Lived Through A Revolution In Zanzibar

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31112, 15 July 1966, Page 2

Lived Through A Revolution In Zanzibar

Eighteen months in Zanzibar, during which she lived through a revolution, have convinced a Christchurch nurse that human values are instilled rather than instinctive.

Miss E. Harrison, a tutor sister at Christchurch Hospital, described her experiences during the 1964 Communist revolution for the Canterbury Travel Club yesterday. She said she had sensed the subversive influences long before the actual revolution.

Colour was not the root of the problem said Miss Harrison.

People expected races of different colour to have different values. It was their antagonism to those values which created the problem rather than the colour itself, said Miss Harrison. Differing standards held by Africans were apparent to Miss Harrison when she Interviewed 430 students in Zanzibar. She was enormously impressed by their answers to such questions as “why do you want to be a nurse?" and “what do you do'with your spare time?” Zealously, they answered that they wanted to be nurses to serve their people and to be of service to their nation when it was granted independence. In their spare time, they said, they went to libraries to improve their knowledge and their English. “This was exactly what I had expected and hoped for in an emerging African country,” said Miss Harrison. When she mentioned her experience to a local resident, the latter said scornfully: “Ask them what books they have been reading and who wrote them.”

When Miss Harrison questioned the students more closely she found that only 3 per cent could give the title of any book they had read. Truth, she discovered, meant expediency. To tell the listener what he wanted to hear was to tell the truth.

“AU the youngsters had taken the trouble to find out what pleases Europeans,” said Miss Harrison. “Africans are great natural orators and have power to manipulate their audiences, even in the United Nations.” When she went to Zanzibar In 1962, the population was 300,000, of whom 200,000 were African. 65,000 Arab and 25.000 Indian. Free compulsory education was available to everyone in the primary schools. There were democratic elections and universal suffrage. EDUCATION KEY Education was regarded as a key to a white man’s job,

particularly an employer’s job. Zanzibar people could be self-supporting if it were not for their attitude to agriculture or fishing. They felt that no educated man would demean himself by working in those fields. “Africans coming to New Zealand do not realise how close we are to a pioneering existence. They do not realise that many good family doctors have never been overseas to do post-graduate studies, and it is not long since manv schools had to be content with teachers who had never seen the inside of a training college,” said Miss Harrison. “Young people in their country, who are sent overseas to study, return as highpowered specialists and are educated way beyond the reach of their own people.” Bitter hatred still existed among many African tribes. It was important to remem-

bed that the slave trade, so appalling at the turn of the century, could not have existed without the co-operation and active support of many Africans who captured members of rival tribes and sold them as slaves. After being a protectorate, Zanzibar had gradually assumed greater control of its own affairs until the first democratic election in 1963. When the election resulted in a victory for a predominantly Arab party, the opposition African party maintained it had been rigged and there had been bloody riots in which 70 or 80 people had been killed, said Miss Harrison. “Many Africans cashed in on the disturbance and had their next-door neighbours murdered,” she said. On January 12, 1964, Miss Harrison and her companions were awakened by gunfire and realised that they had been sleeping through a revolution, instigated by Africans dissatisfied wth the results of a second election victory by the Arab party. DISAPPEARED Members of Parliament had been locked up and many key people had disappeared. The British Government sent three Navy ships and there was no violence while they remained. After they left, gangs of Africans went on the rampage, burning, looting, raping and murdering. Hospitals overflowed with casualties, mainly bums and knife wounds from “pangas,” long powerful knives which could slice down a coconut tree or the head off a human being, said Miss Harrison. Just a few days after the revolution, in which thousands

if. people were killed, two African sisters in the hospital ntroduced Miss Harrison to wo young Africans. Soon she oon realised she was speakng to the leadens of the resolution. "They were charming, culured and well mannered, [heir eyes shone when they alked. They seemed to think hat they had just won a holy rusade. They talked openly rf the training they had been pven in Cuba and Peking,” he said. How did they explain the •eautiful Arab children, with s many as five or six wounds rom the lethal panga on the acks of their necks? Miss larrison asked them. How, in the heat of battle, rare they to tell child from dult.? they asked her. Later, at a mission station, liss Harrison found misionaries exulting over the African victory. “When I told them of the African brutalities they just aid it was naughty of the Africans. They had worked nth the Africans for so long hat they failed to see the mmediate problem,” she said. In a few months Zanzibar ras taken over by the East Jermans and the Chinese, lundreds of Arabs were deported. Indians, who had held government jobs for 20 years .nd paid superannuation, were lismissed without explanation, louses of British and Indian people were confiscated and hear occupants lost everyhing. ‘NO GRATITUDE’ “Africans owed a great deal o the British. Their educaion and their government, >ut there was no gratitude,” laid Miss Harrison. “I learnt my own lesson in Zanzibar . . . never give anyhing to an African, except on i special occasion. Gifts are nterpreted as bribes. They ire a bargaining people and mly by bargaining can they seep their self respect.”