Zanzibar: Violence Among the Cloves

The source of 80% of the world's cloves, tiny, palm-wreathed Zanzibar off the coast of Tanganyika was long ruled by Arab sultans, who imported slaves from the mainland to cultivate the spice trees. When the British took over in 1890, they left the current Sultan with his title and his ceremonial peacocks. But 70 years later, as Britain moved to give Zanzibar self government, the ancient hatreds between African slaves and Arab masters have brought savage division to somnolent Zanzibar.

The Arabs rallied behind the Nationalist Party, nominally led by Ali Muhsin Barwani, 42, a quiet, devout dreamer. But its real leader is militant Abdulrahman Mohammed, nicknamed Babu, a highly intelligent Communist who makes flying trips to Prague and Moscow, has taken the party from a slavish parroting of Nasser to an equally slavish parroting of Moscow. The Africans largely backed the Afro-Shirazi Party, led by a tough former merchant seaman named Abeid Karume, who is generally pro-Western, and inclined toward joining the East African Federation proposed by Tanganyika's Prime Minister Julius Nyerere.

In Zanzibar's general election last January, the two parties battled to a standoff (one orator declaimed to an African crowd: "It is true I have a light skin. You ask why I ask to represent black Africans. Well, I assure you my heart is as black as any man's"). Neither side was able to form a government, and last week the British tried a second round of elections. But the months of campaigning had fanned the smoldering racial hostility into flame. On election day, Arab sword flashed against African panga, leaving a score killed and more than 200 wounded.

When the ballots were counted, the Nationalists and their People's Party allies had elected 13 members to the new legislative council, while the Afro-Shirazis had placed only ten. Unless Karume and his pro-Western friends can stage a comeback, tiny Zanzibar will, at best, join the "neutralists," at worst become a dazed camp follower of the Communist bloc.