Zanzibar: The Cuckoo Coup

An air of weird unreality hung over the sleepy, sun-baked capital of the world’s newest “people’s republic.” Cuban-trained “freedom fighters” sporting Fidelista beards and berets stalked the narrow twisting streets. Carloads of whooping blacks careered through the Arab and Indian quarters, looting and shooting. Radios blared ominous messages of doom and death. From the hood of one car dangled a grisly trophy: the testicles of a murdered Arab.

The coup that last week toppled Zanzibar’s month-old government had its roots in racial conflict. Africans outnumber Arabs 5 to 1 on the tiny twin islands of Zanzibar and Pemba (pop. 310,000). In last year’s elections, the two Arab parties won control of the government although the black Afro-Shirazi Party polled 54% of the vote. Now the blacks exercised their plurality in a more direct manner. Before the week was out, more than 500 Zanzibaris were dead, and the new government—packed with leftists loyal to Peking and Havana—threatened to make once-somnolent pro-Western Zanzibar the Cuba of the Indian Ocean.

Bows & Arrows. The transition was swift and bloody. Led by a fanatical Uganda-born and Cuban-trained “field marshal” named John Okello, 27, a ragtag, 600-man army carrying pangas, bows and arrows raided two police armories. Then the rebels swept into Zanzibar Town before dawn, passing out guns to Afro-Shirazis and members of the outlawed Red Chinese-orientated Umma Party. In less than twelve hours, the Arab government of Sultan Seyyid Jamshid bin Abdulla had fallen, its ministers were in jail, and the 34-year-old sultan himself was hurrying toward asylum in Tanganyika.

Okello quickly took to the radio, boasting and threatening like a mad witch doctor. “It is I, the field marshal, who speaks,” he boomed, posturing in his specially designed black uniform. “The power behind me is 999,999,000. I shall take severe measures, 88 times more severe than my predecessors. Anyone looting even a bar of soap will be liable to jail for no less than eight years. I can make 100 grenades in an hour.”

As he babbled on, quieter but more dangerous men were busy. Back from the mainland, where they had gone in case the coup failed, rushed the people who would lead “the people”: Afro-Shirazi Party Boss Abeid Karume and Umma’s Abdul Rahman Mohammed, better known as “Babu” (Swahili for father). Karume, a burly, bull-necked labor leader who leans to Moscow (and therefore may be the group’s moderate), became President, while Babu, whose experience in foreign affairs includes a recent trip to Peking, was named Foreign Minister. Vice President is Kassim Hanga, a bitter Zanzibari with a Russian wife, a Moscow education, and a violent hatred of the U.S. Last November, when the Parliament moved to express formal regret over President Kennedy’s death, Hanga walked out in protest. Though Strongman Okello bellowed that he was the power behind the new government, it was Babu & Co. who appeared as the real threat.

Rage & Recognition. Worried for the safety of American citizens on the is land, U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Frederick Picard quickly evacuated the Project Mercury Space Tracking Station outside Zanzibar Town and sent dozens of official personnel and dependents off to Tanganyika on a U.S. destroyer. But four American newsmen (including TIME’S William Smith) arrived in Zanzibar to provide a target for the government’s wrath. The reporters sailed in on an Arab dhow and began asking questions. Karume, who wanted no visitors, had them placed under house arrest in the Zanzibar Hotel. When Picard intervened, Karume stormed into the hotel lounge and exploded. “Why are you interfering in our internal affairs?” he raged. “Why, why, why? Why did you evacuate your people without informing us? Why will you not recognize us?” He ordered Picard arrested, and armed thugs marched the diplomat off at gunpoint. Next day, Picard and the journalists were ordered off the island, and rigid censorship was imposed on the reporters who remained.

Recognition of the new regime poured in from Communist countries: North Korea, Cuba, Red China, the Soviet Union. Okello, taking time out from his broadcasting to thank Moscow for its recognition, messaged Nikita Khrushchev his agreement that capitalism should be buried. On Zanzibar at least, declared Okello, “the grave is ready.”