TIME EUROPE
October 30, 2000, Vol. 156 No. 18
A Whiff of Revolt on Spice Islands
Thirty-six years after its union with Tanzania, Zanzibar considers divorce
By SIMON ROBINSON Zanzibar Town
In history books and novels the Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar is full of mystery, a land of slaves and spices, a tropical idyll of bleached white beaches with palm trees leaning languidly in the warm ocean breeze. But Mariam Juma Omar knows another Zanzibar, one of struggle and hardship. "For the average person life is not good here," says the 35-year-old mother of five, shooing her kids into the dirt street outside her modest home in a suburb of Zanzibar Town. "I have a husband with a job but even I must work or the children cannot eat." Omar sells home-cooked food from her living room. With the few dollars earned by her fisherman husband Khatib Mohammed Hassan, 48, she saves $7 a week. "Some people can't save anything — we're lucky," she says. "No we're not," cuts in Hassan. "We should be rich but our leaders themselves make the people poor."
Hassan's complaint is a familiar one on Zanzibar. Many Zanzibaris resent their homeland's political union with former Tanganyika on the African mainland. They complain that the government of the United Republic of Tanzania, as it is now known, has stifled development on Zanzibar's twin islands of Unguja and Pemba and that they are worse off than before. This week they get their first chance since the death of the united nation's first President Julius Nyerere to register that discontent when they vote to elect both federal and Zanzibari Presidents. While Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, from the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (Revolutionary Party) will almost certainly be re-elected, the CCM candidate on Zanzibar — and the future of a united Tanzania — is under serious threat from the Civic United Front. "If we win I see no reason to stay in the Union," says Seif Shariff Hamad, cuf presidential candidate for Zanzibar. "Zanzibaris have not benefited from it one bit. I would go to the mainland and start talks on a program to move toward full independence."
Zanzibar joined with Tanganyika in 1964, just three months after young African nationalists overthrew the islands' Arab Sultan in a bloody revolution. Over the next two decades Nyerere forged a remarkably cohesive and stable nation. But Zanzibar's entrepreneurial inhabitants — an exotic and mostly Muslim mix of Africans and Arabs — chafed at Nyerere's socialist policies and grew frustrated at their lack of autonomy. "The millions and billions of aid and development money that comes into Tanzania, do your research into how much of it comes here. Nothing," says Wolfgang Dourado, an outspoken Zanzibar High Court judge and former attorney general who was jailed for criticizing the union during Nyerere's regime. "We try to talk to them but it's a dialogue with the deaf and dumb."
Seif Shariff Hamad says the answer is for Zanzibar to take control of its own destiny. He wants to remake the former cloves and nutmeg capital as a free port and center for offshore banking and investment: "Our people are very enterprising and hardworking but we need to find jobs for them to create a better life." To do that, he says, Zanzibaris must rekindle their pride and sense of history. "The older generation knows a Zanzibar that was famous, that had a certain attraction. But the young ones, the ones born since the revolution, have never seen how great Zanzibar was."
Not true, says Ahmed Hassan Diria, head of election strategy and planning for the ruling ccm. "We are very proud of our history and traditions. The real truth is that the young ones were not alive to see the vision of the fathers of the union and so they question it." Diria, a former foreign minister, says Zanzibar will never survive on its own. "Other countries are joining together so they have more power in a global economy," he says. "Who will come to this place? Possibly a third-rate investor or someone avoiding taxes."
The talk on the streets is plainer still. "There's fear," says clothes vendor Ali Nasser, 66, who traveled more than 30 km to see Hamad speak to some 5,000 people in a forest clearing dotted with enormous mango trees. Supporters of the two parties wear different colors — green and yellow for CCM, red, white and blue for CUF — and hurl abuse at each other. Fighting has broken out during rallies and both sides accuse the other of inciting violence. "It's because of the problems with the mainland," says Mohammed Mgemi, who sells vegetables in a food market that spills through the narrow windy streets at the center of Zanzibar's World Heritage-nominated Stone Town. "We can be together but we must correct the union." Or as Hassan the fisherman puts it: "Everybody's tired of the way it is. Tanganyika is the big fish eating the little one. All the fish should be the same."
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October 30, 2000
EUROPE
Kosovo after Slobo
It is neither a country nor a province, but the Albanian part of the former Yugoslavia yearns for an identity that the West is reluctant to supply
A Man of Chops and Changes
Oliver Ivanovic, the next big Serb
Hopes and Hesitations
Bernard Kouchner, the U.N.'s man in Kosovo
Defender of the Faith
Bologna's controversial Cardinal Biffi says Italy should favor Catholic over Muslim immigrants
E-Europe: Invasion of the Ice Men
Iceland can't survive on fish alone, so young people are looking to make a splash in the new economy
Fast Forward: Denmark's Hippies Hit Their Golden Years
The residents of Christiania, where the 1970s never died, face a very modern problem: an aging population
AFRICA
A Whiff of Revolt on Spice Islands
Thirty-six years after its union with Tanzania, Zanzibar considers divorce
TRAVEL 2000
Destination: Outer Space
As tourism booms, travelers are lining up for a chance to sample the last frontier
The New New Thing
Quirky and futuristic buildings are the latest must-see stops on the tourist trail. But can other cities repeat the magic of Bilbao?
Log On, Take Off
The Internet is revolutionizing the travel industry but online profits remain elusive
Leisure in the Fast Lane
Less time off is leading to shorter, more frequent holidays
A Sea of Possibilities
As an armada of new ships sets sail, Europeans are taking advantage of great bargains afloat
The Going Gets Tougher
Sometimes travel is an endurance test. And for the adventure seeker, that's precisely the point
BUSINESS
The Virtual Grocer
Supermarkets are pushing products on the Internet so customers need not push trolleys
The TiE That Binds
Successful Indian entrepreneurs have united to interact with and inspire the next generation
THE ARTS
The Art of a Wine-Dark Sea
A lavish exhibition celebrates paintings inspired by the enchanting shores of the Mediterranean Sea
He's Back, and He's Not Alone
Macaulay Culkin comes out of "retirement" in a tender but flawed take on the art of seduction
DEPARTMENTS
On Your Own Time
Lisbon
To Our Readers
World Watch
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
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