Has Z’bar truly achieved objective of 1964 Revolution?

The Zanzibar House of Representatives in session. Until 1992, all representatives were CCM members. PHOTO | file 

By Fatma Karume

In Summary

As it is with all island nations, Zanzibar is a colourful patchwork of people from all corners of the world brought together by the monsoons that blew them in and out of the island with seasonal and harmonious precision.

To truly appreciate Zanzibar’s achievements fifty years from the Revolution that took place on January 12, 1964, we need to go back in history and take a momentary glance at the Isles.

As it is with all island nations, Zanzibar is a colourful patchwork of people from all corners of the world brought together by the monsoons that blew them in and out of the island with seasonal and harmonious precision.

Until the 1780s, when the Omanis took over Kilwa, and promptly diverted the East African trade to Zanzibar, Kilwa was East Africa’s most prominent trading port.

 As the trade route for goods, such as ivory and slaves between East Africa and the Middle and Far East through Zanzibar grew, so Kilwa’s prominence as a trading port waned. By the 19th Century, Zanzibar had become the gateway for trade, including that of slaves between East Africa and the rest of the world.

Sultanate influence

Zanzibar first fell under the influence of the Sultanate of Oman in the 17th Century but it was not until 1840, that the Sultan of Oman Seyyid Said Al Busaidy, also known as the Lion of Oman, decided to move the capital of the Sultanate of Oman from Muscat to Stone Town, Zanzibar.

During this period of history, Oman was in economic decline and Zanzibar’s economy had grown exponentially due to the successful introduction of labour intensive clove plantations, which were supported by the free labour from the burgeoning East African slave trade. So it is that slave labour and the clove plantations became happy bedfellows.

Although, in the popular imagination, Zanzibar is inextricably associated with cloves, plantations of this crop are a relatively recent phenomenon in the Isles, certainly more recent than the immigration of the Omani Arabs. For it was not until about 1810, that an Omani landowner in Zanzibar named Saleh bin Haramil al-Abray, introduced the clove tree and cultivated the first clove plantation at his estate in Beit al Mtoni.

In 1828, during Seyyid Said’s first visit to Zanzibar, he confiscated Saleh’s Beit al Mtoni estate and all his other land holdings on Zanzibar and promptly imprisoned him, on the pretext that he had violated the Moresby Treaty of 1822, which prohibited the Sultan’s subjects from selling slaves to Europeans.

The reality, however, was that having spent his life surviving political intrigues and challenges to his power in Oman, Seyyid Said had no intention of allowing Saleh’s wealth and power in Zanzibar to become a threat to his own power.

As with the clove plantations, Zanzibar is also inextricably associated with the East African Slave Trade. Scholars estimate that by 1860s when the East African slave trade was at its peak, there were over 20,000 slaves sold and bought annually in the slave market in Zanzibar.

 It should be noted that most of the slaves sold in the Isles slave markets were bought by the Omani landowners to work on their large and extremely profitable clove plantations on Unguja and Pemba.