplomacy” and the ensuing pan-tribal Maji-Maji rebellion.26 In the years before 1891, only German businesses occupied properties in East Africa. By 1891, the German government formally intervened with its military on behalf of the German East African Company, which was facing resistance to its efforts to expand trade along Tanganyika’s Swahili coastline.27 Between 1891 and 1896 military officers were responsible for the administration of German East Africa. In 1896, Governor Eduard von Liebert took over administration of the region. Von Liebert encouraged European settlement. Lack of interest on the part of the German public, however, doomed the settlement scheme and administrative costs rose steeply. In reaction to the rise in costs: It was decided that the cotton should be grown by the forced communal labor of neighborhood units. The Africans would receive no payment until the cotton had been sold, when one-third of the proceeds would go to the producers, one-third to the government’s non-European agents, and onethird to district funds.28

The government instituted that Volskulture planting scheme in Dar-esSalaam in 1903.29 After two years of planting and harvesting, the government failed to pay Tanganyikan farmers. In the summer months of 1905,

128

Chapter III

as the time to harvest the third cotton crop approached, the peasants of Kilwa began a small rebellion. Grievances with the Volskulture scheme were extensive and profound and the rebellion spread. The rebels enlisted the help of the religious and spiritual community to help them fight the Germans. Tanganyikan witch doctors dispensed “medicated water” that in Swahili was called maji.30 The Maji-Maji rebellion was a movement that ultimately enlisted all those who had grievances with the German government, and this cut a wide swath in Tanganyikan society.31 This rebellion against controversial land and cash-crop policies was possible because of the linguistic cohesion of Tanganyikan society, which, though diverse, was able to understand and speak a few words of the Swahili language. The Swahili language was neutral; it did not represent a particular community or history of conquest or defeat as it did in Zanzibar. More specifically, in Tanganyika Swahili represented a shared rather than a contested national identity. After all, in Zanzibar, Swahili was largely ignored or maligned by colonial authorities, while in Germany it was raised to the level of an official language of commerce, governance, and education. Unlike the British government, which told Zanzibar’s Africans that colonial rule would lead to economic and political advancement, Germany’s colonial administration never made such claims. Whereas Zanzibaris resisted cash-cropping with circuitous tactics such as working slowly and work stoppages, Tanganyikans decided to fight the colonial authority squarely and directly. Maji-Maji rebels made several bold moves in the early days of the rebellion, murdering as many European and non-European government officials as possible. They burned military and administrative buildings and as much of the cotton crop as they could lay hold of. Governor Gustav Adolph von Götzen’s response was initially quite measured; however, his military ultimately turned to reprisals, destroying food, which led to the deaths of over seventy thousand Tanganyikans. In 1907, after restoring order, the government lifted martial law. The era of reform began when the German imperial government sent Albrecht von Rechenberg to assume the position of colonial governor of Tanganyika. Von Rechenberg devised a reconstruction program. In one of the most progressive efforts by a colonial power to date, von Rechenberg’s government strove to engage the local African peasant-agriculturalists in

Repression

129

devising an export scheme that would both enrich the colonial government while allowing the native community to continue to grow local subsistence crops. Governor von Rechenberg believed that the proper economic policy of colonial nations should be “to maintain an independent peasantry carrying on self-subsistence farming.”32 Beyond that, von Rechenberg believed that rebellion could not be quelled unless the German government improved Tanganyikans’ material well being. The central tenet of the German “agricultural” reform was financial, and these innovations required consultation and accommodation.33 German agricultural reform ultimately altered the nature of political relations between German administrators and Tanganyikan subjects much as guilds and labor unions changed the course of politics in Germany. Germany’s treatment of the Chagga people of the Mt. Kilimanjaro region and the Luguru of the Mororogo district was perhaps the best example of Germany’s willingness to respect Tanganyika’s indigenous political organizations. Rather than fight it, the Germans institutionalized it in the Kilimanjaro Native Planters Association (KNPA), which became the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union (KNCU). By creating the KNPA/KNCU, the Germans kept, but modified, the patronage system, expanding the institution of one highly organized tribe to incorporate the less organized neighboring tribes. The government made the Chagga patronage system an engine of inclusion rather than exclusion. Gus Liebenow argues that the administrative activity of the KNCU had a “spill-over” effect that influenced the larger political environment. The KNCU/Chagga alliance served as a form of training in progressive national leadership, which, in turn, served as an “institutional framework” transcending intra- and intertribal rivalries.34 While reform-minded German colonials were moving to accommodate native resistance by modifying direct rule, the British government in Zanzibar was intensifying the exercise of new imperialist economic strategy. Britain’s policy of limited or indirect rule was changing to one that increasingly promoted direct rule while expanding compelled labor. This was certainly true during the third phase of British colonial rule, when the government was trying to expand Zanzibar’s cash-crop industry in an era when the economy was declining. For the colonial government in Zanzibar repressing native resistance became an end in itself. Ultimately, the divergent approaches adopted by German and British administrators

130

Chapter III

served to further differentiate autonomous inland Tanganyikans from their more acquiescent island neighbors. While rebellion in Tanganyika induced Germans to “reform” their most coercive colonial practices, there was no outright rebellion in Zanzibar, no initial Swahili mutiny that induced reform.35 This acquiescence continued as coercive growing policies intensified. During this era of submission, the British tried both to eliminate old communal organizations and to prevent new labor or political associations from emerging. The British colonial office hoped to keep native Zanzibaris from challenging colonial economic expansion or demanding political reform. When World War I broke out, Germany lost its East African colonial holdings to Britain. Paradoxically, while Zanzibar’s colonial administration was becoming more repressive, a trend thoroughly consistent with the third phase of the five-phase model, an entirely different situation was transpiring in neighboring Tanganyika. Due to the peculiar character of mandates and the unique disposition of the British colonial office after World War I, Tanganyika’s political system continued to accommodate political participation.36 In fact, Britain’s acquisition of German colonies created a set of conditions that tended to support progressive leadership. After World War I various European countries began to view the ideals of the failed League of Nations in a new and positive light. The mandate and United Nations trusteeship systems realized Woodrow Wilson’s bygone aspirations for a world governed by international law, an idea that had support in many quarters. FABIAN INFLUENCE IN THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS, THE UNITED NATIONS, AND TANGANYIKA Following the war, the British Socialist Party, the Fabian League, and members of the Labor and Independent Labor parties made a sustained effort to change the new imperialist nature of British foreign policy.37 The Fabians demanded immediate change: An organized “internationalism,” with each racial group or Nation-State pursuing its own evolution, and shaping its own destiny, uninterruptedly in its own way, intensifying thereby its characteristic faculties, and thus increasing the special services that it could render to the world.38

Repression

131

As likely progenitors of allowing Africans to “develop along their own lines,” the Fabians were keenly aware that powerful forces within the British government wanted to maintain a rigid social order in most British colonies.39 Those members of the Fabian movement who found themselves in the British government had to balance their zeal for colonial reform with an equally important duty to assuage fearful conservatives still promoting imperialism. Most British conservatives and many liberals shared a belief that socialist Fabianism, along with pan-African nationalism, might drive African militants to overthrow Britain’s various colonial regimes.40 Thus a fundamental tension began to develop within the British government. The conflict pitted advocates of reforming new imperialism against those who sought to preserve traditional doctrines enshrined in British colonial policy.41 During the interwar years Britain developed two policies regarding her holdings in East Africa. In Zanzibar the government expanded its policy of ever-increasing suppression of native resistance. In Britain’s adopted colony of Tanganyika, colonial authorities, heavily influenced by powerful Fabians at the League of Nations and the United Nations, tried to accommodate resistance.42 Having transformed distrust into cooperation, the colonial government tried to advance Britain’s economic agenda while appearing as dedicated to reform as the Germans had been. The mandate system, however, demanded a liberalizing of colonial policies. This new approach dovetailed with the socialist Fabian cause of promoting an international challenge to coerced labor. Socialist Fabians’ nominal role in British politics during the 1930s, and the modest political authority possessed by the League of Nations, circumscribed both Fabian radicalism and their efficacy. There were, on occasions, prominent Fabians who gained a level of political power during the 1930s that was truly remarkable. Sydney Webb and his wife Beatrice were members of Britain’s cooperative movement and founding members of the Fabian league. Mr. Webb entered government as a British liberal, rising through the party ranks until ultimately in 1929 he gained the title Lord Passfield, and became secretary of state. One of Secretary Webb’s most important pieces of legislation was the Passfield Memorandum, a document that helped shape labor policy in the decades before colonial independence. In the memorandum, Lord Passfield demanded that each and every colonial

132

Chapter III

trade union should be legalized and registered. He argued that without British authority Africans might explode into violence or implode in disaffection: [Without] sympathetic supervision and guidance, organizations of laborers, without experience of combination for any social and economic progress, may fall under the domination of disaffected persons by which their activities may be diverted to improper and mischievous ends.43

The memorandum is important because it identified the shared misgivings many British Liberals, Fabians, and socialists had about promoting colonial reform. They were fundamentally wary about the impression their own progressive ideology, as well as the ideologies of pan-Africanism and communism, might make on disenfranchised African labor. Like most conservatives, many British liberals, especially during the interwar years, hoped to preserve colonial rule indefinitely. The same could be said for British labor, at least during the interwar years.44 Thus, the fear of African nationalism and its “mischievous ends” increased as Fabianism and panAfricanism were hitting their strides. The pan-African movement began quietly, but by the end of World War I became well known in America and throughout Europe. Between the years 1919 and 1945, W. E. B. Dubois, the dean of the Harlem Renaissance, began a series of pan-African conferences to challenge white rule in Africa. The first, in 1919, was among the most notable because it occurred just after World War I. Colonial Africans were fighting on both sides of the conflict under various European flags. Dubois drafted the Pan-African Congress’s petition that demanded that the League of Nations establish a permanent bureau to help Africans gain rights to their own land and capital after the war. The petition also demanded that the league end forced labor and extend mass education for Africa’s primary- and secondary-school-age students. The final demand was that European governments should immediately grant Africans positions in the offices of the colonial state. Many of the recommendations of the first Pan-African Congress received favorable recognition in progressive circles of influence. Thus by the end of the World War I, the panAfrican movement was a power to be reckoned with, or, in certain spheres, a force to be feared.45

Repression

133

In 1921 the second Pan-African Congress invited members of London’s various liberal and progressive organizations in addition to several delegations of African leaders. Members of the socialistleaning Fabian society showed special interest in helping Dubois circulate his ideas.46 It was at this conference that an enduring controversy emerged regarding the influence of communists on black African nationalism.47 Despite the controversy, more political patrons from the Labor and Socialist parties in London, including Labor party leader Ramsay McDonald, began to attend, advise, and support the Pan-African Congress. This was especially true of the men and women of the Fabian Society.48 Between the two world wars the pan-African movement, the Fabian league and international labor unions continued to expand their agendas and increase their supporters. In all three of these movements, African labor became the focal point of political discourse, the heart of their international agendas. As a result, the British government accused the pan-Africans, the Fabians, and especially international labor organizations of promoting communism, as was the case during British dockworkers’ strikes decades earlier.49 As with most pan-African organizations, the more powerful international trade unions became, the more they aroused conservative distrust. This was especially true following World War I.50 In the years after World War I, colonial enrichment and indirect rule continued to be the governing doctrine of Britain’s colonial bureaucracy and its ruling political parties. In London, with a few notable exceptions, the Conservative and Liberal Parties dominated the Colonial Office between the years 1920–1964.51 More than that, colonial secretaries who emerged from the Labor and National Labor Parties rarely, if ever, enjoyed consecutive years in power. As a result most Labor policies, many of which tried to reflect the ambiguous ideals of dual mandate, rarely, if ever, enjoyed a long tenure. Except for three fleeting instances, a colonial secretary from one of the labor parties was almost always preceded and followed by a colonial secretary from the Conservative Party.52 The first two instances occurred in 1935 when two National Labor politicians held the office of colonial secretary for two years, only to be succeeded by a string of Liberals and Conservatives.53

134

Chapter III

MODERN FABIANISM AND THE RISE OF TANGANYIKAN POLITICAL AUTONOMY After World War II Fabians began to emphasize the dual mandate aspect of colonial order over the purely extractive aspects of indirect rule. As such they tried to help African labor and British colonial governments strive for political compromise and accommodation in the years leading to colonial independence. Though much of Labor and Fabian policies in Tanganyika were supplanted during the ten years of conservative command during the 1950s, the advances gained by Tanganyika’s labor unions and civic leaders could not be undone. Tanganyika was by then a British trust territory and benefited from Labor rule.54 The benefits of the trusteeship system, though modest, were especially valuable to African Tanganyikans because of their history of communitarianism and the peculiar nature of indirect rule. Ultimately Fabians would help establish the Tanganyikan African Association, one of East Africa’s most important and most inclusive political institutions. Colonial administrators who wanted to monitor the development of political organizations in the Tanganyikan mandate founded the Tanganyikan African Association (TAA), in 1927.55 The TAA remained largely apolitical until 1946 when it hosted a territorial convention to discuss Tanganyika’s transition from a British mandate to UN trusteeship.56 Over the next decade the TAA evolved into a more militant organization.57 In 1953 Julius Nyerere, a Western-educated teacher/scholar and protégé of various Fabian leaders, joined the TAA and helped it become a more politically activist organization.58 As president of the TAA Nyerere helped the organization become more articulate and transformed it into an umbrella organization for various Tanganyikan organizations.59 In 1954 the TAA changed its name to the Tanganyikan African National Union, or TANU. TANU eventually became both the leading advocate for independence as well as one of the few instruments of a peaceful transition from colonial rule to Tanganyikan statehood. Fabian expansion of Tanganyika’s educational system during the late years of German rule and early years of the British mandate cultivated a population conversant in Swahili as well as an elite literate in political dialogue. According to Hugh Stephens:

Repression

135

Swahili significance was due to the fact that senior officials in the government insisted that “Swahili had truly become a ‘national’ language and had facilitated the exchange of information both horizontally across societies, and vertically modernized strata” . . . much of both African and non-African cadres maintain high standards in its usage.60

The Germans made Swahili the language of colonial governance and national political integration. In the 1940s it became the language of anti-colonial political resistance. Nowhere were Swahili’s democratic possibilities more evident than in the Tanaganyika dockworkers’ strike of 1939–1947.61 Sandbrook and Cohen examine the dockworkers’ activities and argue that between 1939 and 1947 the dockers conducted three important strikes from which they gained in three ways. First, they achieved a strong and self-conscious unity as dockers. Second, they won a privileged position as the best-paid workers in Tanganyika. Third, they temporarily became the spearhead of anti-colonial activity throughout the territory. These developments show how the dockworkers created their own consciousness and organization through their common actions “in the struggle.”62 For several days in 1947, the combined efforts of a small number of dockworkers who continued to strike, along with a far larger number of striking railway workers, paralyzed most of the commerce in the country.63 C. W. Hatchell, a seasoned administrator who believed the claim of the dockworkers had merit, created and presided over a tribunal to resolve the labor dispute. After a few weeks workers in most sectors went back to work, and the government granted several concessions. The dockworkers received the biggest settlement of all. The Hatchell tribunal created a substantial award that included free meals, free hospital treatment, and a wage increase of 50 percent. Furthermore, Hatchell urged legislation to end the shift system and make dockworkers a professional class. The most important gain, however, was that the Hatchell tribunal inspired the dockworkers to create the Dockworkers’ and Stevedores’ Union. In 1947 the Tanganyikan dockworkers’ strike severely curtailed commercial activities. After protracted negotiations and legislation, the workers succeeded in gaining increased wages along with a range of fringe benefits. These important gains were threatened only three years later, when a band of part-time dockworkers, who claimed that the union had

136

Chapter III

become corrupted by a system of patronage, began a protest against the union. The protest led to a strike. The British military police stepped in and tried to force dockworkers back to work. Violence broke out. Ultimately forty-one men were arrested, but not before a crowd of approximately five hundred dockworkers stoned a disarmed police squad. In the days after the arrests, the British government replaced the striking dockworkers, who never regained their jobs, with more casual workers. Thus the 1950 strike was a significant reversal of fortune for the Dockworkers’ and Stevedores’ Union. One of the important results of the strike was that all workers, both the part-time dockers and their full-time colleagues, lost their standing in the eyes of the government. They also forfeited the mantle of labor leader in Tanganyika’s incipient labor movement. On a more positive note, the legacy of the 1939 and 1947 strikes established dockworkers as catalysts of Tanganyika’s trade movement. This inspired other groups, especially TANU, to engage in a long-term economic and nationalist struggle.64 Unfortunately, the same could not be said for labor unionism in Zanzibar.

ZANZIBAR UNDER CONSERVATIVE THIRD-PHASE COLONIAL RULE In Zanzibar, economic imperialism, which defined the government’s firstphase land-acquisition policies and its second-phase educational policies, continued to frustrate political and social development during Britain’s third phase of anti-labor colonial repression.65 Following World War I, and as a consequence of the depression, the colonial administration’s need or demand for tax revenue increased. During this era, Zanzibar’s political administration possessed all the extractive impulses associated with new imperialism. More specifically, the government advanced indirect rule without promoting any of the humanitarian or civic obligations of dual mandate. This arrangement characterized much of Britain’s third-phase rule.66 In the beginning of the third phase, due to changes in the international political system between the two world wars, Britain’s parliamentary conservatives grew suspicious of challenges to colonial authority. As a result, Zanzibar’s government became more rigid and repressive. As the years wore on, social and economic cleavages between and among Arabs,

Repression

137

Indians, and Africans deepened, and these made the colonial government even more antagonistic to displays of political activity. By contrast, a tenuous balance between the otherwise imperfect systems of indirect rule and dual mandate made it possible for the Tanganyikans of different backgrounds to air their grievances within the TAA or other grassroots organizations. Unlike Zanzibar, Tanganyika’s mandate government gave “ethnic” associations in Tanganyika a political mandate.67 The trusteeship system and the tutelage of the Fabians gave Tanganyikans a window of opportunity that they seized. As clients of the Fabians they were able to reject or shrug off the label of anti-Western militants while simultaneously expanding the TAA, converting its ideology from an association of colonial accommodation to a confident activist movement. The contrast with Zanzibar could not be more striking. The only political organizations created by the British in Zanzibar were the EXCO, the LEGCO, and Clove Growers’ Association (CGA). These organizations were only for elite and wealthy Arabs and Indians.68 African membership was nonexistent. This situation allowed the colonial government to keep Zanzibar as one of its unregulated colonial cash cows. In 1914 the British transferred administration of the Zanzibari protectorate from the foreign to the colonial office. The senior British official in the government was given the title British resident. Although this new move appeared to simply shift in the administrative system, it really represented a consolidation of British and Indian dominance over the economy. The emancipation of slaves and Zanzibar’s conversion from a subsistence to a cash-crop economy generated a constant need for new revenue and increased plantation laborers. Zanzibari political activity during the era of 1914–1930 became a struggle between newly emancipated labor and an ever more repressive British administration. On the one hand, many African laborers wished to maintain their livelihood as squatters, choosing to avoid British coercion to work. On the other hand, British authorities sought to harness labor through coercive practices including taxation and vagrancy laws. Rather than trying to oppose British authority, African Zanzibaris adopted the practice of working slowly, traveling far and wide to elude vagrancy police. Ultimately, as a few wealthy Arab plantations absorbed small farms, efforts to avoid clove work on the island of Unguja proved almost impossible. The government expanded vagrancy laws. The colonial administration abridged and ultimately vacated Muslim laws promoting squatting rights.

138

Chapter III

The government created institutions to establish and preserve social order, and determined that Asians should dominate trade and more specifically the Clove Growers’ Association. The government placed Arabs, who did not own plantations, as junior officials in Zanzibar’s various colonial agencies and ministries. This meant “Africans, indigenous or mainland, could only be labourers.”69 Anthony Clayton suggests that the development of Swahili political life ebbed and flowed with the strength of the economy: From abolition in 1897, a colonial order of political and economic institutions was developed under British supervision. This order gathered strength until the 1930s when, simultaneously the first small cracks appeared: in politics, the birth of an African nationalism and in the economy the consequences of the Depression and a change in the birth-rate of the indigenous Africans.70

The first breach in Britain’s colonial order occurred in the mid 1930s when a few Swahili laborers created the African Association (AA) in 1934. Membership was diverse and the African Association had more cleavage than unity. The AA recruited individuals from Unguja as well as Pemba and the mainland. They came from the city and rural areas and most importantly, they spoke a variety of languages. As discussed in previous chapters, language in Zanzibar was a divisive issue. There were individuals of Shirazi, Bantu, and Arab origin who argued that speaking Swahili forced them to deny other, equally important, aspects of their heritage. In many cases linguistic cleavage prevented similarly situated Zanzibaris from organizing class-based associations, the basis of mutual interest. As such, in 1939 the Shirazi of Pemba, many of whom shared a variety of grievances with Unguja Swahili, felt the need to form their own political organization called the Shirazi Association.71 Due to the fact that the British government neglected its few state-owned plantations, and allowed the Pemba Shirazi to keep their land, the Shirazi were able to transform the Shirazi Association from merely a social organization to a first-rate political alliance. By contrast, the largely Swahili African Association of Unguja was unable to evolve into an effective advocacy organization because the British made Unguja a police state. The government closely monitored any innovation. Junior government officials joined Ungujan committees, specifically the African Association, thereby preventing anti-colonial progressive nationalism from ever taking root.72 Beginning with the emer-

Repression

139

gence of pan-Africanism in the 1920s and continuing into the mid-1950s, Zanzibar’s colonial government adopted a successful policy of encouraging, then co-opting, repressing, or generally frustrating organizations that it believed sponsored African nationalism. Between the first year of the Zanzibari protectorate and World War I, the British government created a vast plantation economy and established a social hierarchy based on class and occupation. Peasant laborers, largely Africans of Bantu or mixed Swahili origin, suffered as the government confiscated and redistributed their land.73 During the second phase of British rule, the period between World War I and the 1920s, the British government established its policies of linguistic stratification by creating differentiation and exclusion in Zanzibar’s educational, civic, and social organizations.74 The British initiated these policies in the early years of the twentieth century, but the effects of this policy stretched into the modern era, animating elite politics into the new millennium.75 As a result of Britain’s manipulations, African Zanzibaris endured poverty and landlessness during the first and second phases of British rule.76 By the third phase of colonial rule, the diffuse influence of pan-African and Fabian socialism began to surface in the rhetoric of Swahili workers trying to promote labor activism in Zanzibar. Zanzibar’s colonial administration became more repressive.77 Coercing Zanzibaris to work in clove plantations required that the British government dispossess subsistence farmers, raise taxes, and make the African public subject to a series of vagrancy laws. In the third phase of colonial rule the protectorate government contained individual African efforts at social mobility, while repressing group efforts to check colonial authority. In the first and second phases of colonial administration, the British government created economic and political institutions, such as the CGA, the LEGCO, and the EXCO, that excluded Zanzibar’s Africans. In the third phase the colonial government tried to stop Africans from creating their own organizations, claiming that they promoted pan-African radicalism and communism. Paradoxically, while the protectorate administration was excluding most Zanzibaris from political participation, Tanganyika’s Fabian government was simultaneously expanding opportunities for its African population. The British administration in Dar-es-Salaam increased German educational institutions, created local governing bodies called Native

140

Chapter III

Authorities, and expanded the centralized bureaucracy, which increased its recruitment of Africans to positions of administrative authority. Furthermore, under the stipulations of the mandate and then the trusteeship, the British made an effort to create peaceful economic associations in Tanganyika. These efforts included an assortment of communal and cooperative planting organizations, which encouraged African political and economic development. The government made these efforts despite a sneaking suspicion that this type of political development might one day lead to revolutionary African nationalism. On the whole, African reaction to British and Arab rule in Tanganyika and in Zanzibar was more the result of dispossession and poverty than African nationalism. Pan-Africanism, which by the 1930s had become a worldwide intellectual phenomenon, was much more a threat in the colonial mind than in political reality. In fact, Zanzibar’s most important political organizations did not originate among labor unions, nor in mosques nor at political rallies—rather, they sprouted in Ungujan soccer fields. In the 1920s Indian and Arab Zanzibaris began forming sports clubs, and, though allowed to participate in the clubs, the British government prevented Swahili and Bantu players from assuming leadership positions. In response to this policy, in 1933 Bantu and Swahili players formed the African Sports Club.78 Members of the sports club, including future Zanzibari president Abeid Karume, founded the African Association. The colonial government and its clients had an immediate reaction, which included trying to slow or stop the registration of the organization, as well as attempting to subvert the organization by planting individuals sympathetic to the colonial government. After five years, the colonial government relented, and in 1939 registered the association. Abeid Karume was elected as its secretary.79 Those five years of struggle weakened the African Association. The AA never became a strong political entity and could therefore never challenged the Indian or Arab Associations. Infighting within the African Association, especially cleavages based on class and sectarian politics, forced Pemba Muslims to form their own organization in 1938 called the Shirazi Association. Tanganyika’s system of indirect rule, especially under UN trusteeship, promoted a variety of civic organizations. By contrast the colonial government in Zanzibar did not. Many British bureaucrats, recruited from

Repression

141

India, were particularly fond of promoting minority rule over participatory government.80 The government was loathe to relinquish its authority and only shared power with wealthy Arab planters who were its clients. As the elite rulers in a British protectorate, Arab planters similarly wanted to limit the number and strength of civic organizations that would in any way affect their privileged status. Thus British and Arab reaction to African attempts to form political organizations was to slow their progress, infiltrate, and change the mandate of the organizations. African efforts to express economic resistance to British rule within the Arab-dominated plantation economy grew more severe. British interest in monitoring African labor union activity, especially in its cash-rich colonies, dominated the policy of Britain’s newly created Labor Committee, established in 1930. Meynaud and Bey suggest that the protectorate adopted a divide and rule strategy with regard to Zanzibar’s laboring classes: The aim of British policy on trade unions was to keep economic and political demands separate and to ensure that trade unionism did not reinforce the nationalist movement. The Colonial Office . . . had seen at a very early date the dangers involved if trade unionism became a weapon for the political leaders.81

In response to pressure from conservative factions in Britain’s parliament, individuals who feared the expansion of pan-African nationalism, Zanzibar’s colonial administration established the Trade Union Decree of 1931. This act required that trade unions go through elaborate registration processes, agree to be monitored, and disavow strikes.82 Ten years later the government passed a second Trade Union Decree, stipulating even more specific conditions for the colonial government’s registration and auditing of native labor organizations. As a result, during the years 1930–1945, an era when there was a rapid expansion of labor unions in neighboring Tanganyika, not a single group of Zanzibari workers came forward to apply for labor union status.83 Eventually, economic decline following the depression and World War II led to a rash of strikes between the years 1946–1948.84 In 1946, postwar imported food shortages reached an all-time high. Further, widespread drought made subsistence farming impossible, leading to famine in rural areas. Cash cropping and clove export suffered greatly, and as a result workers in the various occupations in that sector despaired. In March 1946

142

Chapter III

a group of dockworkers transporting products within the harbor went on strike. Lasting four months, the strike spread to other workers in the clove industry as well as dockworkers. When the strike finally incapacitated the clove economy, the British military eventually put it down. The government restored a semblance of order, although the colonial administration never met demands for pay increase.85 Economic concerns, left unresolved from the 1946 strike, simmered for two years, boiling to the surface when a charismatic leader, Abbas Osman, organized his fellow Swahili dockworkers in August 1948. A paradox of British rule during this era was its almost paralyzing fear of the nebulous threats of communism and pan-Africanism, coupled with its inability to gauge the seriousness of the dockworkers’ strike, which were neither sponsored by African Communists nor influenced by PanAfricanism. In fact, three separate colonial governments in Tanganyika and Zanzibar, with three different administrative structures, were unable to analyze the situation correctly.86 Yet the behavior of the laboring classes in both countries, during the late 1940s, was quite similar. In both countries economic resistance and national sentiment began with Swahili dockworkers. Britain’s own experience with the dockworkers’ strike of 1889 should have indicated that ignoring labor unionism would not make it go away. In Zanzibar, ignore it they did, and the 1948 dockworkers strike became a boycott unlike any the island had ever known. It was better organized, shorter, more intense, and certainly more devastating than the haphazard efforts of laborers in 1946.87 Whereas the Tanganyikans had several organizations in which both African labor and the Swahili language were a dominant force for change, Zanzibari labor was far less well equipped. As of 1948, Zanzibari labor lacked the type of institutions that could promote either colonial resistance or political development. The dockworker strikes in Tanganyika and Zanzibar enjoyed success mainly because the participants were similarly situated, were Swahili-speaking, and had a will to power.88 The same could not be said for the vast majority of Zanzibar’s laboring classes. Its dispossessed, largely illiterate, sharecropping classes would toil in obscurity until violent revolution became the only recourse for achieving economic empowerment. The 1948 dockworkers’ strike presented a unique opportunity for Zanzibar’s protectorate government to, at long last, begin to democratize

Repression

143

Zanzibar’s economy and improve the lives of Zanzibar’s African laborers in a gradual and peaceful manner.89 Like dockworkers in England, the primary complaint Zanzibari dockworkers had with the government was the irregularity of work and the fluctuation of wage. Although the 1948 workers wanted a raise in wage, they also wanted a “reduction in the cost of living.” This was a summons that went far beyond compensation to a call for deep financial reform. For all intents and purposes this was inconsistent with the demands of Zanzibar’s plantation economy.90 Rather than addressing the dockworkers’ economic grievances, or starting on a path of reform, Zanzibar’s administrators failed to acknowledge the strike as a legitimate grievance. Further, the 1948 dockworkers’ strike apparently failed to convince the protectorate government that it needed to change its policies to more closely reflect those of the TUC and Fabians in Tanganyika. Instead of resolving the conflict and expanding economic opportunities for the dockworkers, the colonial administration in Zanzibar defined it as a racial conflict stirred up by unnamed “agitators.”91 The author of the crown’s labor report suggested that [a] particularly unfortunate feature of this strike was the clearly evidenced inspiration by agitators not normally resident in the Protectorate. It is not clear to what extent cooperation in the general strike was voluntary or induced by threats of violence, but it was apparent that a number of African workers came out on strike for no better reason than mistaken sense of loyalty to their own race; this is a Protectorate in which the cordial relations between races has always been notable.92

Ultimately the British colonial administration labeled the 1948 strike a “political” activity, which was proscribed by the government, and put down with military force. As the British government in Zanzibar was demonizing indigenous efforts to organize economic boycotts, it was also trying to prevent these boycotts from leading to the development of indigenous political organizations—a stark contrast from British policy regarding Tanganyikan dockworkers. Between the years 1950 and 1957 the government arrested Zanzibar’s emerging union leaders, cancelled union registrations, and prohibited especially successful labor unions or forcibly shut them down.93 Third World trade unionism became the focus of a competition between the Russian-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions, the WFTU, and the American-dominated

144

Chapter III

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the ICFTU.94 In 1955 the ICFTU held its fourth World Congress where the British TUC made several notable statements regarding the acceptable role of labor unionism in colonial politics. The TUC argued that Africans were ready to assume control over their own destinies: There can be developed an effective trade union movement, the principles of democracy can be practiced and learned in order to serve the purposes of self-government.95

However by 1957, the growing strength of indigenous political movements, with their revolutionary lexicon of pan-African unity led the TUC to take a more cautious position toward African labor unions. The TUC argued that: [There is] a growing tendency for African trade unions to be subordinated to the aims of political Pan-Africanism, to the detriment of genuine trade union activity; and this tendency is being wittingly or unwittingly encouraged by some non-African trade union organizations.96

True to this warning, the early efforts of the Fabians, and the TUC itself, led Tangnayikans to create labor unions and associations in Tanganyika that became political and demanding. By the 1950s these organizations were calling loudly, albeit peacefully, for independence from colonial rule. Meanwhile in Zanzibar, local colonial administrators, many dominated by an alliance of conservative and liberal party benefactors in England, continued to believe they could silence, repress, or co-opt challenges to British authority. Where the government thwarted these African challengers, their frustrated political activity became latent hostility, which eventually led to violence. Of course, Tanganyika and Zanzibar’s respective trajectories toward peace and violence were established well before the modern era of labor unionism and independence activism. The Bantu and Swahili people of Zanzibar had little experience with political participation. At the turn of the twentieth century, when the Indians and Arabs were establishing their respective associations to advance their economic interests, Africans were just gaining their legal freedom. Further, many were too distracted by changes in land law and the squatting system to consider a change in the political order. Africans in Zanzi-

Repression

145

bar lacked the historic tribal linkages many Tanganyikan farmers enjoyed because the latter population was largely settled, and many of Zanzibar’s tribes were partially nomadic. It was far easier for the Chagga people to become politically active than most Swahili Zanzibaris because they had indigenous agricultural associations, which with the proper patronage, developed into a growing cooperative society. The stability and political sophistication of large portions of Tanganyika’s agricultural population led to the development of the TAA in the 1920s. The TAA became an umbrella organization for the disenchanted; it took up a political mantle and changed its name to TANU, becoming one of East Africa’s most potent political entities. Zanzibari political development suffered because, from the earliest years of the protectorate, the colonial administration prevented Bantu and Swahili Africans from forming associations that mixed economic activity with political activity. As a result, Zanzibaris had no African Association to speak of until well into the 1940s.97 Zanzibar’s African Association, rather than being an umbrella for political articulation, reflected attitudes of similarly situated classes and tribal affiliations, sharpening fissures created by fifty years of plantation politics. By various accounts, until the 1950s the leaders of Zanzibar’s African Association were employed as clerks in the British civil service. In 1947, under pressure from its patron, the colonial government, Zanzibar’s African Association severed its nominal ties with the more politically savvy, “more radical” TAA.98 Eventually, the African Association evolved into the Afro-Shirazi party, an organization that represented the political interests of its African constituents. However, this did not occur until the mid-1950s, far too late to have a modifying or conciliatory affect on the impoverished and disillusioned Africans seeking political independence from Britain. Perhaps the most glaring example of the protectorate’s disinterest in acknowledging African grievances or its unwillingness to allow African political development could be seen with the emergence of a new political party, known as the National Party of the the Subjects of the Sultan of Zanzibar, or NPSS. Following the 1948 strike and other meager rebellions of that era, a small number of Swahili dockworkers and peasant farmers formed the NPSS.99 This party was Swahili in culture and language; the founding members referred to themselves as “Swahili.”100 Thus, despite

146

Chapter III

its late start, the NPSS promised to be an organization that could channel Bantu and Swahili animosity, even rancor, into a valuable site for African nationalist politics. By the mid-1950s NPSS membership had expanded and the party needed financial support. The Arab Association, in turn, believed it needed to build bridges with a non-Arab political entity and began funding the NPSS. Eventually the Arab Association began to dictate the agenda of the NPSS and soon Arab members of the party transformed it from a peasant/worker league, a potential force for Swahili political advancement, to yet another organization promoting Arab economic interests. Thus, unlike their colleagues in Britain or Tanganyika, who were able to build on the strike, Zanzibar’s dockworkers were unable to institutionalize their political activity, or to establish a permanent organization to represent their interests. In late 1955 Arab members renamed the NPSS the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP), an organization that would eventually take Zanzibar into its worst civil war in modern history. There were other factors that made political repression during Britain’s third-phase rule intolerable. Britain’s tax revenue system, which the government institutionalized in the first three decades of the twentieth century, became steeper during the 1940s and 1950s. In 1946, the year the protectorate government put down Zanzibar’s first official strike and refused to raise the wages of its dockworkers, it also issued a ten-year development plan. Within Zanzibar, the protectorate government touted the Programme of Social and Economic Development for . . . 1946–1955 as a plan to help Zanzibaris diversify their crops and generate revenue for building national infrastructure.101 However, in the actual language of the legislative document the colonial office claimed the plan would rely on tax revenue for “capital expenditure.” The British government planned to give the protectorate 25 percent of the funds, while Zanzibaris, already heavily taxed during the war years, were responsible for producing the remaining 75 percent. Therefore, at the same time that colonial officials suggested that Zanzibar relied too heavily on the clove plantation to develop properly, they also stated that the most reliable way of financing other projects was through the taxation of the very same clove industry. The protectorate development plan for 1946 stated that: “If the full 500,000 [British pound] programme is to be undertaken, the major part of the money required must be provided from local sources by means of increased [clove] taxation.”102

Repression

147

In a less subtle expression of the economic imperative in colonial policy, the authors of the development plan for the years 1955–1959 suggested that revenue generation was still the paramount goal of the government: Every effort is being made to preserve balance between expenditure on social services on the one hand, and expenditure calculated to result in economic advantage to the protectorate on the other, but in the absence of natural resources in the protectorate, this question continues to cause much difficulty to the development planner.103

During the era of the development plans, between the years 1946 and 1959, the standard of living and quality of life for African Zanzibaris continued their downward spiral that began during the expansion of the plantation economy.104 From phase 1 to phase 4, economic imperialism was the dominant political ideology of the British government in the Zanzibar protectorate. In phase 1, economic imperialism prompted the British government to seize African land, create the plantation system, end squatting, and pass a series of coercive laws to force Africans away from producing a variety of crops for local trade/subsistence farming. In the second phase economic imperialism prompted the government to create exclusive economic and political organizations such as the CGA, the LEGCO, and the EXCO, and to seize control over the development of these organizations so that they favored Arab planting and Indian trading classes while excluding African labor. In the third phase of rule, in accordance with the dictates of Conservative and Liberal Party foreign policy, Zanzibar’s colonial government began establishing local government bodies in rural areas of Zanzibar. However, true to the dictates of economic imperialism, which promoted hierarchies of class and privilege, these bodies were presided over by Arabs.105 Third-phase new economic imperialism prompted the British government to try to quash all attempts by Africans to challenge colonial policies and to suppress, subvert, and destroy any African-led political or economic organizations. Third-phase economic imperialism also led the British government to promote “development” schemes that were simply more of the same policies, geared toward enriching the British government and Zanzibar’s wealthier classes. By contrast, from the early years of German rule to the eras of the British mandate and UN trusteeship, Tanganyika’s colonial governments attempted to make their economic

148

Chapter III

and political programs adhere more faithfully to the norms of the dual mandate.106 Tanganyika’s colonial governments promoted genuine political participation and economic growth in the earliest stages. When development plans were created they similarly promoted genuine long-term economic growth rather than immediate financial gain.107 More specifically, the members of British trustee government, many of whom were members of the Fabian Colonial Bureau, tried to build on the progressive agricultural policies of Germany’s late colonial government.108 Unlike Zanzibar’s protectorate government, Tanganyika’s trusteeship prevented Africans from being alienated from their land.109 Furthermore, the British trustee government built on German efforts to keep coffee exportation completely in the hands of African Tanganyikans. The trusteeship formulated a development strategy called the “focal point program,” which concentrated on using the Department of Agriculture’s meager staff for projects that would expand the colonial economy while benefiting African Tanganyikans. The agriculture department focused on expanding African coffee production, but also preserved German ordinances governing crop rotation and soil conservation.110 Further, unlike Zanzibar’s protectorate government, the Tanganyikan trusteeship supported traditional African cooperatives, and, later, nascent coffee labor unions. Specifically, the agriculture department developed a focal point budget that concentrated solely on coffee, the cash crop that Tanganyikan farmers had traditionally grown. Later the staff of the department helped institutionalize their coffee cooperatives into labor unions. As a result, when the colonial government granted Tanganyikans colonial independence, Africans had control and ownership over an industry that had grown and promised to continue expanding. Zanzibaris, on the other hand, were simply landless laborers, growing a crop that had been in decline more than three decades. In further contrast to Zanzibar, even Tanganyika’s tax system genuinely improved the lives of Tangayika’s African population. The British system of taxation in Tanganyika allowed approximately 90 percent of revenue collected to stay in the “native treasury.” The government used money in the native treasury for local health clinics, developing agriculture, and establishing cooperatives.111 In the 1930s the British government created local councils, which expanded political participation in Tanganyika’s rural districts. Between the 1940s and the 1950s the Brit-

Repression

149

ish government specifically discouraged the expansion of cash crops and encouraged subsistence farming.112 Finally, rather than drawing solely on its British and Indian elite, the colonial government in Tanganyika specifically recruited and trained Africans to assume positions in the colonial administration, a policy they called “Africanization.”113 Thus in the decades leading to colonial independence, Tanganyika appeared to be regressing into subsistence economy, but in reality it was on a dual mandate path of slow but steady economic independence and fully realized African political participation. By contrast, Zanzibar appeared to be on the road to development. However, Zanzibari development was mostly pretense and affectation. It soon became obvious that third-phase protectorate development was a continuation of the twin evils of new imperialism—political exclusion and revenue extraction. What was striking about British policy in this era was that in Tanganyika Britain continued the progressive political socialization the Germans began years earlier. In Zanzibar, British policy remained highly regressive. In addition to taking native land, coercing natives to grow crops they did not want and denying them even elementary education, third-phase British administrators sought to arrest political development in areas outside agricultural production. They were fearful and suspicious of any kind of political resistance in Zanzibar, especially a strike that might spark widespread rebellions, such as those that characterized labor unionism at the turn of the century in Britain, Germany, and Tanganyika. Like other imperial nations, the British colonial government was a product of its domestic political traditions. The state in Britain had an aversion to medieval guilds and modern labor unions. Nineteenth-century British politicians made largely symbolic wage concessions to striking workers rather than try to accommodate worker demands. Unlike German workers or workers in former German colonies, there were few institutional resources for either British labor in England or African labor in British colonies. Whenever the colonial government in Zanzibar established an institution that promised to benefit Africans, very often, paradoxically, it did just the opposite. In the fourth phase of colonial rule, the colonial government endorsed the efforts of elite Arabs to establish their political hegemony just prior to Zanzibari independence. This was because the British colonial government still described Zanzibar as an Arab state, despite its majority

150

Chapter III

African population.114 Arab leaders began stealing elections and capturing colonial institutions for the sole use of their Arab clients, thereby further immobilizing African political activity and incapacitating African political parties. Britain’s blind patronage of the Arab elite enraged Zanzibar’s African majority, who still sought political participation merely as a means toward achieving economic justice. The cumulative effect of Britain’s policies was that it rendered peaceful colonial resistance impossible. Thus, when Zanzibar’s disaffected peasants finally decided to revolt against the colonial government, they cried out a great many slogans that reflected their subject status, but perhaps none as vivid or appropriate as “no taxation without representation.”115

NOTES 1. In rare cases slaves with particular skills or talents, or who had been of great service to the sultan, were given their freedom and a wage in order to continue working for the government. 2. As mentioned at the conclusion of chapter II, by the early 1950s, the YAP, the youth wing of the Afro-Shirazi Party, suggested that African social equality would only be secured by cessation of British rule and the transformation of Zanzibar from an African state to an African, Swahili-speaking nation. The YAP was neither the first nor the last organization to voice opposition to colonial rule. In fact, by the 1920s, African political resistance to colonial rule merged with sporadic protests. In the 1940s Swahili-speaking dockworkers known as the hamali began a series of strikes against the colonial government. The strikes recall the London dockworkers’ strike of 1880 that was a catalyst for Britain’s modern labor movement. As such, the hamali strike was a wake-up call for Britain’s colonial authorities. Their reaction to this labor activity will be discussed in great detail throughout this chapter. 3. In the introduction to chapter I, I describe Taylor and McKirnan’s five-stage model; see Taylor and Moghaddam, Theories of Intergroup Relations, 155–57. In the introduction I also explain how I have integrated Fatton’s three-site analysis into the Taylor/McKirnan prototype to produce the five-phase model. The five phases specifically describe the political conditions in Zanzibar’s colonial history. They are (1) the creation of a stratified class system based on plantation economy, (2) the promulgation of social and educational policies by the government, (3) the manifestation of a repressive colonial policy toward local leaders/ organizations, (4) the emergence of strong resistance/violent revolution against

Repression

151

colonial government, and (5) the rise of a new class system—the mirror image of phase 1, with new elite leadership and new counter elites. 4. Chapters I and II discussed the distinction between “new imperialism” and “dual mandate.” Chapter I described the idea of “dual mandate” as derived from the notion that in exchange for extracting wealth from Africa, Europeans would bring “commerce, civilization, and Christianity” to its native inhabitants. In the twentieth century, and in practical terms, the three Cs evolved into policy that sought to establish schools and governments that might one day be transferred to independent African nations. “New imperialism” was defined in chapter II as an aggressive march of British forces into new territories coupled with renewed attention to lands already occupied by British forces. New imperialism reached its height during the scramble for Africa but continued well into the twentieth century. “New imperialism” was represented by an alliance of wealthy political interests such as members of parliament, wealthy industrial interests and colonial adventurers. For a discussion of new imperialism, see Robinson, Gallagher and Denny, Africa and the Victorians, 312 and 410. 5. Tanganyikan political timeline: 1890–1916 1916–1922 1922–1946 1946–1961 1961 1961–1964 1890–1964 1964 April 1964

1964–1965

German Rule Tanganyika British occupation of Germany’s African colonies; Tanganyika’s administrative status not defined. Establishment of the British Mandate for East (Tanganyika)—drafted by League of Nations United Nations created (Britain’s) Tanganyikan Trusteeship Agreement. Tanganyika gains colonial independence from Britain Independent Tanganyika British Protectorate of Zanzibar Zanzibar Revolt Tanganyika and Zanzibar become the United Republic of Tanzania and Zanzibar. This is an arrangement similar to Northern Ireland and United Kingdom; see I. N. Kimambo and A. J. Temu, A History of Tanzania (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1969), 249 United Republic of Tanzania, or simply Tanzania

6. Initially Zanzibaris eschewed out-right rebellion, preferring to adopt a “work slow” strategy and only striking in the years following World War II. African Zanzibaris only rebelled against the colonial government in 1964 upon learning that independence was qualified by a return to Arab rule.

152

Chapter III

7. The mandate was established by the world powers that were members of the League of Nations after Germany lost its territories in World War I. 8. As discussed in chapters I and II, Britain’s first and second phases of rule in Zanzibar led to the creation of a plantation economy; this, in turn, generated a stratified class system that further required the promulgation of educational policies that would reinforce colonial class assignments. 9. On the other hand, liberal governance in Tanganyika, first by Germans and then British Fabians, created a political system that expanded economic and social opportunity. This more open political process encouraged African Tanganyikans to participate more peacefully in political resistance against, and later in political cooperation with, colonial powers. 10. The British colonial system in Zanzibar was based on economic imperialism. It preserved plantation economy against democracy and modernization. Occasionally the British government would make gestures that signaled a potential opening of the political system. In the third phase this was most obviously demonstrated by a series of laws established between the years 1930 and 1940 that initially sanctioned labor unions. Not long after these laws were promulgated, the British government began banning labor unions that were considered to promote African nationalism or anti-colonial activity. In several instances the colonial government appeared to approve of Zanzibari political or economic activity only to try to undermine these organizations or arrest their leaders. This controversial and largely contradictory behavior on the part of the British government led to alternating cycles of false hope and despair. In the fourth phase the continued cycles of false hope and despair escalated leading to rage that culminated in revolutionary violence. For a discussion of this cycle, see Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 197. 11. During 1940s British involvement in the World War II particularly affected Africans, because human and natural resources were drawn from many African colonies, including those in East Africa. 12. In Tanganyika, as mentioned earlier, the government’s urge to plant more cash crops was not accompanied by a program of land acquisition, and thus Tanganyikans could challenged it. 13. Bill Freund describes how slaves became squatters and then wage dependent seasonal workers in Zanzibar and elsewhere; see Bill Freund, The African Worker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 67–68. 14. See Robert Rayner, The Story of Trade Unionism (London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd, 1929). During the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century, attempts by the British working class to get better hours and wages were frustrated by various laws that prohibited labor organization (1–8). Labor organizations “struggled to survive” until the

Repression

153

1830s, when the repeal of combination acts allowed labor organizations to function in the open (22). During the late 1820s until the late 1870s labor organizations began to expand their activity, developing as they launched into a series of “false starts,” and ambitious but “unsuccessful experiments” (22, 44). 15. The trade union movement was unsuccessful because of its own internal weaknesses. Local unions and sectional interests detracted from efforts to create a unified plan of action. The situation improved in the 1850s when trade unions finally merged. However, the basic tension between the centralization and fragmentation within the British trade union movement remained, and furthermore, new conflicts developed between Social-Democrats, Fabians, and politicians of every stripe within the Liberal Party; Rayner, The Story of Trade Unionism, 22–44. 16. See Cannon, The Oxford Companion to British History, 229. 17. Trygve R. Tholfsen, Working Class Radicalism in Mid-Victorian England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 253–54 and 284. 18. The SDF concentrated its efforts in the practical matters of leading actual worker strikes and promoting civil disobedience. SDF’s leading role in trade union activism freed Fabians to pursue regional and international political alliance and cultivate party politics in Britain, and later in Britain’s African colonies. 19. In the small towns in southern and western Germany, medieval guilds endured changes in the economy and government, producing a local heritage of “institutional eccentricity and close social integrity”; Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State and General Estate 1648–1871 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998), 35. Guild towns helped sustain participatory democracy throughout the German empire when advocates of centralized political authority became both more powerful and unyielding (38–41, 193). 20. The notion that the upper classes lead revolutions, and then, after becoming more conservative, regulate society as they energize and sustain the economy is discussed in Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968), 288–91. 21. John A. Moses, Trade Unionism in Germany from Bismarck to Hitler 1869–1933, vol. I (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1982), xvi. As discussed earlier, the connection between England’s guilds and its labor unions was much more tenuous. Guilds, quashed under Tudor rule, enjoyed a brief revival until the beginning of the industrial revolution, when the British Parliament formally outlawed them in 1830s; Cannon, The Oxford Companion to British History, 229. Most of England’s trade unions remained small local organizations throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. 22. Moses, Trade Unionism in Germany from Bismarck to Hitler, 167–68.

154

Chapter III

23. See Theodore Cassau, The Consumers’ Co-operative Movement in Germany, trans. J. F. Mills (Manchester: Co-Operative Union Limited, 1925), 123. For a list of German political parties and their election results for the years 1871–1933, see Moses, Trade Unionism in Germany from Bismarck to Hitler, vol. II, 515. During the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, a cold war between General Union Social Democrats and Liberal-leaning consumer’s unions developed and was energized by mutual exclusion and scorn. These developments were important factors influencing the tolerant view German administrators took toward Tanganyika’s communal organizations, and were central to the decision to allow Christian trade unions access to trade. It stands in stark contrast to the philosophy and policies of the British in Zanzibar. 24. If German rule and the Maji-Maji rebellion are examined through the prism of the five-phase model, one can be argue that rather than going through each phase of the model, Tanganyikans went directly from phase 1 stratified intergroup relations to phase 4 consciousness raising. For a comparison/contrast of the fivephase model with the five-stage model, see Taylor and Moghaddam, Theories of Inter-group Relations, 156–61, and the first chapter of this book. Similarly, examining Tanganyika through the prism of Robert Fatton’s three sites reveals that Tanganyikans experienced class formation almost at the same time they decided to use class to resist colonial authority. These sites overlapped in Tanganyika and, as a result, the German colonial authority did not have an opportunity or conditions to create class disarticulation; Fatton, Predatory Rule, 8–11, 19–37, 144–45. 25. As in the last decades of the nineteenth century, during the first decades of the twentieth century the German colonial office continued to be dominated by conservatives. However, unlike conservatives in Britain’s colonial office German conservatives were compelled to listen to liberal and progressive voices because of the power of Germany’s labor and social democratic parties. Colonial Director Dernburg, a businessman and conservative of the emerging “managerial class,” advocated economic (liberal) imperialism; see Iliffe, Tanganyika under German Rule 1905–1912, 48. However, the rising influence of labor forces in German politics and the outbreak of Tanganyika’s Maji-Maji rebellion, both of which occurred under Dernburg’s watch, began to temper Derburg’s views, making him more receptive to progressive political forces. Ultimately, Dernburg was compelled to listen of the advice of Tanganyika’s colonial secretary Albrech von Rechenberg, a Marxist-leaning aristocrat who thought African colonialism was a waste of human and material resources; see Iliffe, Tanganyika under German Rule 1905–1912, 50–55. These two men, often working in tandem, became leading forces responsible for the relatively progressive “reform” policies that preceded Britain’s acquisition of the Tanganyikan mandate.

Repression

155

26. German rule at that time was described as a “siege mentality”; Hugh W. Stephen, The Political Transformation of Tanganyika: 1920–67 (Westport, Conn.: Preager Publishers, 1968), 18. 27. Mary E. Townsend, The Rise and Fall of Germany’s Colonial Empire, 1884–1918 (New York: Macmillan Press, 1930). 28. Prosser Gifford and W. M. Rogers, with Allison Smith, eds., Britain and German in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967), 560. 29. Gifford, Rogers, and Smith, Britain and German in Africa, 558–59. The Germans used the term Volskulture to describe peasant cash-cropping (560). In Togo the German government made cotton the local cash crop. 30. Among various Tanganyikan tribes there was a shared belief in the powers of witch doctors. In this instance the witch doctors dispensed magic water to rebels that would supposedly make them impervious to harm against the mighty German army; Stephen, The Political Transformation of Tanganyika 1920–1967, 19. 31. The Germans were of two minds as to who really was behind the Maji-Maji rebellion. Tanganyikan Governor Von Gotzen believed that the rebellion was premeditated effort of witch doctors and dispossessed herdsmen. In Germany, more liberal politicians staffed the foreign office. They argued that the rebellion was the spontaneous reaction by agriculturalists to the flawed policies of the von Gotzen regime; Stephen, The Political Transformation of Tanganyika, 561. 32. See Walter Crocker, On Governing Colonies (London: George Allen & Unwin: 1947), 41. 33. Mary E. Townsend, The Rise and Fall of Germany’s Colonial Empire 1884–1918, chap. 9. 34. See Gus Leibenow, “Tribalism, Traditionalism and Modernism in Chagga,” Journal of African Administration X, no. 2 (April 1958), 73. The fact that the government communicated with all tribes and organizations in Swahili, and that the Chagga were Swahili-speaking individuals, reinforced rather than weakened national integration. Thus, as colonial powers sought to transfer power to native African populations in later decades, Tanganyikans had a head start on most of their contemporaries. They spoke a lingua franca and had developed organizations, which were recognized by the colonial government and which could further their economic and political interests. 35. Most Tanganyikas, despite tribe affiliation, were similarly situated as farmers; many used Swahili as a common language. This fact allowed them able to organize a very dramatic mutiny against the German colonial government. 36. The fact that land was so plentiful in Tanganyika meant that Africans there were more often dislocated than truly dispossessed. Their neighbors in Zanzibar fared much worse. Critics of land transfer policies were few in number. However,

156

Chapter III

in the early 1940s the Labor party took a stand. It declared where “communal land tenure exist, these systems should be maintained and land should be declared inalienable by private sale or purchase”; see “Report of the 41st Annual Conference of the Labour Party,” in Louise W. Holborn, ed., War and Peace Aims of the United Nations (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1943), 684. Naturally, the Labor party could do little to help farmers whose land was already lost. Even stopping new transfers proved difficult because Conservative and Liberal policy still prevailed in the foreign, colonial and agricultural departments of the British government (formally footnote #337). 37. There had been a struggle between the various factions within Britain’s assorted Socialist organizations for and against war with Germany. The faction in support of the war named itself the Nationalist Socialist Party. The anti-war faction kept the name of British Socialist Party; Kenneth Miller, Socialism and Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice in Britain to 1931 (Boston: Marinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1967), 52–53. 38. Miller, Socialism and Foreign Policy, 25. 39. Following World War II the British government began to face serious challenges to its authority. In 1946, despite British attempts to make constitutional reforms, a riot broke out in the Gold Coast. In 1948 a committee was formed to investigate the conditions in what would become Ghana; see Wallbank, Documents on Modern Africa. In 1948 the Watson committee made several recommendations, which included going well beyond reforms to the colonial constitution. While the report conclusions were organized as political, economic, or social recommendations, the report made a careful acknowledgement that there was “no clear dividing line between them and they are frequently inter-related” (88). Regarding political problems in Ghana the committee noted an “increasing resentment at the growing concentration of certain trades in the hands of foreigners” (89). Protectorate authorities suggested that the Bantu and Swahili of Unguja shared similar sentiments regarding Zanzibar’s Indian financiers and Arab planters. Under the heading of economic concerns the report suggested that there was a “feeling that the [colonial] government had not formulated any plans for the future of industry and agriculture” (89). The same could be said about Zanzibar, where coerced labor remained a daily fact and the government’s so-called development plans failed either to improve the clove industry or create other agricultural enterprises. Finally, the report suggested that Ghanians were alleging that colonial government intentionally created a “slow development of educational facilities” (87–91). This last complaint foreshadowed criticism by the Young African Union regarding schools in Zanzibar, see Lofchie, Zanzibar: Background to Revolution, 161–62.

Repression

157

40. See George Padmore, Africa and World Peace (London: Frank Cass, 1972), 143–44. 41. David Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics 1945–1961 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 12–13. 42. For a discussion of how the colonial state in Tanzania tried to “channel and control workers” through the British TUC, thereby hoping to check Communism, see Bill Freund, The African Worker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 93–94. 43. Labor in the United Kingdom Dependencies (London: British Government Publisher, 1957), 8. 44. After World War II, the attitudes of Fabians turned toward helping colonized nations achieve independence. 45. See George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1971), 63–74. 46. Ibid. 47. See Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism, 108–10. When the 1921 Congress moved its second session from London to Belgium, the Belgian press at the behest of the government linked the Pan-African Congress to the Communist Bolshevik regime in Moscow. The authorities allowed the conference to continue but the stigma of Communism once penned remained a constant charge. 48. Members of the society included Professor Harold Laski and H. G. Wells among other dignitaries. 49. Zanzibar’s trade unions were especially suspected. One account suggests that the Arab Zanzibar Nationalist Party was patronized by Communists and that the multiracial Zanzibar Federation of Progressive Trade Unions was a “pro-Chinese stronghold”; see Zbigniew Brzezinski, Africa and the Communist World (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1963), 193. However, other accounts suggest the ZNP was funded by the fiercely anti-Communist ICFTU, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions; see Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York: Stonehill, 1975), 604, and Jonathan Kwitney, Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World (London: Congdon and Weed Publishers, 1983). 50. Ibid. The so-called reform policies enacted by Dernburg were at once criticized by local European settlers who wanted to have access to more African land held in common, and cheaper African labor; Prosser Gifford and William Roger Louis, The Transfer of Power in Africa (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), 557. 51. See David Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics 1945–1961, 61. 52. Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics 1945–1961, 61. In July 1935 Malcolm Macdonald took office. James Thomas succeeded him in Novem-

158

Chapter III

ber of that same year. Labor experienced a reversal, however, when Liberal William Ormsby Gore became colonial secretary; see William E. J. McCarthy, Trade Unions, second ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 102. 53. During this brief era Labor dominated the Ministry of State. Specifically, Arthur Creech Jones, Ivor Thomas, and David Rees-Williams, who served as minister of state during 1945 and 1950; see Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics 1945–1961, 61. 54. Protectorates did not fall under the watchful eye of League of Nations (mandate) or United Nations (trusteeship); rather Conservatives and Liberals dominated the colonial and foreign offices. 55. Organizations not sanctioned by the government were under suspicion and did not last long. The Tanganyikan African Welfare and Commercial Association was such an organization. Widely believed to have been founded by a Ugandan Garveyite, organization leaders tried to enlist a cross-section of occupational interests but eventually found that most TAWCA recruits came from the clerical ranks of big banks/commercial houses. Most of these individuals were sympathetic to colonial rule. Eventually the TAWCA ceased to be a political organization. It became, instead, an association of elite society. Less than ten years later it faded from the social register and disappeared altogether; see J. Cameron and W. A. Doss, Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1970), 82–83. For a discussion of how the TAA almost shared the fate of the TAWCA before it returned to its politics and became TANU, see Stephen, The Political Transformation of Tanganyika 1920–1967, 121. 56. See Stephen, The Political Transformation of Tanganyika, 67. 57. Between the years 1951 and 1954, African farmers/white settlers summoned the TAA/TANU, along with visiting missions from the United Nations and the Fabians/Labor party, to resolve as series of conflicts among the over land alienation issues in the Kilimanjaro region; see Daniel R. Smith, The Influence of the Fabian Colonial Bureau (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1985), 21 and 29. 58. The Fabians had grown to know Nyerere when he was a graduate student in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the 1940s. 59. Fabians thought the TAA had been “too conciliatory” before to the colonial order and were happy when Julius Nyerere, an unapologetic African nationalist, became its leader; see Smith, 1985, 32. 60. Stephen, The Political Transformation of Tanganyika, 68. 61. As was the case with Britain’s dockworkers before the 1889 strike, Tanganyikans worked for a variable wage that changed depending on the number of workers bidding for work and the nature of cargo. Most lived in poverty; see Robert Rayner, The Story of Trade Unionism, 66–90.

Repression

159

62. Richard Sandbrook and Robin Cohen, The Development of the Working Class: Studies in Class Formation and Action (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 56. 63. John Iliffe, “A History of the Dock-workers of Dar-es-Salaam,” Tanzanian Notes and Records 71 (1970): 119–48. 64. See Peter Gutkind and Robin Cohen, et al., African Labor History (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publishers, 1978), 175–204. 65. The five phases specifically describe the political conditions in Zanzibar’s colonial history. They are: (1) the creation of a stratified class system based on plantation economy, (2) the promulgation of social and educational policies by the government, (3) the manifestation of a repressive colonial policy toward local leaders/organizations, (4) the emergence of strong resistance/violent revolution against colonial government, and (5) the rise of a new class system—the mirror image of phase 1, with new elite leadership and new counter-elites. 66. As the five-phase model suggests, the third-phase colonial administration used repressive political and military strategies toward indigenous populist leaders and organizations. Similarly, the third stage of the five-stage model personifies the ideology of and attempt toward individual social mobility by the disadvantaged/ low status group; see Taylor and Moghaddam, Theories of Inter-group Relations, 153–57. Robert Fatton’s third site, likewise, is the realm of class resistance; see Fatton, Predatory Rule, 8–11, 19–37 and 144–45. In the case of Zanzibar, the third site of class resistance occupied two phases, stretching beyond the third phase into the fourth phase of colonial rule, where African resistance became violent. 67. Chapters I and II of this book discuss the protectorate’s stipulation that Zanzibar’s various ethnic associations refrain from political pursuits. 68. In 1926 the British government established the LEGCO and the EXCO. The British resident was the official head of the LEGCO, and was composed of Europeans nominated by the British government and Arabs and Indians appointed by the Omani sultan. The composition of the EXCO was similar, but favored Arabs and British over Indians; see Hilary Blood, Report of the Constitutional Commissioner for Zanzibar 1960 (Zanzibar Government Printer). The colonial government formed the Clove Growers’ Association in 1934. Arabs exclusively controlled the CGA, and were charged with issuing clove trade licenses to Indian clove merchants. When the CGA and the Indian association invariably came into conflict over agricultural matters and commodity issues, the British government supported the CGA at the expense of the IA; see G. E. Tidbury, “The Clove Industry,” in J. K. Matheson and E. W. Bovill, East African Agriculture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950), 273. 69. Anthony Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1981), 15.

160

Chapter III

70. Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath, 6. 71. Most of the Shirazi Association meetings were often conducted in a pigenized Bantu language, not Swahili, but peculiar to Pemba; see Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath, 17–18. 72. For a comparison with British attempts to co-opt Tanganyikan organizations, see J. Cameron and W. A. Doss, Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania, 82–83, and Omar Mapuri, The 1964 Revolution: Achievements and Prospects, 8, 27, and 44. 73. By contrast during the same era in Tanganyika, German attempts to acquire land held in common or to force Tanganyikans to grow cash crops was checked by the Maji-Maji rebellion. 74. In phases 1 and 2 Africans were unable to gain individual social mobility in Zanzibar’s political and economic system, but they tended to believe that social mobility was possible because the plantation economy was expanding. By the third phase of colonial rule, the plantation economy began to experience financial reversal, and the British government began to repress African colonial resistance. Thus, at the beginning of phase 3, Swahili and Bantu Zanzibaris realized that the colonial economy and educational system would not let them “pass” into the upper classes. At the end of phase 3 Zanzibar’s Africans began to realize that resistance to colonial rule, whether individual work slow strategies, or tentative efforts to organize group resistance, were failing to achieve political progress. 75. In the second stage of McKirnan and Taylor’s five-stage model is the promulgation of individualist ideology by the high-status/privileged group. Similarly, Fatton’s second site is the arena of class disarticulation. During the second phase of British rule, the colonial government began to promote the idea that, having freed the sultan’s slaves, all Zanzibaris were able to enjoy a thriving livelihood. In actuality, a series of laws compelling labor on clove plantations situated most African Zanzibaris as sharecroppers on cashcrop farms. In many instances an equally bad or in some cases even worse economic/material situation than they had experienced under slavery. The cleavages among African peasants (or class disarticulation) were largely the result of British colonial propaganda that claimed that class problems were really ancient and racial in origin. 76. In the five-stage model the third stage the disadvantaged/low status group attempt to move toward individual upward social mobility; see Taylor and Moghaddam, Theories of Inter-group Relations, 156. Failing that, this group begins what Robert Fatton describes as third site class resistance, which leads to what I describe as phase 3 political repression; Fatton, Predatory Rule, 8–11, and chapters I and II of this book.

Repression

161

77. The efforts of African Zanzibaris to resist third-phase colonial power through strikes should not be confused with phase 4 violent insurgency—the 1964 revolution—that will be discussed in chapter IV. Here the five-phase model takes a slight turn from the five-stage model that argues that the ideology of individual social mobility dominates the third stage, while consciousnessraising occurs in the fourth stage. By contrast the five-phase model argues that in the third-phase consciousness-raising in the form of indigenous economic resistance, Pan-African activism, and Fabian patronage promoted a form of tentative colonial resistance, which when suppressed leads to violent insurgency in the fourth phase. 78. It is instructive to note the absence of agricultural organizations in Zanzibar. Had Tanganyika been a protectorate, the British government may have eliminated indigenous agricultural organizations, such as those that belonged to the Luguru and Chagga (during the process of land acquisition/dislocation that accompanied more than fifty years of clove cash-cropping). The system of direct rule and nature of Zanzibar’s plantation economy discouraged the colonial government from creating organizations that would coordinate disparate farmers growing a variety of crops. Furthermore, African economic organizations would have been anathema to Arab planters as well as the protectorate system of tax/ revenue generation. 79. Mapuri, The 1964 Revolution, 12. 80. See Bennett, A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar, 208. 81. Jean Meynaud and Anisse Salah Bey, Trade Unionism in Africa: A Study of its Growth and Orientation (London: Methuen Publishers, 1967), 26. 82. Iona Davies, African Trade Unions (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1966), 38. 83. Some workers, especially those working outside agriculture formed informal self-help organizations that allowed families to cover incidental and food expenses during times of financial hardship; Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar under Colonial Rule, 200. 84. A clove infestation dubbed “sudden death,” an increased import cost of the national staple, rice, and a sharp postwar decline in the export demand for cloves, precipitated Zanzibar’s earliest revolt. These conditions were discussed in The Draft Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure of the Zanzibar Protectorate for the Year 1943 (The British Government Printer, 1942), 9. 85. Ironically, the strike made little impression on the labor office in Zanzibar, which chose to organize Zanzibar’s industrial leaders rather than its local workers. Beginning in 1946 and continuing through the 1950s the Zanzibar Labor Office created the United Agriculturalist Organizations, Oil and Soap Manufacturers Association, and the Schooner Captains and Owners Association. These were

162

Chapter III

the organizations of Zanzibar’s European, Arab, and Indian elite; see Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar under Colonial Rule, 202. 86. British governments in Kenya, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar were quite different, from an administrative point of view. The British governments in Kenya and Tanganyika promoted indirect rule, but the former was a colony and the latter a trustee, while Zanzibar was a direct rule Arab protectorate. 87. Dockworkers were given an increase in wage, but not a guarantee that other demands would be met; see Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath, 418. 88. Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath, 418. 89. The concluding chapter will discuss frenzied manner in which the Revolutionary Council implemented land and economic redistribution after 1964. 90. Reform in this sense could refer to Rechenberg’s efforts during the Tanganyikan mandate or Fabian efforts under the trusteeship. 91. Anthony Clayton,”The General Strike in Zanzibar, 1948,” Journal of African History, XVII 3 (1976): 427–29. 92. An unnamed officer of the Zanzibar Protectorete; see Labour Report for the year 1948, 3, as cited in Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 203. 93. Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar under Colonial Rule, 203–7. 94. G. E. Lynde, The Politics of Trade Unionism (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Press, 1968), 193. 95. Davies, African Trade Unions, 188. 96. As cited in Davies, African Trade Unions, 196. 97. Meynaud and Bey, Trade Unionism in Africa, 26. 98. Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath, 18. Paradoxically, Zanzibar’s colonial government recruited a greater number of cheap migrant workers from the Tanganyikan mainland to work on the clove crop. These individuals tended to be more politically savvy and more radical. So while the colonial government prevented Tanganyikan institutions from influencing Zanzibaris, it could not prevent Tanganyikan politics from changing Zanzibar. 99. Between 1948 and 1955 the NPSS functioned more as an informal association, but in 1955, with the help of the Arab Association, it became a more conventional political party. 100. Lofchie, Zanzibar: Background to Revolution, 147–48. 101. Programme of Social and Economic Development in the Zanzibar Protectorate for the Ten Year Period, 1946–1955, Legislative Council Paper No. 1 for the year 1946, Microfiche, IDC publishers, the Netherlands, 32. 102. Ibid., 33.

Repression

163

103. The Programme of Social and Economic Development in the Zanzibar Protectorate for the Five Year Period 1955–1959, Legislative Council Session Paper No. 8 for the year 1955, IDC, 2. 104. For an extensive discussion of the gradual impoverishment of Zanzibari Africans, see Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar under Colonial Rule. According to various studies the quality and quantity of foods rich in nutrients began to decline with the expansion of plantation economy, and grew worse with the two world wars, the depression, and development plans that required more cash-cropping and less subsistence farming. 105. See the remarks of D. B. Barber, official of the Zanzibari colonial administration, as cited in Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath, 23. 106. As discussed in chapters I and II, the norms of dual mandate were articulated by Lord Lugard, who also promoted the concept of indirect rule. Many proponents of dual mandate argued that colonial governments could assist local leaders and institutions to develop alongside colonial institution, helping the economy of the colonized country to grow while simultaneously enriching the colonial power. Indirect rule was less ambitious. Its proponents were less concerned with social welfare, and wanted to staff or fund colonies at the most minimal levels. 107. The German government responded to challenges to its authority, especially the Maji-Maji, with sincere political reform. The British government in Tanganyika made an attempt to continue this legacy of progressive rule. British rule in Zanzibar, on the other hand, ignored latent hostility to its policies and continued its land acquisition and cash-crop agricultural policies, which ultimately led to open rebellion. 108. The German government granted Europeans and Indians, who were the major exporters of all agricultural goods except coffee, only 1 percent of Tanganyikan land. Coffee was the sole dominion of African Tanganyikans. Thus Africans owned most of the land in Tanganyika and controlled one of its most lucrative exports, see the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The Economic Development of Tanganyika (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1961), 16. 109. Daniel Smith, The Influence of The Fabian Colonial Bureau on the Independence Movement in Tanganyika (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985, 20–21. 110. The Economic Development of Tanganyika, 102. 111. Roland Young and Henry Fosbrooke, Smoke in the Hills (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Unioversity Press, 1960), 16. 112. Iliffe, Tanganyika under German Rule 1905–1912, 289. 113. Young and Fosbrooke, Smoke in the Hills, 17.

164

Chapter III

114. Sir Alan Pim argued that the British government must “protect the Arab against himself.” He argued that Zanzibar was an Arab state, that the British government had compromised Arab command when it ended slavery, and that the British government must do everything in its power to prevent the Arab state from becoming African; see Sir Alan Pim, Report of the Commission Appointed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to Consider and report on the Financial Position and Policy of the Zanzibar Government in Relation to its Economic Resources (London: Crown Agents, 1932), as cited in Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar under Colonial Rule, 156–57. 115. See introduction, John Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1966).

IV Resistance and Revolution

The extractive nature of the plantation economy was the source of Zanzibar’s economic, communal, and political cleavage. In the first phase of colonial rule, the British government introduced a system of stratification based on land ownership and occupation. In the second phase, the British government introduced an educational system that excluded Africans and cultivated an Arab and Indian elite. In the third phase of colonial rule, African labor began organizing political resistance. The protectorate government met these efforts by repressing and co-opting African leaders and political movements on the one hand, while trying to discourage foreign influences including panAfricanism and liberal Western unionism on the other. By the fourth phase of Zanzibar’s colonial history, the Arab elite began to copy the practices of the British government. Emboldened by Britain’s third-phase efforts to suppress African labor, Arab Zanzibaris began a twenty-year effort to check African political development. During that phase of colonial rule, the Arab elite began marginalizing and undermining organizations that they believed challenged Arab hegemony or promoted African political resistance. Robert Fatton refers to this phase of African political activity as the site of class resistance.1 In Zanzibar, African class resistance manifested itself during the third phase of colonial rule in the form of the dockworkers’ strike and evolved into electoral and political activism during the fourth phase of British colonial rule. As in earlier phases of colonial rule, the British government thwarted African efforts to establish a presence in Zanzibar’s preindependence 165

166

Chapter IV

political system. Unable to suffer in silence, African activists turned against the Arab population and overthrew the sultan in a violent rebellion against the colonial state. After the coup d’etat, Zanzibar’s new guard, the longsuffering African counter-elite, entered into a new phase of public life, creating a society that excluded Arabs from the avenues of wealth and power, much as Africans had been excluded under British colonial rule. This era was the fifth phase of Zanzibar’s modern history and was the culmination of the four phases of colonial rule that preceded the revolution. The five-phase model describes the third and the fourth phases as the arenas of resistance and revolution, respectively. Zanzibar’s fourth phase of African political resistance escalated into a violent insurgency, a revolution that had the effect of reversing the political order and relegating the island’s remaining Arabic-speaking elite, the Wapemba Shirazi, to a largely disempowered status.2 Consistent with the postulates of the fivephase model, and the specific conditions in colonial Zanzibar, fourth-phase revolution led to a fifth and final phase of reconstruction. According to the dictates of the five-phase model, fifth-phase reconstruction often situates the subordinate group as equal to or superior to the old guard former elite. In contrast to the five-stage model, the five-phase model argues that the fifth phase can take the form of a complete inversion of the first phase. Zanzibar’s inversion made African activists the island’s new elite and, ultimately, Zanzibar’s hegemonic force.3 The repressive policies of the British administration during the third phase of colonial rule made it impossible for Zanzibar’s Africans to make long-term economic gains or transform their tentative labor insurgencies into organized and institutionalized political opposition. Disheartened and disappointed, Zanzibar’s Africans eventually abandoned labor activism, and tried instead to channel their political activism into electoral politics. Ultimately, these efforts failed because Zanzibar’s Arab leadership continued the repressive policies introduced by Britain’s colonial administration during the third phase. In the fourth phase, elite Arabs, many of whom wanted to garner hegemonic control over Zanzibar’s electoral politics, organized this effort. Sadly, the failure of African labor to organize third-phase opposition also adversely affected African attempts to establish a strong presence in fourth-phase party politics. Third-phase British rule, which was characterized by the dismal economic aftereffects of two world wars, was repressive. The global

Resistance and Revolution

167

economic depression particularly affected the production and trade of luxury crops such as spices. As Zanzibar was still first and foremost a clove economy, Zanzibaris of all classes were dependent on the clove trade, and the British government was still generating colonial revenue through its taxation on the clove crop. The grave economic conditions facing East African labor, already severe in the years before World War I, grew worse in the years leading to World War II. Some sectors began to react to this deprivation and organized political resistance. The most dramatic example of this resistance came from Swahili dockworkers in Tanganyika and Zanzibar. These workers shared a common language and occupation as well as a similar set of grievances. As a result, they were able to organize coordinated strikes that brought the respective capitals of these territories to a standstill. Due to the size of the African population and the sheer number of dockworkers, Tanganyika was the site of the region’s most successful strikes. In addition to these factors, Tanganyikan dockworkers were able to organize a better strike than their Zanzibari counterparts because their unique political system was sympathetic to progressive economic development and broad political inclusion. Tanganyikans had a particular talent for organizing resistance, a legacy of intact African communitarianism, and a unique history with progressive German rule. Liberal British governance, which only came with the implementation of the mandate, made it possible for Tanganyikan dockworkers to institutionalize the gains made during their political strikes. In contrast to governance in the Tanganyikan mandate, reactionary conservatives in the British parliament formulated policy for Zanzibar’s colonial administration. These conservatives controlled the colonial and foreign offices. Many of these men believed that East Africa should be divided into regions. The British government carved the first of these two regions out of some of the best land in East Africa, and dubbed it “white man’s country.” The government decided that land that was less productive was less suited to white settlement, and should be used to generate revenue for the crown. As the market for cash crops grew worse, Zanzibar’s political administration grew ever more repressive. As cash crops became less lucrative, African labor, in all sectors of Zanzibar’s economy, began to suffer. When the international cash-crop economy declined, clove production in

168

Chapter IV

Zanzibar began to generate less revenue for Britain and less income for Africans. British rule grew more restrictive as challenges to the colonial system emerged from various quarters, including the communists, panAfricans, and, most importantly, the Fabians, who had gained a foothold at the League of Nations and the United Nations. As Britain’s conservatives began sensing a growing antipathy to colonial rule following World War II, Zanzibar’s British administration was unable to accommodate even the most modest political demands. As such, the government refused to endorse African labor organizations. The government felt compelled to crush any type of resistance. In some instances, this meant co-opting or frustrating opposition; in other instances, it involved subverting or driving resistance underground, where it festered. The inability of Zanzibar’s Swahili labor to institutionalize its third-phase resistance set the stage for chaos and violence, which occurred toward the end of the fourth phase of colonial rule. In fact, the lone political organization of Zanzibari Africans, the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), did not emerge until the 1940s and did not become involved in the political process until the late 1950s, the era of party politics and “popular” elections. Whereas the Arabs created the Arab Association in the 1890s and the Indians established the Indian Association in 1910, the Africans did not form their “ethnic” association until years later. In the 1920s the only organizations that brought Zanzibar’s like-minded Africans together were two soccer clubs. Non-African club managers controlled these clubs, which were comprised mainly of African athletes. In 1933 the African athletes decided to form their own organization, which they dubbed the African Sports Club. A year later this organization gave rise to the African Association.4 The African Association had several impediments relative to its Arab and Indian counterparts. First and most obviously, Arab and Indian Associations had, respectively, a forty- and thirty-year advantage over the African Association, a quantitative advantage. The Arab and Indian Associations also had a qualitative edge over the Africans. Arabs possessed a greater level of educational attainment than most Swahilis; they additionally had vast resources and broad social networks. The Arab and Indian Associations were only nominally defined by their ethnicity. Both of these organizations were primarily affiliations of similarly situated financial interests, clients of the British government try-

Resistance and Revolution

169

ing to ensure their social ascendancy relative to each other and over the majority African population.5 The African Association, by contrast, was an organization of working-class athletes and fans. Its political resources were limited and its financial resources almost nil. It is the contention of this chapter, and the book more broadly, that had the African Association, later the ASP, been able to make the types of financial and political gains that the Tanganyikan African Association/TANU made on the mainland, the violence of Zanzibar’s 1964 revolution might have been avoided. As discussed in previous chapters, the British government disrupted Zanzibar’s indigenous communitarian networks in every phase of its administration and prevented new political associations from emerging. In the first phase, the colonial government alienated Africans from their land, as well as from their rural farming organizations and indigenous tribal authorities, replacing these with local Arab leaders from the coastal provinces and, in some instances, British bureaucrats. In the second phase of colonial rule, the British government established English and Arabic as the official languages of the state, which made it especially difficult for Swahili-speaking Africans to challenge British or Arab authority in the court system. Simultaneously, the British government established an educational system that made education in either language almost impossible to afford, and therefore inaccessible to most Zanzibaris except for a handful of the Arab and Indian elite.6 In phase 3 of colonial rule, British domination took the form of political repression. The colonial government co-opted, frustrated or outlawed any economic organizations that pursued a political agenda. As a result, while Tanganyikans were developing a wide range of trade unions, Zanzibaris were barely able to organize any form of economic resistance. In the fourth phase the entrenched Arab elite began to copy the practices of the British government, conspiring to prevent Zanzibar’s African and Swahili political leaders from exhibiting any form of organized economic resistance or establishing African-led political parties. As indicated in the introduction of this chapter, phases 3 and 4 were both the site of African working-class resistance. In the third phase of colonial rule, Swahili dockworkers went on strike. After the strike they tried to institutionalize their movement by creating the National Party of the Subjects of the Sultan, the NPSS. Not long after it was established, the Swahili leadership invited several well-financed Arabs to join the NPSS.

170

Chapter IV

Eventually, this new element soon overwhelmed NPSS African leadership. As a greater number of Arabs joined the NPSS, they demanded Arab leaders. The NPSS Arab leadership, in turn, gradually changed the agenda of the party to conform to Arab interests. Ultimately, the NPSS became one of Zanzibar’s leading Arab organizations. The NPSS’s new constituents continued to push an Arab agenda and changed the name of the organization to the Zanzibar Nationalist Party. The irony of this development was not lost on many of Swahili dockworkers. By rights, the NPSS and the African Association should have merged and developed into Zanzibar’s largest political party. The elite Arab leadership was able to kill two birds with one stone, by absorbing or paralyzing the emerging Swahili counter-elite and denying the Swahili vanguard their workingclass political base. Thus, a few short years after the NPSS was formed, its Swahili constituents were forced out of their flagship organization. Despite the continuing British prohibition against most African trade unions, some former NPSS dockworkers tried to form various associations.7 However, on a more successful note, and on a parallel political track, Zanzibar’s African soccer clubs formed the African Association. Twenty years later, the African Association evolved into the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP). Even at that slow pace, Britain’s colonial government tried to ensure that neither the AA nor the ASP produced any type of working-class agenda.8 African political development, and Zanzibar’s working-class activism in particular, had once again gone through a cycle of false hope and disappointment. As the British government continued to stymie African political resistance, Swahili workers tried to fight disarticulation and repression. Meanwhile, in anticipation of independence, the Arab elite tried to convert their economic privilege into political hegemony. In the years after World War II, Africa’s working class tried to establish institutions that could challenge colonialism. However, these efforts were often undermined by a variety of determined ethnic minorities. In some cases these groups were leading political oligarchies; in others the challenge came from prospective oligarchies. In Zanzibar, the African working class had several opponents—namely, the British authorities, Zanzibar’s growing Arab elite, and, to a far lesser extent, several wealthy Indian mercantile interests. However, one of Zanzibar’s most devastating cleavages was internal in nature.

Resistance and Revolution

171

As mentioned in previous chapters, one of the main social tensions among Zanzibari Africans was between land-owning Africans and squatters. In fact, the policies of the colonial government were such that most of Unguja’s Africans, both those of Swahili and Shirazi origin, had by the 1940s become totally alienated from ancestral lands—they were essentially landless.9 On the other hand, most of Pemba’s residents, many of whom were Shirazi, were either landowners, or belonged to a clan that held property. Sheriff and Ferguson describe how clan loyalties became the basis for party alliance: [The Shirazi] resisted attempts to ally with the property-less urban proletariat. Ultimately they formed the Zanzibar and Pemba People’s Party with a leadership composed of the most influential Shirazi landowners, merchants, shopkeepers, butchers and bus owners. When the chips were down, it was this petit-bourgeoisie character, with its deep-rooted sense of property, dividing it from the proletariat, which broke from its ethnic moorings to form an alliance with the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) to represent the propertied classes.10

Thus, within the Shirazi community, the growing cleavage between Unguja’s landless Shirazi peasants and Pemba’s landed middle-class peasants began to mirror the larger cleavage between Zanzibar’s Arabs and its squatting Swahilis. While the Bantu and the Swahili were tormenting themselves with the politics of identity and having difficulty establishing their respective political institutions, the Shirazi, and to a greater extent the Arabs, established a broad network of fairly successful political and social institutions. The Arabs, in particular, had a firm hold over their constituents and held sway in many of the organs of the colonial state. The most powerful Arab political organization was the Zanzibar Nationalist Party. By many accounts the ZNP emerged out of the ashes of the NPSS, but it also had additional and older forbearers. The ZNP, like the CGA and Arab Association, was a legacy of British paternalism. As a member of the colonial government characterized it, the ZNP was merely “the projection of the Arab Association into the political field.”11 The ZNP emerged in an era when the British government decided to change the membership rules of the LEGCO. In March 1954, the British resident declared that the number of seats on the LEGCO would be expanded

172

Chapter IV

from eight to twelve to include four Africans.12 In June 1954 Arab members of the LEGCO presented the colonial government with a series of political demands for “constitutional reform,” which included universal adult suffrage. As suffrage was contingent on literacy in most British colonies, the ZNP and its LEGCO representatives believed that an election would establish Arab hegemony in the LEGCO, countering British efforts to extend LEGCO membership to African appointees.13 The British resident and the colonial government, neither of whom wanted to be responsible for increasing the number of seats in the LEGCO, nor for the responsibility of monitoring elections, refused to make the LEGCO into a parliamentary body or open LEGCO seats to elected representatives. After boycotting the LEGCO meetings for more than a year, members of the Arab Association formed the Zanzibar Nationalist Party.14 In 1955 the colonial government appointed a constitutional commission to address lingering Arab concerns over the size and dimension of the LEGCO. The British government appointed Walter F. Coutts as the head of the commission. The Coutts commission proposed that in addition to expanding the LEGCO to twelve seats, an additional number of seats should be open to elected members. Ultimately the Coutts commission decided that the LEGCO should be expanded to eighteen members, six of which should be elected seats. The colonial government scheduled its first election for July 1957. The Coutts commission stipulated that only literate men who were at least twenty-five years of age, owned property of a particularly high value, and were residents and subjects of the sultan would be eligible to vote.15 It seemed that the ZNP, with its obvious political and economic networks, would win a majority of the election positions. Ironically, the Afro-Shirazi Party and the Shirazi of Pemba voted together and prevailed in the elections, securing five of the six seats for Africans. The ASP was a most unlikely victor. The ASP campaign began as a desperate, eleventh-hour effort to challenge Arab political ascendancy in a British protectorate. During the first week of February 1957, a mere four months before the first LEGCO election, eight members of Unguja’s Shirazi Association and ten members of the African Association met and formed the Afro-Shirazi Union (ASU). Over the next year, a large number of AA members joined the ASU and changed the name of the organization to the Afro-Shirazi Party. Despite British efforts to hand power to the

Resistance and Revolution

173

Omani sultan and to forestall the merging of Shirazi and Swahili interests, this was destined to occur.16 When the African Sports Club decided to rename its organization the African Association, it alarmed the British colonial administration as well as a variety of property and clove growing interests on Unguja. At the instigation of parties inside and outside the African Association, many property-owning Shirazis withdrew and formed the Shirazi Association in 1938.17 The Shirazi Association largely represented the interests of property-holding Africans who claimed Persian decent. Most of the association’s Shirazi members were Pemba Shirazi, although there were a few Shirazi from Unguja who joined in later years.18 In the 1940s, the African and Shirazi Associations developed separately from each other and outside Zanzibar’s closed political system until the Coutts decision made African participation possible. The fact that in three short months the Shirazi and the African Associations could unite to form the ASU, rally, and register enough voters to secure five of the six seats was quite a testament to the quality of their leadership.19 In reality, the leadership of both the African and Shirazi Associations had to suppress their sizeable differences and equally large egos to make ASU victory in the 1957 election even remotely possible. The leaders of the two associations could not have been more different. The head of the African Association, Sheik Abeid Karume, initially worked as a merchant sailor. He joined the small Swahili middle class by acquiring a small number of commercial boats. Karume was a hero with Unguja working-class Swahilis. By contrast, the leader of the Shirazi Association, Sheik Muhammad Shamte Hamadi had personal and family wealth that made him financially independent. Additionally, as a product of the colonial educational system, and a member of Pemba’s affluent Shirazi planting class, Hamadi worked for the colonial government and grew sympathetic to Arab planters.20 Each of these men had very different political styles. Karume was a man of the people, and given to invectives against the Arab elite while Hamadi was essentially part of the colonial establishment and a proponent of accommodating Arab authority. Despite their differences, Karume and Hamadi were able to co-lead because they obtained separate and distinct leadership positions over the Unguja and Pemba branches of the ASU respectively. ASU victory in the 1957 election suggested that the Swahili and Shirazi associations might

174

Chapter IV

maintain a lasting alliance and build a strong political base, but ZNP-led protests in 1958 created a permanent split within the ASU. The period of 1958–1960 was an era characterized by conflict.21 There were levels of conflict within and between groups. The broadest dispute raged between Arab and non-Arabs and concerned economic privilege and colonial favoritism. This conflict pitted Arabs against Indians and both groups against a highly diverse Shirazi-Swahili working class. The most pervasive dispute concerned economics and pitted the Shirazi against the Swahili, and Swahilis against Arabs. At the core of this debate the looming question emerged as to whether Zanzibar should function as an Arab cash-crop plantation or a subsistence economy dominated by Shirazi farmers. Until this question was resolved, it was assumed that the Arab community would seize control of the state once the British relinquished the colony. For a period of two years the conflict between Unguja Shirazi squatters and plantation-owning Arabs grew hostile.22 As discussed earlier, the planting class, both the Swahili and the Shirazi, had been allowed to plant crops on “Arab” land as long they nursed Arab cash crops. In late 1958 the Shirazi decided to make a statement by starting a campaign of planting bananas and yams, local food products, which damaged clove trees. Further, the Shirazi squatters openly refused to weed “Arab” clove trees. In open defiance of Arab planters they declared: “The trees are yours, the soil is ours.”23 In 1959 the Swahili and the ASU joined the fray and made the farmers gibe the ASU’s official slogan. The ZNP soon became involved and threatened to expel squatters if they did not reverse their planting scheme and swear allegiance to the ZNP. The Pemba Shirazi supported the ZNP and Muhammad Hamadi called for the squatters to abide by the traditional clove-planting arrangement. A few ASU moderates agreed with Hamadi, but the vast majority of ASU politicos sided with the farmers. Thus, the tentative alliance between ASU’s radicals and its moderates could not withstand this test of civil disobedience. The Unguja squatters had made a statement, but at a high cost. In late 1959, Sheik Muhammad Shamte Hamadi and his supporters split from Sheik Karume, forming the Zanzibar and Pemba People’s Party. The southern Unguja Shirazi supported the ZPPP, which now mainly represented wealthy Pemba Shirazi. Karume renamed the ASU the Afro-

Resistance and Revolution

175

Shirazi Party. The ASP became the party of northern Unguja Shirazi and most Swahili. It also had the backing of mainland Africans and prominent personalities, notably Julius Nyerere. Though the time was ripe for national change, this larger campaign was damaged by the squatter “revolt.” Neither the ASP nor the ZPPP were prepared to challenge the legitimacy of the electoral process or British authority. After 1959, the ZPPP formed an alliance with the ZNP in the hopes of creating a viable voting coalition in the 1961 election.24 Meanwhile, members of the newly constituted ASP were divided between those who supported Karume’s combative efforts to escalate ASP’s anticolonial activism and those who wanted to pursue a more accommodating approach. Had this impasse continued, it might have led to the ultimate dissolution of the ASP. However, three developments revived the party and put it back on track toward electoral success. The first of these three developments came from a consistently vigorous faction of the ASP. After Hamadi formed the ZPPP, the ASP’s youth wing took a more active role in supporting Karume’s policies.25 As important as ASP’s youth were in their efforts to rally older members of the organization, the ASP also needed, and began receiving, both open and clandestine support from a variety of external forces. In the years leading to independence, TANU and Julius Nyerere gave the ASP surreptitious financial and strategic support. However, the most important development in the ASP’s struggle against British hegemony and Arab intransigence was the emergence of a radical black-nationalist movement led by a Ugandan militant named Major John Okello. John Okello’s politics were shaped by events beginning in his early childhood and continuing during his ascension from laborer to business owner. At every stage of Okello’s life, he grew more resentful of minority and colonial rule and more committed to black nationalism. Okello was an orphan by age ten. He was responsible for two younger siblings and became the sole breadwinner. After six years as sole guardian, he found relatives to adopt his siblings and began his professional life as a day laborer and second-shift college student.26 In 1955 Okello moved from Uganda to Kenya. He got a job as a stonemason, continued his evening classes, and became involved in the Nairobi African District Congress, an emerging Kenyan political organization.27 Okello became especially sensitive to the political situation of Bantu Africans

176

Chapter IV

throughout Kenya. His autobiography is replete with encounters he had with Arabs who insisted on using racist derogatory epithets against him.28 After working for a few weeks in a Mombasan sugar factory, Okello left Kenya for Pemba in the hopes of improving his job prospects. He arrived in Pemba in 1959 and discovered that the end of the clove season meant that there were no jobs available. He took odd jobs, and joined the Zanzibar Nationalist Party. Eventually, he started his own masonry business and formed a union he called the Friendly Society of Workers. He was elected president of the union almost immediately, but that did not change his status in the ZNP, where his talents remained largely underutilized.29 As an enterprising young businessman John Okello created lifelong political alliances when he hired Bantus, Swahilis, and Shirazis to work in his business. Later he organized African workers so that they only bought from Pemba’s three African-owned shops. Okello left the ZNP for personal and professional reasons and joined the ASP just before the 1961 election. In his autobiography he reflected that he was growing wary of Arab power on both islands: The predominant Arab influence in the ZNP had awakened in me feelings of distrust for non-Africans I had met on the mainland. Despite the progressive public views of the ZNP, their demand for self-government really meant Arab control, and I knew that eventually the interests of the Arabs would have to clash with those of the majority Africans.30

Although Okello had not been in Zanzibar during the 1957 election, his observations regarding Arab hegemony were incredibly accurate. Arab leaders, and the ZNP in particular, hoped and anticipated taking control of the state after colonial independence.31 Between 1959 and 1961 Okello was animated by missionary zeal to subdue growing Arab authority. Almost immediately after joining the Afro-Shirazi Party, Okello was elected secretary of the youth wing from Pemba.32 Okello criticized the ZNP for representing the “rich [Arab], Asians, Indians and other foreign businesses.” He believed these groups supplied the ZNP with “unlimited campaign funds,” and therefore dominated the political agenda of the party. He reserved most of his venom for the Pemba Shirazi who left the ASP to form their own party.33 He called Muhammad Shamte Hamadi, leader of the ZPPP, an “imperialist stooge,” an insult that for many Zanzibaris carried an especially painful sting during the era of colonial independence.34

Resistance and Revolution

177

Despite his anger, as of 1960 Okello had not decided that a revolution that involved attacking Arabs was the most desirable way for the Swahili to achieve social justice in Zanzibar. Okello tried to persuade African workers to vote for ASP, suggesting that politics on Pemba and Unguja needed radical change.35 Okello recalls: In my campaign speeches I stressed the importance of freeing ourselves from both foreign rule and slavery, I dwelt much on teaching my audiences about far-away revolutions in history. . . . I emphasized also through unity the Cubans too had won their revolution . . . if a small island like Cuba could revolt despite the powerful American presence there was no reason why we could not revolt against imperialism. I stressed that to fight against foreign rule has nothing to do with skin color, for white Americans once revolted against British rule.36

As Okello became aware of the grave political inequalities that Swahili Zanzibaris faced relative to Arabs, his rhetoric became more incendiary. Okello’s shock at the outcome of the 1961 elections turned to anger when it occurred to him that the ZNP had won because the Arab ZNP and the Shirazi ZPPP formed an alliance. Protectorate voting requirements, which based eligibility on literacy in either English, Arabic, or, in a last-minute concession, Swahili, rendered most Africans ineligible to vote.37 Okello realized that the ZNP/ZPPP alliance, in light of the literacy requirement, would permanently frustrate African political aspirations. Thus, from the 1961 elections onward Okello’s campaign rhetoric began to associate foreign rule with imperialism and imperialism with slavery. Okello argued that British and Arab rule therefore represented an imperialism that had to be defeated. Whereas in Tanganyika over 40 percent of the population was literate in Swahili, in Zanzibar less than 10 percent of the population was able to read at the elementary level. This policy excluded most of Zanzibar’s African population and perpetuated Britain’s first- through third-phase policies of stratifying Zanzibaris based on economic class, educational attainment, and occupational background. Whereas linguistic ability in one of the two imperial languages and the Creole Swahili language were a definite economic advantage in the preindependence era, they were absolutely vital during the election era. Okello realized that if he wanted to challenge the ZNP/ZPPP juggernaut, he would have to recruit many more Africans to the ASP. He began

178

Chapter IV

attending community centers, churches, and mosques. He contributed money in a quest to attract more literate and land-rich, hence eligible, voters.38 He also looked for African recruits among Pemba’s military and police forces, and campaigned more widely in Zanzibar City than he had in the previous election cycle. Okello was again disappointed in 1963, when, despite his efforts to recruit more literate constituents, the Shirazi ZPPP and the Arab ZNP maintained their curious alliance, which cost the ASP many LEGCO seats. Okello recalled in his autobiography that upon winning, the ZNP/ZPPP coalition began taking reprisals against ASP supporters. He claimed further that the ZNP excluded ASP representatives from British negotiations regarding Zanzibar’s potential status as an independent nation.39 Ultimately, he resolved that more drastic action was needed. Okello recounts his personal feeling on the eve of the revolt: The Arabs had entrenched themselves in such power that the opposition was impotent. As the head of State, the Sultan was given almost unlimited authority. At this point I perceived completely that the Africans, who were the majority, could do nothing, and I was disappointed to see a growing division in the ranks of the ASP. . . . The party was weakened and demoralized by this split, and I realized that the time to arrange the revolution was at hand.40

The transition from third-phase African political resistance to fourthphase militancy was largely a byproduct of growing tensions within the ASP, along with an unnamed fear that the ZNP would assume control over the state and never relinquish it. Okello redoubled his efforts with the most fearless members of the ASP, especially the youth league, which took the acronym ASYL. Okello drew his most avid and committed supporters from the ranks of the ASYL. Knowing the latent energy and buried rage of Zanzibar’s Swahili youth, Okello often invoked the most vivid images of colonial rule when speaking to members of the ASYL. Okello referred to Zanzibar’s history as a parade of “ruthless Portuguese” and “cruel Arabs” who ruled with the “assistance of the British.” Okello did not refer to Indians in his speeches. More importantly, he never cast them as the “better-off” group responsible for African deprivation. That moniker was reserved for Zanzibar’s Arabs, the sultan, his supporters, and the ZNP in particular.41

Resistance and Revolution

179

Although largely imperceptible to most Swahili-speaking Zanzibaris, the relationship Indians had with the colonial government was just as influential, if not more powerful, than the association Arab Zanzibaris enjoyed with the British. However, because Indians dominated discrete circles of high finance, especially control over mortgages held on most Arab plantation property, they competed as a group with land-rich Arabs, rather than the population as a whole. Further, as Arab Zanzibaris used Indian indentured laborers throughout the nineteenth century, many Swahili-speaking Africans viewed Indians as a deprived group relative to Arabs. Thus, when the revolution finally arrived, the only Indians that became a target for African retribution were small shopkeepers, ironically among the poorest Indians on Pemba and Unguja, but also the most visible representatives of the trading class. Ultimately, Okello’s allusion to Zanzibari society as a struggle between rich planters and poor farmers, between mean slave owners and meek slaves, was a far more effective technique for targeting Arabs as the focus for African violence than it was in stirring up resentment against powerful or wealthy Indians. Okello juxtaposed the metaphors of slave and slave owner to make it clear to his largely African followers that coexistence with Arabs was impossible. On the eve of the revolution, three months after the disappointing third round of independence elections, Okello spoke at general ASP meeting. Okello’s leadership and the activism of the ASYL, along with Nyerere’s distant patronage, may have been enough to inspire Karume and the die-hard activists to revolt, but not the mainstay membership of the ASU. Ultimately it was necessary for the ASP to bring the ZNP’s disreputable electoral policies to light before ASP radicals could spur the more conservative membership of the ASP to insurgency.42 At the meeting following the 1963 election Okello roused his audience with allusions to a gory but victorious end to Arab rule. John Okello pleaded with his audience: The minority defeated us in the last election. I plead with you brothers, that you will never obtain what you want unless you resort to other means. Do not be ignorant of the fact that now there are not ways other than to shed blood.43

A few days later, Seif Baraki, president of the ASP Youth League, introduced John Okello to the audience as “our redeemer,” a term used by

180

Chapter IV

Ghanaians for their leader, Kwame Nkrumah.44 In reality, the comparison was shaky; Nkrumah promoted nonviolent ideas antithetical to Okello’s approach. Even when the colonial government imprisoned Nkrumah for his political activity, he continued to stress the principles of nonviolence in written messages smuggled out to his followers.45 On the surface, Okello’s message was very similar to Nkrumah’s. Like Nkrumah, Okello compared imperialism to slavery, but Nkrumah’s messianic imagery always stressed struggle and martyrdom rather than revenge.46 By contrast, Okello felt that violence was the only way to achieve freedom. He continued to rail against Arabs whenever he had a Swahili-speaking audience. Okello’s appeals became more vivid as revolution approached: I went on to remind them that the slave markets and the irons and chains which held their brothers were still visible in the Island, as were the mass graves where murdered Africans were buried. . . . I asked the crowd if they agreed with this and they replied . . . we agree with our hearts, but you must never abandon us in trouble. . . . I continued . . . “I am here to assure you . . . the way I shall lead you to freedom is not at all related to voting; it relates to blood and you must promise that you are prepared to shed blood.”47

On the one hand, Okello was frustrated by his own failed attempts to make political inroads into the ZNP; on the other hand, he sensed that the protectorate’s entire political system not only frustrated him, but all Swahili Zanzibaris, especially laborers.48 Whereas in 1961 Okello framed his appeal in the language of African unity, a nonviolent challenge to imperialism, by 1963 he changed his rhetoric to a call for militancy and racial justice. In 1961, during his initial efforts to check the ZNP, Okello claimed that the Swahili cultural struggle was not an issue of “skin color.” However, by 1963, Okello began characterizing British and Arab political repression as bigotry and he intensified his racial rhetoric.49 The year 1963 was difficult for the ASP. On June 24 of that year, British government granted Zanzibaris, or more precisely the sultan and his family, internal self-government. The following month the government held elections for the thirty-one seats in the LEGCO. Despite fears that the ASP might challenge the ZNP/ZPPP coalition, it held through the election. Although the ASP won a majority of the total votes, as in the 1961

Resistance and Revolution

181

election, they gained only a minority of the seats.50 In September 1963, three months after the election, the British government published the results from its independence conference convened to decide the fate of the protectorate. The official declaration of the conferees was that Zanzibar should be granted full independence on December 10, 1963, and that the government should declare the sultan the head of the state of Zanzibar.51 John Okello realized that this was the moment to rally his supporters and his rhetoric became hyperbolic. Okello told his followers that independence under the sultan would be equivalent to a return to slavery. He continually evoked the metaphors of bondage and deliverance, coupled with the use of very sharp language of retribution and violence. At an ASP meeting in late December 1963, Okello prepared his audience for an impending war. He told his listeners to “prepare weapons, primarily spears, bows and arrows, knives and sticks.”52 Eyewitness accounts of the two-day revolution recall that Okello gathered his eight hundred ASP “warriors” at ten o’clock the evening of January 11. Their first action was to take over Zanzibar’s various police stations. This was done easily, as most of Zanzibar’s officialdom retired to their homes, and, as such, were unaware that a revolution was at hand, much less its time or place.53 On January 12, 1964, John Okello’s freedom fighters secured Zanzibar’s armories and began confiscating “imperialist possessions” and “enemy vehicles.”54 Okello’s men took over Zanzibar’s radio station and at 7 a.m. Okello broadcast his first fiery message. Okello roused his followers: Wake up, you black men. Let everyone of you take a gun and ammunition and start to fight against any remnants of imperialism of this island. . . . Never, never relent, if you want this Island to be yours.55

High officials of the government, both Arab and British, tried to flee the island or went into hiding.56 Fearing Okello’s warriors might turn on the Shirazi, Muhammad Shamte of the ZPPP asked the Kenyan and Ugandan governments for military intervention, but, like Tanganyika, neither agreed.57 On January 13 Arab shops were pillaged and civilians murdered. In cases where families resisted, the whole family was massacred. Whether Okello expected that violence in Zanzibar would escalate to the point that it approximated genocide is unclear, but he nonetheless

182

Chapter IV

made it clear to his listeners that violence and murder were crucial. In his biography Okello claims that in the final days before the revolution, he gave his military leadership, or freedom fighters, “final instructions on the conduct of war.” John Okello tried to control the chaos he was unleashing by stating that [i]nnocent people should not be harmed . . . and you should only fight against those important imperialists that I designate. . . . Never kill Europeans of any age; this applies to Asians. . . . I am interested only in removing Arab control from this Island, not in destroying the population.58

Okello recruited the core military staff of his revolutionary army, his “freedom fighters,” from the Swahili-speaking officers of Pemba’s police force, and from the staff of Pemba and Unguja’s prison system. He began to mobilize supporters by convincing the African population that they faced a dire future if Arab power continued after the British colonial government granted Zanzibar independence.59 He claimed that if the Arabs assumed control over the Zanzibari state there would be no safeguard to prevent them from abusing their power. Okello promised that “all male African babies would be killed . . . and that African girls would be forced to submit to Arabs.”60 He emphatically added that “Arabs would expel Africans who were not Zanzibaris [i.e., migrant labor] and those who were allowed to stay would be ruled as slaves.”61 Okello’s so-called military intelligence was meant for cool heads. In fact, it is unlikely that Okello could have known that his propaganda would spread so completely throughout the general population. More importantly, Okello probably never believed that revolutionary violence could escalate to the level of genocide. Okello’s use of racial fear tactics, his repetition of the slave/slave owner metaphor, and his invitation to hatred were examples of how many “great men,” or potentially effective leaders, have fallen short of their own messianic ideal. Okello escalated Zanzibar’s “war of visions,” its struggle to find its national identity, to a violent contest for geographic space and material possessions.62 When Okello gave instructions to his party leadership in the month leading to revolution, he suggested that only specified “imperialists” should be the targets of violence. Given the inflammatory nature of his radio broadcast, however, it is doubtful that Okello’s message and tactics could have led to anything

Resistance and Revolution

183

other than undifferentiated mass murder. Okello kept broadcasting messages throughout January 12, 1964, Zanzibar’s one-day revolution. He claimed that Arabs were resisting or, in some cases, retaliating, and that “Africans must continue to fight imperialism.”63 By 9 p.m. that evening, fourteen hours after the first broadcast, Okello’s 9 reported that approximately 6,300 Arab combatants had been killed and 14,716 Arab and nonArab civilians were arrested.64 Fearing continued violence in the days following “the revolution,” many of the Arab detainees that were not deported felt compelled to leave Zanzibar forever.65 Okello’s goal of removing an Arab presence from the island was accomplished in a thirty-six-hour melee. The international community reacted to the defeat of Zanzibar’s one-month-old ZNP regime and to the violence of the 1964 revolution with disbelief.66 Once the Western media reported casualties, the absolute devastation of Zanzibar’s Arab community, and the collapse of Arab authority, the international community became truly shocked and worried.67 The brutal attack was short but effective. It completely inverted Zanzibar’s political order. Okello informed the sultan that he had twenty minutes to kill himself and his family. However, while Okello was busy capturing other military and police facilities, the sultan and his family escaped to the mainland.68 On January 13, 1964, Okello formed the Revolutionary Council and named Sheik Abeid Karume prime minister. He then traveled to the mainland to make an official declaration to the governments of Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda that the liberation had been successful. The Revolutionary Council, and Karume in particular, insisted upon many immediate and dramatic changes to the order of Zanzibari society. The Revolutionary Council began a program of reversing colonial policy in practically the exact order that the British had implemented its policies. Less than a week after fighting stopped, the ASP confiscated much of the property Arabs acquired during the first phase of colonial rule. The ASP declared that all Africans who had mortgaged their property would have their mortgages canceled.69 On January 20 the Revolutionary Council made Swahili the official language of the Zanzibari nation, thereby reversing Britain’s secondphase policy of establishing English and Arabic as the official languages of the state.70 On March 8, 1964, Abeid Karume, now president of the People’s Republic of Zanzibar, announced that Zanzibar’s leading Af-

184

Chapter IV

rican organization, the ASP, would be the nation’s sole political party. He further declared that the government would take over all clubs that based their membership on ethnicity, religion, or wealth.71 This declaration effectively reversed Britain’s third- and fourth-phase policies, which were characterized by an attempt to co-opt indigenous Swahili-speaking organizations, while promoting wealthy and autonomous Indian and Arab organizations.72 Initially, Karume fulfilled many of the practical demands of his African population; however, these sweeping changes included centralizing power in offices of the lone party of the state, the ASP. As ASP’s titular head in the months after the revolution, President Karume’s power and suspicion grew to such a great extent that it could not be checked. Thus, when Okello returned to Zanzibar in early March, President Karume had him arrested for “immigration offenses.”73 Karume and his ASP supporters were concerned about what role Okello would want to play after successfully conducting the revolution. Often outspoken and brash, Okello had strong opinions about the nature of popular leadership and clashed, both before and after the revolution, with Karume and other ASP officials on this and other matters.74 In a thankless and unceremonious end to his efforts, Okello’s revolutionary colleagues, who considered him a “threat to the revolution,” placed him in a series of East African prisons for a period of five years.75 On April 26, 1964, Zanzibar formed a union with Tanganyika.76 Unification was a development that the international community hoped would restore stability to the region and prevent further hostilities against Zanzibar’s minority Arab and Indian populations. Unfortunately, only weeks after the revolution, Abeid Karume began an era of extended authoritarian rule that lasted eight years. President Karume ruled Zanzibar as a police state. The ASP abolished the Anglo-Arab judicial system and replaced it with a people’s court, staffed not by the elders of a particular community, which was the system that prevailed before the protectorate, but by many personal benefactors of Karume’s Revolutionary Council.77 Karume began an unpopular program of housing “development” which compelled rural Swahilis to move to Zanzibar City, where the government encouraged them to live in newly built high-rise apartments. By the late 1960s Karume’s policies turned from promoting African culture to denigrating Asian and Arab social and economic influences. In June 1970 Karume announced that the government would not grant trade

Resistance and Revolution

185

licenses to minority groups. During his reign, Karume passed personal edicts and executive orders that were supposed to be binding on both islands. In 1970 the parliament of Tanzania ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration stated, among other things, that marriages should only occur between individuals with the “full and free” consent of both parties. However, in 1972 Karume issued a decree that forbade Zanzibari women from rejecting arranged marriages and began compelling engagements between prominent Asian or Arab girls and members of his government.78 The island’s Asian and Indian families began to send both their sons and daughters outside Zanzibar for higher education, and in far higher numbers than they had under British rule. As punishment, Karume made the individuals who chose to let their children leave the island pay a steep fee or face imprisonment.79 While the biggest wave of Arab and Asian emigrants left after Okello’s revolution, even more emigrated during the eight years of Karume’s authoritarian rule. Most of those who fled the island belonged to Zanzibar’s wealthy and educated classes. They left the island for good and left the economy in a state of growing chaos. While Karume made life miserable for Ungujan minorities, he adopted a policy of benign neglect toward the Pemba Shirazi, whom he regarded as ZPPP benefactors, ASP traitors, and hence enemies of the state. Karume’s early years represented an inversion, the mirror image of Britain’s phase 1 colonial rule. That phase was cruel but strategic and it involved a redistribution of land and resources, the suppression of indigenous Swahili language, and the co-optation of private “ethnic” organizations on behalf of the colonial government. The latter years of Karume’s regime typified the sort of irrational authoritarian rule that plagued several African governments in ensuing decades. During Karume’s eight years as president of Zanzibar, the tenuous and largely symbolic union between Zanzibar and the mainland grew strained. The rift between Unguja and Pemba deepened. There was only a slight improvement when Karume’s regime ended and Aboud Jumbe became president.80 In 1977, five years into the Jumbe regime, TANU and the ASP merged to form the Chama Cha Mapinduzi. The CCM party centralized the authority of the two nations into one organization, a development that sadly would be unable to resolve Zanzibar’s deepest political cleavages.

186

Chapter IV

CONCLUSION The political rhetoric of the ASP, and John Okello in particular, emphasized the racial nature of Zanzibar’s economic cleavages. However, Okello’s military strategy, the behavior of the African mob, and the decrees of Revolutionary Council following the departure of the deposed sultan suggest that the 1964 revolution was only superficially an ethnic struggle. Ethnicity was a symbolic, peripheral issue used by revolutionary leaders as a catalytic agent to provoke a unified response among workingclass people who shared a common language and had similar economic grievances. As suggested by the five-stage, the five-phase, and the three-site models, Zanzibar’s struggle was a contest over land, language and political representation, and economic identity. At every stage, phase, and site, the contest between the Arabic-speaking haves and Swahili-speaking havenots concerned economic advantage, educational attainment, and political authority. In the first phases, Swahili Zanzibaris lost their land to Arabs. In the second phase Swahili lost its place as an official language of the court system. During this era, the international trade of cloves became more important to the British government than the regional trade of subsistence crops. As a result, the Swahili language began to lose its standing as the de facto language of trade, and Swahili-speaking Bantus began to lose their status as the dominant political community.81 The expanding plantation economy allowed an increasing number of Arabs access to an education. Paradoxically, the wage system which energized the clove economy, and which was almost exclusively dominated by Swahili labor, made it impossible for most Swahilis to attend even the first few years of elementary school. In the third and fourth phase, Arab economic and educational advantage expanded into the political arena. Thus, in third phase of protectorate rule it became very difficult, and in many cases illegal, for Swahili workers to form open and transparent trade union organizations. During the fourth phase of colonial rule the Arab elite, emboldened by more than fifty years of colonial patronage, decided to try to emulate British policies toward Swahili organizations. More specifically, in the 1957, 1961, and 1963 elections, the ZNP employed various strategies, both legal and illegal, to try to exclude representatives of Zanzibar’s Swahili working-

Resistance and Revolution

187

class population from assuming their rightful role as leaders in the legislative council, the LEGCO. Thus the crux of Zanzibar’s economic and political contest concerned access and ownership of land, dominion over matters of culture and language, control over the economy, and, ultimately, command of the political system. The Swahili insurgents targeted the Arab elite not because they were racially different or even because they were wealthier, but because, relative to every other group in Zanzibar, the Arabs appeared to have the most access to wealth, cultural legitimacy, and political authority. They owned the most land, and the British made Arabic the official language of Zanzibar’s commerce. The British government gave the Arabs cultural ascendancy over the island’s Swahili-speaking communities when it declared the Zanzibari protectorate an Arab state. While the British government gave the Arabs and other non-Swahili speaking groups the right to establish their own associations, this same colonial government spent more than fifty years divesting Zanzibar of almost every indigenous African organization, and prevented new African institutions from developing.82 In place of these indigenous Bantu-Swahili organizations, the colonial government established political institutions that would promote British military command, Arab political authority, Indian economic leverage, and, on Pemba, Shirazi economic and cultural ascendancy. These colonial policies pitted groups against each other to the benefit of the government and the extreme disadvantage of the Swahili. In fact, most groups in Zanzibar were materially better off than most Swahilispeaking Bantu, and the Indian community had some of the most powerful, wealthy, and well-connected individuals in the colonial economy and government. This fact returns the reader to the question that animated this research, namely: Why did African insurgents primarily, almost exclusively, target Arabs for revolutionary violence? That question leads us to the current inquiry—namely, why did John Okello and the ASP specifically prohibit attacks against the Indians and Shirazis as well as other Afro-Asian communities? The answer to this question may reside with the dynamics of the three-site, the five-stage, and the five-phase models themselves. The 1964 revolution was, after all, a fairly rational reaction to four cumulative phases of British colonialism. Zanzibar’s Swahili-speaking population

188

Chapter IV

did not perceive that there was a conflict between their economic interests and that of most members of the Indian community. Furthermore, John Okello and the ASP may have realized that attacking the Indians would not change Zanzibar’s political system. For sixty years colonial policy deliberately created economic cleavage between poor farmers and rich planting society. The racial background of Zanzibar’s poor farmers and of its rich planting society was incidental to their basic conflict, which was economic. Although the conflict in Zanzibar was often called a racial struggle, the cleavage between Africans and Arabs was, at the core, a struggle between occupational groups and concerned the nations’ economic orientation. These factions were in many respects trying to determine very simply whether Zanzibar would remain a democratic, subsistence, or authoritarian plantation economy. Ultimately, the actions of the Revolutionary Council, and Abeid Karume, more specifically, resolved this dilemma. In the weeks after the revolution, and in a matter of months, the Revolutionary Council began a plan of redistributing land in favor of African peasants. President Karume then used his eight-year administration to convert Zanzibar from a plantation to a parastatal economy. In many respects, the ASP’s postrevolutionary program of land redistribution and economic reorientation helped explain the motivations governing the insurgency. Swahili insurgents focused on attacking the Arab community because they were considered the primary beneficiaries of a highly stratified colonial economy. To be certain, there were poor Arabs, but their material, political, and cultural interests were protected by a highly visible network of Arab and colonial institutions that supported the plantation economy. By contrast, Indian wealth was much more discreet, limited to circles of high finance and the highly elusive personal associations that govern British patronage. Indian wealth, which began in trade, grew exponentially during the emergence of a network of Anglo-Indian mortgage companies. These mortgage associations expanded in the 1930s, providing bankrupt Arab planters with high interest loans after the depression of the 1930s. Thus, Zanzibar’s rich Indians had an increasingly negative relationship with rich Arabs, not poor Africans. Further, most Zanzibaris viewed the Indian community sympathetically because they were aware of the conditions under which Indians first arrived on the island. The earliest members of Zanzibar’s Indian community were indentured servants, brought to the island by the British government in order to build railroads and other colo-

Resistance and Revolution

189

nial infrastructure. Zanzibari Indians had a deep and complex history, well known to most East Africans. As a result, only the Indians with the most ostentatious displays of wealth or those intimately involved in the daily lives of Swahili attention suffered during the chaos of the 1964 insurgency. Even then, most wealthy Indians faced evacuation rather than genocide. Those Indians who chose to remain in Zanzibar after the revolution had their economic power checked by less violent but more exasperating means. From Zanzibar’s earliest history, throughout the era of the protectorate, linguistic ability has been the primary means of attaining social position and wealth. Race, on the other hand, has remained a highly fluid construct, elastic and subject to change, especially sensitive to economic and political advancement.83 From the fourteenth century until the eighteenth century the Shirazi and the Swahili competed with one another over East African ports, and over cultural ascendancy. Ultimately the Swahili language, culture, and economic system prevailed. The Swahili had numerous advantages over the Shirazi. While the Shirazi were the first emigrants to settle in the region, their culture and language, being absorbed into the dominant Bantu culture, began to disappear almost immediately. By contrast, the Arab immigrants who intermarried with the Bantu created a third culture. The Swahili culture and the Creole Swahili language proved to be able both to help preserve the distinct Bantu and Arab cultures and to simultaneously offer an alternate, truly innovative national identity, which both Bantu- and Arab-speaking populations could embrace.84 By the seventeenth century, race in Zanzibar had become—in fact, it may have always been—a rather fluid construct. Zanzibaris, a racially mixed population, changed their racial identity to suit their political and economic aspirations. When the sultan of Oman made Zanzibar the new Omani capital, his family maintained ties to Arab culture and language. However, as an astute politician who preferred assimilation rather than conquest, the sultan also adopted many aspects of the local Bantu culture, including the Swahili language. Zanzibar became a bilingual nation, but Swahili was the lingua franca, and the sultan accepted this fact. While the Omani slave system became a source of tension, this tension was mitigated by the fact that slave status was not a caste system. Slavery in Zanzibar was more like a system of indentured servitude. Sharia law prohibited the enslavement of subsequent generations of any given family. Thus as late

190

Chapter IV

as the early nineteenth century, race and a person’s occupation were largely independent variables, and racial ambivalence could be present among several members of one family. In the nineteenth-century Shirazi clan system, a nomad squatter of Bantu heritage, who spoke Swahili and lived on a small plot of land in Unguja, could refer to himself as a “Shirazi” farmer. His third cousin, a fisherman who claimed common Bantu ancestry, but spoke Arabic and lived on Pemba, may have called himself an Arab merchant. Racial ambivalence was both a mystery to most European colonial governments and anathema to the survival of the plantation economy. Plantation farming required a division of labor with a majority of the population committed to hard labor. For the plantation system to thrive it had to expand continuously, recruiting an ever-growing number of workers.85 From the earliest days of the protectorate until the 1940s, the British devised many laws and social programs in an effort to recruit a greater number of Bantu and Swahili workers, while continuously cultivating various minority groups into ruling factions that would compete for political and economic hegemony as well as British favor. The British became aware of how truly elastic racial identity could be in numerous situations, and they found that racial identity was rooted in economic pragmatism. One of the most obvious examples of this pragmatism came during World War II when, in an effort to get more or better rations, the Shirazi asked to be classified as Asian rather than African. The British tried to put an end to this racial ambivalence in 1948 when the government began discussions regarding Zanzibar’s colonial independence. That year the British drafted a national census and the Shirazi changed their identity again. This time the vast majority of Shirazi changed their identity from Asian to African. In fact, most Zanzibaris chose the African designation in the 1948 census. This included the Shirazi of Pemba, as well as most of the Swahili of both Unguja and Pemba Islands. Additionally, nearly all the Bantus who had recently emigrated from the mainland, along with those who lived in Zanzibar for centuries, also identified themselves as “African.” Thus, in 1948 the census designated 76 percent of the Zanzibari population, the majority, African.86 The British government and its elite Arab clients realized that for Zanzibar to remain an Arab state, they would have to monitor African political development. In the 1950s Zanzibar’s emerging political party movement prompted most Zanzibaris to change their identity yet again. While most Swahilis joined the Afro-Shirazi Party, nearly all Arabic-speaking Zanzibaris, and

Resistance and Revolution

191

a small number of Shirazis, chose the Arab Zanzibar Nationalist Party. By 1960 Unguja’s Shirazi squatters had developed a deep antipathy for the plantation system and, by extension, Arab planters and the ZNP. Many small farm Shirazi planters joined the ASP. On Pemba, where the economy favored the clan-based planting system, most Shirazi enjoyed fairly high standard of living. Most of these so-called rich Shirazi felt their interests might be threatened if the socialist-leaning ASP gained control over the institutions of the Zanzibari state. Thus the Pemba Shirazi withdrew from the ASP and formed the Zanzibar and Pemba People’s Party. The ZPPP formed a coalition with the ZNP, supporting independence with a return to the sole rule of the Omani sultan. During the revolution, like many Indians, the Shirazi community was largely spared. After the revolution, when the Revolutionary Council declared Swahili national language, redistributed land, and made the ASP the nations’ sole political party, several Shirazi clans and many “Arab” families chose to classify themselves as Swahili. Thus in independence era Zanzibar, as in Zanzibar of the British protectorate, the Omani, Swahili, and Shirazi eras, national identity has been tied to access and dominion over two resources, land and language. The actions of John Okello, the African mob, and the decrees of the Revolutionary Council confirmed that the 1964 revolution could only superficially be called an “ethnic” struggle. The core goal of Zanzibar’s Swahili population involved changing the political system so that the majority of Zanzibaris were no longer subjects of the British monarchy or residents in an Omani Sultanate but bona fide citizens of a distinct and unified Zanzibari nation. By the fourth phase of British colonial rule, it became clear to African activists that this change would require a revolution. The revolution would have to not only convert Zanzibar from a British protectorate to an independent Swahili nation, but would also have recast the Arab Sultanate into a modern African state. For almost a century all the government’s first-phase policies benefited a rich ruling minority at the expense of the vast working-class majority. Britain’s land redistribution scheme benefited Arab planters at the expense of African farmers. Similarly, the second-phase colonial policy of promoting English and Arabic as the languages of the state, while making it almost impossible for most people to attain proficiency in either language, benefited the elite, at the expense of the laboring classes. These policies were deliberate, and eventually provoked a strong and unrelenting reaction.

192

Chapter IV

During the third and fourth phases of colonial rule, African activists tried to work within the system. However, their attempts to check colonial excesses and to open the political and legislative systems to African participation were thwarted by ever more repressive means. British authoritarianism made African revolution a necessity. When Zanzibar’s Africans finally created their own nation they established a one-party state, hoping, perhaps, to bury some of the cleavages within a unified political identity. However, due to the fact that race was never the true or sole source of political tensions, some of Zanzibar’s deeper cultural and economic cleavages resurfaced. Chapter V will discuss how these latent tensions have reemerged in the last decade. This fifth chapter, a postscript, will also suggest that unstable electoral politics in Zanzibar have influenced, and may continue to threaten, politics on mainland Tanzania. ***** The following table describes the characteristics and changing status of the Afro-Shirazi Union, the Afro-Shirazi Party, the Zanzibar and Pemba People’s Party, the Zanzibar Nationalist Party, and the Umma Party at the time of Zanzibar’s three major elections, and during the years after the revolution until Karume’s death. Table 4.1. Party Affiliation/Party Name Election

ASU /ASP*

ZNP

ZPPP

UMMA PARTY

1957

SF WP

NF

WF

1961

SF TWP MSL SF EVWP MSL SF WP OP

SF LP MSL** MF WP

WF CWP

WF CLP

MF WP

WF CWP

WF CLP

NF

NF

NF

1963

1964–1972

* The Afro-Shirazi Union was renamed the Afro-Shirazi Party in 1959 after the defection of Pemba Shirazi, who formed the Zanzibar and Pemba People’s Party. From the 1961 election onward the ASP and the ZPPP ran competing candidates. ** In 1957 there were still six appointed seats in the LEGCO. The British gave four of these seats to Arabs, one to a Shirazi, and one to an Indian appointee. Elected ASU representatives had five seats. The ASU representatives held a majority over appointed Arabs by one seat, but the ASU was otherwise outnumbered by non-Swahili LEGCO members, who were all appointees.

Resistance and Revolution

193

Acronym Key

SF MF NF WF LP WP CLP CWP TWP EVWP MSL OP

a strong presence or factor—registered as many or more voters than other parties’ candidates that year. a moderate factor not a factor a weak presence or factor losing party in that election cycle winning party moderate or weak factor in a coalition with a losing party moderate factor in a coalition with a winning party tied with the winning party but defeated by coalition exceeded votes of winning party (but received less LEGCO seats than the losing party) given a minority of seats in LEGCO only party in era of 1964–1972

Observations Regarding Information on the Chart

As the chart suggests, the ASP was one of the strongest factors in the three elections. In fact, the ASP regularly had a plurality of the percentage of total electoral votes, but the protectorate government chose to give ASP representatives only a minority of seats in LEGCO. In 1957 the number of elected Swahili representatives to the LEGCO equaled the number of non-Swahili appointees. Counting the Indian and Shirazi appointees, African representatives were outnumbered by appointees by one. This dynamic made Swahilis a legislative minority and frustrated most efforts of the otherwise victorious and newly elected Swahilispeaking representatives to hold sway in the LEGCO between the years of 1957–1961. In the 1961 and 1963 elections ASP lost seats because of the ZNP/ZPPP coalition. Language was a core issue during electoral races because while Unguja’s Afro-Shirazi far outnumbered all the Arabs of Unguja and Shirazi of Pemba, the total number of literate Afro-Shirazi was quite limited. In fact, most of the Arabs of Unguja and many of the Shirazi of Pemba were literate; these voters, represented by the ZNP and ZPPP, were able to register a larger number of eligible voters than the ASP was able to register alone. When the

194

Chapter IV

revolution occurred the Revolutionary Council immediately made Swahili the only and the official language of the nation, made the ASP Zanzibar’s sole party, and waived literacy as a voting requirement. In the 1957 election the ASU received votes from just over 60 percent of the electorate, the ZNP received a little more than 21 percent with the remaining votes going to independent candidates or candidates of minority parties. In 1961 the ASP support dropped to just under 50 percent, with the coalition of the ZNP/ZPPP receiving just under 39 percent. In the 1963 election the ASP received 54 percent of the votes while the ZNP/ ZPPP received just over 38 percent One of the ironies of the LEGCO voting arrangement was that even though the ZNP/ZPPP coalition received a minority of the votes they were given a majority of the seats in the LEGCO. In the 1961 election the ASP received ten seats, the ZPPP three, and the ZNP ten. In the 1963 elections the British government granted the ASP thirteen seats, the ZNP twelve, and the ZPPP received six seats. Thus from the first election in 1957 to the second in 1961, the ASP went from having 45 percent of the seats to 43 percent and in 1963 to 42 percent. More significant than the decline in ASP seats, however, was the erosion of ASP power. By 1962 the ZNP/ZPPP coalition began to articulate a more ruthless political agenda that involved matters of formulating colonial independence without the consent of the ASP, and to the detriment of the majority Swahili-speaking population. For more detailed electoral statistics, see: John Middleton and Jane Campbell, Zanzibar: Its Society and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). “Zanzibar’s Freak Election,” The Economist (January 21, 1961): 241–42. British Information Services, Zanzibar, I.D. 1474 (October 1963), Stationery Office Press, 25–27.

NOTES 1. Robert Fatton’s first and second sites, the sites of class formation and disarticulation, correspond to the first and second phases of the five-phase model, and the first and second stages of the five-stage model. 2. The majority of Arabs were run off the island. The conditions of their forced “evacuation” will be discussed later.

Resistance and Revolution

195

3. In contrast to the five-phase model, the five-stage model argues that the outcome of fourth stage consciousness-raising can either lead to relative equality between the two groups a situation where the privilege group will maintain its status advantage over another group. The five-phase model, on the other hand, suggests that a radical reversal in power may occur and argues that the degree to which there is a reversal in power varies from case to case, country to country. In Zanzibar the 1964 revolution and the reconstruction that followed led to an obvious reversal of power. The economic and political powers of the island’s remaining Arab and Indian residents were severely curbed and the state became a centralized economy, Swahili-speaking and governed by Tanzania’s vice-president. By contrast, the reconstruction that took place in the American South following the Civil War allowed American blacks only limited political and economic participation, and even then, these gains were soon reversed, and the society, at least in the South, entered into a new phase of social stratification. 4. See Mapuri, The 1964 Revolution, 12. 5. Even though Zanzibar’s Arabs were, as a group, considered “wealthy” relative to other ethnic groups, Zanzibar was also home to poor and working-class Arabs. Those Arabs who were aristocrats or members of the planting class were a relatively small group. These Arabs created their association to represent their particular interests, rather than those of the larger Arab population; see Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 49–50. 6. Chapter II discussed the fact that education was impossible because it was expensive and because most Africans were farmers who could not harvest their crops if they did not have the assistance of all their family members. 7. The British Trade Union Decrees of 1931 and 1941 allowed Zanzibaris to form unions, but established colonial oversight into the financial and accounting practices of these unions, which in turn allowed the colonial administration to give or withdraw authorization at the discretion of Zanzibar’s British governor, thereby generally arresting African political development; see Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 99. 8. George Hadjivayanis and Ed Ferguson suggest that Zanzibar’s labor movement went through five stages, as cited in Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 197. According to Hadjivayanis, the first stage of trade union development in Zanzibar occurred during the years between 1930 and 1940 when the British government officially sanctioned trade union activity. The next period was the late 1940s, and was characterized by increasing spontaneous strikes, culminating in the 1948 general strike. These strikes were the first indication that there was growing labor union solidarity, see Clayton, “The General Strike in Zanzibar” and The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath. Hadjivayanis and Ferguson’s third stage was marked by trade union

196

Chapter IV

inactivity associated with a stretch of increased wealth from Zanzibar’s clove export. The fourth and fifth stages of trade union development that occurred between the years 1956–1958 and 1959–1963, respectively, were, according to Hadjivayanis and Ferguson, the shortest but most meaningful developments in Zanzibar’s political history. The authors suggest further that the fourth stage “had these features: the proliferation of trade unions along occupation lines; the active role of nationalist parties and an unsuccessful effort to create a trade union federation”; see Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 197. While Hadjivayanis and Ferguson’s five-stage model specifically addresses trade unionism, McKirnan and Taylor’s five-stage model is useful for general discussion of colonial politics, including, but not limited to, workingclass labor history. 9. As discussed in chapter I, the Zanzibari nation consists of two islands, Unguja (sometimes called Zanzibar Island) and Pemba Island. 10. Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 134. 11. Zanzibar Government, Report on the Census of the Population of Zanzibar Protectorate 1958 (Zanzibar Government Printers, 1960), 2. 12. See Mapuri, The 1964 Revolution, 18. By constitutional reform the British government did not envision a radical change in colonial policies, rather, it planned only to expand the LEGCO to include Africans compatible with other members of the committee. Three successive British residents were entrusted with this task. They included Sir John Rankine, who announced the proposal in 1954, and Sir Henry Porter, who succeeded him in June 1955. 13. The ZNP realized in absolute terms that the African population far and away outnumbered the Arab population, but they thought that literacy was so low among Africans that the number of qualified African voters would be meager or negligible. As it turned out, many of the migrants who came to Zanzibar from the mainland in the decades before independence had often attained at least an elementary education before the arrived on the island. The ZNP used its power to make it difficult for migrant labor to establish their residency status or acquire land, which were other requirements for election. 14. See John Middleton and Jane Campbell, Zanzibar: Its Society and its Politics, 46 15. W. E. F Ward and L. W. White, East Africa: A Century of Change 1870–1970 (New York: Africana Publishing Co., 1972), 239, and Middleton and Campbell, Zanzibar: Its Society and its Politics, 43. 16. Both the African and Shirazi Associations were more like incipient trade unions than organizations based on ethnicity. They both shared a similar interest in protecting working classes against harmful colonial policies and expanding Arab political power.

Resistance and Revolution

197

17. Aside from the obvious differences in British policy regarding Shirazi and Swahili property ownership, the colonial government also differentiated between the two groups in other ways. During World War II the British government began rationing food. Initially Arabs and Asians (Indians and Comorians) were given a larger and perhaps preferred ration of food. When Africans demanded an equal ration they were denied, leading Shirazi to claim Asian descent. The colonial government agreed and included Shirazi in the favored Arab/Asian food-rationing scheme; see B. F. Mrina and W. T. Mattoke, Harkati Za Ukombozi (The Liberation Struggle) (Dar-es-Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House, 1980), 50. 18. The Pemba Shirazi were wealthier than their Unguja counterparts and maintained various local organizations that excluded Unguja Shirazi. Three years after the ASP was formed many Pemba Shirazi withdrew from the organization, established the ZPPP, and formed a voting alliance with the Arab ZNP. 19. In fact, there is much evidence that what brought the leaders of the Shirazi and African associations together were the efforts of Tanganyikans. Julius Nyerere, in particular, was a prominent force in the development of Zanzibar’s parties. Nyerere initially counseled the ASP to stay out of party politics until it built a political machine as hardy as the Arab Zanzibar Nationalist Party; see Norman Bennett, A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar, 255. 20. For a discussion of why Abeid Amani Karume emerged as a leading Swahili politician, see Ambassador Don Petterson, Revolution in Zanzibar: An American’s Cold War Tale (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2002), 35–39. 21. See Middleton and Campbell, Zanzibar: Its Society and Politics, 51–55. 22. As discussed in previous chapters, the Shirazi on Unguja, like Swahili neighbors, had most of their land confiscated by the British government and as a result most worked as squatters on Arab plantations. Pemba Shirazi retained most of their land and enjoyed financial independence. 23. Middleton and Campbell, Zanzibar: Its Society and Politics, 52. 24. See the conclusion of this chapter for a chart and observations regarding Zanzibar’s various political parties. 25. See the last pages of chapter III to revisit early activism by the youth wing and, more specifically, to consider the position on the Britain’s educational system in Zanzibar, their ideas regarding electoral politics, and their belief that there was a need for African revolution. 26. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 99 27. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 57. 28. Okello mentions a number of scenarios where he or his African colleagues, are insulted by Arabs, called “slave,” or threatened with enslavement; see Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar.

198

Chapter IV

29. See Robert Rotberg and Ali A. Mazrui, Protest and Power in Black Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 929. Okello tried and failed to secure leadership positions in the ZNP; see Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar. 30. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 76–77. 31. The colonial government had long insisted that Zanzibar was an Arab state, and, as such, should be governed by Arabs; see L. W. Hollingsworth, Zanzibar Under the Foreign Office, 1890–1913 (London: Macmillan & Co., 1953), and Sir Alan Pim, Report on the Commission appointed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to consider and report on the Financial Position and policy of the Zanzibar Government in Relation to its Economic Resources (London: Crown Agents, 1932). 32. Rotberg and Mazrui, Protest and Power in Black Africa, 929. 33. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 83 34. Ibid., 83–84. 35. For an additional discussion of Okello’s tactics before the 1961 election, see “Zanzibar’s Freak Election,” The Economist (January 21, 1961), 241–42. 36. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 80. 37. Many of Zanzibar’s Africans could speak Swahili but could not write it; see Martin Bailey, The Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1973), 19–20. 38. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 89–95. 39. British Information Services, Zanzibar, I.D., 1474, October 1963, H.M. Stationery Office Press, 25–27. 40. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 93. 41. Groups make comparisons regarding relative wealth and status. Very often the absolute “wealth” of the target group is rarely at issue, what is important is the in-group perception that the out-group is better off. According to Taylor and Moghaddam, “when members of a group are seeking information, with a view to evaluating their position, they make comparisons with a number of potentially ‘better off’ and worse off” out groups. A “much better off” other, such as the wealthy and powerful Arabs rather than the merely wealthy Indians, is chosen as the comparison group in order to maximize the effectiveness of the appeal; see Taylor and Moghaddam, Theories of Inter-group Relations, 121. 42. The ZNP policies included a plot to deny former mainland Africans the right to become naturalized Zanzibari citizens and its attempt to exclude African voters from the 1957, 1961, and 1963 election polls; see Mapuri, The 1964 Revolution, 28, 30–33, and 35–38, and Middleton and Campbell, Zanzibar: Its Society and its Politics, 48, 57, and 62–63. 43. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 105. 44. Ibid., 107.

Resistance and Revolution

199

45. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (New York: International Publishers, 1957), 128 46. Ibid., 127–29. 47. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 108–9 48. Taylor and Moghaddam suggest that after ambitious individuals are unable to “pass” into the advantaged group they instigate collective action among the disadvantaged group. Many are motivated both by feelings of individual deprivation and fraternal deprivation; see Taylor and Moghaddam, Theories of Inter-group Relations, 162–67, and 112–20. 49. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 80. 50. Middleton and Campbell, Zanzibar: Its Society and Politics, 60–62. 51. British Government, Zanzibar Independence Conference 1963 (London: H.M. Stationery Office). 52. Guns were not readily available; see Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 10. 53. See Don Petterson, Revolution in Zanzibar: An American’s Cold War Tale (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2002), 54–57. Ambassador Petterson was a young American foreign service officer posted to Zanzibar in July 1963, six months before the January 1964 revolution. Petterson suggests that A. M. Babu, a prominent Shirazi associate both with the ASP and the Umma party, might have actually warned a British official who at the time was commissioner of the police force (56). Petterson also suggests that Nyerere suspected that the ASP and ZNP might clash, but was unaware of, and played no part in, Okello’s actions (54–55). For a description of the role of the Umma party, see the chart at the end of this chapter. 54. Keith Kyle, “How it happened,” The Spectator 14 (1964), 202–3. 55. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 143. For a comparison of Okello’s language and a radio broadcast during the Rwandan crisis, see “A Prelude to Genocide?” in Harpers’ magazine, August 8, 1994. 56. The U.S. government decided to evacuate the American embassy, while the British government decided against British evacuation as well as against sending in British troops; see Petterson, Revolution in Zanzibar: An American’s Cold War Tale, 60–64. 57. See Petterson, Revolution in Zanzibar: An American’s Cold War Tale, 63, 75–76. 58. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 126–27. 59. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 90–92. 60. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 199–200. 61. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 199–200 62. Francis Deng, author of numerous volumes on conflict in Sudan, argues that Sudan’s contending Arab and African visions of national identity were central to the present conflict, but these conflicts were created by warring factions’

200

Chapter IV

desire to control natural resources; see Francis Manding Deng, “A War of Visions for the Nation,” Middle East Journal 44, no. 4 (1990): 608. 63. See Kyle, “How it happened,” 202–3, and Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 143–56. 64. Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar, 151. For a different set of statistics, see Robert Rotberg, “The Political Outlook in Zanzibar,” Africa Report 6, no. 10 (1961): 5. Keith Kyle puts the number of Arab deaths below 100 and attributes Zanzibar’s drastic reduction in its Arab population to flight rather than execution; see Kyle, “How it happened,” 202–3. 65. Bennett, A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar, 267. By the end of 1964 approximately twenty thousand Asians and Arabs, Zanzibar’s most skilled workforce, left the island; see E. B. Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 60. 66. J. Ridley, “Black Cloud over Zanzibar,” in Daily Telegraph, July 24, 1963, and Ephraim Roget, “Zanzibar After the Long Knives,” Analyst, no. 3 (1965). For a fuller discussion of how the American, European, and Arab media reacted to the revolution, see Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath, 78 and 102. 67. Time magazine made the Zanzibar revolution among its lead international stories in the January 17, 1964, issue. 68. The sultan eventually landed in Britain, where he lived the rest of his life on a small pension provided by the British government; see Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath, 85, and Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 57. 69. The ASP issued this first decree on January 18, 1964; see Mapuri, The 1964 Revolution, 60–62, and Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 59. African land was alienated during the first phase of colonial rule 1890–1910; see the first chapter of this book. 70. See chapter II of this book. The Revolutionary Council took over Zanzibari schools much later on July 1, 1964; see Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 59. 71. Lofchie, Zanzibar: Background to Revolution, 279–80. 72. The Clove Growers’ Association was nationalized a few months later on October 8, 1964. 73. Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 58. 74. Although Karume and Okello disagreed on many issues, they had a grudging respect for one another. Okello had a far worse relationship with Abdulrahman “A. M.” Babu, leader of one of Zanzibar’s few labor organizations—the Federation of Progressive Trade Unions, or FPTU. The FTPU enjoyed an on again/off again association with the Arab ZNP. In 1957, around the time of Zanzibar’s first election, the FPTU, led by Babu, seceded from the ZNP; see Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 98. By Babu’s

Resistance and Revolution

201

own account, many of the social programs of adopted by the Revolutionary Council were actually developed by the Umma party, Babu’s other political organ, rather than the ASP, as the historical literature more broadly suggests; see Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 240–41. The association between the ASU and the Umma party began just before the 1961 election as an effort to check the ZNP/ZPPP alliance. By the years 1963–1964, Babu and the Umma party were trying to register voters and were disseminating anti-ZNP propaganda to journalists and to Umma/ASP supporters. While Okello’s efforts at this time were largely clandestine, Babu was conspicuous in his efforts to raise African political consciousness; see Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath, 66. By 1964 the intelligence services of the protectorate government had raided the Umma office and confiscated files, and equipment, including Umma member cars; see Rotberg and Mazrui, Protest and Power in Black Africa, vol. II, 924–68. Babu, in some sense, became a periphery figure by the decline of the Umma party, and the rise of the ASU. He was almost completely overshadowed when, after the revolution, international attention was almost exclusively heaped on Okello. Later, Babu found himself relegated to a secondary role when Karume’s favored status with Nyerere became obvious. Karume became Tanganyika’s vice-president and Okello was imprisoned, but Babu was largely invisible. 75. One of Okello’s main detractors was A. M. Babu; see Zanzibar Government, Afro-Shirazi Party: A Liberation Movement, 1973. 76. Zanzibar and Tanganyika merged into the United Republic of Tanzania. Julius Nyerere was the president of Tanzania and Abeid Karume was the first vice-president. Despite the apparent union, Zanzibar ran its own affairs with little input from Nyerere on matters of internal governance; see Norman R. Bennett, A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar, 267. 77. See Marvin Howe in the New York Times, September 23, 1970, and Christopher Hallowell in The Christian Science Monitor, September 15, 1971, 78. In a public rally Karume exclaimed: “In colonial times the Arabs took African concubines without bothering to marry them. Now that were are in power, the shoe is on the other foot”; East African Standard, October 6, 1970. 79. Guardian [London], September 14, 1971, and The Economist, September 23, 1971. 80. Karume was assassinated in 1972; see Petterson, Revolution in Zanzibar: An American’s Cold War Tale, 265. 81. Hisham Sharabi provides an extensive analysis of the relationship between linguistic competence, national identity, and political authority in the Middle East; see Hisham Sharabi, Neo-Patriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 38–42.

202

Chapter IV

82. Immanuel Wallerstein discussed the role British protection system played in the decline of indigenous institutions and native languages throughout Africa; see Wallerstein, Africa: The Politics of Independence (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), 39–40. 83. For a discussion of ethnicity’s variable nature and how African political groups adopt “ethnic strategies” to advance economic and social objectives, see Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, 47–59. 84. For a broader discussion of the role of language in creating or resisting social stratification see Ali Mazrui, Cultural Engineering and Nation-Building in East Africa (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 94. For a discussion of how Swahili continuously reinvents itself and resists extinction, see Lindsay J. Whately, ed., Endangered Languages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 261–88. 85. See Philip Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 17–25. Curtin suggests that the East African spice islands, specifically Zanzibar, established plantation economies precisely at a time when the worldwide plantation complex was in decline. As such they were consigning themselves to disappointment and conflict. 86. Lofchie, Zanzibar: Background to Revolution, 71–75.

V Inversion

Chapters I–IV argued that analyzing the 1964 revolution as the outgrowth of ethnic conflict is a risky enterprise. “Racial” cleavage is a misnomer, which masks a cleavage that is essentially economic, and manifests itself as a competition between ethno-linguistic groups. Linguistic difference adds fuel to the fire of economic stratification, which in this case is a legacy of Arab imperialism and British “protection.” Thus, the most relevant point of contrast between Tanganyika and Zanzibar is the relative success of political and linguistic integration in Tanganyika as compared with the relative lack of integration in Zanzibar, a condition that planted the seeds of discord that sprouted into violent conflict.1 After the revolution, when the ASP revolutionaries drove the Arab minority from power and off the island, there was the hope that a single party state led by the Afro-Shirazi Party might help to diminish Zanzibar’s political and economic cleavages. For a while the ASP elite was able to suppress the latent tensions that had developed on Pemba as a result of the policies of President Abeid Karume. President Karume considered Pemba’s wealthy Shirazi, many of whom split from the ASP to form their own party, traitors to the revolutionary ideal of ridding the island of Zanzibar’s ruling-class Arabs. He made a point of allowing the Wapemba a few representatives in his government, but then he systematically excluded them from his patronage. Karume additionally pursued policies that many Wapemba found objectionable.2 Ironically, Karume was quite enamored of the Shirazi of Unguja, who 203

204

Chapter V

had stayed with the ASP and helped lead the revolution. Thus Karume’s problem with Pemba Shirazi was not so much their ancestry or culture, and certainly not their “race,” but rather their linguistic and political affiliation, and later their aspirations for regional autonomy. In prerevolutionary Zanzibar the conflict between the Arabs and nonArabs concerned land and language and was energized by the efforts of one powerful group, Arabic-speaking Zanzibaris, who prevented other groups—namely, non-Arabic speakers—from sharing power. In the postrevolutionary era the new conflict took the form of competition between linguistic regions, or in this case islands, and was largely played out between powerful individuals within the government. In both cases describing Zanzibar’s political conflicts as racial cleavage is no more useful than it has been in other conflicts where there are rival groups who derive from a similarly mixed racial background.3 An argument that focuses on “racial” conflict and excludes economic and linguistic analysis obscures the true nature of conflict in Zanzibar and has additionally failed to describe the subtleties of this conflict. In Zanzibar identity politics is idiosyncratic. There is as much differentiation within as between groups. Among the Shirazi, some describe themselves as “African,” while others describe themselves as “Arab” or “Persian.” Similarly, Bantu populations on Pemba Island sometimes identify themselves as Wapemba Shirazi or, if they speak Arabic, Wapemba “Arabs,” while Shirazi living on Unguja who speak Swahili often called themselves either Shirazi or Swahili. Swahili persons on Unguja who are not of Shirazi origin often referred to themselves as Bantu and Swahili interchangeably. Thus, from the twelfth century onward, racial identity in Zanzibar has been a flexible construct that is more sensitive to linguistic and economic advantage than to biological or philosophical considerations. Ultimately, economics trumps identity. Of course, the most obvious example of this dynamic took place during Zanzibar’s first three elections when “rich” Shirazi voted with Arabs and poor Shirazi voted with Bantus and Swahilis.4 Following the 1963 elections, during the violence of the 1964 revolution, African revolutionaries left poor Indians alone while they targeted “wealthy” Indian shopkeepers, whose shops were looted, but whose lives were spared. By contrast, ASP revolutionaries executed or evacuated all classes of Arabs, not because of their race per se, but because revolution-

Inversion

205

aries believed their very existence was a threat to Swahili economic and linguistic aspirations.5 Thus, while racial identity was always mutating, linguistic differentiation was a constant. In fact, throughout the colonial era, the complex nature and meager political influence of the Creole Swahili language was often overwhelmed by the power and wealth associated with those who spoke colonial languages. Language rather than race has been, and continues to be, a better indicator of where Ungujans and Wapembans draw their “in-group” and “out-group” boundaries. This is especially true of the Wapemba Shirazi, who are highly literate and, while conversant in Swahili, may speak and write Arabic as a preferred means of communication. In this instance the ethnic approach cannot describe why the Pemba Shirazi, who are racially Bantu and culturally Shirazi, speak Arabic and therefore often refer to themselves as Wapemba “Arabs.” Analysis of African politics by Ali Mazrui and Francois Bayart takes language into consideration, and suggests that groups such as the Wapemba speak Arabic not because of their racial affiliation with Arabs but because of their economic aspirations and cultural connections to Arabs. Ultimately, a model of ethnic identification that fails to comprehend the importance of language in constructing national identity, or illuminating cleavages embedded in regional politics, will be unable to describe accurately the political realities in many African countries.6 Taken in isolation, and without proper consideration of how ethnicity may evolve, theoretical models that posit that ethnicity is static often fail to describe how major shifts in the political environment can tweak individual, as well as community, conceptions of ethnic identity and racial identification. In Zanzibar, a static conception of ethnicity fails to describe preindependence era conflicts between Arabic-speaking and non-Arabicspeaking Zanzibaris, as well as the current conflict between residents of Unguja and Pemba, and the impact these cleavages have had and may continue to have on mainland Tanzanian politics. In the current political environment, the fifth phase of Zanzibar’s modern political development, violence occurs among different linguistic and economic groups who happen to share a similar mixed racial identity. More specifically, Zanzibar’s contemporary political problems are the result of conflict between the Arabic-speaking African residents of Pemba (the Wapemba) and the Swahili-speaking Africans on Unguja (Ungujans).

206

Chapter V

This development reflects an almost complete inversion of the political hierarchy that existed before the revolution, a phenomenon peculiar to twentieth-century African politics, described in the fifth phase of the fivephase model. In contrast to the five-stage model, which suggests that the dominant group may accommodate the subordinate group, contemporary Zanzibari society is an example of role-reversal, a complete inversion of the political system. Today, Zanzibari society is a mirror reflection of what it used to be. The Unguja Swahili now eclipse the heretofore powerful Wapemba. The purpose of this fifth chapter is to focus on the relationship between Wapemba “Arabs” and the Ungujan Swahili during Zanzibar’s fifth phase of political development. This phase marked the decade of the 1990s. I compare and contrast this analysis with the politics of the 1960s, the era of Africa’s independence from colonial rule, the fourth of Zanzibar’s five phases. According to the five-phase model, during the third phase of political development, the old guard implements a repressive set of policies.7 The underprivileged group, already provoked by their standing in the social order, generally finds these policies unacceptable.8 In the fourth phase the underprivileged groups react and, in some instances, reverse the political order. During the fifth phase, the vanguards of the underprivileged group become the new elite. The political order that develops in the fifth phase is often a mirror image or inversion of the one present in the first phase. The powerful group excludes the less powerful group from economic and political opportunities. During the Karume regime Unguja’s Swahili begin to pursue policies that limited the political authority of the previously influential Wapemba. Though external forces, including Cold War tensions and the cleavage between pan-Arab and pan-Africanism, have influenced modern Zanzibari politics, the dominant cleavage remains an indigenous one. In both the pre- and postrevolutionary eras, there are remarkable similarities regarding the economic and linguistic tensions embedded in Zanzibari society, and reflected in a legacy of distrust and apprehension that typifies modern African politics. When Britain and the United States finally recognized Abeid Karume’s regime, the Revolutionary Council permitted Western diplomats to return to Zanzibar. In contrast to Western democracies, many prominent Communist states recognized the new Zanzibar government within a few days

Inversion

207

of the revolution. As in most countries with Islamic populations, Zanzibaris generally eschewed communism. However, as a one-party state with a broad communitarian ideology, Zanzibar’s Revolutionary Council began an affiliation with several communist states and was the first noncommunist nation to recognize East Germany. East Germany opened an embassy within a month of the 1964 revolution, and money began flowing into Zanzibar from East Germany, China, and the Soviet Union.9 Thus the communist, and later the nonaligned, nations became the greatest supporters of Zanzibar’s new regime. These relationships lent some credence to the American fear that Zanzibar might be an “African Cuba.” Throughout the region, Zanzibar’s brutal revolution elicited a range of emotions—most notably, fear among Arabs and Asians who thought anti-Asian violence might surface in other East African countries.10 This fear was heightened when only one day after Okello’s bloodshed, the governments of Kenya and Uganda—countries with significant Asian minorities—officially recognized Zanzibar’s Revolutionary Council. Zanzibar’s wealthy residents, notably its Asian and Arab populations, enjoyed only a small measure of comfort when the Tanganyikan government waited twelve days before it recognized the Revolutionary Council. Meanwhile, President Nyerere repeatedly condemned the violence of Okello’s revolutionaries and distanced himself from the bloodshed. By February, however, Zanzibar and Tanganyika began their march toward unification.11 In the days following the revolution it was not clear to most observers whether Okello or Karume would become the de facto leader of the nation, and whether this two-man contest would lead to further communal violence. Various regional leaders, especially politicians in Tanganyika, questioned the stability of Zanzibari political institutions if a military leader such as John Okello presided over the government. President Nyerere, the British government, and the CIA were all leery of the residual violence on Unguja. They feared that the recent arrival of Cuban, Russian, and East German military personnel would acerbate rather than diffuse conflict. There was also an abiding fear that Pemba’s conservative “Shirazi” and “Arab” elements, communities that largely escaped Okello’s rebellion unharmed, could launch a counterrevolution that might spread to Unguja.12 On April 26, 1964, President Nyerere and Sheik Abeid Karume concluded the Articles of Union, which established a union between Tanganyika

208

Chapter V

and Zanzibar. The new nation was called Tanzania.13 Given the respective size and populations of the two countries, the conditions of union were remarkably unstable or asymmetrical. The interim constitutions of Tanzania, which the mainland parliament drafted in 1965, made the president of Zanzibar, Abeid Karume, the first vice-president of the United Republic of Tanzania.14 This arrangement made it possible for the president of Zanzibar to dominate politics on the mainland. The union of Zanzibar and Tanganyika began auspiciously in the spring of 1964. However, by 1965 latent economic tensions between Zanzibar and Tanganyika emerged. One of the major grievances between Tanganyikans and Zanzibaris was that while Zanzibaris comprised less than 3 percent of the population of Tanzania, they held roughly 20 percent of the parliamentary seats in the national assembly and had a similar proportion of representatives in the executive committees.15 By the early 1970s, these tensions, as well as other cleavages, began to mirror the growing conflict between the Arabic speaking Wapemban and Swahili Ungujans. From the late 1960s, Zanzibar became more police- and security-conscious, making public criticism of Karume’s regime nearly impossible.16 While the notion of people’s courts appeared to be progressive, it was soon apparent that Karume’s “reform” of the colonial court system was yet another instrument of his expanding police state. By 1965, Karume had staffed the courts with his political clients, many of whom had scant legal training. Few of these appointments possessed an interest in their clients, or jurisprudence, and almost all were political appointees hand-selected and totally loyal to President Karume. Karume’s court-appointed political operatives served as the only source of representation for individuals bringing suit against the state. In actuality, these “lawyers” colluded with the court to protect the state against incrimination. Karume thought of himself as a populist, but by the last years of his regime he had grown truly despotic. Zanzibar went from being a police state under colonialism to a military dictatorship under African rule. The Karume regime showed, once and for all, that decimating the Arab population and chasing most of the elite Indians off the island did not help create the society where healthy institutions could thrive. Furthermore, the revolution as institutionalized by the Karume regime failed to resolve Zanzibar’s persistent economic and linguistic cleavages,

Inversion

209

and, in the case of Pemba, actually awakened political faultlines that had remained dormant for several generations. In 1964 conflict between Wapembans and Ungujans led to the creation of two separate parties—the ZPPP and the ASP. When Zanzibar and Tanganyika unified, Karume banned the ZPPP and all parties other than the ASP. Karume used executive fiat, ordering the Umma, one of Zanzibar’s smallest political organizations, to fold themselves into the ASP, thereby augmenting and radicalizing his political party and further alienating Shirazi moderates on both islands. Karume’s approach stands in stark contrast to Nyerere’s gradual promotion of TANU as Tanganyika’s lone political party. Furthermore, TANU gained authority long before independence and well before it became the state’s sole political organization. In Tanganyika’s early elections TANU became the preindependence favorite, carrying all but one of the seventyone seats in the legislative council. Thus, in Tanganyika, the emergence of a one-party state was an organic process, while in Zanzibar it was largely the result of political manipulation by one man and his clients. Karume and his supporters categorically co-opted or suppressed their opposition. The one-party system, at least in Zanzibar, grew totally unstable. In 1964 and again in 1965, members of TANU’s national executive committee tried to negotiate a merger of TANU and the ASP. Negotiations failed largely because Karume’s ASP was reluctant to submerge its interests to those of the more socially liberal/economically progressive TANU. That the two parties did not merge, and that both Tanganyika and Zanzibar refused to develop a multiparty system, was a political failure, akin to their failure to create a single unified constitution. It was yet another obstacle to the two nations ever achieving true and meaningful political integration. In 1977, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi, the CCM, became the sole party of both Zanzibar and Tanzania until 1992. During the years of 1977–1984 President Nyerere, with much obstruction from Abeid Karume, sought to truly integrate the leadership of the ASP and that of TANU. When the CCM and the ASP united, Karume continued his system of Swahili patronage and continued to exclude Indians and Arabic-speaking Zanzibaris. Under the rule of President Karume, the CCM became a bastion of old guard ASP clientelism. By the 1980s CCM had developed a “tendency to

210

Chapter V

reward its officials financially to develop local bailiwicks of semi-autonomous party-strength.”17 As part of an attempt to reach those alienated by Karume’s rule, Nyerere tried to establish reconciliation with the Arabic-speaking Wapembans. Nyerere convinced the “Swahili” politicos in the Zanzibar wing of the CCM to appoint Seif Sharif Hamad, an Arabic-speaking Wapemba, as chief minister in 1984.18 In 1985, Nyerere retired as president of Tanzania; Ali Hassan Mwinyi, who succeeded Karume as president of Zanzibar and vice-president of Tanzania, inherited the Tanganyikan presidency. As a result, Chief Minister Hamad should have been in line and was poised for the presidency of Zanzibar and the vice-presidency of Tanganyika.19 This possibility alarmed the ASP’s Swahili vanguard. Twenty years after the revolution against the conservative Arab forces on Unguja and Pemba, it looked as if a “Wapemba Arab” might become the leader of the Afro-Shirazi Party. In fact, it appeared to ASP’s Swahili leadership that if Pemba’s “Arabic-speaking” Shirazi assumed power, they could reverse all the hard-won “gains” made by Okello and Karume. From the mid-1980s the prospect of Hamad’s presidency and the possibility of revitalized “Arab” rule created a highly charged atmosphere among Zanzibar’s CCM politicos. CCM’s strong-arm politics further exacerbated the twenty years of strained relations between Ungujans and Wapembans. The Zanzibari members of the CCM demanded that Hamad be prevented from running for Zanzibari presidency. Hamad was allowed to maintain his position as chief minister. The presidency of Zanzibar went to Idriss Wakil, an ASP Bantu/Swahili. Hamad and the CCM seemed to have made peace with each other, and then in May 1988 the CCM dismissed Hamad from his position as chief minister. His CCM colleagues accused Hamad of plotting a coup d’etat, expelled him from the party, and had him arrested. In 1992, Hamad formed the Civic United Front, the CUF, which many Swahili considered to be the political heir to the ZNP and the ZPPP.20 The CUF was popular among Pemba’s residents, as well as many Unguja Shirazi, whom scholars often describe as “an Arabic-speaking people” of Shirazi origin. According to the laws of the state, it was technically illegal for any party other than the CCM to exist on the mainland or in Zanzibar. Chief Minister Hamad’s expulsion from the CCM gave the CUF an aura

Inversion

211

of legitimacy. The perceived disenfranchisement of the Wapemba made the Civic United Front a popular force capable both of swaying public opinion and challenging the Chama Cha Mapunduzi.21 Between the years 1992–1995, the CUF grew in popularity and in membership. Meanwhile, in 1995, Tanzania’s government proposed that Zanzibar should sponsor multiparty elections. Despite the promise of “free and fair elections” and new efforts to promote inclusive participatory governance, “zero-sum/winner take all” politics prevailed, much as it had thirty years earlier. According to various news and political accounts, the rumors that there was fraud in the 1995 presidential elections rekindled some of the same political tensions that emerged in the 1960s. Meanwhile, communal violence in Africa writ large, especially the protracted conflicts in Sudan and Rwanda, as well as the collapse of the Somali state, served as an effective warning against apathy among the international political community. The notion that the 1995 and 2000 elections should in some way recall the 1963 elections is one of the main reasons the international community became concerned with politics in Zanzibar. After the 1995 elections the Organization of African Unity, the OAU, offered to mediate a settlement between the CUF and CCM. When this did not help, the British Commonwealth Secretariat became involved. In the midst of their electoral chaos and despite the increasing fractious nature of both Zanzibari and Tanzanian politics, Nyerere persisted in his effort to foster reconciliation and integration. In 1996 the Tanzanian government created the Tanzania Peoples’ Defense Force, and Nyerere gave Zanzibaris a significant number of positions in each of the various units. The TPDF failed because the two governments planned few, if any, joint military exercises and ultimately very few Zanzibar military officials were posted to the mainland. In this effort, as with others, Nyerere tried to reduce the corruption and remove the stigma of violence associated with Zanzibar’s military and judicial organizations, which Karume had fostered during his tenure as president. The atmosphere of the 1995 elections was, in many respects, similar to the political environment that characterized elections during Zanzibar’s independence era. More specifically, Amnesty International observed that [the] campaign [in Zanzibar] leading to the election was conducted in an atmosphere of intimidation with denial of the rights of assembly and freedom

212

Chapter V

of expression . . . biased reporting by radio and T.V. [and the prevention of some citizens] from exercising their legal right to register to vote and make an informed statement.22

Consistent with fifth-phase inversion, the power equation in Zanzibari politics favored the African politicians of Unguja’s CCM and impaired Arabicspeaking old guard Wapembans and their new organization, the CUF. Even before ballot workers counted all the votes, constituents of the defeated CUF demanded a recount of those already tallied.23 Upon tallying the recount, members of the election board discovered that Seif Sharif Hamad, founder and chairman of the CUF, won the election by a very small margin. Once again, ASP’s elite feared the revolution might be in jeopardy. The leaders of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi feared that a CUF victory could permanently challenge their political authority.24 Zanzibaris in the CCM believed that if the CUF prevailed it would restore Arabic economic, linguistic, and political authority over Zanzibar’s Africans. Thus, by October both the Wapemba CUF and the Swahili CCM pointed an accusing finger at each other. They both complained to the Zanzibar Electoral Commission, the ZEC, that the election had not been “free and fair.” The international media also suggested that the initial tallying of votes had been “rigged.”25 Indeed, the manner in which votes were tallied shifted majority support from Seif Sharif Hamad of the CUF to Salim Amour of the CCM and made it possible for the ZEC to record more votes than were actually listed on the voting register. In one district, the number of votes was inflated by 25 percent, in another by 50 percent. Having sanctioned a ballot count giving Salim Amour 165,271 votes and the election, an international observer group criticized the ZEC, arguing that the race was too close to call and Amour’s victory might be the result of statistical error.26 Another election irregularity was evident in at least one district where votes were made on the straight ballot or “common-roll” system—there was a discrepancy between the percentage and party votes.27 International observers argued that the insecurity of ballot boxes, stored in the open in front of polling stations, was a source of concern. Injured CUF loyalists experienced this final insult on the same day the ZEC announced official election results, and Salim Amour of the CCM was sworn in as the president of Zanzibar. Seif Sharif Hamad insisted that

Inversion

213

the CCM admit that the ZEC had erred and that President Amour transfer the victory to him. In a blustery response, Amour refused to recognize the real and increasingly intense anger of CUF loyalists. Even more hostile than Amour’s rhetoric were the threats made by the CCM to violently “put down” the CUF opposition.28 When the CUF contested the results of the 1995 election after its narrow loss, the CCM responded by attacking Hamad, arguing, rather vaguely, that the CUF challenge represented an abuse of the “principles” to which democracies should aspire.29 The impasse continued and worsened and CCM suspended CUF parliamentary members’ pay. Reports by Amnesty International and the U.S. Department of State suggested that CUF members and Wapembans sustained various injuries, including those rising to violations of their human rights. There were even reports of “ethnic cleansing.”30 As in the past, the Western media described the conflict in terms of ethnicity, which was not especially illuminating, because there was a sizable portion of Unguja Shirazi who remained loyal to the CCM. In contemporary Zanzibar, as in the preindependence protectorate, the main societal cleavage was based on economic, regional, and linguistic differences. From the beginning of Omani rule through the colonial era, the role of economic and political patronage, especially among “Arabs,” was the principal method of political organization. This was especially true on Pemba Island, where Arabic-speaking Shirazi elites played an important role in the economic life and the political culture. On the surface, political and social development on Pemba and Unguja were similar. However, an analysis of Arab economic patronage suggests a vast difference between the two. Whereas Arab Ungujans used Shirazi and Swahilis to sustain their plantations on Unguja, Pemba Arabs used local Shirazi free laborers. Pemba Arabs compensated free labor with small plots of land where they could produce crops for subsistence and sale.31 Thus, while Arabs controlled politics on Pemba, just as they did on Unguja, Pemba’s land-owning Shirazi populations played an important role in the economic life of the minor island. Meanwhile, their counterparts on Unguja were alienated from their land and therefore rendered almost completely powerless. As a result, the Arabs and the Shirazi of Pemba had a less adversarial relationship than their counterparts on Unguja. The Shirazi on Unguja, historically, never owned land. Most were squatters

214

Chapter V

whose crops were taxed by the sultan. Once the British established their protectorate, the colonial government dramatically reduced squatters’ land use and inheritance rights on Unguja. By contrast, the British, who were not interested in making Pemba a colonial plantation, allowed the Arabs to maintain their squatting arrangements with Pemba Shirazi. Furthermore, due to the sheer proximity of many Arab and Shirazi neighborhoods on Pemba, many “Arab” plantation owners were kinder and more sensitive to their poorer “Shirazi” neighbors on Pemba than Arabs on Unguja. While Wapemba’s Shirazi and its Arabs were considered to be racially distinct by most observers, it is clear that their economic and patronage ties drew them closer together, making the borders between these two groups more permeable than classical “race” analysis would allow. Before independence, when Wapemba Shirazi claimed they had more in common with Ungujan Arabs than Ungujan Shirazi, many Swahili viewed these statements as eccentricity. Given what is known about the economic life of the two islands, the coalition between the Zanzibar and Pemba People’s Party (ZPPP) and the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) seems to have been a fairly rational political act. However, a model that relies solely on ethnic analysis rooted in racial difference cannot explain this development, nor can it explain why African nationalism captured Ungujan imagination, while “Arab” identity resonated with many Wapembans. In the 1950s, as African nationalism grew more popular on Unguja, and British protection was drawing to a close, the Afro-Shirazi Party began viewing the Arabic-speaking Wapemba ZPPP/Arab ZNP coalition as a potential threat. When the 1964 revolution occurred the ASP outlawed the ZPPP. The ASP revolutionaries spared the lives of most ZPPP constituents. The remaining Wapemba “Arabs” were able to contemplate a slow but steady political revival, beginning after Karume’s assassination in 1972, and culminating with the formation of the CUF in the 1990s.32 The reemergence of Pemba’s Shirazi interests in the form of the Wapemba CUF caused alarm in the ranks of Unguja’s CCM. The legacy of Arab and Wapemba Shirazi harassment under Okello and then Karume, as well as Zanzibar’s cycle of conquest and retribution, suggested that a reversal of African power was imminent. The return to electoral conflict in the 1995 election recalls 1964 in some very obvious ways. Namely, in 1995 as in 1964, the dominant political group used state repression to squelch dissidents. As in the first half of the twentieth century, the 1995

Inversion

215

and 2000 elections indicate that economic, linguistic, and party cleavages spawned much of the conflict in Zanzibar. The “race” of these Africans is a less informative unit of analysis than the degree to which groups are able to access the state, and distribute power and wealth to those in their linguistic and patronage groups. Throughout the 1990s, public demonstrations for and against the CCM and the CUF required that the Zanzibari government make evergrowing security expenditures. Ultimately, the CCM government used public safety as a reason to detain many CUF supporters as well as journalists. As the Wapemba CUF continued its protest of the elections, it began to draw support from a fervent fundamentalist minority that wanted to introduce sharia law in Zanzibar. This development drew international attention. In August 1998 the CUF General Assembly finally accepted Commonwealth Secretariat proposals to resolve the conflict between the Wapemba CUF and the Unguja CCM. Salmin Amour’s regime, and to a greater extent the Karume government, typified some of the worst tendencies found in corporatist economies combined with authoritarianism often seen in one-party political systems popular in postcolonial Africa. During the reign of Zanzibar’s first president, Abeid Karume, the residents of Wapemba felt they had been categorically excluded from political and economic development. After Karume’s assassination, President Jumbte tried to smooth over bad feelings by appointing a Wapemban to the position of minister of education. As such, Minister Seif Shariff Hamad rose through the ranks of the Chama Cha Mapunduzi. By 1985, Hamad was the senior politician in the CCM, one of the lone Wapembans in the higher echelons of the party, and seemed to be a shoo-in for the presidential nomination.33 However, by the mid-1980s, the Zanzibar branch of the CCM had divided into two warring factions. There were those who supported the extensive land nationalization policies of the revolution, and believed Swahili-speaking Zanzibaris living on Unguja should dominate the political system. They were leery of Hamad’s growing power, and many participated in the 1963 struggle, so they dubbed themselves “liberators.” The other group, called the “front-liners,” believed the government should modify the land nationalization policies and Wapembans should play a larger role in the island’s politics. The leading “front-liner” was none other than Minister Seif Shariff Hamad.34

216

Chapter V

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Zanzibar branch of the CCM tore itself away from its TANU moorings and began to cultivate its local identity, defining itself as heir of the ASP, a defender of the revolution and champion of Ungujan “Swahilis.” When the CCM ignored Hamad’s bid for CCM candidacy and he was passed over for a Swahili from Unguja, his Wapemba constituents felt betrayed. Hamad and his supporters formed the CUF, which over the next few years created a broad Wapemba constituency, including those who favored Wapemban autonomy. By 1995, the CUF was the principal challenger of Unguja’s CCM. That year, Salmin Amour, having risen to the rank of CCM presidential candidate, was the hope of the Ungujans, especially those who wanted to continue to dominate the political system. There was also those old guard “liberators” who wanted to sideline Wapemban activism, and the “front-liners,” Hamad in particular. In the years leading up to the 1995 election, Amour and his supporters developed a political machine for the sole purpose of suppressing the CUF and winning the 1995 election. While the Karume regime sought consolidation of Bantu-Swahili power over the state, the Amour regime represented Ungujan efforts to preserve their political hegemony.35 During the early 1990s Salmin Amour, and his colleagues in the CCM, arrested eighteen CUF leaders and began using police and judicial authority to curtail CUF political functions and harass opposition leaders.36 Despite all the machinations of the pro-Amour CCM old guard, the faction known as “the liberators,” the 1995 race was very close. The CCM garnered 50.2 percent of the vote and the CUF came in a close second with 48.6 percent. The CUF claimed there had been electoral irregularities, disputed the outcome of the election, and initiated a protracted political standoff. Ultimately, the CUF recognized the Amour government, ending its boycott of Zanzibar’s parliament. Ironically, following Hamad’s effort at reconciliation, President Amour began to procrastinate and refused to sign the formal reconciliation document with the CUF.37 What followed in the next few years can only be described as a campaign of harassment aimed at Hamad and his sympathizers. By 1998, the campaign escalated and in July Amour called Hamad in for police questioning and threatened to impose police charges.38 By painting Hamad as a violent and malevolent political instigator, and ultimately having him arrested, Amour was able

Inversion

217

to abort the political reconciliation and begin another series of repressive measures against the CUF. More centrist members of the CCM, alarmed at Amour’s behavior, began meeting in private in an effort to consider how to induce Amour to make peace with Hamad and how to compel him to sign the Commonwealth’s Agreement Memorandum. Amour was aware of the growing rift within his party between his supporters and those who wanted to support another CCM candidate, anyone other than Amour or Hamad, for president. Aware of his own party’s growing dissatisfaction with his leadership, President Amour began his 2000 election campaign by trying to take the focus off himself, making speeches criticizing the Commonwealth’s Secretariat mediation efforts and attacking the CUF.39 Tanzania’s President Mkapa supported Amour’s efforts against the CUF, often at the expense of his own standing as an impartial third party. Mkapa was in a difficult political situation, and, as a result, in several instances his analysis of electoral politics in Zanzibar appeared contradictory. On one occasion, President Mkapa suggested that despite the fact that, as of 1995, Zanzibar was officially a multiparty state, he claimed the sole right to govern Zanzibar would always reside with the CCM, the so-called rightful heir of the ASP. Paradoxically, at the same time that CCM officials in Tanzania were throwing their weight behind Amour, they were in constant communication with London in the hopes that the government there would renew Commonwealth negotiation efforts. Before the Commonwealth Secretariat could renew negotiations, however, the CCM began altering the terms of peace, extracting concessions from the memorandum the CUF demanded and that, in past years, the CCM claimed it would honor.40 The new agreement memorandum “weakened, postponed, omitted or rendered discretionary” provisions concerning the procedure for elections.41 The original provisions allowed the CUF to expect and hope for two outcomes (1) a reconstituted Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) and (2) that future elections would be transparent and based on a credible registration and tallying of voters. The Zanzibari government omitted the line in the initial draft that provided for CUF consultation on the appointments to the ZEC in the final memorandum, making the ZEC organization staffed largely by CCM supporters. This act rendered the second concession that elections be “transparent” and “credible” difficult to guarantee.

218

Chapter V

In the second draft, vague terms such as “good-faith” efforts to include the CUF in consultation replaced “guarantees” found in the first draft of the Agreement Memorandum. Though individual members of the CUF may have been skeptical of the new agreement, the CUF seemed willing to enter the 2000 electoral campaign with the belief that the CCM dominated the government and the ZEC could conduct free and fair elections that October. The two weeks preceding the October 29, 2000, election began with scuffles between CUF supporters and the police.42 The Zanzibari electorate had to choose between Amani Abeid Karume, the son of Zanzibar’s first president, and CUF candidate Seif Hamad, the long-suffering CUF cofounder and presidential candidate. The tensions of the two-week period before election included a police shooting of eight CUF supporters. However, by election day, the violence subsided. CUF accusations that the CCM registered ineligible youth and aliens to vote in the upcoming election persisted. On October 31, the defeated CUF began an informal boycotting of elections claiming that voting procedures had been chaotic, and, more specifically, that voting stations in regions loyal to the CUF opened late, and that CUF ballots went missing. Ultimately the CUF demanded a new election. The Commonwealth Observer Group agreed that the election was in a “shambles” and should be held again.43 The result of the 2000 election was that the CCM held a majority of votes in both Tanzania as well as Zanzibar’s parliamentary houses.44 President Benjamin Mkapa was unwilling to respond to CUF’s demand that the government hold new elections. On November 20, the CUF began a formal boycott of both Amani A. Karume’s victory on the island and Mkapa’s reelection on the mainland. As a result, of the contested elections, conflict between the Wampemba CUF and the Unguja CCM continued and grew deeper. On January 24, 2001, the CUF chairman Professor Lipumba called a small peaceful rally in Dar-es-Salaam to protest the outcome of the election. CCM loyalists attacked him and his supporters. Three days later, on January 27, the day the CUF chose for a “peaceful” mass rally on Zanzibar Island, two CUF supporters were killed. On Pemba the violence escalated. Twenty-three civilians also lost their lives, one policeman was killed, and several hundred civilians were wounded. Several hundred CUF Wapembans fled to Kenya.45 The CCM/CUF stalemate was resolved, at least rhetorically, on October 10, 2001, when the CCM and the CUF signed the Muafaka II.46

Inversion

219

Among the important conditions of the agreement was the confirmation of Muafaka I, the formation of a Joint Presidential Supervisory Commission (JPSC) agreement, and review of appointed officials involved in elections. Muafaka II also established a Commission of Inquiry into the disturbances of the 2001 election.47 Following the second Muafaka agreement moderates in the CUF and the CCM began to develop a cordial working relationship on the JPSC. A few new grassroots political organizations emerged and began to work toward preserving the union between Zanzibar and the mainland while trying to make the political environment more receptive to a diverse multiparty electorate.48 The commitment of the rival political parties to Muafaka II, and the involvement of the international community between the 2001 and 2003 elections were an auspicious turn of events for Zanzibar. In the first instance, there has been a genuine effort by Unguja moderates in the CCM to cede some of their political turf and accommodate the largely Wapemba CUF. As the mainland Tanzanian government became more involved in helping Zanzibaris fulfill the spirit of the Muafaka accords the situation continued to improve.49 The 2003 elections were by various accounts successful.50 The election of Karume’s son, who seems to be a progressive and had been especially sensitive to Wapemba interests, was a further inducement toward reconciliation between Zanzibar’s CUF and the CCM. Some deep and fundamental tensions still exist in Zanzibar, and many of these disagreements reflect a faultline between the residents of Pemba and those of Unguja. Many Wapembans still feel that the union with Tanzania, a gentlemen’s agreement between Abeid Karume/ASP and Julius Nyerere/TANU, was not in Pemba’s best interest.51 Further, despite evidence to the contrary, many Wapembans share an unnamed fear that the younger Karume may, in times of political or economic insecurity, repeat some of his father’s despotic practices. There are lasting recriminations on both sides about the 1964 revolution. Owing to the land nationalization policies of Abeid Karume following the 1964 revolution, the Shirazi of Unguja enjoyed more wealth than they had in over fifty years, and they became loyal CCM supporters. The land reorganization policies became a source of controversy, however, when Pemba Shirazi were asked to cede some of their land to the government to make redistribution possible. Furthermore, Karume’s policy of excluding Wapemba Shirazi from political

220

Chapter V

participation created lasting cleavage between all Wapemban and Ungujans, but most especially between Shirazi of the respective islands. However, as of the late 1990s, Zanzibar’s establishment of a multiparty state and the subsequent efforts to foster reconciliation after the violence of the 2001 elections have allowed Zanzibaris to enjoy at least a small measure of national harmony. The 2003 elections, like the 1963 elections, were a critical moment in Zanzibar’s political evolution. Had the 2003 elections been the subject of controversy or, indeed, had they produced violence, as was the case in the 2001 elections, the situation in Zanzibar would have definitely gotten worse and may have even threatened the political and economic security of Tanzania.52 Currently, President Amani Karume, Abeid Karume’s son, has made conspicuous efforts to stem island corruption and create other forms of economic opportunity, including establishing tourist and fishing industries in Zanzibar. As of the 2003 elections, President Amani Karume’s efforts appear to have brought some measure of economic opportunity to a greater number of Zanzibaris than in any era during or since British rule. Regional and international analyses of Zanzibar’s political cleavages have moved away from concentrating on the politics of “race” toward a nuanced exploration of Amani Karume’s efforts to expand economic opportunities for both Wapembans and Ungujans. However, cleavages between the Wapemba supporters of the CUF and Ungujan supporters of the CCM continue. These cleavages emerged primarily due to ASP postrevolutionary land redistribution policies that favored Swahili Ungujans, but alienated Shirazi Wapembans. At this moment in history, during Zanzibar’s fifth phase of political development, there are still economic disparities among Zanzibaris, and these disparities continue to fuel conflict. Wapemba supporters of the CUF argue that Amani Karume’s economic promises remain rarely unfulfilled. As of 2005, Wapemba CUF supporters also maintain that they remain underrepresented in government appointments and are denied opportunities to fully participate in clove exportation.53 During the October 2005 election these issues brought CUF and CCM supporters into the streets and into violent conflict with one another.54 The official results of the 2005 election suggest that the incumbent, Amani Karume, retained 53 percent of the vote. Seif Sharif Hamad, the founder of the CUF, gained 46 percent of the vote, but lost the election.55 In the days after the election, the CUF claimed that the CCM stole votes. However, many Western

Inversion

221

diplomats, fearing regional implications of a CUF victory, endorsed the election.56 There is a growing fear that if the CCM is unable to make good on its promise to expand economic opportunity, or if it continues to use authoritarian measures against the CUF, Zanzibar’s communal conflicts will deepen and expand, and may eventually cause instability on the mainland. As the 2010 elections approach, there is continued distrust between supporters of the CUF and CCM. It may once again fall to Amani Karume to keep the peace and to ensure that these elections are free and fair. The international community expects it and the CCM will demand it. During this fifth phase of political development, there are still economic disparities between Zanzibaris, but there is recognition that these are the legacy of bygone eras. In fact, regional and international analysis of Zanzibar’s social difficulties has moved away from blame associated with the politics of identity and more toward a nuanced exploration of Amin Karume’s efforts to expand economic opportunities for Shirazi Wapembans as well as Swahili and Shirazi Ungujans.57

CONCLUSION The five-phase study of the 1964 revolution in Zanzibar shows that the policies of the British government created and sustained intergroup cleavages that were both quite transparent and very much consistent with the threesite formulation. The colonial government created classes then it designed policies that would disarticulate and frustrate the working class. Ultimately, this policy elicited a response that is consistent with the framework of the three-site model. However, in addition to working-class resistance to class disarticulation, some members of Zanzibar’s subordinate groups chose not to resist. They chose instead to “pass” into Zanzibar’s ruling minority. I have argued, and continue to argue, that because of its highly variegated and heterogeneous population, “passing” in Zanzibar refers not to racial pretense, but rather to the ability of individuals to master the dominant colonial languages—Arabic and English. In Zanzibar, passing refers to gaining access and membership in the dominant economic group rather than the dominant racial group, as race in East Africa is a very ambiguous classification. I contrast racial passing in pre–Civil War America and in South Africa. In the latter instance, the majority population was so large

222

Chapter V

and migratory, and the land so vast, that documenting the offspring of mixed unions was nearly an impossible task. Thus, mixed-race individuals who appeared white and who spoke English (as opposed to Afrikaans) could “pass for white” no matter how much African blood they possessed.58 There was no “one-drop” rule, as there was in southern United States; rather white South Africans developed an ad-hoc committee system to determine the race of mixed-race individuals, based on language.59 In instances where the racial origin of an individual or several persons of mixed ancestry was in dispute, the South African government appointed an ad-hoc committee to resolve the matter.60 The committee decided on a case-by-case basis if the person was white, mixed-race colored, or black. If a colored person could speak English well and could convince the committee he could pass for white, then his economic and social status could immediately improve.61 In South Africa the ability of a colored person to pass for white was based on two factors: his or her physical characteristics, and ability to master the dominant English language. Thus, in South Africa, many mixed-race coloreds were able to pass for white based on their linguistic ability. In heterogeneous Zanzibar, where practically everyone was mixed-race, linguistic passing was one of the most important features, if not the most important, in social advancement. Thus, when I speak of passing in the context of mixed-race Zanzibar, I speak of linguistic passing. In this instance the five-stage model is a useful tool of analysis because it examines subordinate group behavior that falls short of resistance. More specifically, the five-stage model addresses as a manifestation of disarticulation the phenomenon of passing, which in most contexts refers to individuals of the subordinate race who possess the exogenous physiology of the dominant group. In most cases, individuals who are “passing” pretend to be members of the dominant race to gain social advancement. As a plantation economy stratified according to land wealth, occupation, and linguistic identity, Zanzibar’s society was closed to members of different linguistic groups rather than to races. As such, many Pemba Shirazi, especially those who spoke Arabic, withdrew from their affiliation with their Shirazi counterparts on Unguja. They quit the Afro-Shirazi Party to align themselves with the Arab Zanzibar Nationalist Party, with whom they believed they shared similar political and economic aspirations. While the five-stage model explicitly addresses the specific

Inversion

223

manifestations of passing as a form of disarticulation, it does not address the matter of large-scale “passing.” In the case of Zanzibar, an entire subordinate group separated themselves from “poorer” members of their communal group. Wealthy Wapemba Shirazi aligned themselves with the island’s most powerful group, Unguja’s planting aristocracy, a group with whom they shared the ability to speak Arabic. This alliance was economic, and constituted linguistic rather than racial “passing.” Indeed, the British used the notion of racial stratification to distract Zanzibar’s subordinate economic groups from contending with Arabic-speaking planters for access to state resources. Furthermore, British colonial authorities blocked similarly situated laboring classes from forming associations to advance their mutual goal of social advancement in Zanzibar’s closed political system. This effort delayed colonial independence, which advanced Britain’s economic interests. In Zanzibar, the dynamic of passing was at its most interesting configuration as a group phenomenon rather than an individual effort. The whole-scale “passing” of Pemba’s Shirazi in the 1950s and 1960s has permanently influenced the dynamics of group politics in Zanzibar. Since the five-stage model is not constructed to address group passing, or complete reversals in the political system, I developed the five-phase model. I began modifying the five-stage model in the first chapters of this book, drawing from Fatton’s three-site model, as well as Mazrui and Bayart’s analysis of the impact of the colonial state on African cultural identity. These adaptations made the analysis of Zanzibar both more specific and more accurate, and led to the development of what I call the five-phase model. The five-phase model has been useful because it has been able to examine processes that can be both visible and invisible. More specifically, the five-phase model explains why groups in colonial Zanzibar negotiated a new identity but were rarely able to permanently enter into a higher economic class. The five-phase model also helped shed light on the nature of East Africa’s latent struggles, which for many years were largely invisible to most political observers. These included intergroup and intragroup struggles between Zanzibar’s Arab and Indian communities, as well as within the Shirazi and the Swahili communities. Each phase of the five-phase model is a dialectic, a push by the dominant group and a reaction by a subordinate group. These interactions

224

Chapter V

ultimately produced the next phase of political development. In each new phase, conflict in Zanzibar remained latent but became compounded. Ultimately, these dormant tensions intensified until they manifested themselves as violent conflict. Fatton’s three sites, the five-stage model, and the five-phase model all anticipate these phenomena.62 Fatton’s three-site model is an essential starting point in the analysis of Zanzibar’s political history because it locates social conflict and class cleavage. The fivestage model complements the three-site model because it provides a basic framework for the timing of these conflicts. The three-site and five-stage models analyze the conditions for communal conflict, while the five-phase model attempts to forecast where these conflicts might lead. Whereas the five-stage model is appropriate for analyzing social conflicts in fairly stable democracies, where change is usually incremental and dominant groups retain most of their power, the five-phase model may be more useful where the disadvantaged group may create a complete reversal of the social order—either peacefully, as in the case of South Africa, or violently, as in the case of Zanzibar or Zimbabwe. In contrast to the five-stage model, the five-phase model is explicitly designed to predict outcomes in volatile political environments, where regime change may be unstable, could be accompanied by armed conflict and may, in certain instances, lead to a complete inversion in the political system. In many instances, previous analysis of the Zanzibar revolution has examined the problem solely through the lens of biology, and, more specifically, colonial constructions of racial identity. In fact, scholars have often defined the conflict in Zanzibar as a struggle between two “racial” groups categorically identified as the “Arabs” and the “Africans.” That approach has given little consideration to the fact that these groups often define their differences as ethnic or linguistic rather than racial. It is therefore unable to examine how group identities are mutable, often changing, converging, or diverging, as in the case of the Shirazi of Pemba and Unguja. In Zanzibar the contest over state resources, along with an indigenous tendency to change one’s ethnic affiliation, developed into a rivalry that recalls Francis Deng’s research on strife in Sudan. Deng dubbed this conflict “the contest over national identity.” The three-site, five-stage, and five-phase models will become valuable sources of analysis as international conflict moves from struggle between or among linguistic groups

Inversion

225

to contests within groups having similar “racial” backgrounds but who may differentiate themselves by divergent linguistic identities or political orientations. These three models will be invaluable because they are able to analyze resource conflict within the state among groups who may share the same racial, and even ethnic backgrounds, but have different linguistic orientations, as in the case of Belgium, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Zanzibar. In Zanzibar, racial ambivalence forced linguistic identity to play the dominant role in establishing cultural allegiance and fostering intra- and intergroup rivalries. Yet, despite this fact, much of the literature on the 1964 conflict has given only casual treatment of Zanzibar’s contesting languages and its rival linguistic groups. By contrast, the contest between languages and the emergence of Swahili as Zanzibar’s dominant national language is a discussion that is central to the five-phase model and goes a long way toward explaining the emergence of postcolonial cultural identities in East African countries other than Zanzibar. Like the three-site model and the five-stage model, the five-phase model avoids conflating race with ethnicity. Each of the models deals with ruling-class formation and subordinate-class disarticulation. However, the five-stage model rests on three assumptions that are not particularly relevant to the situation in Zanzibar: that the society and economy are fairly stable, that the political system relies on strong institutions rather than strong men, and, therefore, that the system prefers incremental over radical change. The three-site model does not rest on these assumptions. Rather, it describes change in a closed society that may or may not have well developed political institutions. It advances the notion of disarticulation and then class resistance. The big questions that the third site inspires and that a fourth or fifth phase of the five-phase model seeks to address are whether subordinate class resistance will lead to change and what the nature of that change will be. The three-site model provides the framework for disarticulation and class-based group resistance, while the five-stage model suggests that the reactions to this phenomenon may take the form of either group resistance or individual racial passing. By contrast, the five-phase model specifically offers the possibility of group passing based on an exogenous trait other than race, i.e., the dominant group language. Further, the five-phase model uniquely addresses reversals of power, as well as the phenomenon of individuals who could

226

Chapter V

pass but choose not to assimilate. The five-phase model is especially relevant to countries in Africa where there have been complete inversions of the political systems, where language has been at the center of the struggle between dominant and subordinate groups, and where subordinate groups were led by an elite who could have chosen to “pass” into the ruling class or state bureaucracy, but did not. In countries where individual and group identity are in flux, as is the case in various regions of Africa, intergroup relations are additionally fraught with several latent tensions, and there is often a perennial contest over the state and its resources. The three-site and five-phase models make it possible for social scientists to study regime change in particularly complex societies in order to analyze political processes more carefully and gauge when, why, and how these tensions may become violent. The five-stage model argues that subordinate groups make a rational decision when they seek radical change in closed systems, while the five-phase model suggests that radical action may not make the political system stable. This is especially true in societies such as Zanzibar with weak political institutions or where group identities are fluid. Consequently the five-phase model was specifically designed to describe the situation in Zanzibar. Each of the five phases addresses the complex anomalies of British Imperialism and their impact on the character of Zanzibar’s plantation economy, and on the politics of national identity. Scholars interested in the study of monoculture economies may benefit from examining the five-phase history of Zanzibar. Ultimately, the fifth phase of Zanzibar’s modern political history indicates the importance of examining the parameters of previous research, whether this means reconsidering the assumptions of popular analytical models or scrutinizing the definitions energizing the debate. NOTES 1. The problem with relying on “race” ethnicity as an explanation for conflict in Africa generally, and in the specific case of Zanzibar, is that it obscures as much as it reveals. For example, a conflict between two rival communities in Darfur, Sudan, escalated into warfare during 2004. The rival group calls the better-armed group janjaweed, or “evil men on horseback.” They hail from various semi-nomadic tribes and Western journalists suggest that they are supported by the regime in the north.

Inversion

227

The Sudanese government vehemently denies any association with this militia. The janjaweed have been killing and evacuating more sedentary Darfurian farmers from their ancestral homes for more than eighteen months. According to various accounts, the international community has not acted until recently because they disagree as to whether this violence rises to the level of genocide, and are additionally hesitant because the two groups are similar—more specifically, both groups are racially black, African, and Muslim. In fact, the phrase “racial” conflict, which has been used repeatedly by human rights advocates, is not completely factual and may actually be misleading. In other regions of Sudan, conflicts between similarly situated groups with shared backgrounds have emerged over economic issues such as land, livestock, and water resources and have spanned decades, even centuries. For a current discussion of how communal conflicts are labeled genocidal and when the international community feels compelled to act, see Scott Strauss, “Darfur & the Genocide Debate,” Foreign Affairs 84, no.1 (January/February 2005): 128–29. 2. As mentioned in previous chapters, before the revolution, the Pemba Shirazi formed the ZPPP, an association of fairly wealthy landed interests who voted in preindependence elections in a coalition with the Arab ZNP. At the beginning of Karume’s presidency he nationalized large tracts of Pemba’s privately owned properties, thereby materially and politically alienating many of Wapemba’s wealthy. 3. Nicholas Wood suggests that in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro, where the parties to the conflict are all of the same “race,” and can similarly trace their heritage to a mixed, Turkish, Slavic, and Mediterranean ethnic background, the national controversy has shifted from territorial claims based on cultural identity to a demand for multilingual education. According to his article in the New York Times, the Director of Education for the Bosnian National Council, Zekerija Dugopoljac, argues that “Language defines the identity of a people.” These comments, which refer to a conflict in Europe, are applicable to the study of East Africa and specifically reflect the attitudes of the Abeid Karume and Julius Nyerere who made Swahili the official language of Zanzibar and Tanzania upon independence, see N. Wood, “In the Old Dialect, a Balkan Region Regains its Identity,” The New York Times—International Section, February, 24, 2005. For a further discussion of how this book differentiates between race and ethnicity in Zanzibar please see the introduction of chapter I. 4. Consistent with the general contention of relative deprivation theory, the absolute wealth of the privileged group and absolute poverty of the underprivileged group are not at issue. In fact both groups may be similarly situated, however the privileged group may, by virtue of their power, seem to have greater access to the economic resources of the state, and therefore may appear to be far wealthier than they are. Their power makes them a target of underprivileged rage, see Moghaddam and Taylor, Theories of Inter-group Relations.

228

Chapter V

5. See A. M. Babu, “The 1964 Revolution: Lumpen or Vanguard,” in Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 220–47; Okello, Revolution in Zanzibar. 6. For a variety of discussions regarding the dynamic nature of identity, see Mazrui, Cultural Engineering and Nation-Building in East Africa, and Ali A. Mazrui, Cultural Forces in World Politics (London: Villers Publishers, 1990); Bayart, The State in Africa, 42–59 and 110–15; Rom Harre and Fathali Moghaddam, The Self and Others: Positioning Individuals and Groups in Personal, Political and Cultural Contexts (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Press, 2003), 204–5. 7. The five-phase model specifically describes the political conditions in Zanzibar’s colonial history. They are: (1) the creation of a stratified class system based on a plantation economy, (2) the promulgation of social and educational policies by government, (3) the manifestation of a repressive colonial policy toward local leaders/organizations, (4) the emergence of strong resistance/violent revolution against the colonial government, and (5) the rise of a new class system—the mirror image of phase 1, with new elite leadership and old elites relegated to position of counter-elites. 8. Robert Fatton argues that second site working class disarticulation serves as a further provocation for political resistance among the underprivileged. A discussion of the three-site, five-phase, and five-stage models can be found in the introduction of the first chapter of this book. 9. A. Babu, “The 1964 Revolution, Lumpen or Vanguard?” in Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 241–44. 10. Agehananda Bharati, The Asians in East Africa: Jayhind and Uhuru (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1972). 11. The Editorial Staff, “The Brushfire in East Africa,” in Africa Report (February 1964): 21–24. 12. A. Babu, “The 1964 Revolution, Lumpen or Vanguard?” in Sheriff and Ferguson, Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, 241–44. 13. For more detail on the union, see Bailey, The Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, 37. 14. George Triplett, “Zanzibar: The Politics of Revolutionary Inequality,” Africana 4 (1971): 612–17. 15. See Douglas Anglin, “Zanzibar: Political Impasse and Commonwealth Mediation,” in The Journal of Contemporary African Studies 18, no. 1 (2000): 41. 16. Triplett, “Zanzibar: The Politics of Revolutionary Inequality,”612–17. 17. Roger Yeager, Tanzania: an African Experiment (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982), 114. Yeager argued that one of the paradoxes of the CCM’s patronage system was that it had limited resources to buy support, making the political system prone to instability. Yeager’s analysis supports, and in some

Inversion

229

respects, predicts the degeneracy of Zanzibar’s party-patronage system into the political impasse of the 1995 and 2000 election cycles. 18. Africa Contemporary Record, 1983–1984 (New York: Africana Publishing, 1984). 19. Mapuri, Zanzibar: The 1964 Revolution—Achievements and Prospects. 20. Michael Lofchie and Rhys Payne, Zanzibar: The Politics of Polarization, online research paper, University of California (January 1999), 13. 21. The Editors, “Tanzania: Revolution Revisited,” Africa Confidential 42, no. 4 (February 23, 2001), 6–7. 22. “Prisoners of Conscience face treason trial in Zanzibar,” AI-Index: AFR 56/001/2000, www.amnesty.org. 23. See Civil United Front website, “Agreed Memorandum Between Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the Civic United Front (CUF),” Dar-Es-Salaam, April 1999, 1–3. For a review of parties, see the chart at the end of chapter IV. 24. See this chapter for a comparison of the 1995 election with the Hamad debacle of 1984–1985. 25. “Tanzania’s President Vows to Fight Poverty, Corruption,” Business Day, November 21, 2000; United Nations, “Observation of the 1995 Tanzanian Elections: Report of the Team Leader of the United Nations Electoral Secretariat in Tanzania,” Dar-es-Salaam, December 1995. 26. According to the ZEC count, the CCM garnered 50.2 percent of the vote. The IOG suggested the CUF lost by 157,351 votes, that is to say, 48.6 percent of the electorate. 27. Douglas Anglin, “Zanzibar: Political Impasse and Commonwealth Mediation,” 43. 28. Refer to the chart at the end of chapter IV for a list of Zanzibar’s political parties. 29. Anglin, “Zanzibar: Political Impasse and Commonwealth Mediation,” 45. 30. Amnesty International, The Human Rights Observer 1, no. 1 (2000). 31. Middleton and Campbell, Zanzibar: Its Society and its Politics, 67. 32. E. B. Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution, 116. 33. See Lofchie and Payne, Zanzibar: The Politics of Polarization, 1999, and Anglin, “Zanzibar: Political Impasse and Commonwealth Mediation,” 2000. 34. See Mapuri, Zanzibar: The 1964 Revolution, 73. 35. See Mapuri, Zanzibar: The 1964 Revolution. 36. See Michael Lofchie and Rhys Payne, The Politics of Polarization, 12–14. 37. As the sitting attorney general and vice-chairperson of the opposition CUF, Hamad was a threat to the CCM regime and President Amour, in particular; see Amnesty International Public Statement, “Zanzibar Opposition Leader May be Arrested

230

Chapter V

on Fabricated Treason Charges,” News Service 132/98, AI index: AFR 6/02/98, July 8, 1998, and Lofchie and Payne, Zanzibar: The Politics of Polarization, 18–21. 38. Amnesty International, public statement on Tanzania, “Zanzibar Opposition Leader May Be Arrested on Fabricated Treason Charges,” July 8, 1998, AI Index: AFR 6/02/98, posted on www.Amnesty.org 39. By various accounts Amour’s message saturated the airwaves because the ruling party, the CCM, received over 70 percent of the airtime/news coverage on television and radio beginning in the early months of the campaign until the election in October 2000. The CUF only had about 12 percent of a share of political airtime with the rest of coverage devoted to local races and third parties; see Elections 2000 Media Monitoring Project-Interim Report, Media Council of Tanzania, Dar-es-Salaam, November 3, 2000, africaonline.com. 40. Mkapa made the announcement that despite stipulations by the Commonwealth Secretariat that the Agreement Memorandum should not be reworded; the CCM would withdraw its concessions regarding election reform. 41. Anglin, “Zanzibar: Political Impasse and Commonwealth Mediation,” 58. 42. RawNews, wire at wwww.ABCNEWS.go.com/wire/world October 15 and 17, 2000. 43. RawNews, Tanzania’s President Mkapa to Act on Zanzibar, November 20, 2000, ABCNEWS.co.com/wire/world. 44. Africa Confidential, “Tanzania Revolution Revisited.” 45. Ibid. 46. The CUF and the CCM signed their first accord, or muafaka (literally, accord or understanding in Swahili), at the behest of the international community in 1998, after the violence associated with the 1995 elections. The two parties agreed to reconcile and cooperate in an effort to reform electoral laws and the Zanzibar Electoral Commission, improve voter registration, and review the election. According to a fact-finding mission organized by an academic organization called the Kituo Cha Katiba of Makereere University in Uganda and sponsored by the East African office of the Ford Foundation, Muafaka I, the first agreement between the CUF and the CCM, was “a dead letter for lack of commitment which was further fueled by suspicion between the two parties”; see KCK, Constitutionalism and Political Stability in Zanzibar: The Search for a New Vision, October 2003, available online at www.kitouchakatiba.co.ug/zanzibar.html. 47. Commonwealth Secretariat, Report of Commonwealth Expert Team (CET)—Pemba By-Elections, Zanzibar, May 18, 2003, 3–4. The CET observed elections held in Pemba on May 18, 2003. The team included the regional director for the Electoral Commission of Ghana, Sulley Amadu; Michael Hendricks, a liaison to the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa; and Mr. Karamjit Singh, the commissioner of the United Kingdom Electoral Commission.

Inversion

231

48. KCK, October 2003, 21–22 49. President Mkapa of Tanzania began nominating members of opposition parties to the union parliament after Muafaka II, KCK, October 2003, 23 50. According to the Report of the Commonwealth Team of May 18, 2003, the electoral environment in 2003 “reflected a dramatic reduction in the level of tension and hostility between the parties” (9). The Commonwealth team stated that the ZEC made sure the elections had been transparent and fair, that the discrete police presence and impartial and friendly manner of election officials were in fact responsible for the 93 percent voter turnout (20). The contrast between the low voter turnout, the suspicion and violence of the 2001 and the success of the 2003 elections was stark. 51. See KCK, October 2003, 30. Union with Tanzania has given Zanzibaris of all regions access to a bigger economic pie, including huge aid packages awarded Tanzania from the World Bank and other multilateral donor organizations. Sharing the aid has not always been equitable, and Pemba has often suffered. 52. Anglin, “Zanzibar: Political Impasse and Commonwealth Mediation,” 2001. 53. The Economist, “Spiced with tear-gas: An Election in Zanzibar, Tanzania’s main island, is violently disputed,” November 5, 2005. 54. Associated Press, “Elections turn violent as Opposition backers beaten,” The Courier-Journal, October 31, 2005. More than twenty people were hospitalized after police and CCM militia fired water cannons and tear gas at CUF supporters. 55. Associated Press, “Incumbent President Takes Office after Chaotic Election,” The Courier-Journal, November 3, 2005. 56. The CUF is unknown quantity outside Zanzibar. The Economist dubbed the CUF an “odd coalition of Zanzibar’s underclass (the counter-elite) and its former-oriented overlord (the former elite)”; see The Economist, November 5, 2005. There is a fear that the CUF coalition may develop an Islamic militancy that might threat the stability of mainland Tanzanian politics. 57. Nicodemus Odhiambe, “Conciliatory Karume Sworn in as Zanzibari President,” PanAfrican News Agency, November 8, 2000; Issa Yusuf, “President (Karume) calls for broader “muafaka (agreement),” Guardian, February 19, 2005. 58. For a discussion of the subordinate status of the pidgin Afrikaans language during the era of apartheid, see Shula Marks and Stanplyne Trapido (eds), The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century South Africa (London: Longman Group, 1987), 95–123. 59. For further discussion on South Africa, see Graham Watson, Passing for White (London: Tavistock Publications, 1970), 55–61. For a more detailed discussion of the “one-drop” rule in the United States, see Lawrence Wright “One

232

Chapter V

Drop of Blood,” The New Yorker, July 24, 1994; Berry Brewster, Almost White (New York: Macmillan, 1963). 60. Many controversies concerned registering young mixed persons who wanted access to all-white schools. 61. Watson, Passing for White, 18, 22, and 57–61. If a colored individual could pass for white in South Africa, he/she could enroll in white schools and have access to a greater number of jobs and jobs of a higher quality; see John W. Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Segregation in South Africa and the American South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 192–96 and 203–4. 62. The five-phase model specifically describes the political conditions in Zanzibar’s colonial history. They are: (1) the creation of a stratified class system based on a plantation economy, (2) the promulgation of social and educational policies by government, (3) the manifestation of a repressive colonial policy toward local leaders/organizations, (4) the emergence of strong resistance/violent revolution against the colonial government, and (5) the rise of a new class system—the mirror image of phase 1, with new elite leadership and counter-elites.

Bibliography

Abernathy, David. The Political Dilemma of Popular Education. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969. Agee, Philip. Inside the Company: CIA Diary. New York: Stonehill, 1975. American Heritage Dictionary, second college edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1982. Anglin, Douglas. “Zanzibar: Political Impasse and Commonwealth Mediation.” The Journal of Contemporary Studies 18, vol. 1 (January 2000): 39–66. Associated Press. “Elections turn violent as Opposition backers beaten.” The Courier-Journal, October 31, 2005. ———. “Incumbent President Takes Office after Chaotic Election.” The CourierJournal, November 3, 2005. Bailey, Martin. The Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1973. Barrow, G. W. S. Feudal Britain: The Completion of the Medieval Kingdoms, 1066–1314. London: Edward Arnold Publishers, 1956. Barakat, Halim. The Arab World: Society, Culture and State. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Batatu, Hanna. The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978. Bayart, Jean-Francois. Politics of the Belly. London: Longman Group, 1993. Bennett, Norman R. A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar. London: Metheun & Co., 1978. Betts, Raymond, F. The False Dawn: European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1975.

233

234

Bibliography

Bharati, Agehananda. The Asians in East Africa: Jayhind and Uhuru. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. Blood, Hilary. Report of the Constitutional Commissioner for Zanzibar. Zanzibar Government Printer, 1960. Braganca, Aquino, and Immanuel Wallerstein, eds. The African Liberation Reader. London: Zed Press, 1982. Brewster, Berry. Almost White. New York: Macmillan, 1963. Brezinski, Zbigniew. Africa and the Communist World. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1963. British Information Services. Zanzibar. I.D. 1474, H.M. Stationery Office Press, October 1963. British Legislative Council. The Programme of Social and Economic Development in the Zanzibar Protectorate of the Ten Year Period, 1946–1955. Paper No. 1, IDC Publishers, Holland. ———. The Programme of Social and Economic Development in the Zanzibar Protectorate for the Five Year Period 1955–1959. Paper No. 8, IDC Publishers, Holland. “The Brushfire in East Africa.” Africa Report (February 1964): 21–24. Buchert, Rene. Educational Development in Tanzania. London: James Curry, 1970. Burton, Richard. Zanzibar: City, Island and Coast, vol. 2. London: Tinsley Bros., 1872. Cameron, J., and W. A. Dodd. Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1970. Cannon, John. The Oxford Companion to British History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Cassau, Theodore. The Consumers’ Co-operative Movement in Germany, trans. J. F. Mills. Manchester: Co-Operative Union Limited, 1925. Clayton, Anthony. “The General Strike in Zanzibar, 1948.” Journal of African History XVII, no. 3 (1976): 352–67. ———. The Zanzibar Revolution and its Aftermath. London: C. Hurst & Co., 1981. Cell, John W. The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Segregation in South Africa and the American South. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Chilver, E. M., and Alison Smith. History of East Africa, vol. 11. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. Cohen, Abner. The Politics of Elite Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Bibliography

235

Collins, Robert. Documents from the African Past. Princeton, N.J.: Markus Weiner, 2001. Commission on Higher Education in East Africa. Report of the Commission appointed by the Secretary State for the Colonies 1937. H.M. Stationery Office, 1937. Cooper, Frederick. From Slaves to Squatters. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980. Core, Melinda, and George Ochoa. The Encyclopedia of the Victorian World. New York: Henry Holt, 1996. Coupland, Reginald. East Africa and Its Invaders: From the Earliest Time to the Death of Seyyid Said in 1856. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938; reprint 1965. Cowan, J. M., ed. The Hans Wehr Arabic-English Dictionary. Urbana, Ill.: Spoken Language Services, 1976. Creighton, T. R. M. Southern Rhodesia and the Central African Federation. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976. Crocker, Walter. On Governing Colonies. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1947. Crofton, R. H. Zanzibar Affairs 1914–1933. London: Francis Edwards, 1953. Cuno, Kenneth. The Pashas’s Peasants in Lower Egypt 1740–1858. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Curtin, Philip. The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action 1780–1850. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1964. ———. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Dankin, Julian, Brian Tiffen, and H. G. Widowson. Language in Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. Davidson, Basil. Africa in History. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Davies, Iona. African Trade Unionism. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Press, 1968. Debusmann, Robert, and Stefan Arnold. Land Law and Land Ownership in Africa. Bayreuth: Bayreuth Publishers, 1996. Deng, Francis M. “A War of Vision for the Nation.” Middle East Journal 44 (1990). Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Duranti, Alessandro. Linguistic Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Fatton, Robert. Predatory Rule: State and Civil Society in Africa. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992. Freund, Bill. The African Worker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

236

Bibliography

Gifford, Prosser, and William Roger Louis (eds.). The Transfer of Power in Africa. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982. Gifford, Prosser, W. M., Rogers, with Allison Smith. Britain and Germany in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967. Girgiss, Clive. The Trade Union Congress and the Struggle for Education 1868– 1925. London: The Falmer Press, 1983. Godwin, Peter, and Ian Hancock. Rhodesians Never Die. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Goldstrom, J. M. The Social Content of Education 1808–1870: A Study Class School Reader in England and Ireland. Shannon: Irish University Press, 1972. Goldsworthy, David. Colonial Issues in British Politics 1945–1961. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. Goldworthy, David. Colonial Issues in British Politics 1945–1961. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. Gould, Stephen. The Mis-measurement of Man. New York: Penguin Books, 1981. Gray, J. M. Early Portuguese Missionaries in East Africa. London: Macmillan, 1958. ———. History of Zanzibar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964. Grey, Earl. The Colonial Policy of John Russell’s Administration, Richard Bently, ed., publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty, 1853; reprinted by August Kelly, 1970. Gutkind, Peter, and Robin Cohen, et al. African Labor History. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publishers, 1978. Hamilton, Lady Claud (Genesta). The Princes of Zanj, Elspeth Huxley, ed. London: Hutchinson, 1957. Harre, Rom. Social Being. Oxford: Blackwell, 1979. Harre, Rom, and Fathali Moghaddam. The Self and Others: Positioning Individuals and Groups in Personal, Political and Cultural Contexts. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Press, 2003. Harre, Rom, and Paul F. Secord. Explaining Social Behavior. Oxford: Blackwell, 1972. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Memorandum on Educational Policy in British Tropical Africa. London, 1925. ———. The Place of the Vernacular in Native Education. London, 1927. ———. Higher Education in East Africa. London, 1937. ———. Zanzibar Independence Conference 1963. London, 1963 Hilton, R. H. English and French Towns in Feudal Society: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Bibliography

237

Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Empire: 1875–1914. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987. Holborn, Louise, ed. War and Peace Aims of the United Nations. Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1943. Hollingsworth, Lawrence William. Zanzibar Under the Foreign Office 1890– 1913. New York: Macmillan and Co., 1953. ———. Asians in East Africa. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1960. Honey, John Raymond de Symons. Tom Brown’s Universe. Memphis, Tenn.: Millington Books, 1977. Hourani, Albert. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, Mass.: Warner Books Publishers, 1991. Hourani, G. F. Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950. Huntington, Samuel. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968. Huxley, Julian Sorell. Africa View. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1968. Illiffe, John. Tanganyika under German Rule 1905–1912. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. ———. “A History of the Dock-workers of Dar-es-Salaam.” Tanzanian Notes and Records 71 (1979): 119–48. Ingrams, W. H. Zanzibar: Its History and Its People. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967. Irvine, Judith T. “When Talk isn’t Cheap: Language and Political Economy.” American Ethnologist 16, no. 2 (May 1989): 247–68. Issawi, Charles. An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Jarausch, Konard H. Students, Society and Politics in Imperial Germany. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982. Johnson, Frederick. The Standard English-Swahili Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939. Jones, Arthur Creech, ed. New Fabian Colonial Essays. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Press, 1959. Jones, Thomas Jesse. Education in Africa. Washington, D.C.: Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1922. Keddie, Nikk. Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981. Khouri, Philip. Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Kimambo, I. N., and A. J. Temu. A History of Tanzania. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1969.

238

Bibliography

Kwitney, Jonathan. Endless Enemies, The Making of an Unfriendly World. New York: Congdon and Weed Publishers, 1983. Kyle, Keith. “How it Happened.” The Spectator 14, 1964. Labour in the United Kingdom Dependencies. London: British Government Publication, 1957. Labouret, H. Africa before the White Man. New York: Walker and Co., 1962. Lamberti, Marjorie. State, Society and the Elementary School in Imperial Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Landsdown, Henry W., ed. The Petty Papers: Some Unpublished Writings of Sir William Petty (two volumes). London: Constable, 1927. Leibenow, Gus. “Tribalism, Traditionalism and Modernism in Chagga.” Journal of African Administration X, no. 2 (April 1958): 71–82. Lofchie, Michael. Zanzibar: Background to Revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965. Lofchie, Michael, and Rhys Payne. “Zanzibar: The Politics of Polarization,” an online research paper, University of California, January 1999. Lugard, Lord. Political Memoranda: Revisions of Instructions to Political Officers 1913–1918. London: Frank Cass & Co., 1970. Lynde, G. E. The Politics of Trade Unionism. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Press, 1968. Lyne, R. N. Zanzibar in Contemporary Times. London: Hurst and Blacknett, Ltd., 1905. Lyons, Charles. Essays in the History of African Education. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. ———. To Wash an Aethiop White: British Ideas About Black African Educability 1530–1960. New York: Columbia Teachers College, 1970. Marks, Shula, and Stanplyne Trapido, eds. The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth Century South Africa. Oxford: Longman Group, 1981. Mapuri, Omar R. The 1964 Revolution: Achievements and Prospects. Dar-esSalaam: Tema Publishers, 1996. Marshall, P. J. Cambridge Illustrated History: British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Martin, Esmond Bradley. Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978. Martin, John E. Feudalism to Capitalism. New York: Macmillan Press, 1983. Matheson, J. K., and E. W. Bovill. East African Agriculture. London: Oxford University Press, 1950. Mautner, Thomas. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. Mazrui, Ali A. Cultural Engineering and Nation-Building in East Africa. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1972.

Bibliography

239

———. Cultural Forces in World Politics. London: Villers Publications, 1990. Mazrui, Ali A., and Alamin Mazrui. The Power of Babel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. McCarthy, William E. J. (ed.). Trade Unions, second ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. Meynaud, Jean, and Anisse Salah Bey. Trade Unionism in Africa: A Study of its Growth and Orientation. London: Methuen & Co. Publishers, 1967. Middleton, John, and Joan Campbell. Zanzibar: Its Society and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. Middleton, John, and Margaret Read, From Child to Adult: Studies in Anthropology of Education. New York: Garden City Publishers, 1970. Miller, Kenneth. Socialism and Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice in Britain to 1931. London: Marinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1967. Morell, W. P. British Colonial Policy: in the Age of Peel and Russell. London: Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., 1966. Moses, John A. Trade Unionism in Germany from Bismarck to Hitler 1869–1933, vol. I. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1982. Mrina, B. F., and W. T. Mattoke. Harkati Za Ukombozi (The Liberation Struggle). Dar-es-Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House, 1980. Mungazi, Dickinson, A. The Mind of Black Africa. Westport, Conn.: The Preager Press, 1996. Musgrave, P. W. Society and Education in England Since 1800. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968. Odhiambe, Nicodemus. “Conciliatory Karume Sworn in as Zanzibari President.” PanAfrican News Agency, November 8, 2000. Okello, John. Revolution in Zanzibar. Nairobi: East Africa Publishing House, 1966. Oliver, Lord. White Capital and Colored Labour. Richmond, U.K.: The Hogarth Press, 1929. Padmore, George. Pan-Africanism or Communism. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1971. ———. Africa and World Peace. London: Frank Cass, 1972. Pels, Peter. “The Pidginization of Luguru Politics, Administrative Ethnography and the Paradoxes of Indirect Rule.” American Ethnologist 23, no. 4 (1996): 738–61. Perham, Margery. Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa. London: Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., 1922 and 1965. Petterson, Don. Revolution in Zanzibar: An American’s Cold War Tale. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2002. Phelps-Stokes Fund. Education in Africa Report. Washington, D.C.: 1922. Pugh, Martin. Britain Since 1789: A Concise History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.

240

Bibliography

Rayner, Robert. The Story of Trade Unionism. London: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1929. Reinsch, Paul S. Colonial Administration. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1912. Report of the Commission Appointed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to Consider and Report on the Financial Position and Policy of the Zanzibar Government in Relations to its Economic Resources, prepared by Sir Alan Pim. London: Crown Agents, 1932. Ridley, J. “Black Cloud over Zanzibar.” Daily Telegraph, July 24, 1963. Robinson, Ronald, John Gallagher, and Alice Denny. Africa and the Victorians. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1965. Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1982. Roget, Ephraim. “Zanzibar After the Long Knives.” Analyst, no. 3 (1965). Rotberg, Robert, and Ali A. Mazrui. Protest and Power in Black Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970. Rothblatt, Sheldon. Tradition and Change in English Liberal Education. London: Faber & Faber, 1976. Ruedy, John. Land Policy in Colonial Algeria. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. Russell, Joan. Swahili: A Complete Course for Beginners. Sylmar, Calif.: NTC Publishing Group, 1996. Sandbrook, Richard, and Robin Cohen. The Development of the Working Class: Studies in Class Formation and Action. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975. Scanlon, David. Traditions of African Education. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964. Schapera, I., ed. The Bantu-Speaking Tribes of South Africa: An Ethnographical Study. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1937. Semmel, Bernard. The Liberal Ideal and the Demons of Empire: Theories from Adam Smith to Lenin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Shafritz, Jay, and Albert Hyde. Classics of Public Administration. Pacific Grove, Calif.: Brooks Cole Publishing, 1992. Sharabi, Hisham. Neo-Patriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Sheriff, Abdul, and Ed Ferguson. Zanzibar under Colonial Rule. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991. Silver, Harold. The Education of the Poor. Oxford: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974. Simon, Joan. The Origins of English Education. Oxford: Routledge, 1970.

Bibliography

241

Simonton, Deborah. A History of European Women’s Work. Oxford: Routledge, 1998. Smith, Daniel R. The Influence of the Fabian Colonial Bureau on the Independence Movement in Tanganyika. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1985. Stenton, F. M. The First Century of English Feudalism 1066–1166. Oxford: The Ford Lectures, 1950. Stephen, Hugh. The Political Transformation of Tanganyika: 1920–67. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 1968. Strauss, Leo. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. Strauss, Scott. “Darfur and the Genocide Debate.” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 1 (January/February 2005): 123–33. “Tanzania: Revolution Revisited.” Africa Confidential 42, no. 4 (February 2001): 6–7. “Tanzania’s President Vows to Fight Poverty, Corruption.” Business Day, November 21, 2000. Taylor, Donald, and D.J. McKirnan. “A Five Stage Model of Intergroup Relations.” British Journal of Social Psychology 23 (1984): 291–300. Taylor, Donald, and Fathali Moghaddam. Theories of Intergroup Relations. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Press, 1987. Tholfsen, Trygve R. Working Class Radicalism in Mid-Victorian England. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977. Townsend, Mary E. The Rise and Fall of Germany’s Colonial Empire, 1884–1918. New York: Macmillan Press, 1930. Trimingham, J. Spencer. Islam in East Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964. Triplett, George. “Zanzibar: The Politics of Revolutionary Inequality.” Africana 4: 612–17. Wadstrom, C. B. An Essay on Colonization: Particularly applied to the Western Coast of Africa with some Free Thoughts on Cultivation and Commerce. Darton & Harvey Publisher, 1794. Wallback, Walter T., ed. Documents on Modern Africa. Tucker, Ga.: Anvil Publishers, 1931. Wallerstein, Immanuel. Africa: The Politics of Independence. New York: Vintage Books, 1961. Walter, Mack. German Home Towns: Community, State and General Estate 1648– 1871. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971. Ward, Julie K., and Tommy Lott. Philosophers on Race. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002.

242

Bibliography

Ward, W. E. F., and L. W. White. East Africa: A Century of Change 1870–1970. New York: Africana Publishing Co., 1972. Wardle, David. English Popular Education 1780–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Watson, Graham. Passing for White. London: Tavistock Publications, 1970. Whatley, Lindsay J., ed. Endangered Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Wood, Nicholas. “In the Old Dialect, A Balkan Region Regains its Identity.” The New York Times, February 24, 2005. Wright, Lawrence. “One Drop of Blood.” The New Yorker, July 24, 1994. Yeager, Roger. Tanzania: An African Experiment. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982. Young, Roland, and Henry Fosbrooke. Smoke in the Hills. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1960. Yusuf, Issa. “President (Karume) calls for broader ‘Muafaka’ (agreement).” Guardian, February 2, 2005. Zanzibar Government. Report on the Census of the Population of Zanzibar Protectorate 1958. Zanzibar Government Printers, 1960. ———. Afro-Shirazi Party: A Liberation Movement. Zanzibar Government Printers, 1973. “Zanzibar’s Freak Election.” The Economist, January 21, 1961.

INTERNET CITATIONS Amnesty International. “Zanzibar Opposition Leader May Be Arrested on Fabricated Treason Charges.” AI Index: AFR 56/02/98, www.amnesty org. ———. The Human Rights Observer 1, no. 2 (2000). ———. “Prisoners of Conscience Face Treason Trial in Zanzibar.” AI Index: AFR 56/001/2000, www.amnesty.org. Commonwealth Secretariat. Report of the Commonwealth expert Team (CET)— Pemba By-Elections. Zanzibar, May 18, 2003, www.commonwealth.org. Kituo Cha Katimba. “Constitutionalism and Political Stability in Zanzibar; The Search for a New Vision.” October 2003, www.kitouchakatiba.co.ug/zanzibar .html Media Council of Tanzania. Elections 2000 Media Monitoring Project-Interim Report. Dar-es-Salaam, November 3, 2000, Africaonline.com. Zwick, Jim, ed. Anti-Imperialism in the United Sates 1898–1935. Boondocksnet .com, 2003.

Index

Abbasid dynasty, xii academic disarticulation, 70 adaptation, 76, 110–11n126, 110n125 adult suffrage, 172 Affonso I (king of the Congo), 105n88 Africa: colonization, 24; early British imperialism, 55; early European descriptions of, 93n19; European fears of independence in, 85; “the scramble for,” 43n44 African Association, 196n16; AfroShirazi Union and, 172, 173; formation of, 48n80, 138, 140, 168; functions of, 169; Abeid Karume and, 140; sports clubs and, 170, 173; in Zanzibar, 145 “Africanization,” 149 African Rhodesians, 114n160 African slaves, 18, 39n14. See also slaves and slavery African Sports Club, 140, 168, 173 Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), 145, 169, 172; 1963 elections and, 180; 1964 revolution and, 183, 184,

203; “Arab” leadership and, 210; characteristics and changing status of, 192, 193–94; composition of, 190, 191; formation of, 170, 209; merger with TANU, 185, 209; John Okello and, 176, 177, 178; rise of, 168; Shirazis and, 3; TANU support for, 175; youth wing of, 86; ZNP/ZPPP alliance and, 178, 214 Afro-Shirazi Union (ASU): characteristics and changing status of, 192, 194; formation of, 172, 173; plantation owners-squatters conflict and, 174; renamed, 174– 75; Umma Party and, 201n74 Afro-Shirazi Youth League (ASYL), 178 “age of diplomacy,” 126–27 Agreement Memorandum, 217–18, 230n40 agricultural organizations, 161n78 agricultural reform, 129 Aguiar, Rui De, 105n88 Altenstein, Karl von, 72, 107n106 243

244

Amadu, Sulley, 230n47 Amnesty International, 211–12 Amour, Salim, 212, 215, 216–17, 230n39 Anglican Church, 53, 62, 90n5 Anglican schools, 101n61 Anthropological Society, 99n45 Arab Association (AA), 32, 33, 37, 146, 168–69, 172 Arab dynasties, xii–xiii Arabic, 29, 45n55, 46n64, 64 Arab School, 77, 80–81 Arab Zanzibaris. See Zanzibari Arabs Aristotle, 97n35 Articles of Union, 207 “Asiatic mode of production,” 19 ASP. See Afro-Shirazi Party ASU. See Afro-Shirazi Union Axim (Axum), 94n22 Babu, Abdulrahman, 199n53, 200n74 banking, 47n70 Bantu language, 30, 111n126 Bantus: British racial categorization and, 58; craniological classification, 97n33; declining influence through Zanzibar’s history, xiii; in the fifteenth century, xiv; identity politics and, 204; land use system, 26; Zanzibar’s first permanent residents, xi Baraki, Seif, 179 barbarians, 97n35 Barghash bin Said, Seyyid, 44n51 Bari, Abd el, 111n127 Battuta, Ibn, xvn3 Bayart, Francois, 5, 53 Betts, Raymond, 83 bilateral kinship groups, 43n47

Index

black nationalism, 175 Bodin, Jean, 101n55 Boemus, Johan, 93n19 Boer War, 42n39 Bosman, William, 94n22 boycotts, 35, 48n87 British colonial rule: cash-crop economy in Zanzibar, 121 (see also cash-crop economy); commercial class interests and, 61–62; development plans, 146–47; educational policy (see educational policy); first-phase policies, 8–10, 20–30, 33, 55–56; indirect rule in Tanganyika, 64, 120–21; indirect rule in Zanzibar, 64, 84–86, 86–87; second-phase policies, 10, 51–53, 56–57; tax revenue system, 146; third-phase policies, 10, 136–50, 166–67 British imperialism, 42n38; controversies, 67; dual mandate and, 66–67, 68–69 (see also dual mandate); indirect rule and, 66–67 (see also indirect rule); overview, 20–24, 42n34; three Cs, 65–66, 68; “white man’s burden,” 66. See also British colonial rule; conservative imperialism; liberal imperialism; new imperialism British Socialist Party, 156n37 Burton, Richard, x, 59, 66, 98n41, 99n46 Busaidi dynasty, xiv, 25, 44n50 “bush” races, 97n33 bush schools, 81, 87 business conduct, charter of, 49n87 Cameron, Donald, 64, 102n69, 114n156

Index

Canada, 41n30 Canning, George, 21, 40n24 cash-crop economy: effects of a decline in, 167–68; feudalism and slavery converge in, 45n53; in German Tanganyika, 123; Maji-Maji rebellion and, 121, 128 (see also Maji-Maji rebellion); plantations in the colonization of Africa, 24; in Zanzibar, 19, 121. See also clove economy; plantation economy Cavazzi, Giovanni, 94n23 CCM. See Chama Cha Mapinduzi census of 1948, 190 Chagga people, 129, 145 Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), 211, 212, 215; 2000 elections and, 230n39; clientelism and, 209–10; formation, 185, 209; Muafaka I, 230n46; patronage system, 228n17; political conflicts in Zanzibar and, 216–21 Chamberlain, Joseph, 21 “Charity begins at Home,” 104n80 child labor, 102n62 children, in Great Britain, 54–55 Christian schools, 106n96. See also Anglican schools; missionary schools Church of England. See Anglican Church cinnamon trade, 43n48 Civic United Front (CUF): 2000 election and, 230n39; Islamic militancy and, 231n56; Muafaka I, 230n46; political conflicts in Zanzibar and, 210–21 passim civilization, 99n47 civil service, 35, 45n55

245

Claredon, George Villers, 96n30 class resistance, site of, 165 class stratification, 24–25, 27, 35 class system, 32 Clayton, Anthony, 138 closed political systems, 12n11 clove dealers, 34 clove economy: British tax on, 46n67; in Zanzibar, 28, 31. See also clove plantations; plantation economy Clove Growers Association (CGA): Arab control of, 159n68; formation of, 9, 33; “Heads of Agreement” and, 49n87; overview of, 33–35; purpose of, 36, 37 clove plantations, 24, 25; “sudden death” infestation, 161n84. See also clove economy; plantation economy coffee, 80, 163n108 Cohen, Abner, 96n32 colonial administrator, 42n39 colonial governor, 42n39 Colonial Institute (German), 63, 109–10n119 Colonial Office (British), 133 Comfort, Anna Manning, 104n80 Commission of Inquiry, 219 Committee of the Colonies, 104n87 Committee on Education (British), 59 Commonwealth Expert Team (CET), 230n47, 231n50 Commonwealth Observer Group, 218 communal violence, 1 communism, 133, 157n47, 157n49, 207 communities, collective responsibility for tax burdens, 39n13 confessional system, 107–8n106 Congress system, 40n24

246

Index

conservative imperialism, 20, 110n124; attitude toward education, 56; British colonial rule and, 55–56; new imperialism and, 51–52; political cleavages in Zanzibar and, 5–6 Conservative Party (British), 103n76, 120, 133 Cooper, Frederick, 28, 36 Coutts, Walter F., 172 Coutts commission, 172 craniology, 57–58, 96n33 creolized languages, 11n3 Crofton, R. H., 84 CUF. See Civic United Front Dar-es-Salaam, 127 Darfur, 226–27n1 Dart, Raymond, 96n33 Darwin, Charles, 61 Delamere, Hugh Cholmondeley, 89n3, 95n26 Deng, Francis, 199n62, 224 Description of the Country of Africa (Prat), 93n19 development plans, 146–47 direct rule, in German Tanganyika, 74, 79–80, 120, 126–27 disarticulation, 106n95; academic, 70 Disraeli, Benjamin, 21, 42n38, 92n17, 94n25 Dockworkers’ and Stevedores’ Union, 136 dockworkers’ strikes, 119, 135–36, 142–43, 150n2, 167, 169 Dos Santos, Joan, 94n23 dual mandate: as an independent concept from indirect rule, 106n90; articulation of, 163n106; British imperialism and, 66–67, 68–69;

British investment in, 37; education and, 56; new imperialism and, 52; origins of, 105n88; political cleavages in Zanzibar and, 5–6 Dual Mandate in Tropical Africa (Lugard), 67 Dubois, W. E. B., 132 Durham, John Lambton (“Radical Jack”), 41n30 Dutch East India Company, xiv East Germany, 207 economic patronage, 213 education: Arabs and, 102n72; British advocates of, 104n86; British imperialistic views of, 56; British political impetus for, 103n76; confessional system, 107n106; dual mandate and, 56; educational gap in Zanzibar, 76; expenditures for in Zanzibar, 116n172; Fabian Societies and, 62–63; in German Tanganyika, 73–74, 83–84, 87, 88; in Germany, 72–73; grants-in-aid, 112n140; in Great Britain, 53–55, 62, 90n5, 91n9, 92n16, 103n74, 103n76; inequality in Zanzibar, 81; linguistic stratification in Zanzibar and, 82–83; Lord Lugard on the function of, 102n70; under the Omanis, 45n55; segregation in Zanzibar, 106n98; teachers, 76–77. See also educational policy; schools Education Acts (Great Britain), 90n5 educational grants, 75–76, 79, 112n140 educational policy (British): adaptation and, 76; grants-in-aid, 75–76, 79, 112n140; liberal imperialism and,

Index

95n28; linguistic stratification and, 78, 82–83, 88; on native education, 77–78; “new” imperialism and, 86–87; overview, 71–72; policy of development and, 107n100; racial categorization and, 57–59; in Tanganyika, 64; toward Africa, 62– 63; vocational training, 79; WardHuggins debate, 64–65; in Zanzibar, 64. See also education; schools educational policy (German), in Tanganyika, 73–74, 87, 88, 100n50 “Educational Policy in British Tropical Africa,” 110n125 educational populism, 88 educational reform, 91n10, 102n62 educational theory, in Germany, 72–73 “Education for Adaptation,” 76 education grants, 101n61 “Education in Africa,” 95n29 election of 1957, 172–73 election of 1963, 180 election of 1995, 211–13, 214–15, 216 election of 2000, 217, 218, 230n39 election of 2003, 219, 220, 231n50 election of 2005, 220–21 elementary schools, 92n16 Elgin, Lord, 20 elites, reciprocal assimilation, 24, 31, 32–33, 36 English language, 29, 46n64, 64 “enlightened self-interest,” 68 “ethnic clash,” 1 “ethnic cleansing,” x ethnic identity: racial identity and, 205; Zanzibar and, 1–2 ethnicity: 1964 revolution and, 186, 191; meaning of, 11n2; the shadow theater of, 53

247

eugenicist movement, 91n13 European feudalism, 16–19 executive committee (EXCO): class cleavages and, 35; formation of, 9, 33; members, 48n83, 159n68; purpose of, 35–37 ex-slaves, 30, 31 “external intelligence” theory, 60 Fabian League, 130–32 Fabians: British foreign policy and, 130–32; education and, 62–63, 64, 102n62, 103n76; influence in East Africa, 102n73; labor reform and, 125–26; Pan-African Congresses and, 133; Tanganyika and, 6, 103n76, 134–36 Fardle of Fashion, The (Waterman), 93n19 Fatimid dynasty, xii Fatton, Robert, 4, 53, 106n95, 165 Federation of Progressive Trade Unions (FPTU), 200n74 Ferguson, Ed, 195n8 feudalism, 16–19; cash cropping and, 45n53 “feudal” societies, in Africa, 18, 39n11 fifth-phase societies, 13n22; overview, 11, 205–6; political conflicts in Zanzibar, 206, 208–21 financial firms, 106n95 first-phase class stratification, 24–25 first-phase policies: cultivation of class-based institutions, 33–37; goal of, 30; linguistic stratification and, 29–30; overview, 8–10; political “development,” 33; tension between liberal and conservative

248

Index

imperialists, 55–56; transplanted feudalism and plantation economies, 20–25; versus indigenous economic traditions, 26–30; Zanzibar’s plantation economy and, 30–31 five-phase model: applied to Zanzibar’s history, 5–11; background to, 3–4; dialectic in, 223–24; overview, 4–5, 150n3, 228n7, 232n62; purpose of, 224; significance of, 225–26. See also individual phases five-stage model, 3–4, 13n22, 195n3, 206, 222–23, 224–25 “focal point program,” 148 food rationing, 197n17 former slaves, 30, 31 fourth-phase colonial rule: 1964 revolution (see revolution of 1964); economic cleavage in Zanzibar, 188–92; overview, 10–11, 165–70 Fox, Wilson, 71 Friendly Society of Workers, 176 “front-liners,” 215 functional education, 64 General Civil Code of 1794 (Prussia), 72 German colonial policy: “age of diplomacy,” 126–27; cash-crop economy in Tanganyika, 123; direct rule in Tanganyika, 79–80, 83, 120, 126–27; labor policy, 127–30; linguistic policy and, 63–64; politics affecting, 154n23, 154n25; promotion of revenue generation, 121; tax system in Tanganyika, 115n167 German East Africa, 127

German East African Company, 127 Germany: educational theory in, 72–73; guilds, 126; guild towns, 153n19; political development, 126; politics affecting colonial policies, 154n23, 154n25 Ghana, 156n39 Gladstone, William Ewart, 20–21, 92n17 Godwyn, Morgan, 101n55 Gold Coast, 156n39 Gore, William Ormsby, 157n52 government schools, 70, 74, 75, 78, 109n114, 109n118 “grammar” schools, 92n16 grand theories, 5 grants-in-aid, 75–76, 79, 112n140 Great Britain: Busaidi dynasty and, xiv; Conservative and Labor parties, 120; early imperialism in Africa, 55; education in, 53–55, 62, 90n5, 91n9, 92n16, 103n74, 103n76; Fabians’ effect on foreign policy, 130–32; grants to education, 101n61; guilds, 153n21; labor organizations, 152n14, 153n15; labor politics in, 120; labor unionism and, 124–25; mass migration, 112n132; schools in, 92n17; Trade Union Decrees, 195n7; Victorian era political leaders, 96n30. See also British colonial rule; British imperialism Great Chain of Being, 57–58, 61, 64 Grey, Charles, 96n30, 104n87 Grey, Edward (Viscount Grey of Fallodon), 20, 96n30 Grey, Lord Earl, 104n86 guilds, 126, 153n21 guild towns, 153n19

Index

hadara, 99n47 Hadjivayanis, George, 195n8 Hall, J. Hawthorn, 49n87 Hamad, Seif Sharif, 210, 212–13, 215, 216, 218, 220–21 Hamadi, Muhammad Shamte, 173, 174, 176, 181 hamali, 150n2 Hamed bin Thwain, Seyyid, 44n51 Hamilton, Lady Claud, 98n39 Hammoud, Seyyid, 44n51 Hammoud, Seyyid Ali bin, 44n51, 80 Hardenberg, Karl von, 72 Hatchell, C. W., 135 Hawking, John, 94n24 “Heads of Agreement,” 49n87 Hendricks, Michael, 230n47 Herodotus, xii, 93n19 “hide” system, 17, 39n8 Hippalus, xii Hobson, J. A., 42n34 “Home Burdens of Uncle Sam” (Comfort), 104n80 “houses of call,” 125 Huggins, Godfrey, 64–65, 84–85, 114n160 human evolution, 61 hut tax, 121 identity politics, 204 immigrants, xiii Imperial Education Conference, 95n29 “imperial federation,” 21 imperialism: American, 103n80. See also British imperialism; conservative imperialism; liberal imperialism; new imperialism indentured servants, 188 India, 26, 35; boycotts and, 35, 48–49n87

249

Indian Association (IA), 33, 34, 35, 37, 159n68, 168–69 Indian Merchants Organization (IMO), 32 Indian National Association (INA), 32, 49n87 Indians. See Zanzibari Indians indirect rule: as an independent concept from dual mandate, 106n90; British imperialism and, 66–67; in British Tanganyika, 64, 120–21; origins of, 105n88; in Zanzibar, 64, 84–86, 86–87 Indonesian cinnamon trade, 43n48 industrial schools, 104n87 intelligence, theories of variation in, 60–61 interconfessional schools, 107n106 International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), 144 Iran, 25 Irvine, Judith T., 8 Islam, xii Islamic schools. See medressas Jamaica, 100n50 janjaweed, 226n1 jizia, 25, 30 Joint Presidential Supervisory Commission (JPSC), 219 Jones, Arthur Creech, 158n53 Jumbe, Aboud, 185, 215 Kant, Immanuel, 108n108 Karume, Abeid, 201n78; 1964 revolution and, 183, 184; assassinated, 201n80; authoritarian rule of, 184–85; the CCM under, 209; early life of, 173; founding of the African Association, 140;

250

Index

land redistribution and, 188; nationalization of property on Pemba, 227n2; Pemba Shirazi and, 203–4; political repression and, 208; renaming of the ASU by, 174; union with Tanganyika and, 207; vice-president of Tanzania, 201n76; Wapembans and, 215 Karume, Amani Abeid, 218, 220, 221 Kenya, 162n86, 207 Khalifa, Seyyid, 44n51 Khalifa bin Harrub, Seyyid, 44n51 Khojahs, 98n41 kiambo land system, 43n47 kijiji, 44n49 Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union, 129 Kilimanjaro Native Planters Association, 129 Kilwa, 128 kinship groups, bilateral, 43n47 Kipling, Rudyard, 66, 103n80 Kissinger, Henry, 114n162 Kituo Cha Katiba, 230n46 labor: German policies Tanganyika, 127–30; politics in Great Britain, 120; third-phase policies and, 117– 27; in Zanzibar, 195n8 labor-class system, 32 Labor Committee (British), 141 labor insurgency, 119. See also dockworkers’ strikes; strikes Labor Party (British), 120, 133, 156n36 labor reform, 125–26 labor unions: African, 141; British, 152n14; European labor unionism, 124–25; German, 126; Tanganyikan, 144; third-phase

policies and, 119. See also trade unions landlessness, 171 land ownership: African slaves and, 39n14; British policies, 38; by indigenous peoples on Pemba, 28–29; Shirazi, 43n47. See also land use systems land redistribution, 188 land transfer policies, 155n36 land use systems: first-phase policies and, 29; indigenous, 26. See also land ownership language: group boundaries and, 205. See also entries at linguistic language education, 92n17 legal systems. See sharia law legislative committee (LEGCO): class cleavages and, 35; composition, 193, 194; expansion of, 171–72; formation of, 9, 33; members, 48n83, 159n68; purpose of, 35–37 liberal imperialism, 20, 42n38, 68; British colonial rule and, 55–56; educational policy, 95n28 Liberals (British), 20, 110n124, 133 Liebert, Eduard von, 127 “limps,” 110n124 linguistic identity: communal violence and, 7–8; Zanzibar and, 2 linguistic passing, 90nn6–7, 222–23 linguistic policy: in British Tanganyika, 64; German, 63–64; in Zanzibar, 64 linguistic stratification: British educational policy and, 78, 88; education in Zanzibar and, 82–83; first-phase policies and, 29–30; in Zanzibar, 27, 46n64, 205 linguistic training, 92n17

Index

literacy, 177 literacy training, 95n28 Livingstone, David, x, 65, 73, 103n77 liwali system, 27, 44n50, 84, 114n157 loans, 34 Lugard, Lord Frederick Delarty: British imperial policies and, 66, 67, 68–69, 86, 99n46, 105n88; on the function of primary education, 102n70; as governor of Nigeria, 115n166 Luguru people, 129 Macdonald, Malcolm, 157n52 Mahdist rebellion, 89n2 maji, 128 Majid, Seyyid, 44n51 Maji-Maji rebellion, 121, 124, 127– 30, 153n24, 155n31 Mali, 18, 39n11 manorial system, 17 marriages, 185 Marx, Karl, 19 mass migration, in Great Britain, 112n132 Mazrui, Ali, 19 Mazrui family, 44nn49–50 McDonald, Ramsay, 133 medressas, 79, 112n139; British imperialistic views of, 56; enrollment, 113n152; in Tanganyika, 74, 116n169; in Zanzibar, 74–75, 77, 78 Menouthis, x, xii middle schools, 116n168 miji, 44n49 Milton, John, 60 minority rule, 85 missionary schools, 70; curriculum, 79; grants-in-aid and, 79;

251

Portuguese, 106n96; in Tanganyika, 73, 74, 80, 109n113; in Zanzibar, 74 mixed economy, 19 Mkapa, Benjamin, 217, 218, 230n40 mlango, 43n47 “models,” 5 “monitorial” instruction, 92n16 mortgage companies, 33, 188 Moses, John, 126 Mozambique, 24 Muafaka I, 219, 230n46 Muafaka II, 218–19 Muscat, 25 Muslims: in Tanganyika, 74, 109n113; in Zanzibar’s history, xii–xiii Mwinyi, Ali Hassan, 210 Mwinyi Mkuu dynasty, 44n52 Napier, George, 20, 42n39 National Congress (India), 35, 49n87 Nationalist Socialist Party (British), 156n37 National Labor party (British), 133 National Party of the Subjects of the Sultan of Zanzibar (NPSS), 145– 46, 162n99, 169–70 Native Authorities, 139–40 native education: British policy, 77– 78. See also education; educational policy new imperialism, 52, 71, 89nn2–3, 90n4, 94n25; educational policy and, 56, 86–87 new imperialists, 110n124 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 108n108 Nigeria, 86, 115n166 Nkrumah, Kwame, 180 Non-Conformists, 62, 101n57, 101n61

252

Index

NPSS. See National Party of the Subjects of the Sultan of Zanzibar Nyerere, Julius, 6, 64, 158n58, 199n53; ASP and, 175; CCM politics and, 209, 210; Fabians and, 102n73; president of Tanzania, 201n76; reconciliation efforts, 209, 210, 211; TAA and, 134, 158n59; TANU and, 209; Zanzibar’s 1964 revolution and, 207; Zanzibar’s political parties and, 197n19 Nzinga, Myemba (King Affonso I of the Congo), 105n88 Okello, John, 122, 175–84, 200n74, 207 Oliver, Lord, 111n131 Omani Sultanate: checks and balances approach to government, 9; economic mobility under, 45n55; education under, 45n55; “linguistic passing” and, 90n6; restored by the British, 86; slavery and, 45n53; in Zanzibar, xi–xii, xiii, xiv, 24, 25, 27–28, 29–30 Ominium Gentium Mores (Boemus), 93n19 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 85, 211 Osman, Abbas, 142 Ottoman society, 18 Owen, Robert, 91n10 Palmerston, Henry Temple (“John Bull”), 20, 21, 94n25 Palmerston school, 20 Pan-African Congresses, 132–33, 157n47 pan-Africanism, 132–33, 140 pan-German league, 108n110

Passfield, Lord (Sidney Webb), 131–32 Passfield Memorandum, 131–32 “passing,” 221–23 patronage, 129, 213, 228n17 peasants, manorial system and, 17 Pemba Island, 15; government schools, 78; landownership by indigenous peoples, 28–29; linguistic affiliation of Pembans, 46n63 Pemban Shirazi: 1957 elections and, 172; Abeid Karume and, 204; landownership and, 38; linguistic stratification and, 205; “passing” and, 222–23; patronage and, 213; Shirazi Association and, 138; ZPPP and, 197n18, 227n2 Pemba People’s Party, 171 People’s Republic of Zanzibar: foreign recognition of, 206–7; formation of, 183–85 Periplus of the Erythreaean Sea (Hippalus), xii Petterson, 199n53 Petty, William, 61, 101n55 Phelps-Stokes commission, 95n29, 100n48, 115n168 Phelps-Stokes Fund, 60, 113n149 phrenology, 57–58 physiognomy, 61 physiology, 57–58 Pim, Alan, 164n114 plantation economy: British firstphase policies and, 30–31; dependence on labor, 190; origins of plantations, 19; owner-squatter conflicts, 171, 174; political cleavages in Zanzibar and, 5–6; slaves and, 23–24. See also clove economy plantations, origins of, 19

Index

political “development,” 33 political leaders, Victorian era, 96n30 political repression, third-phase policies and, 117–27 political resistance, third-phase, 122 popular education, 103n74, 103n76. See also education populism, educational, 88 Porter, Henry, 196n12 Portuguese, xiv, 24, 106n96 Prat, William, 93n19 Primary Certificate, 77 primary education, 104n86 Primary School, 77, 81 primary schools, 113n151 Ptolemy, Claudius, xii “public school boys,” 92n17 “public” schools, 92n17 “race,” meaning of, 11n2 race theories, 61 racial ambivalence, 189–91, 204 racial categorizations, 57–59, 84–85, 93n18 racial conflict, 1 racial exploitation, 111n131 racial identity, 1–2, 189–91, 204, 205 racial integration, 111n129 racial passing, 221–22 Rankine, John, 196n12 rationing, of food, 197n17 Rechenberg, Albrecht von, 128–29, 154n25 reconstruction, 195n3 Rees-Williams, David, 158n53 regime change, 13n21 Reinsch, Paul, 58 relative deprivation theory, 227n4 revolts, 39n8; in Canada, 41n30. See also revolution of 1964

253

Revolutionary Council, 183, 188, 191, 194, 206, 207 revolution of 1964: as a class conflict, 3; ethnicity and, 186, 191; fourthphase of colonial rule and, 186–88; groups targeted for violence in, 204–5; John Okello and the events of, 179–84; significance of, 2–3, 6; underlying causes, 186–88 Rhapta, xii Rhodes, Cecil, 51, 64, 89nn2–3, 94n25 Rhodesia, 114n160, 114n162 Rhodesians, 85 Rivers-Smith, S., 77, 80, 81, 107n100, 111n127, 113n144 Romanticism, 67 Romantic Movement, 54 Rosebery, Lord, 89n2, 94n25 Royal College of Physicians, 61 Royal Geographical Society, 59 rural schools, 76, 78, 112nn133–34 Russell, John, 20, 22, 41n30, 104n86 Said, Al bu, xiv Said, Seyyid, xiv, 25, 27, 43n44, 44n51 Said, Seyyid Ali bin, 44n51 Said, Seyyid Barghash bin, 44n51 Said bin Sultan, Seyyid, 44n50 Schlunk, Martin, 63–64, 109n119 schools: Anglican, 101n61; confessional system, 107n106; enrollment by sex, 113n151; enrollment in, 81, 82; funding, 88; government expenditure on, 78; in Great Britain, 90n5, 92nn16– 17; Portuguese, 106n96; racial integration, 111n129; secondary, 100n48; in Tanganyika, 81–82,

254

Index

87; “unassisted,” 112n139; in Zanzibar, 70, 74–75, 77, 80–81. See also education; government schools; medressas; missionary schools; rural schools; secondary schools; secular schools School System in the German Colonies, The (Schlunk), 63–64, 110n119 secondary schools: in Africa, 100n48; enrollment in, 113n142, 115n163; in Great Britain, 92n16; PhelpsStokes commission on, 115n168 second-phase colonial rule: categories of policies, 69–70; colonial educational policy and, 87–88 (see also educational policy); development of social inequalities and, 124; education and class cleavage, 38; overview, 10, 51–53, 56–57; settler policy, 71 secular schools, 81–82, 101n60, 109n118 self-interest, “enlightened,” 68 settler debate, 67 settler policy, 71 shamba land system, 25, 26, 71 sharecropping, 30–31 sharia law, 25, 27–28, 29, 45n55, 189 sheha, 27, 44n49 Shi’a Muslims, xiii Shirazi Association, 48n80, 138, 140, 160n71, 173, 196n16 Shirazis: 1964 revolution and, 3; British racial categorization and, 58; in the fifteenth century, xiii, xiv; identity politics and, 204; Abeid Karume and, 203–4; land ownership, 43n47; land use system, 26; in the medieval era, 26–27;

political organization, 43n47; racial identity and, 190; Wahadimu, 46n61; in Zanzibar, 189. See also Pemban Shirazi; Ungujan Shirazi Singh, Karamjit, 230n47 sipahs, 18 site of class resistance, 165 slaves and slavery, 189; in African feudal societies, 18; British policies toward, 46n65; cash cropping and, 45n53; landownership and, 39n14 slave trade, 15, 16, 23–24, 28, 111n131 slave traders, 65, 94n24 Smith, Adam, 22 Smith, Harry, 20, 104n86 Smith, Ian, 64, 85, 114n162 soccer clubs, 168, 170 social Darwinism, 54, 67 Social Gospel, 104n85 social inequality, 124 socialism, 124 Socialist-Democratic Federation (SDF), 125, 153n18 socialist Fabians, 131 socialist organizations, 156n37 socialist/progressive labor unionism, 124–25 Soden, Karl von, 73–74, 110n119 Soemmering, S. T. von, 93n18 Sohar period, xi–xii South Africa, 221–22 Speke, John Hanning, 66, 73 Speke-Burton mission, 66 spice trade, ix, 15 sports clubs, 140 squatters and squatting, 30, 31, 171, 174, 191, 213–14 St. Andrews College, 107n99 Stanley, Lord, 104n86

Index

Stephens, Hugh, 134–35 Strauss, Leo, 108n110 strikes, 141–43. See also dockworkers’ strikes Suarez, Antonio, 105n88 Sudan, 89n2, 199n62, 224, 226n1 “sufficient price,” 22, 23 “sufficient price imperial federation,” 23 suffrage, 172 Sultan, Seyyid Said bin, 44n50 Sunni Muslims, xiii Swahili language: 1964 revolution and, 183; as a creolized language, 11n3; lack of British commitment to, 113n144; marginalization of, 30; script taught in, 111n126; significance in Zanzibar, 189; in Tanganyika, 74, 82, 83–84, 87, 88, 128, 134–35; as Zanzibar’s national language, 183, 191, 194; Zanzibar’s schools and, 81 Swahili Zanzibaris: 1964 revolution and, 6 (see also revolution of 1964); British racial categorization and, 58, 59; education and, 70; in the fifteenth century, xiii; fourth-phase of colonial rule and, 186–87; land use system, 26; major ruling families, 43n49; in the medieval era, 26–27; NPSS and, 145–46. See also Ungujan Swahilis TAA. See Tanganyikan African Association Tanganyika: coffee economy, 163n108; dockworkers’ strikes, 167; German and British rules contrasted, 118; as a League

255

of Nations mandate, 114n156; medressas and, 116n169; political timeline, 151n5; schools, 79, 80, 81–82, 87, 109n113, 109n118; Swahili and, 74, 82, 83–84, 87, 88, 128; TANU and, 209; thirdphase policies and, 118; union with Zanzibar, 184, 207–8; witch doctors, 155n30 Tanganyika (British): civic organizations and, 140; dockworkers’ strikes, 135–36; education in, 103n76; Fabianism and, 6, 103n76, 134–36; fiscal management, 148–49; indirect rule, 120–21; labor unions, 144; linguistic policy, 64; political development in, 139–40; rise of political autonomy in, 134–36; Swahili language in, 134–35; trusteeship government, 148 Tanganyika (German): agricultural reform, 129; cash-crop economy, 123; direct rule, 79–80, 83, 120, 126–27; education, 73–74, 83–84, 87, 88, 100n50; labor policies, 127–30; Maji-Maji rebellion, 121, 127–30; tax system, 115n167; three-sites model and, 153n24 Tanganyikan African Association (TAA), 6, 134, 137, 145 Tanganyikan African National Union (TANU), 136; creation of, 134, 145; Fabians and, 102n73; merger with ASP, 185, 209; support for ASP, 175 Tanganyikan African Welfare and Commercial Association, 158n55 TANU. See Tanganyikan African National Union

256

Index

Tanzania, 185, 201n76, 207–8, 211, 219 Tanzania People’s Defense Force (TPDF), 211 taxes: British taxation of the clove economy, 46n67; in British Zanzibar, 146; communities as collectively responsible for, 39n13; German system in Tanganyika, 115n167; paid in kind, 40n16. See also jizia teachers, 76–77 technical training, 95n28 third-phase colonial rule: labor practices and political repression, 117–27; overview, 10, 166–67; Zanzibar under, 136–50 third-phase political resistance, 122 Thomas, Ivor, 158n53 Thomas, James, 157n52 three Cs, 65–66, 68 three-site model, 4, 12n7, 224–25 Thwain, Seyyid Hamed bin, 44n51 timar, 18 timariots, 18 Time magazine, 200n67 Trade Union Congress (TUC), 62, 102n62, 125, 144 Trade Union Decrees, 141, 195n7 trade unions (British), 62, 125, 153n15 triangular trade, 23–24 trusteeship government, 148 TUC. See Trade Union Congress tumbo, 43n47 Uganda, 207 Ujamaa, 6 ukoo, 43n47

Umma Party, 192, 201n74, 209 Ummayad dynasty, xii “unassisted” schools, 112n139 Unguja Island, 15; government schools, 78; landlessness of Zanzibar Africans, 171; political repression, 138–39; Shirazi-Swahili dislocation, 29; spice trade and, 15 Ungujan Shirazi: landownership and, 38; squatters, 213–14 Ungujan Swahilis: fifth-phase political conflicts and, 206, 208–21. See also Swahili Zanzibaris Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), 85 United Nations, 85 United Republic of Tanzania, 201n76 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 185 universal education, 53–55, 104n86 ustaarabu, 100n47 Utilitarianism, 54, 67 vagrancy laws, 31, 47n72 Veblen, Thomas, 42n34 vocational training, 79, 95n28 Volksschule, 72 Volskulture planting scheme, 127–28 “voluntary” schools, 90n5 Voluntary-Secular schools, 62 Von Rechenberg, Albrecht, 128–29, 154n25 Wadstrom, C. B., 68, 105n89 wage labor system, 31 Wahadimu, 28–29, 46n61 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 21–23, 41nn30–31 Wakil, Idriss, 210

Index

Wapemba “Arabs”: fifth-phase political conflicts and, 206, 208–21; linguistic stratification and, 205 Wapemba Shirazi: fourth-phase political resistance and, 166; Abeid Karume and, 203–4, 219–20; land ownership and, 28–29; linguistic stratification and, 205; “passing” and, 223 waqf land system, 25, 26, 45n55 Ward, W. E. F., 63 Waterman, William, 93n19 Watson committee, 156n39 Watu Wakuu, 44n49 Webb, Beatrice, 131 Webb, Sydney (Lord Passfield), 131–32 Weber, Max, 73, 108nn109–10 Weston, Frank, 99n46 Whig party, 103n76 White, Charles W., 93n18 “white” empire, 89n4 “white man’s burden,” 66 “White Man’s Burden, The” (Kipling), 66 “White Man’s Country,” 89n3, 95n26 witch doctors, 155n30 Wood, Nicholas, 227n3 working-class disarticulation, 53 “work slow” strategy, 151n6 World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), 143 Yeager, Roger, 228n17 Yorubi dynasty, 44n50 Young African Union (YAP), 86, 115n163, 150n2, 175

257

Zanzibar: 1964 revolution (see revolution of 1964); basis of identity in, 1–2; geography, xi; historical overview, ix–xv; independence, 86, 181; names for, ix–x; sources of conflict in, 2; union with Tanganyika, 184, 207–8 Zanzibar and Pemba People’s Party (ZPPP): alliance with the ZNP (see ZNP/ZPPP alliance); characteristics and changing status of, 192, 193, 194; formation of, 174, 190, 191, 197n18, 209; Pemba Shirazi and, 227n2 Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC), 212, 217 Zanzibar Federation of Progressive Trade Unions, 157n49 Zanzibari Arabs: British racial categorization and, 58; the Clove Growers Association and, 33–35; economic patronage and, 213; education in Zanzibar and, 102n72; European perceptions of, 98n40; first-phase colonial rule and, 30, 31; fourth-phase colonial rule and, 165, 186–87; indirect rule and, 84; NPSS and, 169–70; relationship with Indians, 188; Zanzibar Nationalist Party and, 170, 171 Zanzibari Indians: 1964 revolution and, 179; academic disarticulation and, 70; British racial categorization and, 58; clove dealers, 34; education and, 70; European perceptions of, 98n41; financial firms in Zanzibar, 106n95; history in Zanzibar, 188–89; mortgage companies, 33; relationship with Arabs, 188;

258

Index

relationship with the colonial government, 179 Zanzibar Island. See Unguja Island Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP), 146, 157n49; alliance with the ZPPP (see ZNP/ZPPP alliance); Arab Zanzibaris and, 171; characteristics and changing status of, 192, 193, 194; composition of, 190–91; formation of, 170; fourth-phase colonial rule and,

186–87; John Okello and, 176; plantation owners/squatters conflict and, 174; political goals, 172; resistance to African voters, 196n13, 198n42; Shirazis and, 3 Zanzibar Town, 84 ZNP. See Zanzibar Nationalist Party ZNP/ZPPP alliance, 175, 177, 178, 180, 193, 194, 214 ZPPP. See Zanzibar and Pemba People’s Party

About the Author

Nadra O. Hashim is an adjunct professor of political science at DeVry University, in Louisville, Kentucky. She was an inaugural Ford Fellow at Amherst College in 2001, where she taught in the women’s studies department. Dr. Hashim is currently researching grassroots environmental conservation efforts in East Africa, and is published in the fields of environmental law and American presidential politics. She holds a PhD in international relations and an MA in public administration from the University of Virginia, and obtained her undergraduate degree in psychology from Georgetown University.

259