It seemed that the brightest spark in Africa had been snuffed when the news came through of he Tanganyika-Zanzibar anschluss. But it is now possible to be somewhat more sanguine.
First, the past. Zanzibar’s political life has zig-zagged violently from the start, but the zig zags have neither been unconditioned nor uncontrolled. The island’s small size (both Zanzibar and Pemba are roughly 40 miles from end to end; their combined population, split slightly in favour of Zanzibar, is only 300,000) and its peculiar social system gave its politics a special intensity and fervour—and a proportionately greater degree of mass participation and popular grasp of issues than would be piossible in a larger, more sprawling and complex country. Hence Zanzibar’s crash entry on to the continental and world stage.