Tanzania: Restiveness in Zanzibar

History

Current tensions date back to January 1964, five weeks after Zanzibar gained independence from Britain, when a violent populist revolt by African residents forced the sultan into exile, killed thousands of Arab and Indian citizens, and declared a "revolutionary" one-party state that the U.S. denounced as "the Cuba of Africa." However, just a few months later, the newly independent states of Tanganyika and Zanzibar announced a merger, becoming the United Republic of Tanzania under a constitution that gave Zanzibar control over its internal affairs and guaranteed that the Zanzibar president was also the union's vice president. For the next two decades, President Julius Nyerere ruled Tanzania as a nonaligned, socialist, one-party state that played a key role in supporting liberation struggles in southern Africa and in challenging the international financial institutions (IFIs). Nyerere viewed the union with Zanzibar as a step toward the dream of African unity, but the alliance remained uneasy, with each side suspecting the other was gaining more. Domestic dissent was limited through state control of the press and "preventive" detention, which imprisoned leaders often without trial; but in contrast to many other African countries, state-sponsored killings were rare--until early 2001.

In 1992, under mounting internal and external pressure, Tanzania moved to become a multiparty democracy. In 1995, in the first national multiparty elections, the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party won easily on the mainland. In Zanzibar, however, it faced a strong challenge by the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) whose members tend to identify themselves as Shirazis, a reference to the island's historic association with Oman. When the CCM presidential candidate was declared the winner, the CUF denounced the elections as rigged, and international observers concurred. CUF, which won seats in parliament, refused to participate in the new government and most countries and the IFIs suspended their foreign aid to the island.

Tensions rose steadily over the next five years amid charges of CCM harassment of CUF activists, including the imprisonment of many of its leaders. In June 1999 CCM and CUF signed a Commonwealth-brokered agreement. Under the accord, CUF agreed to rejoin the Zanzibar government and CCM was required to institute a series of reforms to ensure fair and transparent elections. However, in the run-up to the October 2000 elections, abuses by the police against CUF members rose sharply, according to Amnesty International.

The elections, which resulted in a narrow victory for the CCM's presidential candidate, Amani Karume, were again denounced by international observers and by the CUF, which refused to recognize the results. Protests by the CUF on January 27, 2001 resulted in major violence, especially on the island of Pemba, where at least 24 people (CUF contends it was more than 70) were killed, some 200 arrested, and many were beaten, tortured, and raped by paramilitary police brought in from the mainland, according to Amnesty, which called March 1 for an independent inquiry. The Tanzanian government stripped four prominent leaders of their citizenship, and cracked down on the press. More than two thousand Pembans have fled to Kenya, turning Tanzania, as one Zanzibari educator put it, "from a refugee-receiver into a refugee-producer, like the rest of Africa."

Main Actors

Civic United Front (CUF): opposition party, some of whose militants openly favor secession and the restoration of the sultanate that was overthrown in the 1964 revolution. The mainstream wing of the party has called for new elections under a reformed electoral commission and other reforms agreed to in the Commonwealth-brokered agreement.

Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM): ruling party of Tanzania and Zanzibar. CCM was formed in 1977, as a merger between the Afro Shirazi Party (ASP) on Zanzibar and TANU on the mainland.

Zanzibar Liberation Front (ZLF): a group that in early 2001 threatened Tanzanian embassies in Europe and the United States.

Commonwealth: has acted in the past as a mediator and helped broker a 1999 accord between the parties on reforming the island's electoral system before the election.

Friedrich Ebert Stiftung: prior to the 2002 elections the German Social Democratic Foundation sponsored dialogues between the CCM and the CUF.

Proposed Solutions and Evaluation of Prospects

The political killings and repression, unprecedented since the 1964 Zanzibar revolution, have deeply shocked Tanzanians. Several prominent mainlanders, including Nyerere's widow and the former chief justice, have denounced the government violence and crackdown. In early March, CCM and CUF agreed to form a joint committee to restore calm in the short term and promote the return of some 2,000 refugees from Kenya. The outlook of this initiative remains unclear.

The CUF has demanded new elections under a reformed electoral commission. It also favors amending the constitution in order to establish three separate parliaments--one for the mainland, one for Zanzibar, and one for the Union. Since 1964 only Zanzibar and the Union have had parliaments, a structure similar to the situation in Northern Ireland until its parliament was dissolved 25 years ago.

While donors froze aid to Zanzibar after the 1995 elections to pressure the CCM to compromise with the CUF, they have so far declined to do so in the wake of last year's elections and the violence that took place in January. However, the European Union (EU) has strongly denounced the election and the violence that followed, and has hinted that debt relief and other assistance may be adversely affected by the situation in Zanzibar.

Role of U.S.

The U.S. has played virtually no role in this self-determination conflict, deferring instead to other mediators, notably the Commonwealth and the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The U.S. State Department's annual human rights reports have, however, provided extensive documentation about the problem. After the 2000 elections, the U.S. ambassador angered many Zanzibaris by coming out in support of Karume. However, as the situation deteriorated, the State Department said Washington was "deeply concerned about the failures of the electoral process on Zanzibar" and called on the government to investigate and bring those responsible to justice.