Consciousness, Motivation and Violence: Review of War of Words, War of Stones

Jonathon Glassman. War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011.

PART 1: Scholars of mass violence, ethnic cleansing and genocide frequently debate the precise nature of the links between popular violence and an elite propaganda. Mass violence, they increasingly argue, is not the product of primordial hatred activated in a Hobbesian environment of weak social inhibitions. Yet this thesis has come to have something of the air of a cliché; provoking an enormous literature that is essentially a reaction against the "uncontrollable passions" thesis. Such literature argues that such violence was really about "something else", such as control over resources or political power.
In his new ambitious new book on racial violence in colonial Zanzibar, Jonathon Glassman argues that neither approach adequately captures the complexity of violence in the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution and the events leading up to it. In 1964, a group of armed Africans overthrew the Sultan of Zanzibar and purged his supporters in the rival political party. They then embarked on the massacre and intimidation of Arabs; some figures cite as many as 5,000 Arabs were killed in the months following. As in other cases, reports of violence were immediately contested—revolutionaries naturally denied the massacres, while exiles painted a gruesome picture of anti-Arab (and anti-Indian) pogroms.
In Zanzibar, Glassman argues, violence was the product of dueling discourses of civilization and barbarism from groups of "Africans" and "Arabs." Each group shaped competing approaches to the island's history and identity. In his introduction, Glassman traces the development of these identities through the history of Zanzibar, beginning with the founding of the Zanzibar Sultanate in the mid-nineteenth century, when it fell under the rule of the Busaidi family from Muscat, Oman. The Busaidi sultans expanded Zanzibar's wealth through usage of Indian merchant credit and an intense plantation slavery system built around clove production. British-imposed abolition soon destroyed the productivity of this system, and slaves and masters had to re-negotiate relationships of labor through tenancy and squatting. British colonial administrators sought to control and rationalize these relations, and they steadily increased their influence in Zanzibar until the establishment of a formal protectorate in 1890. British administrators had seen Zanzibar as an "Arab state" before the protectorate, and afterwards they continued to rule with (and often for) the Arab sultan as if Arabs were the natural ruling elite of the island.
In the half-century leading up to Zanzibar's first common roll election in 1957, British administrators nurtured a secular intelligentsia of (mostly) elite Arabs, who they inculcated thoroughly with British notions of civilizational nationalism. These Arabs served important roles as middlemen in the colonial bureaucracy. Yet they were no parrots of their would-be teachers; these elites also drew on Islamic modernism and pan-Arabism to advocate (initially) for the Arabs as the natural rulers of Zanzibar, and to mobilize Arabs (and eventually all Zanzibari citizens) against colonialism. Their vision of Zanzibari nationalism was broad and inclusive, but rested on specific values (like allegiance to the sultan) and particular exclusions. All "true" citizens were welcome under the inclusive umbrella of ustaarabu, (a Kiswahili word meaning "civilization") but such logic often criminalized mainlanders and encouraged Arab cultural chauvinism. Politically, the National Party of the Sultan's Subjects (Hizbu or ZNP) represented this ideological position.
In N'gambo, the African neighborhood east of the elite streets of Zanzibar's Stone Town, a vibrant post-bellum African culture nurtured its own intellectual vision of Zanzibar's future. This nationalist vision relied heavily on metaphors of blood and race. Africans, it argued, had been victims of Arab imperialism, and it was only by uniting with each other on the basis of skin color and shared oppression that Africans could overcome Arab hegemony. This vision came to be represented by the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), an outgrowth of a fusion of member of the town's African and Shirazi associations. The ASP was a complex mixture of former slaves, mainland migrants, and the indigenous Shirazi who resented Arab political dominance. Despite their links, those self-identified as Shirazi often faced criticism from the "Africans" that they were futilely trying to be "Asiatic." Instead of adopting an Arabocentric identity, the ASP argued, Africans ought to rediscover and reclaim their "tribal" ancestry. The Arabs were just as colonial as the British, the ASP claimed, but at least the British had abolished slavery. The ASP in effect, "racialized" the memory of slavery. Where the ZNP saw a shifting relationship between patron and client, the ASP saw evidence of pernicious racial oppression. This issue between the two proved to be one of the most contentious points dividing the two parties in the period known as the "Time of Politics", 1957-1963.

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Darfur's Skeleton on DVD

One of the best documentaries about the Darfur conflict, Darfur's Skeleton moves beyond all the 'genocide' talk of 'experts' to get to the people themselves and what they are saying about the situation. Darfur's Skeleton avoids the racist 'Arab vs. African' narrative to probe into the envirornmental causes of the crisis. Directed by Haj Hisham Omar, this documentary is not to be missed.
Order Here

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Videos on Swahili Culture and Civilization

Listen to what Mark Horton has to say, about how the British tried to make the history of the Swahili an 'Arab' history.




Finally, Basil Davidson on the Swahili City States:

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The Black Sidis of Gujarat

full article here

The Black Sidis of Gujarat are a tribal Sufi community of East African origin which came to India eight centuries ago and made Gujarat their home. They carried with them their exceptionally rich musical tradition and kept it alive and flourishing through the generations, unknown to the rest of the world. Their history is rooted in the slave trade of the 13th century and beyond, when Arab and later European slave traders systematically captured thousands of African men, women and children and took them across the seas for sale to the highest bidders. Many Sidi arrived in India as slaves to the Maharajas and Nawabs of the day, whilst others came as merchants, navigators, sailors and slave kings, settling in Gujarat. Their Nubian features attracted the Arab slave traders because of their huge demand in many Indian households as trusted servants and status symbols. That remains true in the Parsi community and several Sidi royal family lineages also continue to thrive to this day in India.

A traditional occupation of African-Indian Sufis in Gujarat has been to perform sacred music and dance as wandering faqirs, singing songs to their black Sufi saint, Bava Gor. Sidi men and women perform sacred music and dance during rituals in the shrines to Bava Gor, and have lived on accepting alms for touring these devotional genres from villages to shrines for centuries. The Sidis are the most musically inclined, who recognise music as a tool for becoming closer to God. Many Sidis also perform as muezzins as they feel closely related to Hazrat Bilal, a black African man who was the first person chosen by Prophet Mohammed to recite adhan (call to prayer). Over time, the Sidis' native African music styles, melodic and rhythmic structures, lyrics and musical instruments mingled with local influences in Gujarat to form this unique and symbolic representation of African-Indian ness.

Sidi Goma perform in a group of twelve: four lead musicians (drummers/singers) and eight dancers. The program presents an overview of Sidi ritual performance, from the traditional muezzin call to prayer to a staged ritual performance. It centres around a danced zikr (remembrance), consisting of joyful, satirical praise dances to their Saint, who is attributed with giving them the joy they express in their dances. Intoxicating drum patterns that "speak" the zikr prayers in rhythm support the dancers who perform virtuosic feats of agility and strength, gradually reaching an ecstatic climax. While the music gradually gets more rapid and excited, the dances unfold with constantly evolving individual and small-group acts of animal imitations, climaxing in a coconut-breaking feat. The programme features solos on the malunga, an instrument resembling the Brazilian berimbau, as well as prayer calls and seated ritual songs (baithi, dhamal andqawwali). Included in the show is a certain type of circle dance, with people coming into the centre to perform more exhibitionistic dancing, indicative of the slave dances of Zanzibar.

The Sidi speak word perfect Hindi and Gujarati, but have remained an oppressed class in India. Because they are black, from Africa, and Muslim, this has kept them at a lower socio-economic and educational level, but recently their situation is finally beginning to change for the better. Yunus Babu Sidi, one of the group's leaders speaking in a recent interview with ethnomusicology professor Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy in UK's fROOTS magazine, says:

"The general population in India think of us as Africans, although we are Indians, pure and proper and Swahili is the language of our forefathers and we should not forget it. I am the only one learning Swahili in the group, so I can teach my fellow brothers and sisters in the future. We use the Swahili language in some of the songs during our performances, but we don't know the true meanings behind these words. If someone asks me what have you sung, I don't have an answer for them and that becomes a problem for me, because this issue is not just about the performance but it lies in the roots of our culture… All I know is I come from Africa, and I would like nothing better than to sit around with my Sidi brothers and sisters one day and have a conversation with them in Kiswahili....

More information can be found at http://www.everyculture.com/South-Asia/Sidi.html

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The African Presence in Oman: Research Questions

My research looks at the influence of Swahili culture on Oman. This research is extremely relevant at the present time. The Arab/African dichotomy has been the subject of extensive media coverage due to the conflict in Darfur. Unsurprisingly, the media focuses only on conflict, reducing a complex historically-negotiated relationship to an ugly racial divide. The history of Oman offers another example of extensive cultural interchange between Arabs and Africans and may help shed light on questions of how intermarriage and migration complicate the simplistic Arab/African dichotomy. It also may shed light on questions of power vis-à-vis family identity.
There are various groups of people who all could be considered African, in one way or another, but who may identify as Arab, Swahili, or simply Omani. Africans in Oman have diverse origins: some come directly from East Africa for employment, while others have someone (usually a mother, grandmother, or great-grandmother) from East Africa. Still others are the descendants of Africans brought by Omani slave traders until the late nineteenth century.

My research starts from the premise that the culture that became Omani—primarily coastal Arabs of the southeast peninsula—had its origins in maritime pursuits and connections with the larger Indian Ocean world. For example, Oman in the nineteenth century encompassed diverse groups of people-- Indian traders who made up the core of Muscat’s overseas financial empire, Baluchi mercenaries, Swahili Arabs like Tippu Tip, and indigenous Zanzibaris.
Those I refer to as Swahili Arabs migrated to the Swahili coast in large numbers beginning in the early 18th century and continued until the end of the nineteenth century. There were two major waves of migration—early 18th century, after the overthrow of the Portuguese, and mid-nineteenth century, with Sultan Seyyid Said’s move to Zanzibar.

This migration gave rise to a distinct Omani influence on the coastal culture of East Africa. Tippu Tip’s family was one example of the Swahilized Arabs who traded and intermarried in Mombasa, Zanzibar, Tanga, Bagamoyo, and other city-states of the mrima.

I am most interested in contrasting the community of Swahili Arabs with their fellow Omanis. This means tracing the history of each community, their mother tongues (Arabic vs. Swahili) and the ways in which they constitute themselves as individuals and social groups. Do all now consider themselves ‘just’ Omani? What religious and cultural differences separated Zanzibari/Swahili Omanis from other Arab Omanis? Is there a social stigma in Oman in being from Zanzibar? What kind of economic differences are there between the two groups What aspects of culture in Oman can be said to have an African origin? Which nisbas are most associated with migration to East Africa?

One way I hope to answer these questions is through an individual who in many ways straddles these divides. Hamed bin Muhammed el-Murjebi, the most famous of the nineteenth century Swahili ivory-traders, was the great grandson of an African woman and an Arab migrant trader from Oman. The first part of my research is directed towards finding relatives of Hamed bin Muhammed el-Murjebi (Tippu Tip) and interviewing them, as well as tracing any documents related to Hamed bin Muhammed’s life and family.
Arab/African Intermarriage

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Sudanese: 'What Arab-African rift?'

While the World sees only Arab-African conflict in Darfur, pockets of amity thrive unnoticed.
Christian Science Monitor
by Heba Aly
Dongola, Sudan - Ask Abbas Adam Ibrahim whether he is Arab or African, and he does not quite know how to respond. "Both," the Sudanese man says, after slight hesitation.

Mr. Adam comes from the Fur tribe, of Darfur – commonly understood to be an African tribe, under persecution by Sudan's Arab-dominated government.

Last month, the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur, saying "evidence shows that al-Bashir masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa groups, on account of their ethnicity."

But for Sudanese Arabs and Africans coexisting peacefully outside Darfur, these racial distinctions are not so clear.

Adam, for example, believes he has some Arab blood.

During the drought of the early 1980s, Adam left Darfur for the mostly-Arab north of Sudan, in search of work and a better life. He settled in Dongola, a city more than 300 miles north of the capital, Khartoum, and has lived among Arabs ever since. He even married one and now has four "mixed" children.

"We live here peacefully and there are no problems," he says. "We live as if we are natives here. We feel that this is our country and this is our town."

Around the corner, at a small Darfurian social club, the atmosphere is loud and buoyant. Young men gather around tables playing cards, slamming down dominoes excitedly, and watching television. They are mostly economic migrants who left Darfur years ago. Among them are members of various tribes that are killing each other back in Darfur and in neighboring Kordofan State.

"There is no such thing as Arab or African. We are all Sudanese," says Mohammed El-Cheikh an Arab from Western Kordofan. "Him over there," he says, pointing across the yard to a young man standing shyly in the corner, "that's my friend Abubakr. He's from the [African] Tama tribe.

"There are problems in Darfur, but they are not between people. They are related to the government and to politics."

In scores of markets, clubs, and homes in the Arab north, Arabs and Africans are working side by side, sending their children to the same schools and intermarrying. The Arab-African distinction that has played out so broadly in media coverage of Darfur means little to people here.

In fact, historians say the distinction has no factual basis. There is a long tradition of intermarrying between the Arab and African tribes that settled in what is now Sudan.

"No single tribe in Sudan can claim it is purely African or Arab," says history teacher and mayor of the greater Dongola locality Bushra Mohamed Saleh. "They are all mixed."

And while some tribes may be more Arab or more African, coexistence between them is nothing new. Even in Darfur, different tribal groups lived together for centuries. So-called Arab nomadic tribes and African farming communities shared the same land – the nomads using it for their cattle to graze; the farmers using it to grow their crops. Conflicts arose routinely but were solved through traditional leaders.

Things changed early this millennium when traditional leaders lost their control, guns became more commonplace, and a group of non-Arab Darfurians took up arms against the government, arguing that their region had been neglected.

In responding to this rebellion, the government made a "big, big, big mistake," says Gen. Hassan Hamadain, who governed West Darfur State during the late 1990s.

It called upon popular defense forces from local communities to combat the Darfur rebels. But those who responded were mostly Arabs, many of whom joined the now infamous janjaweed militia that is accused of razing hundreds of African villages, looting, raping, and killing along the way.

"The government made use of the conflict in Darfur in a kind of non-thoughtful way," says General Hamadain, who has since retired from politics, acknowledging that he and others failed in Darfur. "It was not sensitive to the tribal relationships, the tribal history of the area, and the resources."

And so what began as normal, cyclical conflicts between mostly Arab herders and non-Arab farmers grew to what has been termed the world's largest humanitarian disaster. The United Nations says some 300,000 have died and 2.5 million have been displaced.

Among the dead were members of Hassan Ali Ibrahim's village, which was completely destroyed by Arabs. But he says he can't hold them all responsible.

"The disputes between the Arabs and people in Darfur originate from different reasons – grazing, pastures, natural things. They are not rooted in race," said the community elder, sitting under a tree at the Islamic school he manages in Dongola, where both Arab and African children sit side by side. "The Arabs that are here have nothing to do with this."

Still, for some Darfurians, it is not so easy to forget. Daoud (not his real name) watched with his own eyes as members of his family were killed by Arab militias in West Darfur. After the first attack on his village, he found his father dead. He says he does not blame the Arabs – "Who supported them? Who gave them the guns? Wasn't it the government?" – but he still has difficulty getting too close.

"I can interact with Arabs at work or in general ways, but when it comes to close relationships, I feel there is a wall between us."

British analyst Jago Salmon says this social polarization – a result he blames partly on simplistic descriptions by Western Darfur advocates – has been an unfortunate consequence of the conflict, but was never its root.

"We were still looking for dichotomy of some kind, something that would explain what was going on easily and simply. We latched onto the Arab-African dichotomy, which did vast damage…. Then as the conflict developed, it became a reality on the ground. It became something by which people explained the conflict themselves."

But as the conflict continues in Darfur – 180,000 have fled their homes this year alone, according to the UN – Adam will wake up next to his Arab wife every morning, Ali will teach his Arab students, and plenty of other African Darfurians will keep living alongside Arabs, wishing the politics would cease and their tribes could go back to life as usual.

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Zanzibar: Island Paradise, Islamic Society, and Tourist Destination Gone Wild

The first impressions of Zanzibar (at least if you come by the ferry from Dar es Salaam) are almost inevitably of the relentless activity of the dock; the crush of people—men, women and children carrying luggage, boxes, provisions of rice and fuel from the mainland, all trying to avoid being stepped on amidst the tangle. There are others waiting for their sister or brother, children or grandchildren to step off the boat and into their arms, smiling and laughing. Overhead the sky is clear, and the incredible beauty of this remarkable island engulfs the senses.
The stone buildings are set with intricate doors of carved wood, inscribed with family titles in Arabic and Hindi over the mantle. The centuries of cultural fusion are evident everywhere. Disembarking from the ferry, there are young Muslim students in their matching blue robes paying their respects to an elder on the street, and women in hijab walking on flat heels, their feet intricately tattooed with henna. Several guys wearing locks extend English greetings in passing. And amidst all the rush, negotiating their overloaded frame packs through customs while haggling with the waiting taxi drivers, are the tourists.
Zanzibar is a tourist economy. Once a center of clove production for export worldwide, the island came to rely heavily on tourism after the clove economy collapsed in the 1980s. As soon as my friend and I disembarked, we were greeted with a great many men, both taxi drivers and tour guides, who wanted to know if wanted to go on the spice tour, or swim with the dolphins, or buy some paintings. Tourism is quite literally the lifeblood of this 97% Muslim society.
The following day, as we wandered through groves of banana trees (mg’omba), stands of lemongrass (mchai mchai) and pepper vines (pilipili manga) on the spice tour, I wondered aloud: “how could a place so beautiful come to be stained with so much blood?” There are ghosts in my head of enslaved Africans, mixed Shirazis, and the Arabs and Indians killed in the revolution of 1964.
Zanzibar is a country grappling with the clash of cultures, inequities of class and race, as well as the effects of globalization, including an economy dependent on mostly European tourists. Along the beaches and in restaraunts, I saw plenty of evidence that this old colonial mentality had not been broken, but simply glossed over; for example, the most prestigious hotel in town, the Africa House, was the former headquarters of the English colonial country club. At the bar overlooking the Indian Ocean, an all white clientele is served by an African service staff.
The name Zanzibar comes from two Persian words, ‘Zanj’ meaning black, and ‘bar’, meaning coast. It should be no surprise that despite what many tour guides on the island told us (‘the first people to settle here were either Arabs or Persians’) the indigenous people of Zanzibar emigrated there around 1000 A.D. from the African mainland. They were known as the Hadimu, who settled primarily in the South, and the Tumbatu, who lived in the North. After this initial migration, a wave of traders from Persia and the Persian Coast arrived and intermarried with the Hadimu and Tumbatu. Their offspring became known as the Shirazi and they would figure prominently in the emergence of Zanzibar as a hub of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean.
We visited several monuments dedicated to enslaved Africans, but I still wondered if the formerly enslaved had gained any foothold in the society, especially since the revolution of 1964. That revolution led to outbreaks of violence and the confiscation of the property of many large landowners, mostly of Arab and Indian descent. Given voice by a political activist from Uganda, John Okello, who was also a member of the Afro-Shirazi Party, the revolution galvanized the African population of Zanzibar, especially the poor. Their impetus proved so powerful that a similar uprising in Dar es Salaam had to be put down by President Nyerere, with help from the British. Nyerere then shrewdly moved to federate the island within the union of Tanzania, an arrangement which continues, uneasily, to this day.
But the revolution, though it may have acted as a social and psychological force to redress the imbalance of land and business ownership, could provide very little in the way of comprehensive programs with which to implement the desired changes for the long term. However I did observe some positive features. We toured one farm which was cooperatively owned by nearly 70 families, although according to them, most of the revenue they bring in was from tourism, and not food and spice production. Zanzibar’s food and fuel are shipped in large tankers that dock well off the coast of Stone Town.
There have been intermittent outbreaks of violence since the revolution; some of these killings were in retaliation for the revolutionary government’s seizure of land. In fact, the first president of the new Peoples Republic of Zanzibar was assassinated in 1972, and the current president, Amani Karume, is his son. It made me wonder: how does one absorb or avoid the inevitable backlash to a revolution by those deposed from power? And how does one use those instruments of power now in your hands (i.e. property, farms, weapons, manufacturing centers, and natural resources) to the benefit of all the people? Further still, what cultural programs are most effective for instilling the values of collective work, pride, and self-reliance in a people who have been trained in the opposite mentality by colonial oppression?
I wondered too about the role of Islam in Zanzibar. The profiligate waste and easy promiscuity of beach tourists ran counter to the disciplined and familial devotion I observed in the Muslim society of Zanzibar. I did not have time to probe further into the coexisting presence of these contradictions, merely to scratch the surface of an observation demanding deeper analysis. Nor did I have time to explore the current state of Afro-Arab relations. The picturesque beauty of this island and an economy geared towards fulfilling the elaborate tropical fantasies of a European elite, can stymie such analysis. But the effects of globalization demand a deeper look at this idyllic, troubled island.

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