TANZANIA-POLITICS: No End in Sight to Zanzibari Crisis

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

ARUSHA, Tanzania, Jan 26 1998 (IPS) - A political crisis has lingered on in the Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar since elections there in 1995 but it was shunned by experts who attended a conference on conflict resolution in this Tanzanian resort town.

“I am surprised that the crisis in Zanzibar was not raised at the workshop,” former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere said after the Jan. 21-23 conference, co-organised by a foundation he heads in conjunction with the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

As the some 100 experts shared ideas on averting war and making peace in Africa, 17 members of the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) in the Tanzanian archipelago were winding up a hunger strike they began on Jan. 19 in protest against their continued detention and what they saw as the unsatisfactory handling of their case by the state.

The detainees, picked up early this month, suspended their hunger strike on Friday, but warned that they would resume it if the authorities in Zanzibar refused to speed up the processing of their case.

Zanzibar, which comprises two main islands, Unguja and Pemba, is a self-governing territory. Together with mainland Tanganyika, it forms the republic of Tanzania.

The crisis in the archipelago began when the CUF, whose stronghold is in the smaller of the two islands, Pemba, refused to recognise the government of President Salmin Amour, accusing it of rigging the 1995 presidential election, won by the incumbent by 0.4 percent of the votes. The CUF continues to demand Amour’s resignation.

Nyerere said it had become a fashion for African leaders to ignore a potential political crisis as the one in Zanzibar. “There is a problem in Zanzibar which needs to be addressed urgently,” he said. “Whenever you ask Salmin (Amour) he will say that there is no problem.”

Neither Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa’s one-hour speech at the conference, nor that of his Foreign Minister, Jakaya Kikwete, referred to the Zanzibari crisis. They see it as an internal problem that should be resolved by the people of Zanzibar, which used to be a separate British protectorate and merged with Tanganyika four months after gaining independence in December 1963.

However, Nyerere disagrees. “If something goes wrong, the union will be severely affected,” he said.

Zanzibar’s omission was all the more significant given the thrust of last week’s conference: the meeting “was organised to draw lessons from experiences in Africa in the field of conflict prevention, management and resolution and act as a forum for the exchange of ideas”, according to outgoing UNDP resident representative in Tanzania, Victor Anjelo.

The UNDP official, who left Tanzania on Sunday, said he hoped that “the UN system will use the conclusions of this workshop as an important input in future interventions”.

Anjelo himself has been a leading advocate of dialogue in Zanzibar. A Tanzanian newspaper recently quoted him as saying that Zanzibar’s belligerents should be encouraged to talk.

While the conflict-resolution experts discussed other issues on the Tanzanian mainland last week, Zanzibari Attorney-general Ally Mohammed Omar was holding meetings with the detainees and he was instrumental in getting them to end their hunger strike.

CUF National Chairman Musobi Mageni told journalists in Zanzibar over the weekend that Omar had assured CUF that the detainees would be given a “fair and speedy trial”.

The crisis has slowly been attracting international attention, including that of the Commonwealth and the European Union.

The Commonwealth offered to mediate but both the CUF and the Zanzibari government rejected the offer two weeks ago.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Chief Emeka Anyaoku had stressed that measures should be taken to avert civil strife on Pemba and Unguja, which were rocked by protests for weeks after the 1995 election. He had also suggested the appointment of five CUF members to cabinet posts as a gesture of reconciliation, but this was rejected by the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi.

On Jan. 10, a European Union delegation held talks with Kikwete on the crackdown against CUF members. The talks followed a demonstration by about 60 Zanzibaris who converged on the Tanzanian embassy in London to press for Mkapa to take action.