Zanzibar crisis: Economic, political impact versus future of Tanzania

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The aid, which doesn’t have to be serviced, was to boost the country’s electrification project.

The new Karume-led government was desperate for legitimacy and he therefore sought recognition from world powers mainly the US and the UK. However hard he tried and despite the US having clear interests in the Isles in terms of the Satellite Tracking Station, Western powers refused to recognise the new government. The Communist countries, on the other hand, jumped at the opportunity and not only recognized the new government but some of them [East Germany] opened full-fledged embassies, and others [China, Russia] started dishing out financial and military aid and sending technicians, doctors and army consultants to Zanzibar. In fact the veritable Chinese inroads to Tanzania started through Zanzibar after the revolution. This, coupled, with the forced closure of the American embassy and Satellite Tracking station made Zanzibar a perfect cold-war battle field.

Karume’s anxiety that the West cold collude with the Sultan or some other elements for a counter-coup and the sense of failure that domestic upheavals could go out of hand in the Isles might have pushed him towards the union. In fact in a book entitled Pan-Africanism or Pragmatism? Lessons of Tanganyika-Zanzibar Union Prof Issa Shivji details how Americans, out of fear that Zanzibar could become the “Cuba of Africa”, had thought of possibilities of removing the new government. Being politically unsophisticated and largely uneducated President Karume depended on the advice of other main players such as Babu. Not only did these push Karume towards the communist sphere of influence, they were also against the Union, or at least against the immediate unification with Tanganyika, observers say.

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Zanzibar crisis: Economic, political impact versus future of Tanzania

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