John Okello
This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2014) |
John Okello | |
---|---|
Born | 26 October 1937 Uganda Protectorate |
Died | 1971 (aged 33–34) |
John Gideon Okello (26 October 1937 – c. 1971) was a Ugandan revolutionary and the leader of the Zanzibar Revolution in 1964. This revolution overthrew Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah and led to the proclamation of Zanzibar as a republic.[1]
Biography
Youth
Little is known of Okello's youth: he was born in
Revolutionary
Okello left for Zanzibar in 1963, where he contacted the leaders of the Afro-Shirazi Youth League, the youth organisation of the Afro-Shirazi Party. The Youth League strove for a revolution in order to break the power of the Arabs. On Zanzibar, Okello was also a member of the Painters Union, being a house painter, which gave a regular salary and allowed him to move around the island, supposedly giving speeches at union branches, but in reality to organize a revolution to overthrow the Sultan.[7] In his free time, he built up a small army of determined African nationalists. This army was required to hold themselves to the strict rules of Okello: sexual abstinence, no raw meat, and no alcohol.[7]
The highly religious Okello was convinced he had been given orders in his dreams by God to break the powerful position of the Arabs and to found a revolutionary state on Zanzibar and Pemba. Okello also said that he received orders from God, when still in Uganda, by how he observed the position of stones in a stream. On the night before the revolution, Okello gave his men the order to kill all Arabs between 18 and 25 years of age, to spare pregnant and elderly women, and not to rape virgins.[7]
Uprising
On 12 January 1964, with popular support from the island's native African majority, Okello and his men fought their way to the capital of Zanzibar, Stone Town, where the Sultan lived. Even though they were poorly armed, Okello and his men surprised the police force of Zanzibar and they took power.[8]
During a speech on radio, Okello dubbed himself the "
The coup led to the little-known bloodbath of between 2,000 and 4,000 ethnic Arabs, South Asians and Comorians,[11][12] whose families had been living in Zanzibar for centuries, between 18 and 20 January.[7] In addition to the murders, followers of Okello carried out thousands of rapes and destroyed property and homes.[13] Within a few weeks, a fifth of the population had died or fled.[14]
Ousting
Okello created a Revolutionary Council and was named the leader of the
By 3 February Zanzibar was finally returning to normality and Karume had been accepted, almost unquestioningly, as its president.[17] Okello formed a paramilitary unit, known as the Freedom Military Force (FMF), from his own supporters which is known to have patrolled the streets and become involved with looting.[18][19] In addition to Okello's violent rhetoric, his thick and dialectic English pronunciations and Lango tribal English accent—typical of Lango from Northern Uganda—and his Christian beliefs, alienated many in the largely moderate, Zanzibar and Muslim ASP.[20] By March many of his FMF had been disarmed by Karume's supporters and an Umma Party militia.[19][20] Okello was denied access to the country when he tried to return from a trip to the mainland, and was deported to Tanganyika, and then to Kenya before returning, destitute, to his native Uganda.[20] He was officially removed from his post as Field Marshal on 11 March.[21]
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) was formed by the government in April and completed the disarmament of Okello's remaining FMF troops.[20] On 26 April, Karume announced that he had negotiated to enter into a union with Tanganyika to form the new country of Tanzania.[22] Karume's reason for doing so may have been to prevent the radicals in the Umma Party from taking over the country or to reduce the possibility of increasing communist influence in East Africa.[22][23] Despite this, many of the Umma Party's socialist policies on health, education and social welfare were adopted by the government.[24]
Speculations on death
Okello then stayed in Kenya, in
Cultural references to Okello
The black slave played by Edward Roland in Werner Herzog's 1972 film Aguirre, the Wrath of God is named "Okello". In his commentary to the DVD version of the film, Herzog also says that the character of Aguirre himself was partly modelled on John Okello, with whom the director had been in contact. (Okello had wanted Herzog to translate a book he had written.) Herzog explains: "I chose the name Okello because I owe his craze, his hysteria, his atrocious fantasies quite a bit for this film".[26]
Notes
- OCLC 49395604.
- ^ "British East Africa". Retrieved 7 October 2022.
- ^ a b Petterson 2002, p. 25.
- ^ a b c Petterson 2002, p. 26.
- ^ Petterson 2002, p. 11.
- JSTOR 2934114.
- ^ a b c d Petterson 2002, p. 27.
- ^ Speller 2007, p. 6.
- ^ Mascaro, Antonio (4 June 2017). "Zanzibar Revolution : The Biggest Massacre in East African History". KenyaTalk. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
- ^ "Field Marshal John Okello, the forgotten hero". Daily Monitor. 9 January 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
- ^ Conley, Robert (19 January 1964), "Nationalism Is Viewed as Camouflage for Reds", The New York Times, p. 1
- ^ "Slaughter in Zanzibar of Asians, Arabs Told", Los Angeles Times, p. 4, 20 January 1964, archived from the original on 16 January 2009, retrieved 16 April 2009
- ^ Petterson 2002, p. 65.
- ISBN 9780313323843
- ^ Parsons 2003, p. 107
- ^ Speller 2007, p. 7.
- ^ "Zanzibar Quiet, With New Regime Firmly Seated". The New York Times. 4 February 1964. p. 9.
- ^ Speller 2007, p. 15.
- ^ a b Sheriff & Ferguson 1991, p. 242
- ^ a b c d Speller 2007, p. 17.
- ^ Conley, Robert (12 March 1964). "Zanzibar Regime Expels Okello". The New York Times. p. 11.
- ^ a b Conley, Robert (27 April 1964). "Tanganyika gets new rule today". The New York Times. p. 11.
- ^ Speller 2007, p. 19
- ^ Sheriff & Ferguson 1991, p. 241.
- ^ Petterson 2002, p. 177.
- ^ DVD commentary to Aguirre, Wrath of God (Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2004), track 13.
References
- Bakari, Mohammed Ali (2001), The Democratisation Process in Zanzibar, GIGA-Hamburg, ISBN 3-928049-71-2.
- Clayton, Anthony (1999), Frontiersmen:Warfare in Africa since 1950, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 1-85728-525-5.
- Kalley, Jacqueline Audrey; Schoeman, Elna; Andor, Lydia Eve (1999), Southern African Political History, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0-313-30247-2.
- Okello, John (1967), Revolution in Zanzibar, Nairobi: East African Publishing House.
- Parsons, Timothy (2003), The 1964 Army Mutinies and the Making of Modern East Africa, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0-325-07068-7.
- Petterson, Don (2002), Revolution In Zanzibar: An American's Cold War Tale, New York: Basic Books, ISBN 0813339499.
- Plekhanov, Sergey (2004), A Reformer on the Throne: Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Al Said, Trident Press Ltd, ISBN 1-900724-70-7.
- Sheriff, Abdul; Ferguson, Ed (1991), Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule, ISBN 0-85255-080-4.
- Shillington, Kevin (2005), Encyclopedia of African History, CRC Press, ISBN 1-57958-245-1.
- Speller, Ian (2007), "An African Cuba? Britain and the Zanzibar Revolution, 1964", The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 35 (2): 283–302, S2CID 159656717– via Taylor & Francis Online