Comments Off

By Luke, March 1, 2010

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 Off

By Luke, February 16, 2010

“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

• Zanzibar 1964 – Part1
• Zanzibar 2- Go Man Go (this one)
• Zanzibar 3 – Okello
• 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 Off

By Luke, February 2, 2010

Zanzibar, seen first from far out at sea is a long, low shore. It appears insubstantial and almost indistinguishable from streamers of distant cloud which intensify the remote vastness of the Indian Ocean.

(Ed’s Note: This is part 1 of a series of eye witness accounts written by Luke’s Dad who was working in Zanzibar at the time with his family including Luke. Hurley senior was a doctor and a painter.)

As the steamer approaches, the shore becomes gradually more substantial and long beaches become visible backed by screens of palms. The palms are dense but, at intervals, unrolled as it were by the steady progress of the steamer, there are partial clearings giving sight of crumbling Arab villas, thick walls, sightless windows, an air of disuse and decay.

From time to time as the shore unrolls, groups of outrigger canoes can be seen dancing on their reflections like long-legged flies. These lead the eye to discover clusters of huts, the dwellings of fishermen, partly hidden by the dense purple shadows thrown by the palms upon the beach. The roofs are of thatch, dried palm fronds called makuti.

The video below is an eye witness account from the time.

The shore has a listening, waiting quality and is forbidding and mysterious. It seems imbued with a living personality; it seems to watch, it seems to repel rather than invite. The imagination conjures up unseen watchers, silent, aware, hostile. It is like going back in time to an earlier state of the planet or even to another planet.

The harbour is dotted by small coral islands, miniature replicas of Zanzibar herself, and the waterfront presents a limpid white facade of slender buildings and, tall among them, the rambling, massive palace of the Sultan and the filigree clock-tower of Belt el Ajeib – the ‘House of Wonders’.

THE SHAMBAS
It is impossible in this setting not to think of the many many episodes of violence which have clouded the skies of this unhappy island. There are 640 square miles of island and, round about, the heedless sea. Where can you escape? Your skin colour, your clothes, your long grey beard allow of no concealment. ‘Where is no border to cross with your few belongings, there are no mountains to take cover in. The hunters will find you and surround you, you will fail to protect your child and you will see the rising sun flicker on the blades as they descend.

THE STREETS OF ZANZIBAR
The streets of Zanzibar are tortuous and intersect erratically. Walking into any one of them is like walking into a maze. After walking a short distance it is at first impossible to tell the alley by which you entered. Like cracks in dried mud, the streets are little more than canyons whose depths, in places, only know the light and warmth of the sun at the times when it is directly overhead.

Eventually you turn a corner and emerge into an open space. This space, unfamiliar because seen from a different angle, may be your original point of entry or it may be right across the city or indeed anywhere on its perimeter.

The houses form enormous blocks of three to four storeys on average. Each storey is a cube and adjacent houses at first one storey high can clearly be seen to have grown at different rates so that one is three cubes high and the next two. It is this unequal growth which gives an Arab city its characteristic outlines.

When the second house grows up by the addition of another storey, the side windows of the first necessarily become communicating portals between adjacent houses. The walls of the tall houses are of crumbling plaster with a weathered texture of pale pastel shades.

There are rows and rows of windows protected by shutters which are coloured more stridently than the walls and which present fore-shortened lines of rust red, viridian green, cobalt blue, burnt sienna. Beneath them, at street level, shop awnings, gaily striped, cover trestle tables overflowing with a profusion of fruit partly obscured by ink-black shadow.

It is possible to pass through large sections of the city from house to house at ground and second floor level emerging into the street only rarely and then merely to cross a narrow alley. It is also possible to walk across the city from roof to roof and see lively streams of colour flowing along, far below.

Before going down to the street again, pause to take in once more the vast rooftop area which is the uppermost tiers of life. Many families live at this level often under shanties built on the topmost flat surface. There are bui buffs hanging up to dry, saris and scanties hanging on clothes lines, women looking, groups sitting and conversing and even people tending small gardens away beyond. You can see the Indian Ocean between the taller slender buttresses of the mass which includes Beit airport and the Palace of the Sultan.

All the various smells, like the notes of a symphony, are blended into one unmistakable smell – the smell of Zanzibar. The piquant blends with the foetid and the sickly sweet. Individual elements, like solo phrases, emerge from time to time depending on the state of the tide, the shifting of a lazy breeze, or proximity to a particularly powerful source.

An erotic breath of mimosa emanates from a passing hui hui. The nostrils prickle to the tang of smouldering copra. Near the fruit stalls there is a sickly sweet smell from rotting loquats like the breath of a sherry drinker.

The sounds are varied and continuous. The curious chants of itinerant vendors blend with the yap yap yapping of small bulb horns on the home-made hand carts of sweet-meat sellers. Bicycle bells ring all the time. The children chant their rhythmic play, babies cry, old men argue. Radios compete with each other from every window. Strange blends of curiously pitched string instruments complete with Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, and news bulletins in Kiswahili.

OUR HOUSE
We lived in a yellow-washed three-storey building, a typical massive piece of Arab domestic architecture, impregnable as a fortress and possibly designed with this view in mind. It could be seen for a distance of almost a mile.

Our ground floor was characteristically bare, like a warehouse or a godown. Access from the street was through a double door of timber, secured by a weathered beam. Up and out of this shadowy space a stairway led into the principal room which was as vast as, and reminiscent of, a Saxon tithe-barn. Another wooden gate at ground-floor level gave access to a small courtyard into which opened the doors of the servants’ quarters. All of this ground floor region had once been the living space for the slaves who slept on stone buttresses. Staples and rings let into the massive walls bore testimony to their past occupancy.

The house was L-shaped with two high stone walls and a small courtyard. From this courtyard wooden steps led to a verandah on each floor. The top floor was freely accessible to the large colony of bush-babies which lived in the trees of Victoria Gardens and there was a clear view of the main road to Mazzizini. I could glimpse a corner of the hospital half-hidden by the trees. From the other end of the verandah there was a view of the street leading into the depths of the town.

WORKING SOUNDS – MORNING IN ZANZIBAR
I have often thought that there is a seemingly haphazard sequence in the life of a street which would turn out to be fully rounded and logical if studied daily. I remember most clearly the mornings or the evenings. Each dawn I awoke to the cry of the muzzein chanting his Arabic prayers, a mournful and weird sound, the cry of a soul lost forever in the depths of an abyss. The whine of the wind in desolate places, the lost and desolate predicament of the human being trapped on an inexorably inimical planet, a cry of loss, a despairing wail of loneliness.

A gardener from the nearby park, taking flowers to the Sultan’s palace, pushed his handcart along the road. His cart sounded as though one of the wheels were square. It made a curious grinding rattle, punctuated by a rhythmic knock, pause, knock, pause, knock which became louder and louder and then approached, deafeningly amplified as he reached the confines of the street and passed beneath the bedroom window. Then the knock, pause, knock, pause, knock diminished into a distant featureless rumble and faded away.

This was the first working sound of the day. The second was a faint rumbling, coming from afar which rapidly increased in volume and became identifiable as the beat of galloping hoofs and the clanking of milk cans. It was a donkey cart drawn by the liveliest donkey possible, beating sparks out of the road, the cans swaying violently and the driver, hunched and indolent, carried along, lost in a dream of his own. This din would also be suddenly amplified as the equipage entered the street and for a lime it sounded like a locomotive and drowned all other sounds.

A group of cyclists came next, houseboys on their way to Mazzizini, their laughter making their balance precarious as they listened with appreciation to one of their number, always the same one, imitating the falsetto pidgin Swahili instructions of his employer who must have talked a lot of nonsense, judging from the hilarity.

Individual sounds became lost soon after and merged into an increasing volume as more and more people and vehicles began to take up the tasks of the day. Time to get up and watch the crows chasing the sparrows.

The streets were almost empty from 2pm to 4pm. All who could remained out of the sun which blazed overhead melting the tarmac on the road and seeming to have weight as well as heat. A short-sleeved shirt and light-weight slacks were all the clothing one could tolerate and, in the office, resting the forearms carelessly on the desk would saturate the papers with sweat and cause them to stick to the skin and come off the table, stuck to the forearm.

1961
The election had been won in fact by a single vote, which gave the Zanzibar Nationalist Party a single seat majority. Cabinet Ministers were chosen and had all the dignity associated with such rank yielded to them, apart from that of final executive powers. It was, as it were, a trainee government. During this period tempers had cooled down, though curfew was still in force.

After about six years I felt I knew everyone of any prominence in Zanzibar, from street vendors to exalted officials. So one of the most noteworthy features of the days succeeding the revolution, after a semblance of normal daily activity had been restored, was the large number of unfamiliar faces to be seen. A great many of these new people, Africans included, appeared to be in positions of authority. This was something which excited my curiosity. I wondered how much of the organisation had originated outside Zanzibar.

The men on the losing side were either killed, or maimed or detained or shipped to where they had come from as slaves had formerly been shipped. One day when overt violence had ceased and it was safe to walk the streets, I encountered Balawai who had formerly been Head of Immigration. He was walking in deep and unseeing dejection along the street, unshaven, unkempt and horribly hungry. He had been summarily dismissed from his post and now had no means of livelihood. He had been in and out of prison several times so I was told.

WHAT YOU SAW
It was embarrassing to walk along and encounter some of these men when the only Arabs who had retained their former status were members of the Umma party who had, if anything, gained ground due to devious methods and leftist affiliations. For the time being at least the doctors were irreplaceable.

The overtones and undertones of the political climate were becoming intolerable. Almost every person of any standing who had favoured the deposed party was in a state of uncertainty about his own future. If he were an Arab, it was virtually certain which party he had favoured. His beard, colour and clothes proclaimed his allegiance to the Zanzibar Nationalist Party. If he were an Indian or a Goan it was likely, but not certain, where his sympathies lay. Most of these people had favoured what they were inclined to call the more civilised crowd, the Arabs. An Arab who enjoyed the favour of the Revolutionary Council was so held because of a common allegiance to a more universal cause, a cause in the furtherance of which the island was to become curtained off from its friend and neighbour Tanganika.

Arabs had been killed, maimed, dispossessed, and sacked from their jobs. Large numbers had been held in detention camps and afterwards shipped to Muscat under the same conditions of privation which had once been the lot of the slaves. Others had been into and out of the prison several times for questioning. Some were allowed to retain their jobs because the jobs in question (doctoring, for example) could not, for the time being, be done by anyone else.

An Arab doctor felt that he worked for an antagonistic master, that he was on sufferance, that his services were retained with reluctance and that he would be dispensed with at the earliest opportunity. There were grounds for such sentiments. An Arab doctor who had daily access to the imprisoned Arab exministers of the deposed government, was treading on dangerous ground. Not only was he carefully watched lest his daily visits to the prison be made use of for counter-revolutionary purposes, but he was probably under constant pressure to make use of his access to the deposed leaders for just this purpose. A false move might be misunderstood with dire consequences to him. He was also at the mercy of any malicious enemy who might destroy him by denouncing him as a spy. In addition, he had such an enemy – a former subordinate, who since the revolution had become a superior.

For reasons of this sort it was understandable that when one of the ministers became seriously ill he should have been especially anxious to transfer the responsibility to me.

BROKEN LOCKS – LOOTED BUILDINGS
The shops remained half-shuttered with their doors ajar ready for instant closure. That they were open at all was due to the fear of disobeying an order of the Revolutionary Council. Some remained closed, however, notwithstanding this instruction which had come over the radio. (The radio had become an instrument of Government.)

There was talk of rape, of houses entered and searched apparently at random by bands of men whose credentials were never shown. Were they gangs of opportunists or were they acting on instructions? I wondered how many of my personal acquaintances had been killed. Locks hung broken and half-dislodged from many doors. There were many broken windows. The Indian pick-up, its windscreen shattered, remained in the street pushed to one side. Its deep black tyre marks were still clearly visible in the soft tarmac. The black official cars with their black, green and blue pennants fluttering passed and repassed over these marks, altering course a little to negotiate the obstruction.

Even then it required courage to walk in the streets. One felt uncomfortably conspicuous, one’s footfalls echoed. The empty joylessness, the long and worried faces and the apparent interdiction of laughter, weighed on the spirit.

The house adjoining mine was empty for a time. The Riamis who had lived there, had left before the Revolution. Further along, another house which had been lived in by a brother of the Sultan was empty too. Its emptiness also antedated the Revolution. It was odd that so many relatives of the Sultan had left during the weeks of Zanzibar Nationalist Party rule. It was odd also that these houses had not been decorated at the time of the Independence ceremony.

However, they were not empty for long. A number of Chinese soon occupied one, a number of girls came to occupy the other. None of the girls was older than sixteen. There was also a little boy about twelve years old.

The Chinese, there were about ten of them, walked from their house every day to their Embassy which was also in my view close to the seashore. They walked in single file looking neither to right nor left. I never saw any one of them smile or address what might appear to be a flippant or a humorous remark to one of his fellows. For the most part they were silent. Joyless, like an empty atmosphere, they came and went like clockwork.

The Riami house, now occupied by girls, never seemed to sleep. They had Arab and African physical characteristics with Arab predominating. They were by no means quiet and spent their time dancing, quarrelling and singing. Judging by the number of times I heard her name called, Silirna was the boss.

One day, after nightfall, I was standing on the high verandah looking along the empty street. There were no guards visible at the time, possibly because they tended to merge with the shadows.

Two young Africans appeared from the depths of the town and slowly made their way along the street until they came to the Riami house next door. They were very smartly dressed and aged about eighteen or so.

They stood and seemed somewhat indecisive. ‘ They talked together in lowered voices for quite a long time. Then one went to the door of the house while the other stationed himself across the street, the better to scrutinise the highest window of the house – the part where, judging from her frequent appearance at that window, Silima lived_

The man across the street then began to shout “Silima” repeatedly, while at the same time, his companion rapped with his knuckles at the door. After quite a time the upstairs window was thrown open and a long, shouted conversation ensued which I was unable to understand. Finally the door below was opened and the men admitted to the house.

Silima’s noisy household was in marked contrast to all the others in the street. Though many were unoccupied, some of them harboured anything from six to ten people. But the occupied houses were as silent as the unoccupied ones. It was as if the inmates feared to do anything whatsoever to attract attention. They showed no lights and they played no music.

I was becoming dull myself. I had no inclination to paint or read. When work was over I returned to my house. Nothing within it had any particular interest for me. I had packing to do and the process seemed interminable. Between spasms of activity in this regard I would scan the streets and open places from one window after another and became, for the time, a curious watcher, a minder of other people’s business.

People did not visit each other’s houses at that time. There were, in any case, fewer and fewer friends to pass the time with. One by one ex-officials were taking the plane and relieved, without exception, to be on their way at last. There was a general exodus going on. Indians slipped away to Dar es Salaam, Mombasa and Bombay. They were free to go, so long as they did not take more than £10 in currency with them. Many of them were shorn of their jewels, some were seized and imprisoned, but the numbers remaining in Zanzibar lessened and lessened as time went by.

KNOCKING AT THE DOOR
It was an hour after sundown. From time to time I could hear muttered remarks which the guards made to each other. They stood close against the wall of the house in the street below but were not visible from the windows. Since they were always very quiet, I sometimes forgot about them and forgot to lower my voice when talking to Hassan or to myself. I sometimes spoke aloud when I was alone because it helped to relieve the tension.

Hassan was late. I wondered what had happened to him because he usually insisted on coming even when I gave him the evening off. I became restless and began to wander about the house from the circle of light, going from room to room and down to the shadowy basement to the stairs leading to the inner courtyard where Hassan lived before the revolution. I thought that perhaps he had come back early and gone to sleep. But there was no sign of him. I found, however, that one of the bicycles was missing. Hassan must have taken it without leave, and this disturbed me a little.

Having made a careful check of all the doors I went back to the small rough table under the naked bulb – a Rembrandt setting – and I took out my pen and diary – `careful what you write’.

`Hassan had changed’, I thought. I would look up suddenly and find his eyes upon me, instantly flicking away. `Have you been there all the time, Hassan?’ Why did he always stand partly concealed in a long shadow, half hidden by a pillar? In fact they all did that. They quite instinctively always placed themselves and some other object in the line of your vision.

“In the Cuban revolution”, a voice on the radio was saying, “they started with only six pistols. In the Zanzibar revolution we had only one gun between us — at the start.” Words to that effect. I wasn’t attending very well.

A few days before Hassan had asked me “What is this socialism, Sir?” in the course of my reply he had drawn me to the centre of the floor, away from the windows, out of ear-shot of the guards. Another time he had said “But you work with your hands, don’t you, Sir?”

*****

The next morning when I emerged on the street below, Mrs Comes was waiting to way-lay me. “We didn’t expect to see you today”, she said. “We thought you had been taken away during the night. There was a loud banging on your door about three o’clock this morning. We thought they had come to get you. They’re after the Europeans now.” I never gave Mrs Comes ‘any change’. Moreover, I was already concentrating on the work before me at the hospital and this was more than enough to engage my whole attention.

NEW ENCOUNTERS, NEW STATUS
Sometimes one forgot about particular people until one encountered them by accident on the street. Such encounters usually meant a brief, silent exchange during which both parties thought for a moment of the recent disorders and wondered about the effects which these disorders might have had.

Seeing a familiar face was the first certainty that the person encountered was not dead. Secondly, you wondered what he or she had been through. Thirdly, now that previous secret affiliations had come into the open, you wondered where the other person stood. Why were the two impecunious Arabs who kept a small huckster shop alive? I often walked to their shop in Stone Town in the afternoon to buy my cigarettes. This was an area where many Arabs had lost their lives. I had seen many in the wards who looked just like the two from the shop. Not only were these two brothers alive and in good spirits but theirs was the only shop whose wares were openly and profusely on display. Arab and Indian-owned shops all around were now shut or half-shut, but the shop in question, typical of shops ?f the Arab followers of the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (Z.N.P.) had passed unscathed through all the troubles.

A man whom I knew equally well, a poverty-stricken Arab petrol pump attendant, had been shot. Being harmless, just as Nzee was harmless, somehow I had not expected him to suffer any harm. He worked for an Indian proprietor who described the pointless manner in which the man had met his end. He had been shot off-hand, the gunman firing with the same sort of action with which one throws away a cigarette-end.

Some acquaintances had been changed terribly and had looked blankly at the ground before them. They recognised me only after a momentary hesitation and seemed ashamed to have me see them in their altered state. An airport official, for example, who had always been very friendly and effusive passed me by within a few feet, unshaven and harrowed looking. When I greeted him I instantly felt sorry I had done so. He had seen me but had not wished to talk to me. He was ashamed. I was possibly a reminder to him of former happier occasions when he was gainfully employed and full of the importance of his position.

Members of the Ruwehy family, patients of mine, passed by with looks of introspective despair. Mister Suchak had achieved what he and I had finally agreed had been impossible – he had visibly lost weight. But he was anxious to speak to me and greeted me in his usual way – “Yes, Doctor”, to which I replied “Yes, Mister Suchak”.

A NIGHT CALL
The telephone was ringing at 2.30 in the morning. It was Saturday 14 January 1964. The voice at the other end, though familiar, was not a voice I ever heard outside of office hours. I was alarmed at this, even before I got the message.

“There’s trouble. Stay where you are for the moment. It’s big this time, touch and go I understand, and heavy casualties expected, but not just now. We are doing all that’s necessary. Stay where you are and get some rest.”

I put down the phone feeling a fierce resentment. I did not look forward to hours on end, case after case and going from one operating theatre to the other. The work was tiring and worrying. I had had it all before. I had come to abhor violence, to be frightened by it, to be overcome by the uselessness of it.

I walked into the shadowy living room which was open to the night on all sides, and the night was full of noise like that of an immense firework display. I looked for but did not see rockets in the sky. I was struck by the sinister import of the alarmed cawing of crows. My anxiety was of such great intensity that it benumbed me. I stood in the dark and listened, all thought and motion eliminated by the enormous din. I went to one window after the other and looked out into the black sky, still half-expecting bursts of coloured light, but I could see nothing. The night was black and there was no moon or stars.

At one moment bursts of gunfire seemed to come from very near at hand, the next from far away. There would be a fusillade of shots, then a single shot, then another, then a pause, then another fusillade. With each shot I imagined a man dead under the trees or wounded mortally and crawling amid the tripping, snake-like roots and the haphazard graves.

When I arrived at the hospital, light was everywhere, cars were converging, the matron, superintendent and assistant matrons were all at their posts and in uniform. Even the Director of Medical Services was there, unfamiliarly unshaven, his face white and worried.

Extra beds were being set up, extra stores were being checked, ambulances were rounding up off-duty nurses, theatre attendants and laboratory staff. Great activity prevailed amid the constant noise of gunfire and a sense of uncertainty and anxiety.

A few casualties had appeared and were being dealt with. They were men who had minor injuries, and men who had been able to make their own way to the hospital. It seemed that the battle was engaging the attention of the antagonists to the exclusion of all other considerations. The fact that the government forces were not transporting casualties to the hospital was regarded as definite proof that things were really serious. It meant that they were fully occupied.

Telephone messages to police headquarters had been of little use. The Commissioner of Police had been contacted but seemed breathless and preoccupied. His replies had been drowned by the noise of splintering glass and loud, amplified detonations, making it clear that he was in the height of trouble.

Previous experience of multiple casualties had taught me that I would go into action last of all, and continue longer. So I drove back to the house to get some food and to alert the family. Daylight was breaking by now, and though my ears were filled with gunfire and the clamour of the crows, there was nothing for the eye to see.

Mr and Mrs Gomes and Mrs Balucci, our neighbours, appeared from across the road. Mrs Balucci asked me if it was safe for her to go to Mass. I opened my mouth to say “Yes”, and I said “No”, and was glad afterwards. How could she have asked? I was terrified, though made myself appear otherwise. As we spoke, the sinister blasts of gunfire went on, seeming at one moment to be all around us, far far away the next.

What I recall at this time most of all is the craving for knowledge of what was going on. I tuned the radio to the local station, Radio Nguja (the correct name for Zanzibar). It emitted a high-pitched signal but this would, I hoped, give place, sooner or later, to a voice – probably telling everybody to keep calm.

The police, some two hundred trained riflemen who took the place of the military in Zanzibar, had the firearms. Their opponents had pangas, the silent weapons.

The police had learned from the recent riots – when they had been too slow to act vigorously – and were now acting with firmness, ruthlessness, and decision. It was only a matter of time before the rising would be crushed.

Suddenly the radio fell silent. It seemed to give the lie to my wishful thinking and implied with great force that all was not well. Two single shots exploded with terrifying noise very close by, and then there was a period of silence into which a new sound gradually crept, increasing rapidly in intensity until it became recognisable as a loudspeaker van. I got to the window in time to identify it as a police car, which sped towards Mazzizini. It was a reassuring sight for all its evident haste. I made out the words ‘curfew’ and ‘houses’, and ‘stay off the streets’.

The real development was the sound of voices shouting in the distance. On looking out I could make out a group in the middle distance between the house and the hospital. Seven men intermittently concealed the trees which lined the road. It was obvious that they had emerged from the cover afforded by the shrubs of the park known as Victoria Gardens. There was something about them which aroused uneasy suspicion. ‘They looked like riot police who were neither smart nor properly equipped. Two of them had steel helmets and wicker-work shields, like the tops of circular laundry baskets, and carried police riot sticks. Another carried a service rifle. He was constantly peering up into the trees and shifting his position scanning the road in both directions, and scanning the cover on either side.

As a consequence of the riots and civil disturbances which had occurred the previous year and which had not been firmly crushed at the very beginning owing to the tardiness of the police – who were slow, well-meaning, peaceful chaps – a specially trained emergency unit had been formed. I had seem them at work on various occasions, notably when they had charged and dispersed the demonstrators outside the court room in which Barn had been sentenced.

There was no certain means of knowing whether these men were riot police or not. They were dressed in tatters, long-tailed shirts hanging untidily outside their khaki shorts. They were very vulnerable, right on the main road and were bound to be engaged by a police patrol. The degree of dishevelment and the incompleteness of their equipment might have been accounted for by a surprise attack, leaving them time only to dress hastily and grab what equipment they could. Furthermore, the Special Branch often dressed themselves deliberately in nondescript clothing.

They were talking together in rough, angry-sounding voices and while they talked, they kept moving around the same spot. The rifleman had been a few paces apart from the others, and his voice was louder than the rest. But he set my doubts at rest by leaning his rifle against a tree and moving away from it, separating himself from it by a good six or seven paces. This was irregular, I thought. No service rifleman would leave his rifle in this manner. Therefore, they were revolutionaries. I became certain in that moment that I was observing a group of violent men who had taken the law into their own hands. Their possession of so many items of police equipment indicated that some success had attended them and suggested that the regular police force must have sustained a setback at their hands.

The group moved closer very slowly, shouting to each other very raucously, glancing all around, each man slowly gyrating and the group as a whole constantly changing in relationship to each other.

Hassan had come quietly some moments before and had been inspecting the men with silent concentration. He said to me now in a whisper, full of anxiety, “These are bad men, sir, very bad men” – he was adding something more when my attention was distracted from his words by the sound of a vehicle. I caught the words “Makonde” and “toka Kenya” but the sound of the coming vehicle held my attention. The men shouted loudly and angrily at the car which must have been running straight at them.

The white Anglia swerved violently as the driver made to turn off the main road, aiming at the side road which passed by the open aspect of our house around the enclosure where the family of graves was situated. The rifleman fired as the car, tyres screaming, barely made the turning and raced away out of earshot.

The explosive sound set us all trembling. The sound set the crows to renewed raucous clamour, and as the shock of it diminished, the men were even nearer, their faces quite distinct now and dark with an anger such as I had never seen on a human face before. It was probably compounded with fear, the sort of fear which drives a man to rain blow after blow on a victim already dead.

My family and I and Hassan were now in a group in the middle of the floor, afraid to approach the windows, trying to keep the small one quiet. We could hear the men who were now in the street outside the main wooden door. Hassan had slipped down and secured it minutes before. Even so simple an act required the highest courage.

Another blast sounded, this time amplified a hundred times by the confines of the street. From this time onward shot after shot sounded, giving me the impression that the shot fired at the Anglia was the first shot of the campaign as far as that particular gunman was concerned. From then on he seemed to fire at random into the eaves of the houses. All the houses were shuttered and the group of seven had the street to themselves.

There was an ominous noisy debate going on outside, the men sounding angry and violent with each other. We waited for them to batter at the door with their clubs. At one time the voices seemed to come from the floor directly beneath us. Was the smaller door secure? Had they found their way in without hindrance? We waited for another explosion, for their feet on the stairs, for violence beyond imagination, but they passed on along the street surely into a trap of opposition. Where on earth were the police? In one of three situations – amongst the dead and the wounded, helping to lead the revolution, or sailing away into the open sea on the Sultan’s boat, the Said Khalifa.

Again there was the sound of another vehicle approaching the town at a headlong speed. It was a small pickup full of Indians. There were three adults crammed together in the front and there were children on the back clinging together as the vehicle swayed, almost leaping off the road. They were fleeing from some danger into the safety of the town.

The driver cannot have seen what was awaiting. The pickup passed into the street, passed our house in amplified sound, and then there was a scream of skidding tyres and the crash of broken glass, a violent explosion, loud angry shouts and children screaming.

I placed myself cautiously so that my back was pressed against the wall near a side window, and I was able to get a view along the street. I saw the shattered pickup and the children cowering in the back. Then the children were obscured by the group which encircled them, clubs raised. I heard the children whimper as the clubs struck them repeatedly, and I saw them thrown violently onto the ground.

There was no doubt about the identity of the next vehicle to appear. It was a police lorry, a reassuring sight. It was moving soberly into the town following the direction taken by the group and by the pickup. I could see the steel helmets of the men it carried. Obviously the rising had been contained and mopping up operations were on foot. I looked forward vindictively to the retribution which was in the offing for the group of violent men.

I called out to my family that there would be a battle and that they should stay away from the windows – they were in the bedroom because it seemed to offer a modicum of additional security. I myself, however, resumed my observation point at a window which overlooked the street. From here I saw the lorry pass and had a clear view of the men in the back, some twenty-five or thirty, fully equipped for combat.

But they were not policemen at all! They were allies of the group first seen, who had positioned themselves and were waiting by the broken Indian pickup which was now a roadblock. The men in the police lorry cheered and raised their right hands giving the V sign – index and long finger separated, the sign of Winston Churchill – to their comrades-in-arms. The comrades-in-arms replied in like manner. There was no purpose at all in ringing the police.

This fact may be divulged at the present juncture though naturally I did not know about it until later. My immediate problem was to come to terms with the fact that there were no signs of any resistance to the revolutionaries. I imagined that a regrouping of Government forces was being carried out or that our area happened to be behind revolutionary lines. I had been told that a message had been sent requesting aid and, like everybody else, I frequently glanced at the sky and looked out to sea. But sea and sky were both empty – and were destined to remain so.

As far as I knew at the time, however, the streets and the open spaces between myself and the hospital were bristling with revolutionaries, and I had to call for transport and for any information available from the Hospital Superintendent.

I went to the telephone, looked at it, and paused. It lay there black, squat and silent. It had taken on a sinister aspect. I was afraid to pick it up and had to summon all my willpower. But as my fingers touched it and before I could grasp it, it came to life of its own accord. The person at the other end was a female and she was so frightened that she could hardly speak. “There’s shooting in the street, there are men everywhere. They’ve shot our Askari, through the chest.

I think he’s dead or dying. I can’t get through to the hospital. You must come.” She was gasping, making articulation difficult. “You must come at once.” She showed a touching faith. What the hell could I do? What did she expect me to do? To my certain knowledge there were already eight people lying dead or half dead in the street. With every shot I imagined another. I’m sure if I had had a gun just then, I would have leaned out of a window and fired it. And that would certainly have been the end of all of us.

In view of the danger in the streets, it was decided that an ambulance should come and fetch me and the family. In this way I would be able to do my work untroubled by the thought of them besieged in the house or at least cut off and very much a prey to unspeakable anxiety.

(To be continued. 1 of 8 in Part 1)

• Zanzibar 2- Go Man Go
• Zanzibar 3 – Okello
• 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