Ahmed Rajab and the Struggle for People’s Rights

Ahmed Rajab, a Tanzanian-born international journalist, political analyst, essayist, and notable people’s rights activist joined the ancestors in February 2025. Rajab worked within the ranks of the global freedom struggles and served as a journalist and a fighter for African independence and unity. From the time of his youth, he was associated with the leading figures of the Zanzibar Revolution such as Ali Mahfoudh, Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu, Ali Sultan Issa, Salim Ahmed Salim, Bi. Ashoura Hilal (Babu), Bi. Biubwa Amour Zahor, Hamis A. Ameir, Hashil S Hashil, and Mohamed Ali Foum. When he worked as a journalist for the Kiswahili service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) he used his perch in London to connect progressive forces in Africa, in Palestine, and indeed in all parts of the world where people were fighting for self-determination. He was closely associated with African revolutionaries such as Ndeh Ntumuzah and Tajudeen Abdul Raheem in London and in his last years served as a member of the International governing council of the Global Pan African Movement (Kampala chapter). From 2006-2009 he was based in Dubai where he was Head of Newsroom (Middle East/Asia Bureau) for IRIN. Ahmed Rajab was a champion of the Kiswahili language and culture and devoted the last years of his life to the globalization of the Kiswahili language and culture. In this tribute, Pambazuka seeks to highlight the positive contributions of Ahmed Rajab to African freedom.

Ahmed Rajab as a youth in Zanzibar

As a youth, Rajab grew up in the internationalist environment of Zanzibar where citizens of the islands mixed and intermarried with Africans from the mainland, Indians, and the strong Comoran population of Zanzibar. From his writings we learnt that as a youth, Ahmed Rajab was a runner for the revolutionaries of the Umma party who were at the forefront of the Zanzibar Revolution, in 1964. In his writings, he has reminisced about taking food to jail for those of the Umma party who had been incarcerated in 1964. The record of his activities as a youth was described many years later for a BBC Witness History podcast in 2020.

His father Ali Muhammed and his mother Bi. Mhaza Ali joined the Afro Shirazi Party (ASP) and after the 1977 merger of ASP and the Tanganyika African Union (TANU), his father was a local ward leader of Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) in Stone Town Zanzibar.  After the killing of Sheikh Karume in 1972 most of the leaders of the Umma group, such as Ali Mahfoudh and A. M. Babu, were placed in detention. Ahmed Rajab as a member of the youth wing of Umma was dispatched to the United Kingdom to study philosophy. As a student, he started to work as a stringer for the BBC Kiswahili service and he worked full time as an advocate calling for the freedom of those who had been detained in Zanzibar. He worked at the Index on Censorship and with Amnesty International to push for the release of the Zanzibari revolutionaries. Inside Tanzania itself, there was a small committee of progressives such as Aishura Babu, Amne Salim, Issa Shivji, Karrim Essack, Walter Rodney, and Abdul Sheriff who worked closely with Ahmed Rajab who used the human rights platforms in London to fight for the freedom of the detained Zanzibaris. Another group that worked for the release of the political detainees, was the TANU Study Group in Dar es Salaam. Ahmed Rajab worked closely with freedom fighters from other African societies and for a short time shared a house in North London with Ndeh Ntumuzah, the Cameroonian revolutionary.

Activist, Journalist in London

Political repression in Kenya, and Uganda had driven many political activists to London in the late seventies. Rajab used his experience of fighting for the release of political prisoners in Tanzania to support freedom fighters in Kenya and Uganda. He was one of the supporters of a major political rally held at Friends House, London, in 1978, organized by the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya (CRPPK). Rajab was working closely with Abdilatif Abdalla, the well-known Kenyan poet and political activist who had moved to London in 1977. The collective work of the progressive Pan Africanists in the media world assisted the pushback of the South African Information warfare efforts that became known as the Muldergate scandal. Tanzania was also responding to the challenges to its human rights record and released A.M. Babu, Colonel Ali Mahfoudh and other Zanzibari who were in detention.

Colonel Ali Mahfoudh 

After he was released from detention in Tanzania Ali Mahfoudh was invited to Mozambique by President Samora Machel to settle and continue training the military. Colonel Ali Mahfoudh had been a firm supporter of FRELIMO during the armed struggles for liberation 1965-1969. He was one of the principal military planners and Tanzanian Peoples Defense Forces (TPDF) commander who assisted FRELIMO to break the Gordian knot that the Portuguese army had sought to use to stop the Frelimo advance in Mozambique. Rajab became a crucial link between Colonel Ali Mahfoudh and liberation fighters in other parts of Africa such as Polisario, freedom fighters from Comoros and Eritrea.

It was from this period where Ahmed Rajab and Abdilatif Abdalla developed a lasting relationship in their struggle for Pan African freedom. They worked for the BBC Swahili Service and later Africa Events, a news magazine that covered political, social, and cultural issues across the African continent. At the height of the destructive African policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the journalistic community worked closely with the anti-apartheid and the anti-globalization forces providing in-depth analysis and reporting on crimes of the apartheid state, helping to raise awareness about anti-imperialism and the struggles for democratic participation in Africa.

Ahmed Rajab, Africa Research and Information Bureau (ARIB) and the Global Pan African Movement

Ahmed Rajab functioned as an ambassador for A.M. Babu when he left Tanzania and relocated overseas. Rajab worked closely with Caribbean movements such as the Working Peoples Alliance (WPA) of Guyana and the New Jewel Movement (NJM) of Grenada and provided concrete journalistic assistance to beat back the disinformation of the Burnham regime against Walter Rodney, the WPA, and the Rodney family when Rodney was assassinated in 1980. During this period, a significant number of West African refugees relocated to London to advocate for democratic rights in their home countries. Among these West Africans were Zaya Yeebo (former Minister of Jerry Rawlings) and Napoleon Abdulai. These Ghanaians together with Tajudeen Abdul Raheem co-founded the Africa Research and Information Bureau (ARIB) in 1990. Babu, Rajab, and ARIB collaborated on many projects to advance people’s rights.  

A.M. Babu recruited Tajudeen from this work in London in 1992 to go to Uganda to organize the seventh Pan African Congress. Both A.M. Babu and Karrim Essack had persuaded the President of Uganda to host the Congress in Kampala. The Congress in 1994 was one of the very few occasions when Babu, Salim Ahmed Salim, and Rajab were in the same meeting. Babu, Rajab, and the progressive Pan African forces worked hard against genocidal violence in Africa. This was especially important in the wake of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that exploded on the last day of the seventh Pan African Congress.

Ahmed Rajab without A.M. Babu

A.M Babu joined the ancestors in 1996. Since that time Rajab lost an important mentor and advisor. This was especially true when there was the delicate question of the interconnection between professional work and progressive Pan African principles. This issue came to the fore in the relationships between Malik Chaka and Ahmed Rajab over the question of interviewing Jonas Savimbi. Jonas Savimbi had been introduced to Kenneth Kaunda and other leaders of Southern Africa by A. M. Babu, when Savimbi had professed to be a freedom fighter and a supporter of the Chinese concept of people’s war. Nyerere himself had been introduced to the Chinese leadership by Babu. When Jonas Savimbi became the overt ally of apartheid in the wars against the peoples of Africa, he was denounced by Babu. Rajab’s journalistic work with the BBC brought him in contact with Malik Chaka a former Pan Africanist who was now a consultant for the neoconservatives of the Republican Party of George W. Bush. In 1999, Robin White of the BBC’s Focus on Africa carried out a lengthy interview with Savimbi when the anti-apartheid Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC) had declared Jonas Savimbi as a war criminal.

Rajab became a known name in Africa from his work on BBC Kiswahili service and for his work on the Africa Quiz show, which he co-hosted with Robin White and, ran for several years during the 1980s and 1990s

Rajab, who was before 1999 considered a cultural Muslim; that is, the African who lived in the Swahili culture of the coast, followed the holy days of the Islamic faith but who enjoyed the pleasures of a bohemian lifestyle, such as fine wines and good nightlife. Ahmed Rajab was profoundly affected by the global Islamophobia that swept the western world after 2001 and the wars against the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan. From 2006-2009 he was based in Dubai where he was Head of Newsroom (Middle East/Asia Bureau) for IRIN, the then UN humanitarian news agency and he later spent another three years in Nairobi as Managing Director of Universal TV. He later worked as a consultant to the Kaduna-based Gusau Institute. One other controversial professional quandary for Rajab was in relation to the self-declared Somaliland Republic. Rajab traveled often to Somaliland and was challenged to respect the Organization of African Unity/ African Union position on Somaliland.

Ahmed Rajab as a cultural worker

Ahmed contributed articles and poems to anthologies, including African New Voices (1997) and Pioneers, Rebels, and a Few Villains: 150 Years of Journalism in Eastern Africa (2021).

A respected figure on the African literary scene, he contributed his expertise as a judge on various panels, including for the 1999 CNN African Journalist of the Year Awards, the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing, and the 2019 Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature.

After the passing of Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, Rajab served as a member of the international governing council of the Kampala faction of the Global Pan African Movement. Rajab was active on the cultural and political front with respect to both the Kiswahili language and the future of the relationship between Zanzibar and the Union Government. His writings began to appear on outlets in East Africa, such the Tanzanian weekly news sheet Raia Mwema, where he espoused positions on the Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar that contradicted the Pan-African spirit. It was noteworthy that while Rajab righteously championed democratic rights in Tanzania, he was silent on the abrogation of rights in Rwanda and Uganda. In the governing council of GPAM he remained silent when other International Governing Council members raised the question of Uganda as the headquarters of the Global Pan African movement. Rajab was not heard from when the extreme activities of the neo conservatives from the UAE were being exposed.

In 2023, he was the keynote speaker at a House of Lords reception to celebrate World Kiswahili Day, a recognition of his appreciation for the role that the Swahili language plays in African culture.

Ahmed Rajab is survived by his wife, Aysha (née Omar), a National Health Service (NHS) ward administrator he married in 1984, their four children, Tahar, Zakiya, Umi and Talal Rajab, and seven grandchildren.

Pambazuka sends its deepest condolences to the family, friends and comrades of Ahmed Rajab.