East Africa's Unexpected Marriage
GRUNDY, KENNETH W.
THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANGANYIKA AND ZANZIBAR East Africa's Unexpected Marriage By Kenneth W. Grundy Pliny the Elder may have been the first but he certainly will not be the last to declare...
...As the revolution progressed, it appeared that these forces were President Karume's chief support...
...They too had been concerned about Zanzibar's Leftward drift, and for a week or two before the merger there had been rumors that an African country might have to "take over" Zanzibar to prevent it from gravitating into the Communist orbit...
...They provide that the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar will be governed under the provisions of the Constitution of Tanganyika until a representative constituent assembly adopts a new constitution...
...Thus, domestic affairs in Tanganyika and Zanzibar provide some clues to the union...
...A nation's foreign policy reflects and expresses the interests of the regime in power, and if that regime is unsteady, one can expect its foreign policy to be inconsistent and unclear...
...By contrast, Julius Nyerere, the President of Tanganyika, has for some time enjoyed a favorable Western press...
...An increasingly radical Zanzibar stood as a real threat to his authority...
...His status had been growing more and more tenuous since January, and he perhaps felt that Nyerere's support was imperative to sustain the moderate faction which he led...
...Ostensibly there was a clash of tone, style, approach, and ideological polemics, but in their pragmatic African context, such superficial factors can be subsumed under the all-pervading desire for rapid development...
...These two men were believed to be chiefly responsible for the course of the revolution...
...What is more, whenever such changes are brought about, or appear in the offing, we understandably find it difficult to view them independently of the cold-war framework...
...It was not long before the Western press began to label Zanzibar the "African Cuba...
...Tanganyika, with its nine million people, should be able to dominate the Union with 300,000 Zanzibaris...
...The day after announcement of the merger, Tanganyika's Foreign Minister Kambona hurried to Nairobi and Kampala to secure official approval of the proposed move, and perhaps to seek assurance of military assistance should Zanzibar's Leftists attempt to subvert the union...
...In this uneasy setting, the Tanganyika-Zanzibar union was conceived...
...Shortly thereafter, the proposed merger was made public...
...Kenneth W. Grundy, a specialist in African affairs, is currently teaching political science at the San Fernando Valley State College...
...President Nyerere appointed five members of the Zanzibar Revolutionary Council to a 25-member Cabinet...
...Karume, Hanga, and Minister of Finance Abdul Aziz Twala hurried to Dar where they persuaded Nyerere to leave the policemen in Zanzibar...
...A week after the Zanzibar coup, about 300 Tanganyikan policemen were flown to Zanzibar to maintain order...
...Government leaders in Kenya and Uganda, though a bit unsure of the consequences of the agreement, breathed an audible sigh of relief...
...It is likely that plans for the union first took shape at that meeting...
...After all, they were neither destroyed nor defeated in the creation of the Union...
...The radicals needed the moderates to give the coup a decidedly African nationalist tone...
...A strongly Leftist group, led by Vice President Hanga and Foreign Minister Babu, was thought to be on the ascendancy over a moderate faction headed by President Abeid Karume, who had the support of the Afro-Shirazi party and three out-spokenly anti-Communist Cabinet ministers, the most notable being Sheikh Othman Shariff, who was in charge of Education and Information...
...After five days of silence and apparent indecision, he dismissed the mutineers, called in British troops to restore order, and arrested at least 200 Tanganyikans (some estimates ranged as high as 600), among them members of TANU (his ruling party), the police, the Army, and the Tanganyika Federation of Labor...
...Its Leftward drift seemed increasingly evident, and Western and African policy-makers had reason to be alarmed by the revolutionary government's orientation...
...THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANGANYIKA AND ZANZIBAR East Africa's Unexpected Marriage By Kenneth W. Grundy Pliny the Elder may have been the first but he certainly will not be the last to declare that there is "always something new out of Africa...
...Tanganyika and Zanzibar are geographically and economically natural partners...
...There seems to be an inexplicit, unwarranted assumption held by Western observers of African affairs that Africa's international boundaries are static...
...But transplanting Zanzibar's political struggles to the mainland could afford radical elements wider horizons for propaganda and infiltration...
...It is unlikely, however, that Nyerere will be devoured by those he seeks to tame...
...Still, despite Nyerere's contention that "It is an insult to read cold-war politics into every mile toward African unity," and that the Union was inspired purely by the desire for "unity," the merger does significantly affect East-West rivalries in East Africa, and its broader ramifications cannot be ignored...
...On April 23, Nyerere, accompanied by his Minister of External Affairs and Defense, Oscar Kambona, and Minister of Home Affairs, Job Lusinde, visited Zanzibar to conclude the arrangements...
...Since the Army mutinies, Nyerere has been under pressure from Tanganyikan Leftists, who were receiving support from radical forces in Zanzibar only 22 miles away...
...But domestic political affairs in both countries were in a state of flux and confusion...
...Similarly, Zanzibar's radical politicians will be forced to function in a broader arena where their importance most likely will be diminished...
...Reports circulated that the leaders of the coup had been trained in various Communist capitals: Sheikh Abdullah Kassim Hanga (Vice President) had studied international law in Moscow and has a Russian-born wife...
...Nyerere and Karume represent essentially similar constellations of interest, and examination reveals a resemblance too frequently overlooked: Each sought the merger as a means of frustrating rival forces in his own territory...
...When informed in Rawalpindi of the agreement, he told newsmen that he had known in advance of plans for the merger, but that night he rushed home to Zanzibar...
...Since the tenor of the regime in Tanganyika was generally more sympathetic to the West than was the Zanzibar government, the West should benefit from the Union—although only indirectly, since its leaders studiously maintain a non-aligned posture on coldwar issues...
...What forces brought this "unlikely" merger into being...
...is to be an end in itself, an inward looking entity with restrictive tariffs, it could spell disaster for the [East African] common market and for the services so laboriously built up...
...Ever since the January coup in which the month-old Zanzibar government, composed of and representing the interests of the Arab minority of that country, was overthrown by nationalist forces claiming to speak for the African majority (see Keith Kyle's "Letter from Zanzibar," NL, February 17J, an ideological hiatus had been opening between Zanzibar and its East African neighbors...
...the moderates, unable to displace the radicals who had instigated the coup, were compelled, though reluctantly, to try to hold on until an opportunity presented itself for a realignment of forces...
...President Nyerere's response was vacillating...
...It therefore became central to Nyerere's domestic, as well as to his foreign policy, to seek to destroy or neutralize the menace posed by the island's Leftists...
...and second, because both Zanzibar and Tanganyika had undergone such profound domestic crises in recent months, the time seemed hardly ripe for external decisions of such fundamental import...
...while their Cabinet ministers waited outside...
...The two Presidents met briefly "behind closed doors...
...Throughout East Africa it was felt that Nyerere's indecision suggested perhaps that he commanded less authority than had theretofore been attributed to him...
...that there is something unnatural or inherently wrong about change...
...When the coup brought an African (as opposed to an Arab) government to power in Zanzibar, there was really no fundamental clash of interests between the two countries...
...The situation in Tanganyika, though less unsettling, was also undergoing change...
...The latest, and in some respects the most surprising, development to bestir that Continent is the merger of two independent East African states, Tanganyika and Zanzibar...
...Should the new Union be stabilized, it will represent a successful and peaceful counter-revolution against the apparent "Communization" of Zanzibar—in effect, an unusual approach to East Africa's "Cuban problem...
...Other Soviet-, Cuban-, or Chinese-trained organizers filled key governmental posts...
...This will probably serve to dilute their influence...
...His reputation suffered as a result of the weeklong Army mutinies, and he has been under increasing pressure from more radical segments of TANU ever since...
...Among them were Karume, who became First Vice President (he still retains his old title of President of Zanzibar), and Babu, who will be in the new Directorate of Planning...
...We tend to forget the history of Europe's own fluid national borders, altered by war, dynastic alliance and marriage, diplomatic negotiation, intimidation and external intervention...
...Under the British colonial administration, the four East African territories of Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar were functionally coordinated...
...As a single nation-state with its capital in Dar-es-Salaam, the Communist embassies in Zanzibar Town will be closed, and their work will be taken over by diplomats in Dar...
...The Tanganyika-Zanzibar merger can thus be viewed as a first step toward a larger regional federation...
...Foreign policies are in large measure the offspring of domestic politics...
...Negotiations were facilitated by the absence of Babu, who had been away from Zanzibar most of the month, first to the Conference on World Trade in Geneva, and then to Indonesia and Pakistan on a goodwill and trade mission...
...By week's end, both Tanganyika's Parliament and the Zanzibar Revolutionary Council ratified the Articles of Union, and on April 27 the instruments of ratification were exchanged in Dar...
...paradoxically, there are already some signs that merger could become a barrier toward regional unity, for as the East African Standard commented: "If the union...
...This development is surprising for at least two reasons: first, because of the apparent ideological variance between the two countries...
...Sheikh Abdul Rahman Mohammed, known as Babu (Minister of External Affairs and Defense), was trained in Peking and had been the Zanzibar representative of Hsinhua, the Chinese Communist press agency...
...Meanwhile, Nyerere and Karume will appoint a commission to make proposals for a Republican constitution, and within a year, the constituent assembly will meet to consider the commission's proposals...
...Zanzibar will have a separate executive and legislature to handle purely domestic affairs, but Parliament and the Executive of the United Republic reserve the right to deal with national matters —external affairs, defense, immigration, external trade, customs, excise duties, harbors, emergency powers, police, civil aviation, posts and telegraph, public service, citizenship and taxes...
...The Union also attests to the appeal of the idea of unity in East Africa...
...In January, troops of the First Battalion of the Tanganyika Rifles had mutinied, expelled their European officers, and marched into Dar-es-Salaam demanding higher pay and complete Africanization of the Armed Forces...
...If bilateral union can lead on quickly to quadripartite federation, it will be wholly welcome...
...By the first week in April, however, Nyerere had become increasingly frustrated with Karume's inability to retard or arrest Zanzibar's "Communization," and he threatened to remove the policemen...
...The laws of each country will remain in force in their separate territories, but are subject to amendments and provisions which may be found desirable...
...Nyerere, as President, is empowered to repeal any Zanzibar law conflicting with areas of responsibility assigned to the federal government...
...Equally disturbing were the policies of the revolutionary government, which served to reinforce Western fears...
...But...
...Tanganyika's leadership is justifiably characterized as peaceful, friendly to the West though non-aligned, reasonable though sufficiently progressive to gain mass support throughout the country—in short, a force for stability in East Africa...
...Domestic considerations also prompted Karume to agree to the Union...
...The Articles of Union appear to assure Tanganyikan domination...
...About 450 miles inland at Tabora the Second Battalion engineered a similar uprising...
...In Zanzibar, after the banishment of John Okello, the self-styled "Field Marshall" of the revolutionary forces, two centers of power came to share authority in an uneasy alliance...
...After each became independent, the dream of an East African federation was still very much alive, but for one reason or another, plans for federation have not yet materialized...
...A merger along the lines worked out with Karume would serve such a purpose...
...Events leading up to the formal union are still clouded in secrecy...
Vol. 47 • May 1964 • No. 11
