Haroub Othman: A friend and a comrade

For all intents and purposes, and for a day like that the night was still young. It was just after 11 o’clock and we had just finished attending the official opening of the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) and we walked down to Forodhani to have dinner on the streets. Having been done with that we walked back to attend the music extravaganza at the same place, the Old Fort. On entering we saw Haroub chatting with friends. Fatma Alloo, our host, was excited: We had been looking forward to meeting Haroub from early that evening. I went straight to Haroub and hugged him as Fatma informed him that the whole board members of the African Research and Resource Forum (ARRF) was here and we would be delighted to meet him, including Michael Chege.

We exchanged pleasantries as usual. I congratulated Haroub once more for his excellent tribute to Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu when he published I saw the future and it works in Babu’s memory. Michael, unfortunately, had not seen the book since its publication in 2001. I promised I would get him a copy somehow. But Mike reminded Haroub that all the debates he has been involved in regarding the viability of the capitalist world order are now more relevant than ever. Indeed, he added, 'Samir Amin and Mahathir Mohammed must be having their last laugh as the USA nationalises banks.'

As usual Haroub was quietly composed and responded by requesting us to get together with him the following day to chat further as if to cover lost ground. He then beckoned Saida to join us as she was standing at a distance with other friends. A pleasant moment followed and we promised we would meet Haroub the next day at one o’clock before departing for Nairobi. It was never to be.

Sunday morning, 28 June 2009: I had just finished having breakfast at the Tembo Hotel at nine o’clock when the ARRF administrative secretary Ms Doreen Ndenda informed me that Fatma had called the hotel urgently looking for me. I called Fatma from my cell phone.

'Are you at the hotel,' she inquired in panic.
'Yes,' I replied.
'Then wait for me at the entrance. I have very bad news for you. Haroub has passed on!'
'What?' I shouted back.
'Yes it is true! Just wait for me. I’ll be there in a second.'

For a moment I stood there dazed. Everything around me seemed empty. I quickly had a flash back to May 2002 when the news of my brother Aggrey passing on in an accident in Nairobi also reached me in a similar manner through a phone call. Such moments are better to be heard about from others and not to be experienced in person.

Fatma arrived looking completely dazed and confused. She simply beckoned me to follow her as she tried to relate the story in staccatos. We were soon in Haroub’s hotel room to meet his wife, Saida, sitting next to him on the bed they had just shared full of life for their last night. The pain that had gripped this gracious lady, crying and weeping for her loved one, reaching out to us for help to try and bring him back as we were last night, was simply unbearable.

'Peter, Peter! Haroub ametuwacha jameni! Ah, ah, Haroub, Haroub, uko wapi?'

In his book, Intellectuals at the Hill (1993), Issa Shivji describes Haroub as 'a long time academic activist and sometime chairman of UDASA – University of Dar es Salaam Academic Staff Association.' There can be no better summary of the essence of the political and intellectual contribution of Haroub to us than in these words. Haroub used the pen and his brain to engage people to analyse, explain and understand problems which faced humankind so as to solve them. That was the meaning of his academic activism.

Like his close comrade Babu, Haroub believed in making definite and clear statements about the solution to social, economic and political problems once he satisfied himself with analysing the evidence and facts before him. In this regard, his research skills as a historian and his intellectual depth in political economy came in handy. The book I enjoyed reading most was the tribute to Babu that I have referred to earlier. And with this I would like to appreciate the life of Haroub.

I saw the future and it works is the only book that gives us a concise publication of the political thinking of Babu and how his ideas helped shape the politics and future of Zanzibar and Tanzania. Babu’s other book, African Socialism or Socialist Africa (1981) had a slightly different concern: It was intended to produce the first comprehensive Socialist Programme for Africa and it did.

The first key question that Haroub asks in his introduction to I saw the future is still pertinent in contemporary Zanzibar. The question is: Should a party (like the Umma Party that Babu led) proclaiming itself to be socialist and a vanguard of the working class maintain its independent status, or should it allow itself to be submerged under a broad alliance, hoping its cadres would be able to influence the course of events? In the case of Zanzibar, the latter did not happen; from that time the initiative was lost to Babu and his comrades (p2).

In other words, the making of a purely Zanzibari socialist revolution was lost first when the Umma Party joined the Revolutionary Council and the Afro Shirazi Party after the revolution of 1964, and second after the Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar to form Tanzania in April the same year. It is worth speculating whether Zanzibar would have been another Cuba in the Indian Ocean had Babu and his comrades in the Umma Party succeeded in carrying out the socialist revolution.

According to Babu, pushing Zanzibar into Tanzania meant poverty for the people and almost permanent stagnation (p18). Having taken the Spice Trail (the tourists visit to the spice farms on the island) on Sunday on the morning when Haroub passed on, I am left wondering whether this statement is still applicable to present day Zanzibar. This rich island that is home to thousands of cherished flora and fauna; this wonderful soil from which sprouts trees of lychees, guavas, mangoes, oranges, bananas and all tropical fruits known to man with little of this man’s efforts except to harvest and carouse; this home of bees and butterflies and a weather comfortable to both man and his earthly foes alike; why should this land remain so virgin and so unproductive in this age of technology and fail to put Zanzibar in the league to which she belongs globally – with Singapore and Cuba or both combined?

Up to his passing on Babu was not really against the union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar, i.e. the United Republic of Tanzania. It was for Tanzania as long as the union would release the highest productive potential of its component parts and not simply be used as a political base for the reproduction of a parasitic society that underdeveloped its component parts. If this was to be fate of the people of the component parts then, as Lenin had said much earlier, self-determination of Zanzibar would be justified up to and including secession.

Babu is very concise and precise when talking about Zanzibar and the Future (pp. 26-38). The capacity of Zanzibar to bounce back as an economic dynamo is almost unlimited provided a serious strategy for economic revival is consciously worked out now, without further delay p29).

Haroub very often echoed these words, but apparently little seems to be happening during this first decade of the 21st century. Why the delay when reality that urgent change is needed to uplift the life chances of our people are staring us in the face?

To plan the strategies that will make a positive difference in the lives of our people requires two things, according to Babu. First of all, we need to appraise the reality of the era in which we are: In this all political economists concur. Progress today depends more on manufacturing rather than trade in primary commodities such as cloves. Value addition prior to exporting the many fruits of the soil that Zanzibar is endowed with is a necessary condition for the island’s economic take off.

Secondly, we need to look critically, and dispassionately, at the country’s past without allowing contemporary political imperatives to influence our investigation (p 29). This dispassionate diagnosis of the past will inform us that it contains the potential riches of the present; it gives tremendous comparative advantage of the island as a tourist destination with a high potential of being a service economy that is backed solidly by modernised agricultural production.

'Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightening they
Do not go gentle into that good night.'

These are the words of the English poet, Dylan Thomas from his poem Do not go gentle into that good night, written some time between 1934 and 1952.

Just like Babu, Haroub worked very hard and was singularly dedicated to his work and his people. Fatma Alloo had just warned me that morning that she was losing too many intellectual friends and comrades who 'work themselves to death!' (her own words).

Dylan Thomas had made this observation many decades before, and he philosophically thought that the drive to make ideas be heard and to bring change in society almost drives committed intellectuals to this rather 'suicidal mission.' Even when our 'words spark no lightening' to awaken society or the powers that be, we soldier on: We do not go gentle into that good world!

Haroub, soldier on. Do not go gentle into that good world; rage, rage into the night!

* P. Anyang’ Nyong’o is Kenya's minister of medical services and founder of the African Research and Resource Forum (ARRF)
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.