John Okello

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John Gideon Okello (* 1937 in Lango District , Uganda , † 1971?) Was an East African revolutionary and leader of the revolution in Zanzibar in 1964. This revolution ended the domination of the Arab-born Zanzibari and the Sultanate. The ruling Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah was ousted and Zanzibar became a republic. Following the revolution, massacres were carried out on the Arab population of Zanzibar.

biography

youth

Little is known about Okello's youth. He was baptized when he was two years old. His baptismal name was Gideon . He grew up in an orphanage and started working at the age of 15. He lived in various East African countries. Among other things, he worked as a bricklayer. He was imprisoned for two years in Nairobi , Kenya for reasons unknown. There he came into contact with revolutionary ideas.

Policeman in Pemba

In 1959 Okello went to Pemba , where he worked as a police officer. He joined Sheikh Abeid Karume's Afro-Shirazi party . This party was directed against the predominant position of the Arab minority in Zanzibar and Pemba.

revolutionary

Okello went to Zanzibar in 1963, where he built an underground army. The highly religious Christian Okello preached alcohol abstinence, sexual abstinence before marriage and he forbade the consumption of raw meat.

He told his fighters of divine visions that commanded him to fight "the Arabs". Before the revolution he is said to have ordered his men to murder all “Arabs” between the ages of 18 and 25, to spare pregnant women and older women and to keep virgins from being raped.

revolt

On January 12, 1964, Okello began conquering the capital, Stone Town , where the Sultan lived. Zanzibar police forces were surprised and overwhelmed.

Okello addressed the population in a radio address and declared himself Field Marshal of Zanzibar and Pemba. The sultan should kill his family and himself, otherwise he would do it. However, the Sultan had already brought himself and many of his ministers to safety.

Following the conquest, between January 18 and 20, between 5,000 and 20,000 Zanzibaris of Arab origin, whose ancestors had lived in Zanzibar for centuries, were murdered. Original scenes from the murders were used in the controversial film Gualtiero Jacopetti's Africa Addio .

Disempowerment

Okello created a Revolutionary Council and appointed the head of the Afro-Shirazi party , Abeid Amani Karume , as president and the leader of the radical left-wing Arab Umma (Massa) party , Sheikh Abdulrahman Muhammad Babu, as foreign minister of the new People's Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba . Neither Karume nor Babu had been informed of the coup. Both lived in Tanganyika and wanted nothing to do with Okello. Karume gradually disempowered him and left him with his title of field marshal.

On February 3, the situation in Zanzibar had stabilized and Karume took over as president.

Okello created a paramilitary organization called the Freedom Military Force (FMF) , whose members roamed the streets looting private property. Not only the Muslim Zanzibaris were deterred by Okellos pathetic, Christian rhetoric. His Ugandan accent also seemed strange to the majority of Zanzibaris. By March Karume's forces and paramilitaries of the Islamic Umma party had disarmed Okellos militia. Okello was declared an undesirable person while on a trip to Tanganyika and was denied his return trip. On March 11th he was officially removed from his position as field marshal.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA ) was founded by Karume in April; she disarmed the last of the Okello supporters. On April 26, Karume announced that Zanzibar would unite with Tanganyika to form Tanzania . Karume also wanted to prevent the Umma Party from taking power and he wanted to minimize communist influence in East Africa.

Speculation regarding his death

Okello lived in exile in Kenya, the Congo and Uganda. He was last seen with the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in 1971. In the book "Revolution on Zanzibar" Don Petterson claims that Amin could have seen him as a threat and therefore eliminated him. Okello has been missing since his time in Uganda.

Cultural reception

In Werner Herzog's film Aguirre, the Wrath of God , a black slave named "Okello" appears. In a comment on the DVD, Herzog explains that the character was modeled on Okello, with whom he had been in correspondence.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Plekhanov, Sergeĭ, A Reformer on the Throne: Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Al Said, Trident Press Ltd, page 91, ISBN 1-9007-2470-7
  2. ↑ Timothy Parsons: The 1964 Army Mutinies and the Making of Modern East Africa . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003, ISBN 0-325-07068-7 , pp. 107 ( online ).
  3. ^ Ian Speller: An African Cuba? Britain and the Zanzibar Revolution, 1964. In: Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History . tape 35 , no. 2 , 2007, p. 7 ( online ).
  4. ↑ http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0811FB3E5415738DDDAD0894DA405B848AF1D3
  5. ^ Ian Speller: An African Cuba? Britain and the Zanzibar Revolution, 1964. In: Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History . tape 35 , no. 2 , 2007, p. 15 ( online ).
  6. ^ A b Abdul Sheriff, Ed Ferguson: Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule . In: James Currey Publishers . 1991, ISBN 0-85255-080-4 , pp. 242 ( online ).
  7. ↑ a b c d Ian Speller: An African Cuba? Britain and the Zanzibar Revolution, 1964. In: Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History . tape 35 , no. 2 , 2007, p. 17 ( online ).
  8. ↑ http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10B14FC3A5C147A93C0A81788D85F408685F9
  9. ↑ http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50910F9385B1B728DDDAE0A94DC405B848AF1D3
  10. ↑ http://eprints.nuim.ie/841/
  11. ^ DVD commentary to Aguirre, Wrath of God (Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2004), track 13
personal data
SURNAME Okello, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Okello, John Gideon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ugandan revolutionary and leader of the Zanzibar revolution in 1964
DATE OF BIRTH 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Lango District , Uganda
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: 1971