Above and below is Anne M Chappel during her heydays.
My parents, Mervyn and Audrey Smithyman, moved to Tanganyika in 1946 after the war to work in the British Colonial Administration. My father had been a lieutenant-colonel in the Kings African Rifles. He came from Nyasaland (Malawi) and spoke Chinyanja so was able to study and become fluent in KiSwahili. My mother was a teacher of Geography and French.
I was born in Mwanza on Lake Victoria, my father’s first post. Our family moved around Tanganyika with various political postings: Bukoba, Biharamulo, Same, Dar-es-Salaam, Mbeya and finally, in 1956, Zanzibar.
Our first 6 months were spent in Pemba where my father was the District Commissioner. In my father’s memoirs he remembered how wonderful it was to live in Chake Chake. As the British representative he attended Sir Hassan bin Ali Mahadhy’s wedding. Then we moved to Stone Town where my father was initially Assistant Provincial Commissioner and in charge of the 1958 population census.
We lived in Mazizini before moving to Kikwajuni and our final years were spent in the house in Shangani on the shore near the High Court. Zanzibar was a special place for children. My brother and I had bicycles and we wandered around with great freedom. We found that Zanzibaris were a generous, happy people of great diversity and tolerance.
I learnt to swim in those beautiful clear seas and spent happy hours jumping off the steps in front of Mambo Msiige at high tide. We learnt to sail in Zanzibar harbour and sailed out to the sandbanks and Prison Island. Looking back we can appreciate how special it was. The only problem, for us children, was being sent away to boarding school.
My brother, Michael, became a fine cricketer and used to play with the English Cricket Club at Mnazi Moja by the sea. I remember the fathers and sons matches they played there. Michael went on to play for South African Schools, SA University and Natal ‘A’.
He toured the UK with the SA Schoolboys that included Mike Proctor and Barry Richards; SA Universities and Colin Wesley’s team, In England he played at Lord’s Cricket Ground against an invitation team and caught and bowled Peter May, the English Captain.
My mother taught geography at The Aga Khan School in about 1961/2. My mother believed in the importance of a good education and I understand that she found the school of a very high standard.
As teenagers we loved going to the cinema, the Majestic. We used to buy a wedge of hot peanuts from the venders outside and purchase tickets for upstairs. They were 2 shillings I think. Cheaper seats were downstairs.
I remember standing for the British anthem. We often went to cowboy and indian films and the downstairs audience used to annoy us by clapping for the Red Indians! I knew all the little alleyways of Stone Town. I loved going down Portuguese Alley (Gizenga Street) where dukas were full of local craftsmen.
Main Street had the larger shops filled with worked gold and silver jewelry, ivory and semi-precious stones from India and Ceylon. When the Union Castle ships arrived the prices went up.
My father was deeply involved in the politics of the lead-up to Zanzibar’s independence in 1963. In 1959 he promoted giving Zanzibari women the vote. He was head of the Committee on the Extension of the Franchise to Women. In 1960 he wrote a ‘Report on Development of Local Government in Zanzibar’.
My father was once asked by the Sultan to travel to Latham Island, south of Zanzibar, to raise the Sultan’s red flag over the island, as the sandbank belonged to Zanzibar. My father had great respect for the venerable Sultan Sayyid Khalifa bin Harub.
At first the British plan was to move gradually towards full democracy, but this was the time of the Cold War and there was much agitation in the islands and abroad to grant Uhuru as fast as possible to colonial countries. Much has been written about those contentious times.
The process of political argument developed very acrimoniously in the public sphere. The two main parties, ZNP / ZPPP and the ASP, were poles apart. This time was called the ‘War of Words, War of Stones’, by Prof. J. Glassman. Since support for the opposing sides was split roughly 50:50 the outlook was not promising.
My father was assistant to Sir Hilary Blood, the British Constitutional Commissioner, when he came to Zanzibar to recommend on the final structure of the legislature. Unfortunately Blood insisted on 22 elected seats (8 further seats were appointed at this stage) and the 1961 elections resulted in a tie and widespread violence.
In 1962 Lord Duncan Sandys, British Minister, visited Zanzibar and announced that the British would now allow full representative democracy. The results of the 1963 elections were a surprise: the ZNP coalition won with less than 50% of the vote – quite legitimately as they narrowly won many constituencies.
My father was appointed Permanent Secretary to the new Prime Minister, Mohd. Shamte.
I was not in Zanzibar during the Independence celebrations of December 1963. Prince Phillip arrived to officiate. My parents were involved in all the celebrations. The British Resident, Sir George Mooring, left with the Gordon Highlanders on the aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal.
A new flag was flying over Zanzibar.
But I was home the night of January 12, 1964, the night of Revolution. My father spent hours on the phone trying to get military support from our neighbours (Kenya and Tanganyika) with whom Zanzibar had mutual defence pacts, and from Britain. Zanzibar did not have an army. Sadly all requests were refused. He tried to get arms flown in from Pemba but the airport was overrun.
I was 16 years old and that night I was sent to the top veranda of the house to keep watch for any mobs coming into our garden. The full story of that time is described in my novel, ‘Zanzibar Uhuru’. The women of our house waited offshore in our tiny yacht as dawn broke.
My father said that a silence descended over Stone Town.
When it became apparent all hope was lost without outside help, my father swam out to join us and he went to the Salama steamer in the hope that the whole cabinet would be there to act as a negotiating body with the rebel government. Unhappily, the cabinet did not take my father’s advice and were captured. The Sultan and his family were on the steamer having been persuaded to leave at the last moment.
Young Sultan Jamshid had wanted to stay and fight. My father travelled on the Salama with the Sultan and many others when they were refused entry to Kenya. The British finally arranged safe passage. The resultant massacres in Zanzibar during the mad John Okello’s rampage are a blight on the history of the islands.
To finish our story: Our family moved to South Africa. My mother died at a young age and my father remarried. I went to University in Durban, trained as a teacher, married and had a daughter and a son. When I was 40 there was virtual civil war in South Africa and my second husband and I immigrated to Australia.
Since then I have written a novel about Zanzibar in order to tell the history of the last 50 years. I believe that Zanzibaris suffered greatly during the years after 1964. I have also written the story of my father’s life.
Sadly my father passed away in a residential home in Chester, UK, at the age of 97 in 2008. In his bedside drawer he had a ball of cloves. My father was an African at heart; he was honest and true. He was a cog in the political machine in Zanzibar, where, in difficult times, he did his best.
I realise how blessed I was to grow up in Zanzibar. Not only was it a beautiful place and I feel a deep connection to my days of childhood there, but it has influenced my whole life in many ways.
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