Transnational Memory: Suriname in Afrabian Slavery Memory Politics

John Njenga Karugia

Note: This is an excerpt from an upcoming book. Please do not cite. Kindly drop me an email to get permission to cite the version of this excerpt that will exist by then. My email:

johnnjenga@gmail.com

Abstract

Globally, an array of strategic actors are driving transnationalisation of memory for a myriad strategic reasons. They range from nation-states, museums, authors, civil societies, organisations and diasporic citizens. Our focus is the Indian Ocean as a transnational memory space where cosmopolitan memories travel within and beyond the Indian Ocean transregion. i How do transnational actions of commemoration within and beyond the Indian Ocean impact the creation and maintenance of transnational memory spaces? What are their social and political effects? This article analyses the emergence of new publications and discourses by Zanzibari-Omani authors whose writings analyse contemporary falsification of slavery narratives originating in Suriname and how they are eventually used as propaganda against Oman, Arabia, Omani-Zanzibaris, Arabs and Islam in Tanzania.

Introduction

Various actions of representation and commemoration in cosmopolitan palimpsestic spaces are shaping transnational memory politics across the Afrasian transregion and affecting creation and maintenance of transnational memory spaces within various memory cultures across the Afrasian transregion. Decisions on what should be remembered or forgotten and representation of such remembering or forgetting are especially problematic within cosmopolitan spaces. Till and Kuusisto-Arponen, in their discussion on ‘responsible geographies of memory’ argue that “debates about the meanings of place often emerge when unsettled pasts resurface unexpectedly in ways that dislocate present-day land uses.” This relates to Appiah’s fallibilism which is “the sense that our knowledge is imperfect, provisional, subject to revision in the face of new evidence.ii” Till and Kuusisto-Arponen note their interest in examining what they call “controversial processes of social memory and forgetting at places marked by state-perpetrated violence.” They argue for the creation of “responsible geographies of memory” and note that it is the responsibility of scholars and global citizens, that is, cosmopolitans to:

1) acknowledge that landscapes often function as places of critical testimony for survivors; 2) problematize singular claims to the authenticity of place made through universal narratives and seemingly stable material landscapes; 3) create safe spaces of listening, wherein stories about place can be articulated and acknowledged by various stakeholders, while recognizing the moral complexities in representing violence

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through textual, visual and embodied means; and 4) recognize the progressive potential of places as cosmopolitan spaces of encounter and learning.

They further argue that: “By treating places marked by difficult pasts as cosmopolitan, hosts and visitors are invited to engage critically with the unfolding processes of memory politics, and adopt respectful approaches toward justice that includes caring for places and peoples in the past and present.” It is within the framework of emergent discourses of ‘responsible geographies of memory’ that this article seeks to situate its discussion. This article attempts to demonstrate the power dynamics regarding the agency of various stakeholders to create change and what successes and challenges they are facing at shaping creation and maintenance of transnational memory spaces. The case we examine falls within the matrix of the aforementioned ‘responsible geographies of memory” due to claims made by inhabitants of these geographies regarding traumatic pasts and presents.

Cosmopolitan memory politics linking Oman, Zanzibar and Tanzania

The Afrabian transregion which is a part of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism offers an interesting case that illustrates the complexity of agency within emergent dynamics of transnational memory politics of ‘responsible geographies of memory.’iii Four connective memoryiv cultures across four geographies are involved; Oman in the Middle East, Tanzania in East Africa, Zanzibar which is a part of Tanzania and Suriname in South America. In Oman, we focus on transnational memory politics of a portion of Oman’s diasporic population that define their identity across two relational Indian Ocean geographiesv i.e. Zanzibari-Omani. In Tanzania, we focus on secession politics of Zanzibar that wishes to become a nation-state.vi In Zanzibar, we focus on transnational memory politics of a contested massacrevii against Zanzibari-Omani Arabs and on revisionist representation of slavery memory using remediated slavery images from Suriname’s sugar plantations.viii

Over myriad centuries, generations of sailors from Oman sailed across the Indian Ocean. ix As they traded, they also settled across the vastness of the Indian Ocean. Oman established a court in Zanzibar hence expanding the Omani empire from the Middle East to the Indian Ocean. Sailing and oceanic trading activities were conducted by men. Most of these men ended up having wives and concubines across the trade routes on islands and mainland across the Indian Ocean.x As four wives are permitted in Islam, it was not uncommon for an Omani businessman to have four or more wives or more women with whom he had sired children with. This was convenient since on every stop across the harbors of the Indian Ocean where trading activities were conducted, such a trader would find a home and a family to stay with after and before sailing over long distances for many weeks. An interview partner informed me in 2014xi that until today, there are families that travel to various places along the Indian Ocean coast in search of unknown relatives using the sir names of men that must have probably narrated the existence of other wives and children in such places.xii My Zanzibari interview partner had encountered

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such people at the ‘Dhow Music School’ an institution where he works as a teacher of music and musical instruments related to Indian Ocean cultures. He noted that various people with multi-layered identities from African countries and from Oman visit Zanzibar in search of family relations. According to him such people travel across Zanzibar bearing a question such as “might you know anyone or any family with the sir name so and so.” My interview partner noted that there have been people that have been successful at finding family members.xiii Across households located on Indian Ocean islands like Zanzibar, Lamu, Pate and Wasini, it is not uncommon to notice very old photos of Omani men who traded across the Indian Ocean hanging on the walls of the sitting room or right at the entrance of the house just beyond the door, facing the entry as if protecting the household or announcing who the pioneer of the household is.

Zanzibar was once the heart of the Indian Ocean especially due to its conducive climate for growing spices.xiv Omani traders established deep socio-cultural and economic connections to Zanzibar to an extent that the Sultan of Oman established a court in Zanzibar. The other court was in the Sultanete of Oman. Hence, the Omani empire officially emerged. With the passage of time, more Omanis settled across the Indain Ocean including Zanzibar. As a major slave market, Zanzibar was also an important trading hub for African slaves.xv The slaves originated from Africa’s hinterland and were shipped to Zanzibar where they were auctioned before further shipping across the vastness of planet earth.

Today, there is discordance as to who the first inhabitants of Zanzibar were. A prominent Zanzibari-Omani scholar discussed this at length during interviews I had with him in Muscat, Oman. According to him, Omani-Arabs who sailed across the Indian Ocean for millennia were first to arrive and settle in Zanzibar. According to him, Omani-Arabs settled along the eastern coast of East Africa long before Africans started migrating from western Africa due to increasing population. Hence, by the time Africans arrived along the East African coast, they found cosmopolitan places that were thriving in sailing, trading and religious activities related to Islam. The foregoing is contestedxvi. In a recent radio interview a Swahili scholar from Kenya noted that Africans that had fought against Portuguese colonialists in what is now referred to as Kenya, had sought the assistance of Omani Arabs and hence their arrival in East Africa in large numbers. Hence the emergence of such prominent families as the Mazrui Family in Kenya who originated from Oman.xvii

Omani-Arabs with multi-layered identities such as Zanzibari-Omanis claim various places across the Indian Ocean as their homelands and do not see themselves as a diaspora. According to my Omani interview partner, black Africans that ended up in Zanzibar were brought in as slaves to work in spice farms or to be sold as slaves across expansive geographies. As a cosmopolitan place, Zanzibar became home to many ethnic groups that migrated there from Asia and the Middle East. Most visible due to their influence on the infrastructure and cultures of Zanzibar are Shirazzids who migrated from Iran and Indians.xviii Shirazzids constructed various mosques and bore holes. Over the centuries, along the East African coast, a contact language emerged from a

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combination of words from Bantu languages and other languages that were spoken by people that encountered each other along East Africa’s coast e.g. Arabic, Persian, Hindu etc. The language is called Kiswahili.xix Today, it is an official language in Kenya and Tanzania including Zanzibar. Kiswahili is also spoken by parts of the population in Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi.

After the British took over Zanzibar after a brief war, it became an independent British protectorate.xx After the British abolished slave trade in Zanzibar, various memory sites were preserved and new ones erected.xxi In 1963, Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika on the mainland to form what we today know as Tanzania.xxii In 1964, the black population of Zanzibar and other Africans that had been apparently secretly brought from the mainland attacked Arab families in a killing-spree that is estimated to have left 5000 to 12000 people dead.xxiii That massacre was dubbed ‘Zanzibar Revolution’ because it was seen by black Zanzibari and other black Tanzanians as the event that reclaimed Zanzibar from the hands of the rich Arabs who had owned most land and businesses.xxiv Apparently, bantu Tanzanians revolted against the rich class of Zanzibari-Arabs that had colonized Zanzibar for millennia and enriched themselves through slave trade. Contemporary Zanzibar has various memory sites that have been constructed to commemorate the predicament of slaves that were held and sold in Zanzibar e.g. the Slave Market.

The irony of that event is that some of the black Zanzibaris that were attacking the Omani Arabs also were of Omani lineage from thousands of years of trade and interaction between Oman and Zanzibar. But they had been convinced that their own ‘blackness’ contributed to their poverty while the Arabs enriched themselves off their labour and land. Hence they murdered Omani Arabs so that they could take over the land and business opportunities. Zanzibari-Omanis that escaped the massacre had to flee in small ships and boats. Interview partners in Oman reported that the transnational nature of their journeys from the night of the attack.xxv Firstly, they ended up in adjacent mainland Tanzania, Kenya, Madagascar and later across vast transnational routes like Dubai, United Kingdom and other destinations that saw them experience multiple displacements across vast geographies.

An interview partner in Muscat noted that his friends and himself had escaped to Kenya, then to Dubai, then to the United Kingdom before going back to Oman in 1970.xxvi Many Zanzibari-Omanis ended up in Oman after 1970 following a decree by Sultan Qaboos.xxvii After taking over the reign over Oman from his father, Sultan Qaboos decreed that anyone of Omani bloodline was welcome to Oman and would receive Omani citizenship and all benefits thereof. Like other oil-producing countries in the Middle East, Oman was getting richer and hence very attractive as a homeland for its formerly displaced descendants. While Oman was developing itself into a prosperous middle-income economy, Zanzibar’s influence across the Indian Ocean had reduced significantly. Today, Zanzibar is mostly known as a tourist destination without its former glory of a strategic island where Africans, Portuguese, Persians, Germans, Americans, British, Arabs

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and French sought to be in control of.xxviii Despite this, Zanzibar finds itself at the crossroads of intense maritime memory politics. Zanzibar’s memory politics is connected to its secession politics to become an independent State. Tanzania does not want to loose Zanzibar as part of its territory while Zanzibar’s independence is supported by Zanzibari’s and Zanzibari-Omanis residing in Oman and beyond. Complex transnational memory politics have emerged from the foregoing.

Appiah has argued that cosmopolitans have obligations towards each other. Tanzania and Zanzibar have various commemorative obligations. Firstly, Zanzibar’s memory culture should commemorate slaves that were traded in its slave markets. Secondly, Zanzibar’s memory culture should commemorate Zanzibari-Arabs who died in 1964 after attacks by black Tanzanians. At this juncture, we must note that the commemoration of the 1964 massacre against Zanzibari-Arabs is contested. While it is referred to as “the Zanzibar Revolution’ in Tanzania, emergent diasporic voices of Zanzibari-Omanis located in Oman refer to it as “the Zanzibar Genocide.” Zanzibar’s declaration of intended independence has triggered overt and covert memory politics by mainland Tanzania to prevent Zanzibar from breaking away. This is where we see social and political effects of the agency of the Tanzanian state and how it affects the creation and maintenance of transnational memory spaces. Similarly and simultaneously, we discern the agency of transnational actors that are situated within various structures in Oman and Zanzibar, especially how they are reacting to that portion of Tanzania’s memory culture that links both geographies.

Our example is a Zanzibari-Omani author, Ibrahim Noor Shariff. Sharif was born in 1941 in Zanzibar while it was a British protectorate. He has always travelled back and forth from Oman to Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania as well. In 2014, Shariff published a book in Kiswahili language titled ‘Tanzania na Propaganda za Udini’ – ‘Tanzania and its religious propaganda’. He shipped 400 copies of the book to be distributed in Tanzania. He wrote the book in Kiswahili because Kiswahili is the main language spoken in Tanzania. This would make the book accessible to almost all Tanzanians. Kiswahili can be seen as the main tool of Shariff’s agency and that thus the agency of Zanzibari-Omanis to influence the transnational memory politics between Oman, Zanzibar and Tanzania. Furthermore, Shariff’s agency is boosted by his prominence as a prominent poet whose publications have been celebrated internationally. Additionally, Shariff’s agency is propelled amongst various transnational networks in the world of Kiswahili language and Swahili people from his days as a Kiswahili lecturer for 25 years at Rutgers University in the United States of America to his current engagement as very prominent artist and professor of arts at the Sultan Qaboos University.

The book exposes and reacts to Tanzania’s falsification of history that has been entrenched into the curriculum of its secondary schools. This falsification occurs through manipulation of historical documents to perpetuate the claim that Omani Arabs moved to Zanzibar and by extension to Tanzania’s mainland territory to engage in slave trade amidst torturing slaves.

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According to Shariff, such fabrication and manipulation of historical facts is meant to cause Tanzanians on the Island of Zanzibar and in the mainland to think that Zanzibar always belonged to Tanzania and it should not be allowed to secede to descendants of Omani Arabs since they would probably allow former Zanzibari-Omanis and new Omani Arabs to settle on Zanzibar. This would mean the rebirth of the Omani empire in the Indian Ocean. An interview partner in Zanzibar noted that the Tanzanian government fears that granting independence to Zanzibar could end up in an Islamic state that might be perceived as problematic to Tanzania’s and East Africa’s interests given the stereotypical association of Islam with terrorism globally. The interview partner also noted that Zanzibar’s independence could also lead to Zanzibar’s harbors competing with Tanzania’s and Kenya’s harbors in handling regional trading activities. The interview partner further noted that local discourse indicated that mainland Tanzania and East African countries are afraid that if Zanzibar becomes and independent nation, it might install a free-trade zone that would compete with other East African economies. Hence, in line with Shariff’s work, in order to avoid loosing Zanzibar, Tanzania and Zanzibar’s memory cultures have been instrumentalised in order to keep Zanzibar as part of Tanzania. In extensive interviews with Ibrahim Noor Shariff, he noted that while Arabia consents to having been part of slave trade, it does not consent to falsified representation of former historical events as is happening in Tanzanian secondary school history text books that subtly rewrite history to insist on Arabs as the only slave traders in Zanzibar and Tanzania. Shariff analyses and critiques manipulation and fabrication of widely known images that are used in Tanzanian secondary school history text books to portray how black slaves were apparently arrested, led in slave caravans and apparently tortured by Arabs. Shariff argues that such manipulation is conscious production of propaganda to forment hatred between Christians and Muslims. He notes that such malicious rewriting of history is dangerous for the future as it might lead to serious conflicts.

Shariff identifies one such example, a famous image known to many scholars of Latin America (Shariff 2014, 135). It was originally published by a British-Dutch soldier, John Gabriel Stedman in 1796 in a publication titled “Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam” being a first-hand account of events he witnessed in 1773 on how slaves were tortured in Suriname. In Tanzania, it was published in page 80 of ‘History for Secondary Schools, Form Two, 2012’ with very slight changes. According to Shariff the image is mischievously used to “portray the inhumanity committed by Muslims in Tanzania” (Shariff 2014, 135).

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It represents the infamous hanging of slaves that worked within the sugarcane plantations in Suriname. During slave trade in East Africa, the sugarcane economy had not been established. Currently, it has been reprinted in Tanzanian school text books to depict how Arabs i.e. Omani Arabs that lived in Zanzibar apparently tortured Tanzanians during the slave trade era. The idea is, to juxtapose and replace European colonialism, at least partially using images. The intention is to portray Arabs as slave traders and colonial masters. While it may be seen as an attempt at grouping Arabs with the Germans, Belgians, Portuguese, French and British, according to Shariff this falsification plays another role. According to Shariff these images are used in Tanzanian history books to “conceal the actions of Africans and Europeans (as slave traders too) but to throw dirt at Muslims” (Shariff 2014, 135). It can therefore be argued that the resultant politics is aimed at denying Zanzibari-Omanis citizenship and identity bound to Zanzibar and making them foreigners whose descendants travelled all the way from Arabia to torture and trade in human beings.

When Tanzanian school children see this image, they associate Arabs with slavery and colonialism. All this, then, is used as propaganda against any claims to citizenship by Omani Arabs in Tanzania, especially those that lived in Zanzibar. As perpetrators, the Omani Arabs are therefore guilty. They should leave and go back to Oman, or shut up, at least as regards Zanzibar’s independence.

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Appiah argues that cosmopolitans appreciate that their “knowledge is imperfect, provisional, subject to revision in the face of new evidence.” Till and Kuusisto-Arponen, in their discussion on ‘responsible geographies of memory’ argue that “debates about the meanings of place often emerge when unsettled pasts resurface unexpectedly in ways that dislocate present-day land uses.” They note “the unpredictability of group memory due to the translocal nature of how places are connected to peoples and pasts through socio-political networks, cultural and economic connections, and personal and shared emotional geographies.” Such Afrabian networks exist within Afrabian globalectical cosmopolitanism.

From Omani-Zanzibaris, we witness the “engagement”, “curiosity” and “intelligence” of cosmopolitanism that has intervened against what it perceives as “intolerable.” Two books published in Kiswahili by diasporic Zanzibari-Omani scholars have attempted an intervention. Ibrahim Noor Shariff authored “Tanzania na Propaganda za udini” and Harith Ghassany’s authored “Kwaheri Ukoloni, Kwaheri Uhuru.” They have both been published by Zanzibari Omani authors living in Oman. One analyses religious propaganda against Islam and the other is a collection of testimonies from witnesses of the Zanzibar genocide. These, and other literary works have argued their case for Zanzibar as a cosmopolitan place defined by pluralism and hybridity, just like Mbali na Nyumbani that retells of the escape from Zanzibar after the attacks of Arabs.

During long in-depth author-interviews with professor Ibrahim Noor Shariff, he categorically emphasized Arabia does not deny involvement in slave trade. What Arabia, especially Omani Arabs abhor, is What Chimamada Adichie has referred to as “the dangers of a single story” or what Till and Kussisto-Arponen have warned against – “singular claims to the authenticity of place made through universal narratives and seemingly stable material landscapes.” Here, the single story perpetuated within this competitive memory is the portrayal of Omani Arabs as nothing else but slave traders and colonialists. The memory landscape in Zanzibar also solidifies these claim. The slave market propagates this view of Zanzibar’s and therefore Tanzania’s history by extension.

As I noted earlier, Till and Kussisto-Arponen have argued that “debates about the meanings of place often emerge when unsettled pasts resurface unexpectedly in ways that dislocate present-day land uses.” Today, the slave trade history in Tanzania is being instrumentalised by mainland Tanzania who has found an opposing partner in new interventions coming all the way from Oman, mostly from Zanzibari Omani thinkers who were witnesses to what happened during the Zanzibar genocide and who had to immediately escape from Zanzibar through transnational routes that as recaptured in their life-stories.

One land-related claim from Zanzibari-Omanis is that the Bantu found them and other Arabs on the East African coast and not the other way round. The sudden attacks against a minority that

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lived and traded on Zanzibar even before the Bantus arrived is viewed as injustice against a homeland. In any case, most Zanzibari’s claim a certain Afrasian or Afrabian lineage pointing at Iran, Oman, India, China amongst other places. Zanzibar is a cosmopolitan place exhibiting competing memories. Tanzania is yet to create what Till and Kussisto-Arponen refer to as “safe spaces of listening, wherein stories about place can be articulated and acknowledged by various stakeholders, while recognizing the moral complexities in representing violence through textual, visual and embodied means.” Despite Ibrahim Noor Shariff’s agency of investing time in research, writing, publishing and shipping this book, the Tanzanian government’s agency must be put into perspective. One could argue that since the text books containing the alleged propaganda against Islam and Arabs are published by Oxford Press University while Ibrahim Shariff’s book is published by his own publishing company – the Oxford Press University books might be taken more seriously by readers who have consumed a lot of outstanding literature from Oxford such as dictionaries. Since Shariff publishes it himself, some scholars and readers might criticize a perceived lack of peer-review despite the outstanding sources Shariff mentions which are available for reference in Tanzania. Some readers interpret Shariff’s books as a personal battle against the government of Tanzania. An interview partner with whom I discussed Ibrahim Shariff’s book noted that “Ibrahim Shariff is a very painful man” since he belongs to the generation of Zanzibari-Omanis that were killed or turned into refugees after what Tanzanians refer to as the ‘Zanzibar Revolution’ and what Shariff calls ‘genocide against Zanzibari-Omanis.’ While the foregoing issues might diminish Shariff’s agency in influencing the transnational maritime politics between Oman, Zanzibar and Tanzania, simultaneously, global and local events might influence Shariff’s agency positively. Contemporary global politics has led to the perception that Islam is under attack from within itself (Muslims killing each other due to religious beliefs e.g. Shiite and Sunni) as well as from other arenas e.g. the Iraq war started with false evidence, the imprisonment without trial of Muslims at the Guantanamo Prison, the killing of President Muammar Gadaffi of Libya, Mr. Donald Trump’s attempted blanket travel ban for several countries where Islam is the main religion. Local Tanzanian politics of continued refusal to allow Zanzibar to secede have led to the interpretation that an island where 99% of the residents are Muslims should not be given independence from Tanzania. Due to various networks that have Islam as their center e.g. imams, religious scholars and private individuals constantly travel and or communicate with others, horrible events like the wars in the Middle East are not lost to these networks. Therefore in Tanzania, a book that captures how art was used to propel past hatred against Muslims in Western countries and the connection thereof to the contemporary politics against Islam is a very welcome piece of literature for Muslim Kiswahili speakers in Zanzibar, Tanzania and beyond. According to Shariff, so far he has not received any communication from Zanzibar or Tanzania or the rest of the Kiswahili-speaking world in East Africa denying or criticizing the analysis in his book on ‘Religious propaganda in Tanzania’. The 2017 tour of East Africa by a government entourage from Oman using the meticulous royal ship ‘Fulk al Salamah’ of Sultan Qaboos of Oman might assist Ibrahim Noor Shariff’s agency in creating further interest as regards debates on Islam surrounding Oman, Zanzibar and Tanzania. Dr Mohammed bin Hamad al Rumhy, who is the Minister of Oil and Gas was the highest

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government official in the ship that sailed to Zanzibar, Mombasa and Dar es Salaam on the orders of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos. The royal ship was on a naval expedition “following the Royal directives of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos to revive the Omani maritime heritage” and especially “to convey greetings, love and peace from the Omani people to their brothers in these countries”.xxix Tanzania and Oman have had frosty relations in the past regarding maintenance of transnational memory spaces. At one point, when the government of Oman offered to repair the House of Wonders which is the former center of power for the former ruling Sultan, Tanzania requested for the money to be wired to it so that it could repair the building itself. Oman refused to send the money due to high levels of corruption in Tanzania’s former government and because there was fear as to whose agency would promote and preserve what versions of memory the renovated House of Wonders would eventually represent. Symbolically, there was fear of ‘return of the Omani Arabs.’ That would solidify a material claim by Omani Arabs and by extension the ousted Zanzibari-Omanis of an Omani territory and lost homeland in Tanzania.

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