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Escape from Zanzibar: Refugees, Documents, and the Indian Ocean Shipping Regime
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2023
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In January 1964, on the heels of its formal independence from Britain, the East African island of Zanzibar exploded in a violent uprising ousting the Al-Bu Saidi sultan—an Omani by descent—and his primarily “Arab” government. Though early reports of the revolution did not indicate targeted attacks against Arabs, it soon became clear that thousands of Arab-identified residents—settlers—were killed, mostly in rural areas.1 Others, including some families I came to know during my years in interior Oman, described being separated from their families or being captured and taken to detention camps, where they stayed a week or two before being reunited. Some found their way to these camps in search of relatives, shelter, and food.2 Decades later, the chaos and violence of that time was recounted to me with unnerving directness. Eventually, thousands of Arabs were deported or fled—to Kenya, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Muscat and Oman. Muscat, on the coast of Oman, was the seat of the other Al-Bu Saidi sultan—a cousin of the Zanzibar sultan—who had only recently taken control of “Oman proper,” the territory of the Imamate whose ruler was now in exile in Saudi Arabia having been defeated in a war with the Sultan of Muscat. In the meantime, those leaving Zanzibar required ships and documents.
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References
1 Estimates of the number of Arabs killed have varied significantly. At the end of January 1964, British officials were estimating between 400 and 1000, but by April, they estimated that between 5,000 and 6,000 Arabs had been killed. Public Records Office (PRO) DO 185/60 and FO371/178270. For the earliest reports, see DO 185/59. For an excellent account of the experiences of the Zanzibar diaspora, see Nathaniel Mathews, Zanzibar Was a Country (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, forthcoming).
2 For details from the perspective of British officials in contact with the Red Cross, see PRO DO 185/60. According to the file, there were four centers, holding 2,220 detainees. British Red Cross reports detail the four centers that were soon established in Zanzibar town and on Prison Island to which they provided care. Other centers popped up elsewhere on the island. British Red Cross (BRC) RCC/1/12/4/190.
3 Huber, Vaselka, Channeling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond, 1869– 1914 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Hanley, Will, “Papers for Going, Papers for Staying: Identification and Subject Formation in the Eastern Mediterranean,” in A Global Middle East: Mobility, Materiality and Culture in the Modern Age, 1880–1940, eds. Kozma, Liat, Schayegh, Cyrus, and Wishnitzer, Avner (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), 177–200Google Scholar.
5 Khalili, Laleh, Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (London: Verso, 2020)Google Scholar.
6 Zanzibar National Archives (ZNA) AB 26/15.
7 ZNA AK 9/3 and ZNA AB 26/15. Zanzibar was not alone in promulgating new immigration decrees in 1923 and 1924. The United States, for example, instituted its Immigration Act of 1924 affirming a quota system, first introduced in 1921, that cemented the passport system. See also Torpey, John, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.
8 Glassman, Jonathon, War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.
9 PRO DO 185/60. This distinction became particularly important after the first steamer, the Jan van Riebeeck, arrived in Salala in February, as the sultan became frustrated with the fact that “Zanzibari subjects” were on board.
10 PRO FO 371/178270.
11 The ship, named after a seventeenth-century Dutch navigator and founding commander of Dutch fortifications at the Cape of Good Hope, had been plowing the Indian Ocean when it was recruited for the task. The Dutch government, however, was unaware that the ship was carrying these “refugees.” UNHCR Evacuation of Manga Arabs from Zanzibar. 11/1-15/112 (vol. 1).
12 PRO DO 185/59.
13 PRO FO 371/178270. Interestingly, the original cable from the British consul general in Muscat reporting on the sultan's position, noted that the time after which those of Omani origin became Zanzibari was when Zanzibar became a British protectorate, which would be 1890 and not 1860. Accordingly, the date on a subsequent memo summarizing the cable has the original date as 1890, crossed out to 1860. BRC RCC/1/12/4/190
14 The “Winter monsoon” of October to March blows from the northeast toward the southwest, bringing ships from Arabia to East Africa.
15 PRO FO371/178270.
16 One memo from the UNHCR suggested that it was, in fact, the British Foreign Office that had advised the Omani Sultan to screen—and limit—those leaving. UNHCR Evacuation of Manga Arabs out from Zanzibar. 11/1-15/112 (vol. 1).
17 Indeed, by the summer of 1964, it appeared that while the first wave of about 3,500 had departed for Muscat, Salala, and other ports, there were many others (at first, it seemed to be about 1,200 or 1,300, but then maybe 1,900 or 2,113), half of whom were children and many from Pemba, waiting to leave. The Red Cross and UNHCR tried to secure other ships, including the SS Santhia, a ship of the British India Steam Navigation Company and from the Pan-Islamic Steamship Company. UNHCR Evacuation of Manga Arabs out from Zanzibar. 11/1- 15/112 (vol. 1).
18 By August 1964, the UNHCR, recognizing that the remaining Arabs in Zanzibar were not technically refugees, determined that the high commissioner would act as an “intermediary of good will” for humanitarian reasons and endeavor with good prospects to raise the cost of transport through voluntary agencies and interested governments. UNHCR Evacuation of Manga Arabs out from Zanzibar. 11/1-15/112 (vol. 1). See also, BRC RCC/1/12/4/190 for accounts of negotiations. By May 1965, the Muscat government insisted on the end of the emergency period and would no longer accept emergency documentation issued in Zanzibar and cleared in Muscat.
19 UNHCR Evacuation of Manga Arabs out from Zanzibar. 11/1-15/112 (vol. 1).
20 Noora Lori, Offshore Citizens: Permanent Temporary Status in the Gulf (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019); and Noora Lori and Yoana Kuzmova, “Who Counts as ‘People of the Gulf’? Disputes over the Arab Status of Zanzabaris in the UAE,” POMEPS (Project on Middle East Political Science, 2021), https://pomeps.org/who-counts-as-people-of-the-gulf-disputes-over-the-arab-status-of-zanzibaris-in-the-uae.
21 The petitioners also stated that “50% of refugees [were] fit for nursing homes” and that, as cultivators and shopkeepers in Zanzibar, they could not pursue work in Dubai. Similarly, the petitioners complained, hundreds of their children needed schooling and the standards in Dubai were not nearly as rigorous as those in Zanzibar. Those with secondary education wanted to attend university; PRO FO 371/179781.
22 A cable from Athens to the UNHCR in September 1967 mentions four destitute “Zanzibaris” with Imamate passports. UNHCR Refugees from Zanzibar—General (1967-1971). 11/2/10-100.GEN.ZAN[a].
23 UNHCR Refugees from Zanzibar in Saudi Arabia. 11/1-1/0/SAU/ZAN.