The last couple of days have seen riots on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean. Zanzibar joined with Tanganyika in the 1960s to make Tanzania (get it? TANganyika + ZANzibar = TANZANIA)
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| Oh look! Zanzibar! |
A Muslim cleric, Sheik Farid Hadi, the leader of a campaign for Zanzibar autonomy, went missing. In response, his followers protested, but the protest seems to have been taken over by gangs as an excuse for unrest and looting. More than 50 people have been arrested and one policeman was killed. Police used tear gas yesterday to disperse the crowds, but more long-term damage has been done. The national exams have been postponed, hurting the education system, which is already very poor. Zanzibar gets most of its economy from tourism, but most of the populace still lives in abject poverty.
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| Cleric Sheik Farid Hadi |
Random Kate Thoughts: I went to Zanzibar over a year ago. It is a beautiful island, known as the "Spice Island" for its long years of clove plantations under the Sultan of Oman. I also teach about Zanzibar and was even teaching about the island today, hence my interest in this story. The conflict between Zanzibar and the mainland is much older than this riot, much older than Tanzania's independence even! Starting in 1840, the Sultan of Oman moved his capital (of Oman) to Zanzibar, leading Zanzibar to exert a huge amount of influence on the mainland. It has only been this past century that Zanzibar has started to get overshadowed by mainland Tanzania. The uneasy political balance between the two camps has been going on for some time, but you can see that it is far from over. Hopefully Hadi will be found soon.
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| To make you jealous, here is a sunset picture I took while in Zanzibar |
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