The General Strike in Zanzibar, 1948

Abstract

This article examines a three-week long strike in Zanzibar City in August and September 1948. The strike began among labourers from the mainland at work in Zanzibar port, but spread to all African work-people in the City after an unsuccessful attempt to break the strike by the government. This attempt had led to a major demonstration and confrontation at the entrance to the port, violence being only narrowly averted.While at one level the strike was a Zanzibar sequel to the strikes of the previous year in Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, in Zanzibar there was additional significance in the fact that the City and Island's work-force were in very large proportion men from the East African mainland. Zanzibar's dependence on mainland labour had begun in the early decades of the twentieth century. In those years mainland labour had been particularly well-paid, by the standards of the time. By the late 1940s however, mainland labour in Zanzibar was as poor as, perhaps poorer than, its mainland counterparts. Besides, the political structure of the Protectorate aggravated sentiments of alienation since mainlanders were not regarded as permanent residents for whom the government should have any particular concern: nor were mainlanders represented in the legislature.Even after the strike was over the colonial authorities saw only a need for labour reforms rather than political re-structuring to accommodate mainlanders. The strike however had briefly united all Africans, indigenous and mainlander. When, a decade later, this unity of Africans, mainlander and indigenous, town and plantation labourer and peasant, was re-formed, revolution followed. As a portent, therefore, Zanzibar's strike is of particular significance.