OKELLO FADES THE MUSIC CHANGES
TOY SOLDIERS
After the fourth day of the revolution Okello’s broadcasts ceased to dominate. The music continued but gradually ‘changed its tune’.  There were new tunes sung by massed voices, martial tunes, some of them in the German language. There was also a very catchy Arab-cum-Indian air which was performed by a choir of children with an antiphon and response structure. A deep male voice sang the verses and the children’s choir sang the refrain.

There was a chant too, which was the victory and rallying song of the Tanganika African National Union – TANU for short. This chant was typically African. A single voice, not always the same voice, would sing a verse which went like this:

“Oh oh Kha ru me no jeng anchi”.

The crowd would then rhythmically respond “oh oh oh na jeng anchi”, clapping their hands and stamping their feet to the compulsive rhythm.

The latter was to be heard again and again at the victory rally, at the antiAmerican rally and at the party given for the Minister of Health when he had been appointed to a cabinet post in Tan Dar es Salaam.

Another song, which I did not hear so often, was a martial tune which was whistled. It almost seemed reserved for the extraordinary army which I now wish to describe.

One or two days after I had returned to my house I saw a group of six very small boys marching along in a single file. None was older than ten, and some could not have been more than six years old. They came along briskly and wore sunny smiles. Some carried sticks at the marching position on their shoulders as though they were rifles. As they approached closer to my observation post – a high verandah – I saw that they were not on their own. They were accompanied by a middle-aged adult who carried a recently cut and roughly trimmed walking stick. He was spare and ill clad, and wore a floppy, ancient homburg hat. He eyed me rather inscrutably – warily and somewhat antagonistically I thought – as the marching column passed underneath.

I saw this band of children more and more often. Each time I saw them their number had increased and their equipment had become more standardised. For example, on the second occasion they all had sticks but some had roughly hewn pieces of plank made to look like rifles, while some had steel helmets. Eventually the numbers reached double figures and all wore steel helmets and were equipped with wooden mock rifles. Whistling their tune they would march on, and before very long the tune could be heard before the marching file.

Before long their expressions had undergone a change. The smile was no longer there and had been replaced by what the Americans call a ‘mean look’. One or two of them in fact actually scowled at me. At first I thought ‘What a nice gesture on somebody’s part! These children are probably orphans and someone has organised their play to take their minds off sadder things. They are playing soldiers and loving it.’

But I changed my mind the day they ‘took over’ the Goan Institute. They had become quite sinister. They had established sentries and pickets, they carried their rifles realistically, and, above all, their faces had taken on a new, fierce quality. They had become, believe it or not, intimidating.

It was odd, also, that this child army ‘took over’ the Goan Institute as a mock exercise. But a few days later it was taken over in real earnest by forces of the new regime. The whole business put me in mind of the cat who catches a mouse, disables it a little, and brings it along to the kitten for training purposes. Sometimes I feel that the child army was the most sinister thing in the whole situation.

Furthermore, many ‘take-overs’ had occurred. The Revolutionary Council had ‘nationalised’ the English Club, the Sailing Club, the Karimjee Sports Institute and the Corn orian Club. Nationalisation always meant an armed guard. It was odd to see an armed guard picketing the locked-up sailing club! In passing, I must say that I think the word ‘nationalisation’ was incorrectly used -’confiscation’ was a better word. `Take-over’ adequately serves my purpose.

Like most of the technicians I was merely holding my position until I should be replaced by a Zanzibari. I should then be summarily dismissed, having served my purpose. Some European technicians whose work could be done by Zanzibaris had been dismissed already. Those whose skills were more specialised and whose continuing presence was deemed essential were treated rather more courteously. But no-one doubted that when the time came, he too, would receive short shrift. The process was known as ‘Zanzibarisation’.

Owing to the fact that we were drifting into an Orwellian 1984-type of regime I had given my notice and I had promised to remain until I was replaced by another surgeon.

Since the governments of East Germany, Russia and China were providing all the other technicians, I felt that they might as well provide a surgeon too. I waited for him on my own. There was no future for my children in this environment, and their education would have presented serious difficulties.

However, I was not improving the situation by going. Many of my friends had no option but to stay and face the situation. Zanzibar was their home. I hated leaving my patients, having developed paternalistic feelings towards them, irrespective of their race, social class or political persuasion. I knew, and the surgeon who would replace me was to underline this for me, that the vast majority of people have no politics. They suffer under whatever regime is imposed upon them. There may be some subtle differences in the degree of suffering inflicted by one regime vis a vis another but the fact remains that whatever the ideology, the few impose themselves upon the many. That it is for their good is hardly relevant.

In practical terms I can state the problem as follows: a patient who is severely ill ceases to be a politician. He becomes a sick human being in need of help. Sick people, whatever the colour of their skin or whatever the colour of their creed have this much in common, namely that they are human beings, fundamentally naked. Therefore I had no difficulty in administering the same immediate, complete and continuous care to all. I merely hoped that this would be realised by all the political factions involved.

OKELLO
Lorry loads follow? The Shambas

Okello’s voice was curiously intimate. It was deep and it had a peculiar intonation. There was a hint of exultation in it and he liked the sound of it.

The strangeness of the man came through; there was a menace about him; he emanated an odd, fearful atmosphere. The voice was frightening no less than the messages it conveyed. While he spoke the small group crouched around the transistor would become completely immobile, hypnotised and white-faced.

When I first heard him he was addressing by name a certain Arab leader – an Arab headman whose name I cannot recall. He would call out the name once, then again and then ask,

“Are you listening to me? I am going to shoot you.”

Then the name again, then “You are going to the police station at Kiernbe Samaki. Then you will be brought here to me and I will shoot you dead.”

Then the name again “Are you listening to me? Do you hear me? You are to give yourself up, you are to go to the police station at Kiernbe Samaki. I am going to shoot you.” Then the name again “go to the police station at Kiembe Samaki or if you like you can shoot yourself. You can shoot yourself if you prefer. Give yourself up or kill yourself.” Again he would pause but he would time his pause. “If you don’t shoot yourself or give yourself up, I will come with my gunmen and we will shoot you, and we will shoot your wife and we will shoot your children, and we will kill all your people until there will be no one left.”

In Swahili the threats sounded chilling and affected me in an uncomfortable way. He half spoke, half chanted. He used repetition deliberately and in such a way that the impact was physical. Then came a last message to the unfortunate man, a repetition of what he had said before then. He said “I want all the men with guns to report to me now. We are going.”

After a silence the music began again, suddenly, at a high volume. It would continue, and while it went on it seemed like a physical screen concealing from the listeners appalling scenes of violence. Then suddenly it would stop. Everyone around became apprehensive as Okello’s voice came on the air again.

“Are you listening to me in …?” – naming the place – “are you listening to me? Do you hear me all of you? You are to come out on the road and form up along one side of the road. You are to kneel down with your backs to the centre of the road. You are to do this now. I am coming.” Then, addressing his followers, “Come with me now, the men with guns. We are going now.” Then the music followed.

Okello’s announcements continued all through the day, punctuated by the music and during the music, violence. His domination of the radio was important. As the violence abated, so did his power.

“It’s all there,” said Okello, prodding his bible. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” We had heard the voice of Okello before we had found out his name and before we had an inkling of his status. He was the self-styled Field Marshall of the Revolution. His emergence is something of a mystery and is worth some speculation.

I recall that one of the European Sisters spoke of Okello in terms of such admiration that, for a moment, I became interested in what she was saying, more on account of the light she was throwing on herself than on account of whom she was speaking about. There is no question but that there was a faraway look in her eyes!

She described a man who might have been the hero of a romantic novel. He was an African, tall, slim, and strong. He had an air of authority, a kindly expression, and spoke ‘with a cultured tone in faultless English’. He had treated her with the utmost courtesy and had promised to give orders forthwith which would extend to every facility to the medical personnel. He, himself, would conduct the first ambulance to wherever it was required. He soon disappeared for good, however, because no one had set eyes upon him again.

The nursing sister in question always maintained that this man had been the real Field Marshall. She was no fool and had her own sources of information. Her ward and sphere of authority was on the ground floor of the hospital. She was in charge of the casualty reception centre and this was the busiest part of the

hospital in terms of coming and going of all sorts of people. I cannot discount her opinion, but I myself cannot confirm the existence of this man, though there were certain factors which fitted in with his existence, or rather, his demise.

Two or three months before the rising, Okello had been employed as a boat boy and he had spent most of the time painting a boat as docilely and inconspicuously as anyone else.

He had a great deal of money on him when he returned to the mainland ‘for a rest’. The immigration authorities in Mombasa caused him to suffer indignity, not allowing him to “import” the two guns which he wore, cowboy fashion, and which had become, to him, a mark of rank. He had become, in his own estimation, above the law.

Eventually, in a matter of weeks he had been out-manoeuvred and the idea that he should return to his native Uganda ‘for a rest’ may well have been planted in his mind by those who found him an embarrassment. When he decided, being ‘rested’, to return to Zanzibar they simply refused to give him an entry permit. He had served his purpose.

‘Field Marshall Okello’, the man who became leader of the freedom fighters, had been unknown until he announced himself. No-one knew who he was but many agreed, on hearing him, that his accent and his syntax indicated that he was a stranger to Zanzibar and was probably a continental from the interior of Africa – Kenya or Uganda.

His voice, however, carried such menace in its tone, and such scenes of retribution in its content that his authority seemed absolute. Indeed there was, for a time, a feeling among his hearers that Abeid Kharume had been superseded and that we were hearing the voice of the new leader of Zanzibar.

“Sheik Fulani, you hear me, you can shoot yourself it you prefer or give yourself up if you prefer and I will come and shoot you. If you do not give yourself up, or shoot yourself, I will come and shoot your wife and your children and your father and your mother.” In the Swahili, which was recognisably different from the Zanzibar dialect, the voice had its own chant-like rhythm, such as may be achieved with iambic pentameter in English. Full value is given to the vowels in Swahili; it is pronounced like Italian. His messages sounded like this -

“Utapigwa risasi” “Ata bibi iako”

“Ata mama zako” “Ata baba lako”

“Ata wototo wote wako”

“Wote watapigwa risasi’

The declamation of a prophet, prophesying woe to the children of Israel, could not have shaken the heart more. This voice and these threats put fear into me. Later in the day he turned his attention to one ?f the imprisoned cabinet ministers. His threats to this minister alternated with his messages to the various Arab headmen. Music filled the intervals between announcements and, while the music was playing, the mind conjured up pictures of ghastly activity.

The threat to the deposed cabinet minister had another ominous factor about it. This was the use of the word ‘crime’. He accused the minister of crime which he did not specify. He addressed the minister by name – did they provide a radio in the prison, then? – and said that his execution had been planned for ‘four o’clock today’ – not two hours hence. At first he referred to shooting, but in later announcements he had changed his mind, he was going to hang the minister instead – ‘at four o’clock today’.

Let me be emphatic. No one hearing that voice disbelieved the intention. Noone. The horror of what was about to happen filled every corridor and every ward. There were people in my ambience who were unable to speak, so gripped were they by fear.

Everyone knew the condemned man. He was the most junior and the most likeable in the ex-cabinet. I had met him several times and he had always seemed to me to be an exceptionally open, pleasant man. What crimes had he committed?

Furthermore, if one minister was going to be summarily executed like this, what was the fate of the others to be? What crime had Sir Tayabali Karimjee committed that all his property had been confiscated? What of Shamte? What crimes had Ali Mushin committed? They must have been half-crazed with fear. And why was there no word from the President?

Whether the exigencies of battle demanded Okello’s presence elsewhere, or whether he was silenced by Kharurne, could not, at that time be determined. All that the listener could glean was that, for the moment, there were no more threats. Something was happening, perhaps, behind closed doors.

Four o’clock came and went. A fusillade of shots, during a period of sudden stillness, came from the direction of Rahaleo where the prisoners had been taken. But the radio music continued and the expected announcement never came.

* * *

My attention during the ensuing evening and night was wholly taken up with medical matters. I found it very difficult to talk to my theatre sister Khadija because she was so worried about her husband and her children. The word had gone around that the ‘freedom fighters’ were going systematically from house to house in the quarter where she lived and that they were killing all the Arab men, women, and children.

She was sick with anxiety. She had only to look about her at the terrible injuries which had been inflicted and at the number of children included to get a very clear picture of the likely fate of her own. But the standard of her work was maintained; tirelessly, though silently and despondently, she continued to assist me; and as fast as we sent the patients away, others took their place. She looked most anxiously at each new patient expecting to see a relative of her own.

There were no further references to execution of cabinet ministers, but Okello continued to broadcast at intervals and his authority appeared to be undiminished. He visited Pemba and harangued an audience, strutting up and down, peering into the faces of those in the foremost rank, carrying a revolver in either hand.

He returned from Pemba by air, travelling on the Cesna which plied between the two islands. I spoke to a man who occupied the seat next to him and who fell into conversation with him. He had been very willing to talk and spoke most enthusiastically of Winston Churchill whom he claimed as one of his two great influences. The other was the Bible which never left his possession. He had it on his lap. He prodded it with his forefinger and said “It’s all here. Everything I’ve done is here.”

References to ‘crimes’ became more and more frequent. The connotation of the word seemed to have widened. The police, in their loyalty to the Government which they had served, had fought gallantly against their revolutionary adversaries. Had they committed a crime by so doing? It appeared they had. The radio gave out lists of arms found at the homes of ex-ministers. What crimes had they committed? Was it the crime of being of another political persuasion? If not, what was it?

It was made to seem that wealth, political opposition and conversation about politics were a crime. We Europeans had been forbidden to discuss political matters. A female in a Cuban uniform had suddenly appeared in the West Wing where the Europeans had taken refuge and she had brandished her rifle angrily as she accused all those present of talking politics. (It was true that everyone was discussing the situation, but how had she come to know about it?)

Because of the many references to crime, voices were lowered. Loiterers nearby, just within earshot, began to be noticed. Provocateurs were suspected. There were even one or two Europeans amongst us whose presence was not accounted for and whom no one else knew. Within forty-eight hours at the most, all became involved in an atmosphere of suspense and uncertainty. We had heard about the body on the beach at intervals throughout the day. It became for me a sort of leitmotif of the time. I saw in my mind’s eye the sea lapping around this body, saw it move with the undertow and become more and more firmly embedded in the sand as the tide ebbed and flowed. But it had turned out to be a Goan after all. Were Europeans immune? We thought we were. We based our opinion on the slender fact that, up to now, no European had been either killed or beaten.

As the terrible voice of Okello went on and on, it gradually became bourne upon us that our reactions to his words, as we listened to the radio, were under scrutiny. Was the place crawling with spies then, already? By the third day no one spoke freely.

In the meantime every corridor echoed with the sound of Okello’s voice sentencing the beaten cabinet, one by one, now to fifty strokes, another time to seventy years in prison. It was unreal, bizarre, and had madness in it.

Later we were to hear his voice addressed to his own men. Ten rifles, he said, were missing. When he issued his threats about the misappropriated rifles he read out the serial number of each rifle, dwelling on the number with a kind of pleasure. He promised summary execution to the bearers of the rifles with these numbers. It was firmly believed that this threat came to fruition. His fascination with numbers was clearly shown also when he spoke of the number of lashes, the number of years of imprisonment, and later the numbers killed in the shambas. It was also clear in the sentences which he passed on each of the imprisoned cabinet ministers in turn, and in the sentences with which he threatened anyone who stepped out of line. The number he chose, and he appeared to choose them as he went on, had a curious affinity with each other. He liked large and odd numbers, in both senses of the word, such as 67 years in prison, 114 lashes. He particularly liked a very big number with a small number added such as 5003 – numbers with a sort of unhinged precision about them which immediately took on a curious life of their own. Fascinated as he was with his military manual, I could imagine the keen pleasure he derived from the Book of Numbers.

Okello was the kind of personality who needed to prove to all and sundry through action that his words were true.

He had gained control of a body of determined and violent men and he kept this control, exercising a ruthless discipline. He was not placed in this position of authority by anyone but himself. He rose from the ranks.

It is not likely that a man would have been chosen to lead the revolution who was not of the people, not stable, and not politically conscious. The obvious choice to make would have been an army officer steeped in the non-political, even anti-political traditions of the army, (which really means `robot-in-charge’ of a robot organisation). They had made a choice like this in the case of the police. They had merely telephoned the senior police officer of their choice and told him to lie low. He did, and his colleagues ran into trouble. They were ambushed on the way to their emergency stations.

Not only had he allowed himself to become separated from the army he controlled – Roman history, had he included it with the Bible and the writings of Winston Churchill in his reading, might well have provided him with forewarning of this mistake, but also his army had been quietly recruited by Mussa. One by one they had been examined by the doctor with the new beard and recruited into a new army. Now they were sitting around a blackboard learning that America is a paper tiger. Caesar had been separated from his legions, had been completely out-manoeuvred, and would never trouble Zanzibar again. Okello had subserved his function.

Though there were flurries of gunfire from time to time, the contrast to the day before, when the streets had been alive with freedom fighters, was marked. At first this quiet fitted the theory that the bloodshed was at an end_ The battle was won and lost, the African Nationalists were in power. But Okello’s broadcasts suggested a more sinister explanation for the quietness, namely that the freedom fighters were at work elsewhere, probably in the Shambas.

There was an unmistakable note of retribution in the inflection of his voice, along with the content of his broadcast messages directed at one village headman after the other, referring always to the headman and the village by name. Between one message and another, while the music played, ghastly pictures formed in the mind.

3 of 8 in Part 1

• Zanzibar 1964 – Part1
• Zanzibar 2- Go Man Go
• Zanzibar 3 – Okello (This one)
• Zanzibar 4 – the first twelve hours
• Zanzibar 5 -Escape to the Hospital
• Zanzibar 6 -Mzee
• Zanzibar 7 -NEW YEAR’S EVE 1964
• Zanzibar 8 – First Demonstration

Comments are closed