Zanzibar's political and economic instability is keeping investors away

By CLIVE MUTISO

he balmy breezes that waft across the tiny state of Zanzibar from the Pemba Channel have suddenly turned into an ill wind bearing a series of calamities. Some of the disasters are natural, like the El Nino storms that have inundated the twin islands of Unguja and Pemba and rendered thousands of the country's one million people homeless. Others are economic, like the collapse of the price of Zanzibar's main export, cloves. Some were avoidable, like the cholera outbreak due to poor sanitation which killed hundreds during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan this year. The most pernicious problems, however, stem from the political crisis precipitated by the high-profile treason trial of 16 members of the opposition Civic United Front. Their main crime seems to be having won a crucial by-election, embarrassing and infuriating the government of President Salmin Amour. Heavy-handed police raids on opposition officers are scaring away investors and tourists and sending the economy into a tailspin.

The 34-year regime still styles itself the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar, but for years it has been trying to bury some of its more incongruous Stalinist relics to attract investment. But things move slowly in the languid Spice Islands. It was long after the fall of the Berlin Wall that the East German Embassy was removed from the official list of tourist attractions, and the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Hospital reverted to its former name of the One Coconut Hospital just two years ago. "The government is still out of touch with reality and resistant to change," says Mohammed Yusuf, Director of Organization for the Civic United Front.

After the bloody 1964 revolution that drove out the Sultan, an Omani Arab, and installed the Revolutionary Government, private enterprise was suppressed. The next year, Zanzibar formed the Tanzania political union with mainland Tanganyika, but stayed semi-autonomous with its own president and parliament. Zanzibar gets 20% of the national budget, although the islanders are outnumbered 29 to 1 by the Tanganyikans. Claiming that Zanzibar and Tanganyika should be equal partners in the union, Zanzibaris are pressing for 50% of the cake--while other Tanzanians want to see the share reduced. Unless the two groups reach a settlement, the alliance could soon disintegrate altogether.

The government itself threatens to implode even more quickly. In the October 1995 general election, the Civic United Front--on a popular platform advocating free speech, more transparency in government and economic reform--won 24 national assembly seats to the government's 26 in a vote that independent observers judged to be massively flawed, robbing C.U.F. of outright victory. Amour's narrow victory gave him the power to appoint 25 more members and the Attorney General, but C.U.F. has boycotted sessions and concentrated on planning for the next elections due in 2000.

Since the elections, foreign aid to Zanzibar has been cut off by European countries citing human rights violations, and the land's economic mainstay, spice cultivation, has hit hard times. The country's hundreds of thousands of clove trees, most now over 100 years old, are yielding less--production has dropped from 10,000 tons to 500 tons a year--while per capita income has dropped from $500 a year to about $100. Prices have slumped because the principal market, Indonesia--where clove oil is used to flavor cigarettes--is buying fewer cloves as smokers' tastes change. Efforts by the government to spur production by offering free seedlings to farmers are met with a lack of enthusiasm. "We are not interested when it costs us 50 cents to pick a kilo of cloves and they [the government] pay us 55 cents," says farmer Saidi Omari. Instead, many farmers eke out a living by showing tourists around their spice and herb fields or by growing edible seaweed for export to the Far East.

Tourism, though, is a losing proposition. Zanzibar got a promising boost last year when the Aga Khan's Serena Hotels group took over two large seafront buildings near the port and converted them into a luxurious inn embellished with traditional Zanzibar wood carvings and artifacts. But even outstanding service, professional marketing and heavy discounting have not been enough to keep it full. Other hotels are offering air-conditioned double rooms at $25 a night and still cannot get customers, who fear political unrest.

So far President Amour has managed to keep the country afloat with import levies on consumer goods. Cargo bound for Dar es Salaam and the Tanzanian hinterland is offloaded in Zanzibar because customs duties and taxes are lower than on the mainland. As night falls the goods are slipped down to secluded coves where small boats smuggle them to waiting buyers on the mainland 30 km away. "On a clear day you can see Tanganyika from Zanzibar," goes the island saying, "but on a good day it disappears from view." The dreamy spice islands of our imagination may also soon disappear from view unless Zanzibaris can end their political squabbling and woo the tourists and investors they so desperately need.