{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Zanzibar under the Sultans was not a barbaric apartheid state - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Zanzibar-under-the-Sultans-was-not-a-barbaric-apartheid-state-/-/434750/2946584/-/11u993w/-/index.html

Zanzibar under the Sultans was not a barbaric apartheid state

At the outset, I ought to begin by commending him on his bold and sincere ideas on the way forward in the Zanzibar political crisis. It is good to see a mainland CCM stalwart and intellectual discussing the Isles without showing emotions and the usual contaminated utterances.

Save for some erroneous generalisations, which I will refer in this response, his observations and recommendations are worthy of serious attention by Zanzibaris and mainlanders alike.

I have deliberately mentioned my age in the above paragraph because I want him to understand that I am not a "reader" of Zanzibar's contemporary political history but rather a conscious witness and during some moments a participant in the events that have transpired on the Isles since the mid-1950s.

I quite agree with Mr Mafuruki's remark that without knowing the history of the Isles we cannot prescribe any credible solution to the recurring turbulence here.

However, the dilemma in my humble opinion stems not from people's ignorance of that history but rather the pitiable distortion of the history itself. Written narratives of recent politics have degenerated into political diatribes, propaganda and point-scoring.

For instance, when the writer points to the "oppression" of the people of Zanzibar by the Sultan, many Tanzanians of today would immediately associate that word with the mass brutalisation and killings that happened in such places as apartheid South Africa, Idi Amin's Uganda, Saddam Hussein's Iraq etc.

I can assure him as a Zanzibari who has lived under three successive Sultans on the Isles that the word "oppression" is too loaded to truly depict Zanzibar's society under the three Sultans' rule in the 20th century. It conjures up the scenarios of the 19th century slave trade.

A more objective characterisation of the Sultan's rule would point to the economic exploitation of and discrimination against the local Waswahili in terms of being denied fertile land, access to higher education and government employment.

This exploitation and the social and economic inequalities under the Anglo-Sultan domination were a continuation of the feudal system the benefited mostly the Arab landed aristocracy and the Indian comprador commercial and mercantile immigrant community.

The fact that the landed gentry and the ruling Sultans were of Arab descent has no doubt given a racial dimension to the Zanzibar social and class conflict. In this context, one cannot deny that there existed a patronage system operated by the Arab ruling class that parcelled out the few opportunities that emerged in the feudal-cum-embryonic capitalist mode of production in pre-Revolution Zanzibar.

However, one has also to note the peculiarities of the Zanzibar kingdom of those days. One such peculiarity is the fact that the same Sultans enrolled their kids in public primary schools where they mixed with us ordinary African pupils.

In the early 1950s, I rubbed shoulders with the princes in the dusty environs of our palm-thatched Shimoni Primary School. From the vantage point of history it appears strange that the Sultans did not send their sons to Harrow or Eton like other royals throughout the globe, past and present.

I mention these details to counter the propensity of bigots to exaggerate stories of general Arab arrogance and widespread maltreatment of Africans before the Revolution of 1964. I repeat that the fundamental question in Zanzibar was always class subjugation emanating from feudalism and the undeveloped capitalism of the clove and coconut plantation system. Permit me now to turn to the erroneous generalisations I alluded to earlier.

I refer specifically to the statement that CUF as an opposition party is overwhelmingly composed of descendants of the overthrown ruling classes. This is the kind of misinformation that I also talked about earlier. As a matter of fact, CUF evolved from a political movement that was known by the acronym Kamahuru founded by a group of dissident Zanzibari CCM party cadres who were earlier expelled from the party by a Mwalimu-presided Congress at Dodoma.

Actually, when Kamahuru was initiated, the current leader of CUF was in detention facing charges of illegally possessing documents containing state secrets. Mr Mafuruki would probably have been more convincing if he had stated that remnants of the ancient regime have tended to show sympathy and support to CUF as an opposition group.

But they are a fading element. The truth is that CUF as it is today is a mass party of predominantly ordinary Zanzibaris of mostly poor backgrounds, with its stronghold in the rural peasant communities of Pemba.

Lastly, I admire Mr Mafuruki's audacity in proposing a referendum on the Union. He is the first CCM stalwart of the mainland to do so. It attests to his intellectual integrity and courage.

Similarly, the other proposal of holding open discussions on taboo issues in Zanzibar with a view to promoting reconciliation is a patriotic call that should be seriously taken up by the authorities.

Zanzibar under the Sultans was not a barbaric apartheid state - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Zanzibar-under-the-Sultans-was-not-a-barbaric-apartheid-state-/-/434750/2946584/-/11u993w/-/index.html

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