Zanzibar 2- Go Man Go

“GO, MAN, GO”
My body was exhausted but my mind was hyperactive. Before I could get to sleep again a car drove into the compound. Doors slammed and I heard new voices. One of these was very distinctive, being of a curious high-pitched timbre. It was vaguely familiar, like Sedan Kimathi. The conversation ceased and there were sounds suggestive of a heavy weight being dragged along the ground.

I got up in time to see a small man with the yellowish colour of an Arab but the broad features of an African. “Go, man, go”, he said. He got into the back of the car, slamming the door. The driver’s door slammed also, and the car drove away.

This incident left a strange uneasiness in my mind. It added to my feeling of disorientation, and feeling of unreality. The whole situation was so reminiscent of a nightmare that I half-expected to wake up and find a normal day beginning. Many a time I wished it were a dream – even prayed that it would turn out to have been a dream.

I dozed off again to be suddenly awakened by a burst of rifle fire which seemed to come from somewhere on the beach. Then there was silence again. I started to my feet, looked through the window, and looked out to the sea. But there was nothing to be seen, nothing at all anywhere.

I took the opportunity to walk through the wards, first stepping over the recumbent figures in the corridor outside and on the verandah. No one, I thought, was really asleep. Some were in pain and I could hear their groans.

The man whom I particularly wished to see just then was one of the earliest admissions. He had been cycling to his post at the airport on the previous night. He was a fireman and I had seen him before, his proudly protruded chest at one of the festival parades. He had been decorated with a special medal for long and faithful service in the Fire Brigade.

He had been cycling to man the fire engine at the Airport when he had been shot through the chest and his bicycle taken from him. Then they had beaten him with sticks, though he had been shot, and was dying as far as they knew. I saw the linear weals across his back. The bullet had entered the left side of the chest and there was no visible exit wound. Part of the lung had been lacerated, and the chest had filled up with blood so that the remaining lung tissue had been compressed and rendered functionless.

I had inserted a tube into the chest leading to an underwater seal so that drainage was airtight. The blood and fluid had been draining away and the heart, which had been displaced to the right, was slowly returning to its proper position.

I went along and saw this man amongst others. It occurred to me that his uniform, albeit a previous uniform, had been responsible for the attack made upon him. No one could have been more an African than he, but his uniform, I suppose, identified him with the opposition.

After this solitary ward round I returned to the office. I lay under the fan again and once more the sense of nightmare came over me. I found my thoughts, memories and speculations repeating themselves.

Would Kharume allow the violence to continue? Could he stop it? Could he control his jubilant freedom fighters? Did he want to? Only time would tell. I had heard Kharume himself declare at a public rally that if the Afro-Sherazi Party were elected, it would establish a multi-racial society in Zanzibar. I took comfort from this recollection.

As the night wore on I would sometimes doze and dream. Strange distant sounds would wake me to a twilight zone of consciousness during which I seemed to hear the rumbling of heavy guns or the roar of many aeroplanes. But it always turned out to be the fan above my head. Real sounds awoke me instantly: the groaning of a wounded man in the corridor outside the door or the entry of a truck into the compound. Even in the dead of night there were sporadic rifle shots and the whining of a ricochet – nervous guards, perhaps, shooting at shadows.

I reflected again on the disturbances of 1961. The Makonde had run amok and had killed many Arabs. During the night they had gathered near the tumbledown dwellings of the Arabs in the plantations. At first light they had encircled the makuti-roofed dwelling, thrown burning faggots and set the roof on fire. As the occupants blindly stumbled out into the ring of pangas they were mercilessly butchered, their skulls cleft, their arms cut off.

This had been repeated for many nights, even though the police force was intact and troops had been drafted in from Kenya.

`How must these people be feeling now, at this very moment? They lie in their flimsy homes in the depths of the coconut palms, remembering former occasions. They lie uneasily, fearfully. Each feigns sleep but all are awake. Are there sounds out there in the shambas? Are there sounds other than the soughing of the wind, the fall of a frond? Now there is nothing at all, no-one at all to stop the Makonde. How terrible it must be to fear the dawn.’

‘But’, I continued to myself ‘there is somebody, there is an authority, there is the strength of Abeid Kharume. He is one of the people, their chosen leader. They will obey him with an alacrity which they would show to no outside authority. He will not allow a massacre and they will obey him.’

I had not long to wait for an answer, only until dawn – which by the lightness in the sky seemed very near. Then the radio would resume its music and its messages, and we would know for sure. But when the time came the radio became more than a source of information. It became an instrument of terror. It dominated the days that followed and the principal exponent of this was a new person with an unknown history, whose name was Okello.

During this time Okello, at first merely a private citizen, gained more and more authority until by the third day it seemed that he was in complete command. This process was facilitated by the absence of any contender for the office. If the previously ordained commander had been killed, the emergence of Okello from obscurity would be more easily explained. And we had heard of such a person. He had been impressive. Later he disappeared and was not seen again.

STRANGERS
Zanzibar has always been a land of many tongues. Each ethnic group tended to speak in its own language in the home and to acquire Kiswahili as a second tongue. Arabic however, had declined into a language of formality and religion. Due to the widespread use of native African nurses and concubines, even the Arab households used Swahili amongst themselves. Therefore, in the streets, Swahili predominated, but Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu were heard everywhere. After the revolution there was a new influx of languages – Russian, German, Chinese and Cuban Spanish.

In a small place like Zanzibar one was constantly running into the same people. One met them in the course of work, later one passed them doing their shopping in Creek Road or Sokomajogo Street. Later again one might see them at the pictures. In this respect the place was like a village.

A man who had lived in the Protectorate for approximately twenty years, whose boast was that he had filled every important administrative post on the island at one time or another, was quite convinced that many of the Africans involved in the revolution, even at the very beginning, were newly arrived from the African continent.

He was able to fill in some of the details about the body on the beach having been a witness to the shooting near his own house in Kilele Square. This body had later been seen by a nun from the windows of the convent. This was not long after the revolutionaries had begun to enter the town. She had thought it to be the body of a European and had reported it as such to the hospital but it was the body of a Goan youth.

At this point I will insert information received much later and will attempt to trace events to the point at which S.T. was in a position to take up the story. From his account it was possible to form a more amplified picture of the progress of the band whom I had observed.

The group of seven had spent the night concealed in the trees of Victoria Gardens overlooking the side road down which the Anglia had later turned to avoid them. They began to move into the town, having gained the main road, expecting at any moment to rendezvous with a larger band coming from the direction of Rahaleo. It was for this reason that they lingered and debated, while I debated whether they were policemen or not. Glancing frequently behind them, they began to move slowly towards my house which they would have to pass to gain access to the streets.

It was then that the white Anglia had been driven towards them. The shot fired at that Anglia was the first shot fired by that particular gunman. Gaining confidence, and expecting reinforcements, they moved on deeper into the street into what I had thought was a trap, and they had next stopped the Indian pick up. They killed the three adults who were in the front scat and clubbed the children who were in the back.

I had thought from the first that the gunman leader of the group of seven looked like a Kikuyu, rather than a local African. He did not have the short, powerful, rather squat physique of the Zanzibar African. Hassan had judged from their conversation that some of them at least were continental Africans from Kenya.

Shortly after the shooting they were joined by two truckloads of their fellows who I had thought of at first to be genuine police. Thus augmented, the irregulars passed still deeper into the town and shot the Bank Ascari; they then moved into Kilele Square and shot the Goan youth. “He halted and raised his hands. A rifleman, some twenty paces away fired, and missed. He fired again and missed. The third shot, or possibly the fourth – he was a terrible shot – found its mark and the force of the bullet toppled the Goan backwards over the jetty wall on to the beach”, explained SA’.

“Following this”, he went on, “a large crowd of irregulars, all Africans, poured into the square, fanning out on either side. They were armed with a weird assortment of weapons. I noticed clubs, bows and arrows, pangas and the odd rifle. I thought my number was up and raised my hands above my head. I was ordered to turn my back so that I faced away from the crowd. Then I heard a voice shout ‘Don’t strike the European- usipige Mzungu.’ I was ordered to my house – which was one of the houses abutting the square – and told to stay there”.

5.T., as I have said, had been for many years in Zanzibar. The nature of his duties was such that he met the public in large numbers every day. He had many firm friends of all races among the local people. He was so certain that many of the revolutionaries were outsiders, that he had discussed the matter with many who were in a position to have a reliable opinion. As a result he was convinced that the revolutionaries had many continentals among their ranks.

My own reading is that continental Africans were involved but the point is not of the utmost significance. I visualise each seasoned fighter from the mainland acting as a corporal, acting as the nucleus of a band of seven. This would explain the make-up of the group which I had first seen. It would fit in with the opinions of Hassan and the old Administrator, and it would fit in with the remark that some of the Africans spoke Swahili in a rather different way to the way it was spoken in Zanzibar. It was on this, as well as the evidence of his eyes, that Hassan had formed his judgement. Hassan, an African from Tanganika, familiar with the speech there as well as the local speech, diagnosed the Swahili used by the group leader as he passed as not being very good. It is well-known that this language deteriorates the farther inland one travels.

Finally there is Okello himself. In the course of his very first broadcasts it was wonderingly commented upon that he spoke like a stranger.

2 of 8 in Part 1