6 The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Future: Ambivalent Encounters Between Zanzibar and East Germany in the Cold War

In many ways we were naïve about the effects of our intervention in Third World countries. Our intelligence-gathering skills, honed by the experience of the Second World War and the Cold War,were transferred through our well-trained liaison officers and specialists. Prompt-ed by their diligence, the security service in Zanzibar reached ridiculous dimensions. Relative to the size of the population, it was soon far bigger than our own, and it rapidly acquired a dynamic of its own over which we had no more influence.³ ⁶

little cost,asmall nation like East Germanycould make ah ighlyv isiblei mpact by rendering decisive assistance to an even smaller territory strugglingtoachieve abetter life for its citizens. Together East Germany and Zanzibar could realize the socialist vision of as ociety freeo fcapitalist exploitation and neo-colonial domination. Zanzibar could serveasarevolutionary model to neighbors still dependent on the West for aid, trade, and expertise.
As historians turn to the study of East-South relations duringt he Cold War, and recover an oftenf orgotten and yeth ighlyc onsequential world of linkages, moorings, entanglements, and disentanglements, we should consider the ideas that animated such encounters.² This essayd emonstratest hat at least on one level the East Germansa nd Zanzibaris werei na greement: the futurew ould be one in which Africans would not onlyenjoy the blessingsoffreedom and sovereignty in islands wheremanyoftheirancestors once toiled as slaves. They would also experience "development," and enjoysuch modern amenities as electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing. Throughout the 1960s, this future sustained ar elationship between two nations separated by thousands of miles of land and sea, as well as highlyd issimilar cultural traditions.
Such cooperation between Zanzibarand East Germanymay be placed within the context of an historic moment when socialist internationalism appeared to possess real promise in orienting recentlyd ecolonized territories in Africa and Asia towards the socialist East.The East beckoned with aid, friendship, and discursive support,and was an emerging and enticing counterpoint to Western nations implicatedbycolonialism. Later in the Cold War, East Germanywould form close ties with other movements and nations of the developing world, and Zanzibar would look to China for aid and expertise. Nevertheless, for both Zanzibaris and East Germans, their once close relationship contained all the romance, frustrations, and misunderstandingso fafirst love.³ Believing socialism and African nationalism werenatural allies in the struggle against imperialism, racism, and inequality,they rushed into ar elationship thats eemed to offer ab right future and benefits to bothsides, and yetwhich led instead to mutual disillusionment.
This chapter will discuss whyZ anzibar'st iesw ith East Germany quickly waxed, and eventuallywaned. It will examine East Germany'sinfluenceonZanzibar'sf ledgling revolution, the initial violence of which had onlyr ecentlybeen  Forabroadpicture, see PhilipMuehlenbeck and Natalia Telepneva, eds., Warsaw Pact Intervention in the Third World: Aida nd Influence in the Cold War (London: I.B. Tauris, 2018).  Soviet-Cuban ties also contained as trong element of romance in the 1960s.F or as tudyt hat emphasizes how Soviets imagined the relationship, see Anne Gorsuch, "'Cuba, My Love:' The Romanceo fR evolutionary Cuba in the Soviet Sixties," American Historical Review 120 ( 2015). brought under state control by the time GDR representatives madetheir first appearance in the islands in early-1964.I na ddition to oral and archival sources that give some indication of the impact of this relationship on the popular level, Iwillexamine the novel By the Sea,inwhich Zanzibari author Abdulrazak Gurnah provides ac ompellingn arrative of Latif Mahmud,w ho at the ageo f 18 sets out to studyinthe GDR.⁴ Latif is something of acompositecharacter,inspired by the memoriesa nd narratives of Gurnah'sf ormerc lassmates who set out with high hopes to studyi nE ast Germanyi nt he 1960s.⁵ Their experience is emblematic of an erao fi nflated expectations, when Africans newly-liberated from colonial rule hoped to achieve all their nation building ambitions, and turned to wise men from the East bearinggifts of credit,scholarships, and technology. After the end of colonialism and before the onsetofthe African debt crisis of the 1980s therew erer elatively few limits on futurist discourses.I nt he 1960s, the "socialist transnationali maginary"⁶ was in full swing, producing a series of images of the future that animated asteadystream of students, technocrats, and teachers traveling back and forth between East and South. Such encounters, linkages, and connections helpeds hape Zanzibar'sr evolutionary experiment,a nd wereb ut one component of ap roject of socialist globalization that forgedn ew and consequential ties between Africa and the East.

The Rise of aS ocialistV anguard
When in the earlyt wentieth century the British began to establish schools in Zanzibar along western lines it had to overcome considerable resistance among parents and villagel eaders convinceds uch institutions would corrupt the minds of the next generation, and underminet heirf aith in Islam.O nly after the colonial state moved in the 1940s to incorporate Islam into the curriculum did the schools begin to gain widespread favora nd acceptance.⁷ The experiment proved so successful thatafter World WarIImore and more Zanzibaris began to look further afield for opportunities to pursue higher education. Those who came to physical maturity in the Cold Warera wereuniquelyadvantagedin 6T he Rise and Fall of aS ocialist Future this respect; not onlyw eret he British offering mores cholarships-primarilyt o studya tU ganda'sM akerere University,o ri nt he United Kingdom-families werea lso more willingt han ever to sponsor promisingc hildren anxious to acquire higher education overseas.⁸ Andb yt he late 1950s ar ising generation of young Zanzibaris could also look to the East for patronage and support.R ecognizing an opportunity to influencea ne merging Third World elite, the socialist fraternityo fn ations began to arrangef or ag rowingn umber of Africans to visit carefullys tage-managed tours,o rt os tayf or longer periods of studya nd training.The GDR was one of aconstellation of statesthatalsoincluded the Soviet Union and China willingtoinvest scarcestate resources in an attempt to inculcate Third World nationalists in socialist theory and belief.⁹ By the late 1950s the British also signaled their intention to eventually withdraw from Zanzibar,which triggered abitter partisan dispute over the colonial inheritance.T wo rivaln ationalist party coalitions emerged, and access to foreign scholarships was just one of the ways in which they competed. Of the two, the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP)w as more aggressive in obtaining and disseminatings cholarships; indeed, the party could not find enough applicants to fill the number of offered scholarships.¹⁰ Party leader Ali Muhsin persuaded Gamal Abdel Nasser to sponsor dozens of Zanzibari studentst oc ome and studyi nE gypt.¹¹ Sent to Cairo in 1960 to represent the ZNPa nd supervise the students, Ali Sultan Issa contacted Eastern Bloc embassy officials, and requested scholarships. He estimates that through his and others' effortso ver 300 Zanzibaris went to the GDR in the 1960s for shortcourses in trade unionism and cooperatives, or for full degree programs in such fieldsasmedicine and engineering.¹² The presencei nt he islands of as mall but increasinglys ignificant cohort of youth who had been exposed to life in the East had far-reachingconsequences, which will onlyb eo utlined here.¹³ It encouraged ag rowingd ivide within the ZNP between the more conservative party mainstream and al eftist faction led by AbdulrahmanM ohamedB abu, the party'ss ecretary general and principal foundero ft he ZNP youth wing,k nown as the Youth'sO wn Union (YOU). In mid-1963B abu resigned from the ZNP to help found the Umma Party,w hich gained the support of most of thosew ho had returned from the East.The new party was based overwhelmingly in ZanzibarT own, and accommodated members who espoused everythingf rom Maoism to anarchism, nationalism, and social democracy.¹⁴ Umma began to criticize the ZNP as aparty of reactionary feudalists and capitalists; it also formed at actical alliance with the ZNP'sm ain rival, the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), even though in previous years Babu had repeatedlya ttacked that party for its divisive racial polemics.¹⁵ As Zanzibar approached independence these three parties presented widely contrasting electorala ppeals.I nasociety in which al arge majority of voters werep oor Muslims of at least partial African ancestry,t hey disagreed as to how thatmajority ought to be identified, and from what it oughttobeprotected. The ZNP claimed Zanzibaris weref irst and foremost Muslims who needed to be protected from the political domination of newlyi ndependent states like Kenya and Tanganyika lacking clear Muslim majorities. They also needed to preserve Zanzibar'su niqueM uslim culturef rom "hordes" of unwanted migrants from the African mainland. The ASP,m eanwhile, claimed most Zanzibaris wereA fricans who needed to defend themselvesfrom Arab cruelty and domination.¹⁶ And for its part Umma claimed most islanders were members of downtrodden classes that required protection from exploitative capitalists and feudalists. The three partiesa lso differed dramaticallyw hen it came to which global leaders they found most inspiring,a nd to which they looked for material support.The ZNP claimed to eschew racial politics, and yeta ligned itself with Gamal Abdel Nasser'sv ersion of anti-colonial Arab nationalism. The ASPf or its part openlye mbraced racial politics, yetdrew inspiration from Julius Nyerere, the non-racialist 6T he Risea nd Fall of aS ocialistF uture leader of Tanganyika'sindependence movement.Umma, meanwhile, looked further afield for allies and ideological cousins,revering socialist nations as sources of inspiration and support.¹⁷ Umma'svery existence was onlypossiblethrough Eastern patronage;despite the triangular symmetry of the partisan contest,s ocialism was not an organic plant thats prouted naturallyf rom an island population that traditionallys aw the world in terms of class struggle. The onlything "traditional" about socialism in Zanzibar was its cosmopolitanism; socialism drew much of its strength and vitality from the travel experiences of arising generation precocious in its cultural and intellectual appropriations. While Zanzibaris comingt om aturity during the height of the Cold Warw ereu niquelye ager and able to go abroad, and while they ventured much further than their predecessors, for at least at housand years Zanzibarh ad been ak ey link in ac osmopolitan network of trade and migration encompassingt he islands and coasts of the western Indian Ocean.¹⁸ In the waning years of colonialism the GDR and other socialist nations of the East managed to attract ag rowingn umber of aspiring young islanders, manyofwhom upon their return to Zanzibar gravitated towardsUmma, and embraced "scientific" solutions to the islands' chronic racial and class divisions. Never ap arty thate njoyed mass appeal, Umma mayb ed escribed as as mall but effective party in the Leninist vanguard tradition. In the mid-1960s Umma would playa ni nstrumental role in pushing Zanzibar towards the GDR and other nations of the East.

AN ew East-South Partnership
After af inal round of elections, in December 1963t he British transferred power to the ZNPa nd its sister party,t he Zanzibar and Pemba People'sP arty (ZPPP). Barelyamonth later the independent ZNP-ZPPP coalition governmentwas overthrown in an ASP uprising that triggered weeks of violence. The seizure of power quickly captured international headlines, in part because it was not clear who was behind it,o rw hether the new regime would align with the East,t he West,orremain neutralinthe Cold War. While the violence was definitelyracialized, and directed primarilyagainst Arabsasthe allegedlyarrogant descendants of slave owners, Umma comrades were also active in the revolution, including those of Arab ancestry.And since over adozen had receivedmilitary training in Cuba, and could be heardshoutingSpanish revolutionary slogans over the radio in Zanzibar, therew as even brief media speculation that the revolution was the work of Fidel Castro'sr egime.¹⁹ Umma cooperation with the ASP in early1 964 was af unction of their common opposition to the ZNP-ZPPP alliance; but it alsostemmed from the fact that race and class identities weres lippery,a nd easily, conflated. It was not difficult for ASP revolutionaries to recast Arabs as feudalists and South Asians as capitalists-especiallyw hen, in the context of the ColdW ar,s uch an appropriation of socialist vocabulary earned the new regime amodicum of international respect, as well as inclusion in the global narrative of the dawning of an ew and more equitable socialist epoch. Af urther reason for the willingness of ASP leaders to accept Umma comrades into their ranks was ad esperate manpower shortage caused by the death or flight of so manysupporters of the former regime, some of whom were among the islands' more educated citizens.
Umma officiallym ergedw ith the ASP in March 1964,b yw hich time Babu and his cohort of leftists had assumed positions of influenceinthe new regime. In fact,asMinister of External Affairs and Trade, Babu was instrumental in Zanzibar'sd ecision to recognize the GDR in late January 1964.²⁰ Accordingt oW est Germany'sH allstein Doctrine, no nation except the Soviet Union could have relationsw ith bothW est and East Germany. By siding with the GDR,t he new regime clearlys ignaled its intentions to depart from the general trend of African non-alignment in the ColdW ar.Markus Wolf, who at the time was the GDR'sdirector of foreign intelligence in the ministry of state security,r easonedthatdiplomaticrecognitioncame about through the influenceofZanzibaris who studied in the GDR,a nd returned with positive feelingst owardst he East.²¹ Those who visited others ocialist lands instead were alsoi ns upport of recognition.
Relatively uneducated, and am oderate when it came to the global contest between East and West,P resident Abeid Karume was encircled by ministers like Babu who had traveled to the East and embraced as ocialist vision of the future. Thought hey sometimes disagreed as to what that would actuallyentail, 6T he Rise and Fall of aS ocialist Future at least some were convincedo ft he need to oust or at least sideline Karumei n order for their cherishedP eople'sR epublic to take its rightful place in the progressive march of humanity.A fter considerable maneuvering on all sides, as well as continual Americanand Britishstrategizing as to how to best neutralize the perceivedc ommunist threat in the islands, in late April 1964 Karumec onsented to af ederation with Tanganyika,Zanzibar'sc losest neighbor on the continent.T his allowed him to transfer to the mainland men like Babu and Vice President Kassim Hangaconsidered to be hostile and/or actively plotting against him.²² If the federation purchased Karume some short-term political security,itset up an immediate confrontation with Tanganyika over the issue of Zanzibar'srecognition of the GDR.The GDR had alreadyoffered agenerous aid package,which Karume sawa sv ital to his ambitions for nation buildinga nd racial uplift.H e was not prepared to abandon such aid in order to placate Julius Nyerere, his partnerinthe union and now president of the United Republic of Tanzania.Tanganyika, meanwhile, was the largest recipient of West German aid in sub-Saharan Africa, and among other projects the Bonn government provided keyt echnical and material assistance to the air wing of the Tanganyikan army. All of this was now in jeopardyd ue to the Hallstein Doctrine. The issue was so serious it threatened to break the union; Karume refused to abandon his East German "friends," and Nyererew as convinced the GDR was trying to sabotaget he union.²³ He eventuallyp ersuaded the East Germans to accept the demotion of their embassy in Zanzibar in exchangef or the right to open ac onsulateg eneral in Dar es Salaam. When the West Germans interpreted this as aviolation of the Hallstein Doctrine, and announcedinearly-1965they would be withholdingtheir military aid, Nyerererenounced all aid ties with the Federal Republic.²⁴ Karume was the onlyr ealw inner in all these negotiations, since the East Germans were forced to increase their aid pledgess oa st ok eep him on their side. War. It included farcical moments, as when upon his arrivali nF ebruary 1964 Wolf was asked to inspect aguard of honor to the "liltingstrains" of apoliceorchestraplaying Viennese waltzes.Incelebration of MayDay,hewatched as singers "praised the beauty and richness" of the GDR as ak ind of "fairytalel and of plenty."²⁵ Clearly, Zanzibari officials sawthe GDR as apotentiallyendless source of patronage.And the GDR did nothing to disabuse such notions, but instead offered an aid program thatw ould have gone al ong wayt owards "developing" Zanzibar,and realizingamodernist vision of the future shared by President Karume and his new East German friends.

The New Zanzibar
Though the GDR did not delivero na ll its initial promises,i td id send medical personnel and secondary school teachers to help make up for the exodus of British expatriatesand skilled Zanzibaris victimized by the revolution.²⁶ Officials of the Freie Deutsche Jugend,the East German youth organization, also advised the ASP on how to mobilizethe younger generation in support of socialist nation building imperatives. Abdulla Said Natepe and Aboud Talib traveled to the GDR to receive training in how to establish their own version of the Young Pioneers, an institution first established in the Soviet Union in the early-1920s, which over the decades had become ubiquitous in the socialist East.RajabKheri told aZanzibari student audience in 1965t hat "our problem is thatw eare backward, and we have to be in harmonyw ith our friends who are the long time founders of these children development programs. … their children have achieved highd evelopment levels. We have to construct ab ridge of friendship with them and unite with them.I nt his wayw ecan achievet hats amel evel of development."²⁷ The youth labor camp was another fixture of life in the socialist East,a nd the GDR assisted Zanzibar in establishing its owns et of camps by sending tractors  Wolf and McElvoy, Man Without aF ace,253 -254. Wolf reasoned Zanzibarish ad chosen the GDR as amajor patron so as to not offend neighboringstateslikeKenya still economicallytied to Great Britain, and whomight be anxious about too close of ties with the Soviet Union: "We were economicallya dvanced enough to be au seful supplier of advice … but small enough not to annoy anyo ther sources of income." Ibid., 255.  Clayton, Zanzibar Revolution,1 44,1 46.T oc ompareE ast German aid with that of the USSR and China, see also Burton, "DivergingV isions;" Burgess, "Mao in Zanzibar";a nd G. Thomas 6T he Rise and Fall of aS ocialist Future and instructors to impart practical skills in plumbing,for example.²⁸ Finally, the GDR rampedu pt he number of scholarships on offer; in 1966,f or example, 123 Zanzibari students werei nt he GDR-more than in anyo ther foreign country, and nearlyd ouble the combined number of those studying in China and the USSR.²⁹ While the GDR sponsored the construction of adairy plant it had amoresignificant economic impact in the realm of finance. The Moscow-trainedA bdul Aziz Twala, Zanzibar'sMinister of Finance, leaned heavily on the advice of Martin Gentsch, who although East German was asked to chair the Public Finance Control Commission. In early1 966 the commission was instrumental in establishing the People'sB ank of Zanzibar( Benki ya Wananchiw aZ anzibar). As Eric Burton describes, Twala and Gentsch werec lose personal friends, and agreed that Zanzibar needed to reducei ts dependency on the capitalist West, while also maintaining financial autonomyf rom the Tanzanianm ainland. They werea lso convincedo ft he need for East German instruction in the principles of socialist economics, management,a nd bookkeeping. In additiont oa rrangingfor islanders to receive such traininginthe GDR,Gentsch and Twala collaboratedo nt he openingofa" School of Economics," which when it opened in Zanzibar in April 1967b oastedo verahundred students.³⁰ While the GDR had an impact in the realms of finance, education, and youth mobilization, East Germany is especiallyr emembered for its assistance in housing and security.F rom early-1964 Karume was an enthusiastic supporter of East German plans to house the entire population of the islands in massive new apartment blocks that would boast modern amenities such as running water,indoor plumbing, and electricity.³¹ As an African nationalist who cut his political teeth in the streets of Zanzibar Town,i ti sn ot hard to imagine Karume'srapturous response to such proposals.B yt he mid-twentieth century the capital was divided between the largely Arab and South Asian neighborhoods of Stone Town, and the mostlyA frican areak nown as Ng'ambo, or literally "the other side." Stone Town enjoyed coolings ea breezes and close proximityt ot he palaces of the sultans,highcolonial officials, and wealthygrandees of island society. It also boasted an array of cafes, movie theaters,and public gardens. Meanwhile the African residents of Ng'ambo rented housing of widelyv arying quality and amenity.³² Thusi fE astG ermanyf ollowed through on its promise to provide Africans with "modern" housing it would rectify one of Zanzibar'smostvisible, galling,a nd visceral reminders of racial inequality.
Such grandiose plansw ere, however,s oon scaled down to the demolition and reconstruction of two Ng'ambo neighborhoods, Kikwajuni and Kilimani. In 1968, however,a rchitect Hubert Scholz and at eam of East German experts proposed to extend these pilot projects over the rest of Ng'ambo. The plan called for the construction of 6,992f lats in an areat hat alreadyi ncluded 5,163h omes deemed to be in good or fair condition.³³ Ultimately, through GDR support and the forced and unpaid labor of urban Zanzibaris citizens, the regime managed to construct only1 ,102 flats. These new units in the urban area Michenzani suffered from chronic problems with water pressure, and along with thoseinKikwajuni and Kilimani represented an addition of less thanathousand flats to Ng'ambo'sp re-existing housing stock.³⁴ Yeti nt erms of square footaget he Michenzani apartment blocks weret he largest buildingse verc onstructed in Zanzibar, and their sheer scale did managet oi mpress some islanders, and grant the regime's development schemesameasure of legitimacy.For many islanders, however,the massive apartment blocksa re stark reminders of the thousands of hours of forced labor required for their construction. And accordingt ot his author's own subjective aesthetic, they have aged about as well as most of their modernist Eastern European predecessors.³⁵ Ap lan to demolish homes, relocate citizens, and forcet hem to contribute unpaidlabor to the construction of flats intended for onlyarelative few was controversial enough; even more so was the GDR'sc entral role in setting up Zanzibar'sn otorious securitya pparatus. Markus Wolf recalls that almost as soon as diplomatic relations weree stablished the Zanzibaris requested training in intelligence gathering-no doubt duet ot he GDR'se xcellent reputation in such matters.Karume'sregime hopedtoemploy such expertise against potentiallydisloyal islanders. Wolf recalls:  See LauraF air, Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community,a nd Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar,1 890 -1945 (Athens,OH: Ohio University Press,2 001).  Myers, Verandahs of Power,111-112.  Ibid., 115,123.  The regime'sd ependenceo nf orced labor to build the new flats in Ng'ambo, as wella sf or other public works projects,isone of the most vividlyremembered and wellknown facets of the revolutionary project.S ee, for example, Burgess, Race, Revolution, and the Struggle for Human Rights.

6T he Risea nd Fall of aS ocialist Future
In manywayswewere naïveabout the effects of our intervention in Third World countries. Our intelligence-gatheringskills,honed by the experience of the Second World Warand the Cold War, weretransferred through our well-trained liaison officers and specialists.Prompted by their diligence, the security servicei nZ anzibar reached ridiculous dimensions. Relative to the size of the population,i tw as soon far bigger than our own, and it rapidlya cquiredadynamic of its own over which we had no morei nfluence.³⁶ In hindsight,W olfi sd efensive and apologetic about the consequences of such training.H em ust certainlyh aveb een aware of the willingness of people like Seif Bakari, Zanzibar'sdirector of intelligence, to resort to tortureand extra-judicial murder.Until research is undertaken in the Stasi archives, much will remain unknown about this murky relationship.³⁷ It is known that Seif Bakari and other islanders receiveds ecurity training in the GDR,³⁸ and that under Bakari'sd irection thousands of Zanzibaris werearrestedinthe decade following the 1964 Revolution. Manyw eret ortured, and some werek illed. Citizens werek ept in ap ermanent state of fear; informants wereb elieved to be everywhere, continually feeding information to security agents. Ali Sultan Issa, who served Karume'sr egime as Ministero fE ducation, recalls: In those days,wecould not trust even our own wivesbecause they sometimes informed on their husbands to the statesecurity,trained by the East Germans.And we all know how the East Germans controlled their people, so almost the same systemapplied here. … We used to have as ayingt hat "among threep eople one is not yours." We thought the walls had ears, they could be bugged.³⁹ Kjersti Larsen notes thatinher anthropological fieldwork, "elderlypeople recall the system of denunciation … whereneighbors, even familymembers, informed on each other."⁴⁰ Charles Swift,a nA merican mental health officer assigned to Zanzibar in the late-1960s, recalls the atmosphere as "heavy with suspicion and apprehension. … About the onlypeople who spoke their minds werethe patients at the psychiatric hospital."⁴¹ While in popular memoriest he GDR is usu- Wolf and McElvoy, ManW ithout aF ace,2 56.  See Anna Warda'sproject on The Ministry of Security in the "Third World",which includes a case studyo nZ anzibar: https://zzf potsdam.de/de/forschung/projekte/die-tatigkeiten-des-mfs.  Interview by author,S eif Bakari, Dodoma, Tanzania, May1 ,1995. allyr emembered as the patron and mentor of this hateds ecurity apparatus, locals tend to blame its cruelty on officials like Bakari, animated as they were by a lethal combination of paranoia and racial animus.

East-South Encountersi nM emory
In oral histories of the revolution, Zanzibaris remember East Germanymostlyfor its investments in housing and security.Those who studied in the GDR,however, often have more vivid, personal memories. Such recollections inspired Abdulrazak Gurnah-Zanzibar'sm ost respectedn ovelist and twice an ominee for the Booker Prize-to provide us with the evocative story of Latif Muhammed, who in By the Sea obtains as cholarshipt os tudyd entistry in the GDR in the 1960s, and thus escape as eries of tragedies that have engulfed his family.⁴² His father is considered the town drunkard, and his mother is indiscreteinher infidelities. His older brother,m eanwhile, is seduced by av isiting Persian merchant,w ho convinces him to board ad how and follow him over the horizon. To compound the family'sshame, the Persian merchant also tricks the father into relinquishing ownership of his house;the familysuffers eviction, and the loss of their possessions.
Latif is laconic about his family'sd escent into poverty and disgrace. He merelyn otes that he wants to escape from his parents,t on ever "see them again, to leave them to theirindignant decline and theirpoisoned lives."⁴³ Literature becomes arefuge-the books and magazines available at his school library, and at the United States Information Service (USIS). He praises America for offering air-conditioning, jazz recordings,and "beautiful" books he could actually borrow,a nd return. Through such American largesse Latifb ecomes exposed to Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville and other authorswho excite "anoble curiosity," and which-unlikeBritish authors-are unconnected to "adiscourse of [colonial] tutelage and hierarchy." As "the Emperor of Hollywood and rock'n'roll," President Kennedy also impresses him. America'sglamorous imageistainted,however,bythe murder of Patrice Lumumba, footageofAmericanpolice roughly handling black civilrights activists, and the CIA'sreputation for "manipulating and controlling every small and big thing that caught their attention."⁴⁴  Gurnah interviewed his former classmates whos tudied in the GDR in the 1960s.P ersonal email communication from Abdulrazak Gurnah to the author,A ugust 14,2 019.I tb ears notice that in By the Sea Latif'sstoryrepresents onlyafractional component of amuch largernarrative.  Gurnah, By the Sea,115.  Ibid., 106 -107.

6T he Risea nd Fall of aS ocialist Future
In his hunger for the culturala nd intellectual capital of distant lands, Latif also visits the East German "Information Institute," where he discovers Schiller, Chekov,a nd Mikhail Sholokhov.A nd then as the mistress of the Ministero fE ducation, Latif'sm other manages to securef or her son ac oveted scholarshipt o the GDR.H aving sworn off alcohol, and become deeplyr eligious,L atif'sf ather worries Latif will lose his religious beliefs among the communist atheists of the East.H et akes him to the mosque, whereh el eads the men in prayer,a nd then dispenses some fatherlyadvice: "When youget to that godless place, don'tforget to pray. … Whatever else youd o, don'tl ose God, don'tl ose your way. There's darkness there." Blaming his father for his family'sd issolution, Latif finds his newlyf ound piety laughable.⁴⁵ Latif'sf irst impressions of the GDR are not favorable; the place strikes him as wet and gloomy, and his student hostel is crampedand poorlyheated. It is a "catacomb" setaside for "dark" male students from Africa like himself. Uprooted and thrust into this artificial environment,the studentsjostle one another for respect and primacy.They create "an order of precedence and exclusions and dislikes" that is "detailed and precise, despite the appearance of raucous,r omping disorder." Having never "liveda mid such noise and playa nd violence before," Latif relishes "most of it cautiously, without questioning or wonder."⁴⁶ His roommate, Ali, hails from Guinea and immediatelyd emonstrates his "sneering dislike," and need for deference. Full of "scorn and mockery and knowingness," Ali has alow opinion of the GDR'srank among the nations. "This is Eastern Europe," he says. "They don'th avea nything here. It'sj ust as bad as Africa." He speculatest hatt he meat in the cafeteria stew is not reallym eat,b ut goat feces,o ra sbestos.⁴⁷ In such cynical company, Latif quicklyl oses anyb elief he mayh aveh ad of being on apersonal mission to help realizehis country'sfuture as a "developed" socialist society.E arlyonh ed eclares to Ali: "Icame to GDR to study, to learn a skill. As soon as I've done that,I'll go back homeand do what Ican to help my people." Ali just laughs,a nd dismisses Latif'sa ttempt at idealism: Is that whyy ou came, youY oungP ioneer?Idid not want to come here. Iw anted to go to France, but the onlys cholarships available were to fraternal socialist countries,e ither to comehereorgotothe Soviet Union to learn to drive asnow plough.Ithink all the students herew ould prefer to be somewheree lse.
Latif then concedes: "We all wanted to be in the land of Coca-Colaa nd blue jeans, even if it wasn'tj ustf or thoser efined pleasurest hatw ew anted to be there."⁴⁸ Though Latif is an avid student,and earns the respect of his Germaninstructors,h eo bservesarelationship between them and the rest of the studentsr ife with "misunderstanding and insolence and mischief."⁴⁹ As awhole, the teachers are neither very fond of nor impressed by their African charges. Andinturn, the students acteds uperior to the teachers, as if we knew about things which the teachers had no inkling of -useful and complicated things, not just acoupleofw eddingsongs or asonorous prayero rh ow to playaharmonica. Iw onderedt hen, and still wonder now,who did we think we were? Perhapsw ek new that we wereb eggar pawns in somebodye lse'sp lans, captureda nd delivered there.H eldt here.P erhaps the scorn was liket he prisoner'ss ly refusal of the gaoler'sa uthority,s topping short of insurrection. Or perhaps most of us were reluctant students,a nd reluctant students are always liket hat with their teachers. Or perhapss till, somethingstern and unyieldingand despising in our teacher'sd emeanor made us resistant to them. Or perhapsevenfurther still, as one of the teachers told us,the heat in our countries and in our food had sapped our motivation and drive,and made us prisoners to instinct and self-indulgence.⁵⁰ Thus despite the rhetoric of socialist solidarity Latif'sG erman instructors possess attitudes and draw conclusions about their "dark" students that mirror colonial and Orientalist tropes of equatorial idleness and hedonism. They see their students' less thans tellar academic performance as indicative of broad cultural and racialnorms. The students, meanwhile, do not view their instructors as comrades in the great progressive march of humanity, but rather as curmudgeonly and mean-spirited prison guards,whose austerea nd often disdainful attitudes deserveo nlym ischiefa nd mockery in return. And yetG urnah goes further than merelys etting out aw ell-worn dialectic between European paternalism and post-colonial pride. Through Latif he asks: "who did we think we were?" Did the students reallyk now moret han their teachers?
Though Latif includes himself in this question, he is clearlyopen to new understandings.F or him, East Germany is "likeagleamingnew order,intimidating in its earnest and brutal self-assurance."⁵¹ He does not,however,expound much further on his personal impressions of this socialist new order,other thantonote  Ibid., 119.  Ibid., 115.  Ibid.  Ibid., 104.
6T he Rise and Fallo faSocialist Future the local town'su nwelcoming architecture and wind-swept emptiness, which mayber ead as am etaphor for sterile bureaucratic central planning.H ealso refers to the "authoritarian degradations of the GDR," but without elaboration.⁵² Otherwise, his interpretations of life in the East are free of socialist references, and could be the impressions of anyA frican traveler comingt oG ermany long before or after the Cold War. Accompanying Ali on awalk around town on aSundayafternoon, they encounter racist or at least socially obtuse behavior. Aclutch of male German youths approach on the sidewalk; Ali tenses for an altercation, but the boys merelyl augh and exclaim, "Afrikernische."⁵³ Latif remarks: "their swagger and their laughter made the wordu gly. It was shocking,t hatc asual mockery,b ut there would be time to getu sed to that and worse, to learn to recover from such smugd isregard."⁵⁴ Later,while riding anearlyempty bus aGerman man "wearingadark, heavy workman'scoat" leansoverthe back of his seat and stares at Latif "for about five minutes without interruption." When Latif eventually "glanced back into the bus, it was to find the man'sl iquid eyes restingw atchfullyo nm e, unraveling ad eep mystery. … After his five minutes were up, the man made as norting noise and turned to face the front again."⁵⁵ Aside from whatever maybededuced from as norta nd as tare, Latif'se ncounters with ordinary East Germans are devoid of violence and overt abuse.A nd on at rip to Dresden Latif is amazed to learn of the city's "medieval triumphs, its great industries, its beautiful buildings," as well as devastation suffered in the recent war.H er egrets that his colonial education was limited to the historic doingso ft he British,a nd made no mention of Dresden, "or am ultitudeo fo ther Dresdens.T hey had been there for all these centuries despite me, ignorant of me, oblivious of my existence. It was as taggering thought, how little it had been possible to know and remain contented."⁵⁶ Latif'sv isit to Dresden figures as part of ag rowinga wareness of av ery humanist sideofthe socialist East,first glimpsed in the works of Schiller and Chekov.F urther nurturing this awarenessisapen pal relationship with ayoung German woman named Elleke, who sends Latif aphoto of herself wearingaleopard- Ibid., 135 -136.  This might refer to the German adjective "afrikanische."  Ibid., 119.  Ibid., 135.  Ibid., 122. skin coatand a "friendlysatirical smile."⁵⁷ The two agree to meet; and Ali begsto come along as asort of bodyguard, in case he is harassedby"German thugs." Ali says "Youare so young. … So inexperienced. Such asad creature from the bush. You'll need some worldlya dvice when youm eet up with the leopard-skin coat."⁵⁸ Latif goes alone,h owever,a nd is approached by ay oung man named Jan, who announces he is Elleke-that he impersonated ayoung woman in theircorrespondence as ap rank that went further thani ntended. It all began when a speaker came to his college "to talk about the workt hat the GDR was doing in Africa," which Jandismissed as "the usual campaigningrubbish about fraternal relations." He decided to invent Elleke as asortofsecret slap against the authorities, but which to his surprise yieldedaletter from Latif, and the beginning of a very satisfying correspondence.⁵⁹ As tudent of automobile design at al ocal college, Janintroduces Latif to his mother who is tall, graceful, and aformer beauty. Both he and his mother are wellr ead, fluent in English, and pepper their conversation with literarya llusions rather than socialist rhetoric. Indeed, though having livedt hrough twow orld wars, and seen the rise of both fascism and socialism,t he mother is remarkably independenti nh er thinking.A bovea ll, she maybedescribed as an irrepressible humanist,who through life'smanyv icissitudes retains ap assionate attachment to literature and philosophy.⁶⁰ Latif is surprised to discover the mother alsohas her own deep well of African stories to tell, as wellasscathing ruminations on the morality of settlercolonialism. BeforeW orld WarO ne her parents werew ealthyl andowners in Austria; when Austria lost the war the familyb ooked passaget oK enya, and purchased ac offee farm. They felt they had ar ight to "places that wereonlyoccupied by people with dark skinsa nd frizzy hair." Her parents didn'ti nquire much into the "duplicity and force" of colonial rule; all thatm attered was "the nativesw erep acified and labour was cheap." And life continued that wayu ntil 1938, when they werei nformed that if war erupted in Europe they would be interned. So they sold their farm, moved to Dresden, and with their  Ibid., 117. ForGurnah, this pen pal relationship was autobiographical. However,unlikeinBy the Sea,h ea nd Elleken ever met in real life. Personal email communication from Abdulrazak Gurnah to the author,A ugust 14,2 019.  Gurnah, By the Sea,122-123.  Ibid., 124. Forathoughtful examinationofH ungary'scontemporaneous attempts to nurture ayouth culture of international socialist solidarity,see Mark and Apor, "Socialism Goes Global."  Gurnah, By the Sea,125-128.
6T he Risea nd Fall of aS ocialist Future life'ssavingsbought alarge and imposing home. After the war the new socialist regime confiscated their home and divided it into smaller apartments.⁶¹ When Janmentions his mother wroteamemoir of her time in Africa, she dismisses it as "lyingn ostalgia." She says, If Iw erew ritingi tn ow,Iwould also tell the horrible stories and depress everyone, like a boringold woman. … My father was fond of sayingthat our superiority over the nativeswas onlypossible with their consent. … PoorPapa, he didn'tthink that it was torture and murder that werec ommitted in our name which gave us that authority in the first place. He thought it was somethingm ysterious to do with justice and temperate conduct,something we acquiredfromreadingHegel and Schiller,and goingtoMass.Never mind the exclusions and expulsions, and the summaryjudgements deliveredwith contemptuous assurance. … It was our moral superiority which made the nativesa fraid of us.⁶² If anything in East Germanystrikes Latifasespeciallyadmirable, it is this sortof ruthless honesty.Y ears later,L atif recalls the wayJ an and his mother "treated every question as if it tested their integrity,a si ft hey had to guard against the duplicitous revision which alters the balance of as tory and turns it into something heroic." He praises their "sustained passion for ideas thatcould not be destroyed completely, not even by living through the obscenities of colonialism, nor the inhumanities of the Nazi war and the Holocaust,nor by the authoritarian degradations of the GDR."⁶³ Latif admires their obstinate belief in humanist values, and unwillingness to conform to hegemonic narrativesa nd ways of seeing the world.
While initiallyw illing to at least try and sound like an idealistic YoungP ioneer,L atif comes to see the great distance between the transcendent rhetoric of fraternalE ast-South relations and the depressingr ealities of life in the GDR,i ncludinganever-present fear of arrest and imprisonment.Hebecomes an accomplice in Jan'selaborate plan of escape. The two poseastourists visiting Yugoslavia; from there they board atrain to Austria,wherethe authorities send them on to Munich. The twot hen separate, with Jans taying in Germany, and Latifc ontinuing on to further studies in England. Thus we seehow,inaneffort to escape his tragic familyc ircumstances,ashya nd precocious youngZ anzibari male accepts an opportunity to studyinthe GDR,and there loses anyfaith he mayhave had in the socialist project.Within afew months he takes an opportunity to travel to London, the capital of British imperialism, and yetalso acenter of humanist learning and scholarship.
Although awork of fiction, Latif'sstory is inspired by Gurnah'so wn life experiences, in that he left Zanzibarinthe 1960stostudyliterature in Great Britain, whereh eh as resided for most of his adultl ife. Like Latif in By the Sea,Gurnah eventuallybecame auniversity lecturer,aswell as anoted author of bothnovels and literarycriticism. While he did not spend time in the GDR as astudent,Gurnah developed his account of Latif from the recollections of fellow Zanzibaris who had. And although highlym ediated, By the Sea nevertheless proposes a wayf or us to view the Zanzibari encounter with East Germanyi nt he 1960sa s one in which African studentsw ereo nt he surface willing to respect the basic tenets of the socialist project.Y et because they weren ot consultedi nt he role they weret op layi nt his project,t hey sometimes felt they were "beggar pawns in somebodye lse'sp lans."⁶⁴ And though their presencei nt he GDR wasm eant as living proof of the socialist fraternity of nations, for some this fraternity remaineda bstract,a nd less real or impactful thant he personal connections they made with German citizens while abroad.⁶⁵ Anxious over wheres uch unscripted encounters might lead,the GDR'snotion of "solidarity" did not actually encourages uch personal associations. As Toni Weis observes, the GDR wasf ar more interested in the solidarity of abstract peoples than of real,f lesh-andblood people.⁶⁶ Andy et some Africans were able to leave their student hostels and form associations with East Germans, through which they werei ntroduced to as urprising world of privatep assions and subjective experience.⁶⁷

Conclusion
Back in Zanzibar, the effort to turn the theory of socialist internationalism into the reality of modernist development wasf acing unforeseen obstacles. When Wolf first arrivedinthe islands in 1964,hesoon realized Zanzibaris had exaggerated ideas of what sorto fa id the GDR could provide: "They would mournfully  Ibid., 115.  Fora nother perspective,b ased upon oral histories of Tanzanian students in the GDR,s ee also Eric Burton, "Navigating Global Socialism: Tanzanian  show us crumbling boats, old radios, and fraying telephone cables left behind by the British, hoping that we could restore the infrastructureo ft heir entire country."⁶⁸ If islanders sawt he GDR as as ourceo fe ndless munificence, and if East Germans sawtheirrelationship with Zanzibar as ameans by which to break out of their diplomatic isolation,a nd build idealistic ties with as tate that met their standards of socialist authenticity,t he disillusionment was on both sides. By 1968 President Karume was increasinglyu pset with the poor results and/or highc ost of GDR-sponsored fishing and dairy projects, the poor English skills of East German instructors,a nd the amount Zanzibar was expectedt op ay back on interest-bearing loans. He became impatient with anyf oreign expertise that could not be obtained at minimal cost-and by "minimalcost" he meant the Chinese, who offered grants and interest-free loans, and sent experts and advisors willing to subsist on very little. Someo fK arume'sf rustration with the East Germans percolated down to the popularl evel. An East German biology teacher,w hen asked by his students in 1967a bout the size of his salary,w as dulyi nformed that for the same amount Zanzibar could support five or tenC hinese instructors,a ll of whom could live in the house he alone occupied.⁶⁹ Karume'sa ttitude became one of suspicion of all forms of technocratic expertise; hence his closure of the short-lived GDR-sponsored "School of Economics," and decision in the late-1960s to dramaticallyc urtail the numbers of Zanzibaris sent overseas for training and education.⁷⁰ He began to saya tr allies, "Tumesoma hatukujua, lakini tumejifunza tulijua," which roughly translates as "We studied and didn'tunderstand, but then we learned through practical experience."⁷¹ Karume'sd isdain for experts was an extension of his general dislike for educated persons, since from the 1950s they weret he ones in the ASP most likelyt oc hallengeh is authority.Y et Karume also parted ways with the GDR over his unwillingness to follow any "scientific" blueprint for socialism that entailed collectivization of agriculture, for example, or curbingthe privileges of the political elite. And as Eric Burton observes, the East Germans were sometimesp ut off by the racial animosity thata nimated manyo fK arume's  Wolf and McElvoy, ManW ithout aF ace,2 54.F or an engagingA merican perspective on the Cold Warr ivalries playingo ut in Zanzibar,s ee Don Petterson, Revolution in Zanzibar:A nA merican Cold WarT ale (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002).  Interview by author,E ckhart Schultz, Zanzibar Town, July 22, 2004.  Burton, "DivergingV isions," 108 -109.  Interview by author,R ubesa Hafidh Rubesa, MtambweN yale,Zanzibar,J une 21,2010.These words were featured on alarge banner strunguponthe government-built Michenzaniflats, sug-gestingZ anzibarisd id not need East German expertise to completet he project (photograph in author'sp ossession). most cherished initiatives. Though they once viewed him as an "anti-imperialist progressive," by 1970 he was a "nationalist conservative" who "artificiallyfuelled racialtensions for personal interests."⁷² By then China had supplanted the GDR as Zanzibar'sl eadingf oreign patron, and about 200E ast Germant eachers and "experts" in Zanzibar had alreadyl eft,o rw ereo nt heir wayh ome.⁷³ The disillusionment was mutual-East Germans were convinced Karume was not at rue socialist,and Karume felt that other than in the realm of security the GDR had failed to live up to expectations. It wasn'to nlyt he obstacles of language, culture, and distance that eventuallyb rought an end to the flow of students, technicians, and teachers between East Germany and Zanzibar.B y1 970 it was clear to bothsides their shared vision of asocialist futurewas hollow,superficial, and unable to paper over serious differences of interest and ideology. The political elite of both countries felt it was time to be more selective in their international partners, and to be more aware of the potentiallys hallow quality of an imagined future that, while possessing immensea ppeal, wasu nable to reconcile diverging conceptsofrevolution, development, and solidarity.⁷⁴ Thus just as Zanzibara chieved sovereignty duringt he height of the Cold War, the GDR was poised and readyt ob reak out of its diplomatic isolation and conduct its first major development projects in Africa. Believing they were part of aglobal drama in which one people after another would embrace socialism and achievemodernist development,E ast Germans felt they werep laying a significant and honorable role in advancing the irreversible progressive momentum of history.B y1 990,however,the GDR had merged with West Germany,a nd Zanzibar had lost keyaspects of its sovereignty:its presidents werenow selected by Tanzania'sr uling party based overwhelmingly on the mainland. Severe economic decline had alsocompelled Zanzibar to roll backone revolutionary initiative after another,a nd to abandon anything more than lip service to socialism. Instead of gazinge astward,s tate officials now looked to the West and Middle East for aid,e xpertise, and tourists to fill the manyh otels now clustered along Zanzibar'sf ine whites and beaches. AndA bdulrazak Gurnah was now asking his friends and former classmates who studied in the GDR-caught up as they werei na ne ra of high idealisma nd socialist solidarity-how they managed to negotiate the disparate avenues of opportunitys uddenlyp resented to them.  Burton, "DivergingV isions," 111.  Burgess, "AS ocialist Diaspora," 282; Clayton, Zanzibar Revolution,1 48.  Fort he difference between "development" and "solidarity," see Weis, "The Politics Machine," 352, 357.
6T he Rise and Fall of aS ocialist Future