Sir: As ' Cato ' remarks in "Another Spectator's Notebook
" (July 7) the British press has been singularly silent. about the dreadful happenings in Zanzibar since the wholesale massacre of the Arabs in an African uprising which brought the tyrant Karume to power In 1964. Karume appears to have been obsessed with the desire to exact a terrible revenge on the Arabs who had been the dominant race until the declaration of a British Protectorate in 1890. Karume's successor, the African Aboud Jumbe, is apparently just as bitterly anxious to crush and humiliate the Arabs. In a letter I received from him a few months ago he referred to the " medieval Zanzibar" of the Arab Sultanate and accused the Arab politicians he has imprisoned and exiled of trying to perpetuate Arab supremacy over the African masses.
I spent nearly a quarter of a century in Zanzibar as a member of the Education Department in the days of Colonial Office rule. Aboud Jumbe was one of my pupils, as were many of the Arabs who have been murdered, imprisoned without trial, and exiled under the present regime.
Zanzibar as 1 knew it when I went there fifty years ago was a happy place remarkable for the harmonious relations between Arabs, Indians, Europeans and Africans. The island is now 'free ' and independent of British rule, but I sometimes wonder whether those who worked hard for independence and were eager to get rid of the British imperialists do not occasionally regret the old days of Colonial Office rule. The head of the British administration, His Excellency the British Resident, may have been rather an autocrat, but he was certainly a benevolent one. British officials have now been replaced by a gang of thugs who have reduced this lovely spice island to a condition of misery where people live in an atmosphere of fear and hatred.
L. W. Hollingsworth Flat 27, Mayfair, 74 Westcliff Road, Bournemouth
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