Zanzibar: Threats & Protests

As an uneasy quiet settled over East Africa, eyes turned back to the tiny island 22½ miles off the coast where the region's troubles had all begun two weeks ago. Though there appeared to be no active, political connection between the mainland mutinies and Zanzibar's new leftist regime, it seemed that the island violence had flashed like chain lightning across the Zanzibar Channel. "It's like prison riots," said an experienced U.S. official. "When one explodes, the others begin to pop off."

Though Washington and London withheld recognition, many officials clung to the hope that Zanzibar would not in fact turn out to be another Cuba. They insisted that President Abeid Karume was a determined African nationalist, not a Communist. And though U.S. intelligence sources were certain "Field Marshal" John Okello had been trained in Cuba, it was becoming increasingly clear that he wielded little power in the new government. Last week Okello was back at his broadcasting chores, warning civilians to lay down their guns. "Otherwise," he bellowed in his own arresting argot, "you will see how we hang people and burn them like chickens. Others will be executed by being cut into pieces that will be spread on the streets. Still others will be thrown into the sea, while others will be tied to trees and shot by novice marksmen. Anyone who tries to be a hypocrite will be punished by 50 years in jail."

As Okello blustered, Karume was busy flying to nearby capitals, protesting to his African neighbors that his government was not Communist. But for all his soothing words, the fact remained that the only newsmen still permitted in his brand-new "people's republic" were correspondents from Moscow and Peking. And no one believed that the Communists, whether they instigated the revolution or not, would hesitate about trying to take it over.

Nikita Khrushchev had a fine man on hand for the job in Vice President Kassim Hanga, who studied at Moscow's Lumumba University for 21 years. And if Red China's Premier Chou En-lai was interested, he had only to pop over from West Africa and talk with Peking's good friend, Foreign Minister Abdul Rahman Mohamed. "Babu" would certainly listen.