Word: zanzibar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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After the recent coup in Zanzibar, TIME's East Africa Correspondent Bill Smith tried in vain to get to the scene by plane, finally chartered a dhow to take him the 23 miles from Tanganyika to the embattled island. On arrival, Smith had barely begun to interview a U.S. official when Zanzibar police seized his notes and placed him and several other Western journalists under detention. The charges included sending "biased" stories-although Reporter Smith had not yet cabled a word. After almost 24 hours and some browbeating, he was released and placed aboard a British vessel...
...chain of army mutinies that rocked East Africa like an earthquake had its epicenter in Zanzibar, where bloody revolution sent shock waves rumbling up and down the Great Rift. Before the aftershocks subsided, the British Commonwealth governments of Tanganyika, Uganda and Kenya had been severely shaken...
...were dead, whole blocks of the Arab and Indian quarters lay in ruins, and President Julius Nyerere's government-once considered East Africa's most stable-had been seriously discountenanced. The mutiny was made possible by Nyerere's decision to send 300 crack Tanganyikan cops to Zanzibar to help restore order there. No sooner had they left than the 1,600 African enlisted men of the Tanganyika Rifles rose with machine guns, mortars and grenades, arrested their British officers and noncoms, then defied their commander in chief to do something about...
...uneasy quiet settled over East Africa, eyes turned back to the tiny island 22½ miles off the coast where the region's troubles had all begun two weeks ago. Though there appeared to be no active, political connection between the mainland mutinies and Zanzibar's new leftist regime, it seemed that the island violence had flashed like chain lightning across the Zanzibar Channel. "It's like prison riots," said an experienced U.S. official. "When one explodes, the others begin...
Though Washington and London withheld recognition, many officials clung to the hope that Zanzibar would not in fact turn out to be another Cuba. They insisted that President Abeid Karume was a determined African nationalist, not a Communist. And though U.S. intelligence sources were certain "Field Marshal" John Okello had been trained in Cuba, it was becoming increasingly clear that he wielded little power in the new government. Last week Okello was back at his broadcasting chores, warning civilians to lay down their guns. "Otherwise," he bellowed in his own arresting argot, "you will see how we hang people...